Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Then
Creed: Landed. It’s fifty-four degrees and overcast.
Liv: Your jacket isn’t warm enough for that, and you know it.
Creed: You’ve never seen my jacket.
Liv: I have. You wore it to the roof on Saturday. It’s a windbreaker pretending to be a coat.
Creed: Your problem with my windbreaker is noted. I have warmer jackets for inclement weather.
Liv: Define warmer.
Creed: Insulated.
Liv: That is not a definition. That is a hostage statement from a clothing catalog.
Creed: Warm enough.
Liv: Men who say “warm enough” are found frozen beside highways every winter.
Creed: I’m in Toronto, not scaling Everest.
Liv: That’s exactly what a man in a fake coat would say.
Creed: [photo of the arena ice at 8 a.m., empty, lights up, Zamboni in the corner]
Creed: Morning skate.
Liv: The ice looks angry.
Creed: The ice IS angry. This rink hosted a figure skating thing on Monday, and you can see the grooves.
Liv: You can SEE the grooves from there?
Creed: You can if you've spent fifteen years on the ice.
Liv: Show off.
Liv: Are angry grooves dangerous?
Creed: Annoying more than dangerous.
Liv: Annoying Grooves sounds like a bad band Luther would recommend.
Creed: Luther would recommend Annoying Grooves and then tell you their second album is underrated.
Liv: I respect him already.
Liv: [photo of her coffee at Columbia, on a stack of books, His Dark Materials on top]
Liv: I'm at the library. Tell hockey to wait.
Creed: The Amber Spyglass again?
Liv: I told you. Annual September ritual, currently extended to October.
Creed: What page?
Liv: 330. College is harder than I thought.
Creed: You'll be at the end by Friday. I believe in you.
Liv: Just DON'T spoil it.
Creed: You've read it three times.
Liv: Irrelevant. Respect the process.
Creed: I respect the process.
Liv: You mocked the alethiometer.
Creed: I said it seemed busy.
Liv: That is mocking.
Creed: I apologize for the compass thing.
Liv: The alethiometer accepts nothing less than full repentance.
Creed: I’m in a locker room. Full repentance may have to wait.
Liv: Typical athlete. Afraid of emotional accountability before noon.
Creed: [photo of a hotel room window at dusk, Toronto skyline, gold and grey]
Creed: View from room 1804. Nap, then game.
Liv: The CN Tower looks like it's apologizing for something.
Creed: It always looks like that. National posture.
Liv: Please don’t acclimate to it. You already apologize with your eyebrows.
Creed: I don’t apologize with my eyebrows.
Liv: You absolutely do.
Creed: My eyebrows are confident.
Liv: Your eyebrows once apologized because I beat you at Scrabble.
Creed: You used “qi.”
Liv: It was legal.
Creed: It was suspicious.
Liv: Losing is hard. I’m here if you need support.
Creed: Skate at 10. Media at 11. Nap at 2. You?
Liv: Lab at 1. Exam tomorrow at 9. I may be dead by Friday.
Creed: You won't be dead.
Liv: You don't know that.
Creed: I know you.
Liv: That was either comforting or arrogant.
Creed: Both.
Liv: Efficient.
Liv: I've watched it.
Creed: The game?
Liv: Yes, the game. James had it on at the bar. I told him I was there for the game, and he said, “Sure you are, kid,” and gave me a Sprite anyway. I’m researching.
Creed: Research what?
Liv: You.
Creed: Ah.
Liv: I now understand what "icing" is. You’re welcome.
Creed: We’ve been working on that for three weeks.
Liv: Well, tonight it CLICKED. But . . . you got hit at the blue line in the second period.
Liv: That man was the size of a small house.
Liv: Are you okay?
Creed: I’m always okay.
Creed: I was the small house in a previous play. Hockey is a small-house economy.
Liv: I’m not sure if I like hockey.
Creed: You should, and I’m waiting to hear something like congratulations.
Liv: For not dying? I’m thrilled. I’ll give you a gold star the next time I see you.
Creed: No, won 4-2.
Liv: I SAW. And you got an assist—I learned that at the bar too.
Creed: Did I?
Liv: Creed Lafontaine, I am going to send you the box score.
Creed: Please don't.
Liv: [screenshot of the box score with Creed's assist circled in red]
Creed: You circled it three times.
Liv: I wanted you to feel celebrated and mildly threatened.
Creed: Mission accomplished.
Liv: James said assists are important.
Creed: James is correct.
Liv: James also said defensemen are emotionally unavailable.
Creed: James talks too much.
Liv: I find his insights credible.
Creed: Landed in Montreal. Here it’s forty-eight and grey. Leaves are still going. Different country, same fall.
Creed: [photo of a small outdoor neighborhood rink, dry boards, a few orange, red, and yellow leaves on the empty ice surface]
Creed: This is where my grandfather taught me to skate when I was four.
Liv: Creed.
Creed: Yeah.
Liv: That's a lot of trust for a Tuesday morning text.
Creed: It's Wednesday.
Liv: You know what I mean.
Creed: I know what you mean.
Liv: So, tell me about him.
Creed: My grandfather?
Liv: Yes.
Creed: He was Philippe senior and died when I was twelve.
He taught Luther and me both. He didn’t believe in helmets, and he believed in frozen ponds.
He believed if you fell hard enough on your head once at four years old, you’d never fall again on purpose.
Luther tested this theory three times before my mother told Grandpa that either we wore helmets or she’d never let us skate with him.
Liv: Tough lady.
Creed: She’s tough but loving.
Liv: I like her.
Creed: She’d like you.
Liv: You don’t know that.
Creed: I do.
Liv: Confident eyebrows again.
Creed: Accurate eyebrows.
Liv: [photo of the Columbia library window, view of the quad in late afternoon light, ginkgos in yellow]
Liv: You have a grandfather rink and I have a library window.
Creed: The window is yours, though.
Liv: What do you mean?
Creed: You said “my window.” The rink wasn’t my parents. It belongs to a neighborhood in Montreal. The window belongs to you.
Liv: You’re a sentimentalist.
Creed: I’m a defenseman.
Liv: That is not a denial.
Creed: It’s a redirection.
Liv: Ineffective.
Creed: Noted.
Creed: Won 3-1. Clean game. Coach happy. Nobody died.
Liv: I couldn’t watch the game, but congrats. I have to study.
Creed: Good luck with the test.
Liv: Thank you. If chemistry kills me, tell James I appreciated the Sprites.
Creed: I’m not delivering your final message to a bartender.
Liv: Fine. Tell him I appreciated the Sprites and his hockey commentary.
Creed: Study.
Liv: Bossy.
Creed: Accurate.
Liv: Unfortunately.
Liv: Exam went fine, btw. Since you didn't ask.
Creed: I was waiting for you to bring it up so I didn't seem overbearing.
Liv: That's worse.
Creed: I'm aware.
Liv: B+.
Creed: Professor punished you for choosing chemistry?
Liv: Tactical underperformance to manage expectations.
Creed: Of course.
Liv: If I get an A too soon, they’ll expect excellence.
Creed: Tragic.
Liv: Thank you for understanding my burden.
Creed: I’m very supportive.
Liv: You’re smug.
Creed: Also supportive.
Creed: I’m in Chicago, and it’s indeed windy. So much wind. The wind has opinions.
Liv: Everyone knows that.
Creed: The wind is morally invested.
Liv: Hope it doesn’t blow you away.
Creed: I’m harder to move than that.
Liv: That sounds like a hockey quote.
Creed: It can be both true and annoying.
Liv: You contain multitudes.
Creed: Luther would love that.
Liv: I knew I liked him.
Creed: I went to a museum.
Liv: You what?
Creed: I had time between skate and game. I went to the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago.
Liv: The SMART MUSEUM?
Creed: Yes.
Liv: Creed Lafontaine, you went to a museum called the Smart Museum.
Creed: The name is unfortunate. The collection is not.
Liv: Did you do this for me?
Creed: I did it for me. I thought of you while I did it.
Creed: [photo of a small dark painting with figures in a candlelit interior]
Creed: Teach me.
Liv: I need a higher-res photo.
Creed: [higher-res photo of the same painting, plus a photo of the museum placard]
Liv: OH.
Liv: Creed, that's a follower of Caravaggio.
Liv: The placard says "circle of," which means the museum thinks it MIGHT be by someone who knew him personally, but they aren't going to commit. It's the most cautious wall label in art.
Creed: What am I looking at?
Liv: Tenebrism. The light is the subject. Caravaggio invented this. The figures emerge from total darkness like the painting is deciding what to let you see. Notice the woman in the back left is barely visible but her hand is in the light. That hand is the whole painting.
Creed: The hand is the whole painting.
Liv: The hand is the whole painting.
Creed: Okay. I see it now.
Liv: Do you?
Creed: Yes.
Liv: . . .
Liv: I wish I were there.
Creed: I wish you were here too. Maybe next week we can go wherever you choose to take me.
Liv: That is a dangerous offer.
Creed: I’m aware.
Liv: I could make you look at frames for three hours.
Creed: I can take it.
Liv: You say that now.
Creed: I’m a professional athlete.
Liv: Frames have humbled stronger men.
Liv: [photo: hand-drawn map of Randolph Street with an X and "Creed, take notes"]
Creed: What kind of notes?
Liv: Everything. The bread. The lighting. Whether the waiters look at you when you ask them a question. Whether the music is too loud. Whether the place has soul. Report back.
Creed: Yes, ma’am.
Liv: Don’t “ma’am” me unless you’re prepared to be assigned homework.
Creed: I assumed this was homework.
Liv: This is fieldwork.
Creed: Of course.
Liv: Also dessert. You need to report on dessert.
Creed: You didn’t mention dessert.
Liv: I assumed you had common sense.
Creed: Dangerous assumption.
Liv: So I’m learning.
Creed: Landed at JFK.
Liv: Welcome home.
Creed: Home.
Liv: What?
Creed: You said home.
Liv: I did.
Creed: I'll be on the roof later tonight.
Liv: I'll be on the roof.
Creed: Wearing your jacket?
Liv: Wearing your sweatshirt.
Creed: That’s my favorite sweatshirt.
Liv: I’m aware.
Creed: You planning to return it?
Liv: Eventually.
Creed: Define eventually.
Liv: Warm enough.
Creed: That is not a definition.
Liv: That is a hostage statement from a clothing catalog.
Creed: You’re using my own words against me.
Liv: I’m academically gifted.
Creed: I missed you.
Liv: You were gone five days.
Creed: I know.
Liv: I missed you too.
Creed: Roof at eleven?
Liv: Roof at eleven.