12. Nolan #2
"Too honest," he told Jamie, who'd twice tried the same corner and been read both times. "Your eyes go where the puck goes. You look, then you shoot. I only have to watch your face. Very sweet. Bankrupt, but sweet."
Jamie said something about mixing it up next time.
"No," Misha said kindly. "You will not."
He was right. Jamie aimed for the same side again on his last one and skated back to the line, owing the room a tab of oat-milk lattes.
He was still laughing when I noticed his stride. Jamie had taken a hard hit near the end of Game Four. He skated with a hitch he thought nobody could see, keeping his left arm tucked on the stride. When he shot, the follow-through stopped a foot short of where it usually finished.
Petey asked him about it at the bench. I was close enough to hear.
"It's good," Jamie said. "Little stiff. I'm ready to go."
Petey nodded and moved on because Jamie gave the right answer.
I stayed where I was, leaning on the boards, and watched the kid steer his shoulder around and go back to snapping pucks. It's good, little stiff, ready to go. It was the same answer any of us would have given. He couldn't sit out a Cup Final.
Ask him the follow-up, I thought. Ask what "little stiff" means.
I didn't. I stood there and let the reasons stop me: Petey's got it, it's a bruise, he's twenty-two. Everyone was reasonable.
Jamie buried a shot top shelf and looked over to see if I'd been watching. I nodded. He grinned and lined up another puck.
A columnist caught me at the glass on my way off the ice. He was the guy who quoted equipment managers.
"Game Five is a bounce-back game," he said. "You've played hundreds of those. What's the secret to answering the bell?"
He asked about the mind, and mine went straight to the body, because for me they'd never been two different things.
"Pain's part of the job," I said, and stopped.
He waited, expecting more.
"You show up," I said. "That's the whole secret. Sorry, I owe Petey ten minutes."
I didn't owe Petey anything, but I'd already said more than I intended.
***
Elias walked me over to Hannah's a little after eight. It was three blocks, and he looked at everything along the way: parked cars, porches, and the gangways between buildings.
At one corner, a small man stood waiting on an enormous dog who was nosing at a tree. It was a shaggy black beast with a tail that wagged at the sight of us.
"Baxter," Elias said to the dog, not the man. He got a full-body wag in return. The man lifted two fingers off the leash, and Elias lifted two back.
At Hannah's building, he stopped.
"I'll come back at eleven," he said. "Text if you're ready to leave sooner."
"You could come in. She'll feed you."
"She's not expecting two." He was already scanning the corner. "Go. This is your time."
Hannah opened the door, wearing jeans and a sweater. She had reading glasses pushed up in her hair and looked past me at Elias's back going down the steps.
"He's not staying?"
"He's working."
"Hm." She held the door. "Good bones."
Her kitchen smelled of caramelized onions.
There was a pot on the stove and a stack of journals on the far end of the table.
Her boyfriend, Paul, was in Chicago for three days.
She put food in front of me without asking whether I'd eaten.
She knew I got meals delivered and had opinions about eating from trays.
She didn't mention the Cup Final. Anyone else in the city would have led with it and told me we'd get them at home. Hannah asked whether I'd noticed the new awning on the coffee place on Maryland, and whether it was as ugly as she thought it was. She was right.
She took a bottle of bourbon down when the plates were cleared. It lived on the top shelf and came down maybe twice a year. She never announced the reason why.
She poured two glasses, one finger each, and slid mine over.
I turned the glass a quarter turn.
"My building's a circus," I said. "There's a satellite truck out front and a kid holding a boom mic, hoping I'll come out the front door."
"I saw that."
"The League's got people everywhere. Security guys were bumping into each other on our floor in the hotel in Boston."
"Mm."
I turned the glass back the other way. She let the silence sit. She never fills it when she wants to know something. It works on me every time.
"There's someone," I said.
She sipped her bourbon.
"It's new." I looked at my glass. "It's—there's no version of it that's simple. The timing's wrong and the situation's wrong; it's—" I let the sentence die.
She set her glass down. "You've been here an hour and you've checked my window twice. Tell me."
"I'm scared."
She looked at me for a moment. Then she reached over, took my glass, and poured a second finger. I couldn't remember the last time that happened.
"Being scared of a good thing isn't unusual."
"It's not that simple. There are things about this you don't—"
"Of course there are." She didn't argue. "I'm not saying it's simple. I'm saying scared isn't a reason to do anything. I hear you on the edge of treating it like a reason." She sat back with her own glass. "You get scared when something can be taken from you. That's all it is."
I didn't want to discuss it, and she understood. She told me about her week instead.
"A family fired me today," she said. "Not fired.
You can't fire me, but the son stood in the hall and told me I didn't care about his mother.
It was in front of two residents. He did it because I wouldn't promise him something I can't promise anybody.
" She sipped her bourbon again. "He's not wrong that I wouldn't promise it.
He was wrong about it being something I could promise.
I don't get to argue. I have to stand there and let a scared man tell me what he thinks I am. "
"What'd you do?"
"Excused myself to see my next patient." She shrugged. "That's the job. Somebody decides you're a villain, and you go do the next right thing anyway." She set the glass down. "Then I came home, turned my phone off, and made too much food for one person. You can use that for your diagnosis."
I almost said something. She saw it coming and headed it off.
"Don't. I like cooking. I'm allowed to like cooking." She pointed at me. "You, on the other hand, ate whatever came in a tray tonight, or you would have, if I'd let you."
"I ate what you put in front of me."
"And you were very good about that." Her voice was flat, matter-of-fact. "Sometimes it feels like a miracle when a grown man eats his vegetables."
That line got a laugh out of me—a real one.
"There you are," she said.
"Don't do that either."
"I'm not doing anything. I'm a scientist. I observe." She drank the last of her bourbon. "You walked in here looking parking-garage gray. Now you're a person again. I'm allowed to notice that my friend's back."
"You're doing a lot of noticing tonight."
"It's my personality. You knew that going in."
She stood, took the pot off the stove, and emptied the contents into a plastic container. She snapped the lid on it and set it beside me.
At a quarter to eleven, I texted Elias and got up from the table. When I reached the door, she called after me. "Nolan—"
I looked back. She had a dish towel over her shoulder and both hands on the counter.
"The thing you're scared of," she said. "Don't let that paralyze you. It's not going to hold still while you get ready for it. Ready isn't a thing that taps you on the shoulder."
"I know," I said.
"I know you know." She pushed off the counter and joined me at the door, reaching out for a tight hug. "Go win your game. I won't watch. I'll know in my gut what's going on."
Elias was waiting for me under a streetlight. We walked back the three blocks without talking. Hannah's comment stayed with me the entire way. Scared isn't a reason. She'd meant it as permission, but somewhere in the back of my head, I knew I was scared of something else.
What if he wasn't what he said he was? It was starting to add up: the heating pad, the boring calls, and Tarn.
The condo was cool and half dark. Elias had left the lamp on by the recliner.
He locked the door behind us, both locks.
"Good visit?" he asked.
I looked down at the container in my hands. "We'll have this tomorrow. She thinks you're too thin."
"She's a doctor. I guess she'd know." He took the container from me and set it on the island. "You should sleep. It's a big game coming up."
"Yeah." I stayed where I was, one hand on the back of the recliner. The window behind him was black and the lamp cast half of him in shadow. The question escaped my mouth before I could stop it.
"Did the team really send you?"
He paused for half a second.
"Yeah, the league office arranges it, and the team signs off. It's standard for a deep run. Why?"
"No reason. Long day." I pushed off the recliner. "Are you coming to bed now?"
"No, I've got a little work to do. Boring stuff."