Three
MAINE
Forty-seven hours. That’s how many hours I work in this cesspool to make rent.
The calculation rattles around in my head as I plunge elbow-deep into the sink, excavating cigarette butts and what might’ve been lime wedges in a previous life so they don’t clog the drain. Something solid grazes my knuckles, definitely organic, possibly sentient, absolutely don’t want to know.
The stench assaults me—fermented hops breeding with whatever primordial soup thrives in bar drains after midnight—and my stomach, fuelled by half a PowerBar and pure spite, clenches like I’ve got the overtime penalty shot to win the Stanley Cup.
Someone alert SportsCenter—Maine Hamilton’s glamorous Tuesday night.
The clock glares 2:17 a.m. and the day’s plan stretches out before me.
One more hour here, then five hours of unconsciousness (if I’m lucky), then morning skate where I’ll try not to vomit, then three classes I’ll try not to sleep through while professors drone about crisis management, then Pizza Plus for dinner rush.
At this rate, the Grim Reaper’s got better odds of making it to spring break.
“Yo, Ivy League!” Derek’s fingers snap like firecrackers. “Are those glasses going to wash themselves while you’re having deep thoughts?”
The words arrange themselves— Blow me sideways, Derek —but I swallow them with the rest of my pride. Because, right now, I can’t afford principles. I can’t afford anything except this constant algebra of humiliation accrued versus rent money earned.
“Living the dream,” I mutter, giving up on the sink for now and hefting another rack of pint glasses.
The industrial dishwasher belches steam like a dragon with indigestion. My eyes stream from heat and exhaustion meeting in the middle. My PBU Hockey shirt—the one I wear like armor, reminding myself I’m somebody—plasters to my chest with sweat.
Eight-fifty an hour. No tips for the help while Derek pockets everything.
A crash explodes from the main floor. Through the service window, I see some jackass in a Patriots jersey standing over a constellation of broken glass. Of course it’s a Patriots fan, because the universe has a script, and this guy is playing his part perfectly.
“Ivy League!” Derek barks. “Cleanup!”
I grab the mop bucket and head out. “I’ll get that cleaned right up,” I say.
Forty-seven hours of eating shit with a smile per month. Four hundred bucks from bar work. About the same each from pizzas and my scholarship. And I might be able to cover rent, utilities, and feed myself some instant ramen.
As I mop, three more disasters bloom. A bachelor party downing shots like soda. A couple by the pool tables conducting a whisper-fight that’s basically free entertainment for the bar. And, from the women’s bathroom, I hear that special symphony of booze meeting porcelain.
I retreat to my dishwater fortress, hands raw from industrial-strength degreaser. The cracks between my fingers leak pink into the suds. And, when I’m done with that and get to work on the trash, the bag weighs enough to test my hockey conditioning as I haul it to the dumpster.
Where it detonates like a garbage grenade as I try to lift it in.
The contents cascade everywhere—old garnishes, cigarette butts, mysteries the health department doesn’t need to know about—and cold, viscous liquid penetrates my jeans and soaks my shoes... the ones that need to last through to spring because new ones aren’t happening.
“Jesus fucking—“ My voice ricochets off alley walls. A one-eyed cat materializes from behind the dumpster, hissing. “Sorry, Cyclops. Didn’t mean to interrupt your Michelin-star dining experience. Save room for dessert, because I think there’s half a mozzarella stick in here somewhere.”
The cat blinks its one eye, unimpressed with my attempt at conversation.
With a sigh, I head back inside, where Derek waves me over. “Need the kegs changed downstairs. Bud Light’s dead.”
“That’s a two-person job,” I point out, knowing it’s useless. “You know, spinal injuries, worker’s comp…”
He snorts. “You play hockey. All those muscles gotta be good for something besides taking up space.”
“Sure thing, boss,” I say, as cheerfully as I can muster, because I need the paycheck. “I’ll just use my NHL-ready spine as a forklift.”
If he recognizes the sarcasm, he doesn’t react to it, and I head down to the keg. My lower back screams as I move it—not the good burn from deadlifts, but the sharp pain of twenty hours without sleep—and every muscle threatens mutiny. Still, I wrestle the keg upstairs through pure spite.
“Took you long enough,” Derek mutters, when I re-emerge.
Eight-fifty an hour to audition for a herniated disc.
With Derek now tapping the keg—man, what a guy—I attack the next rack of glasses with violence usually reserved for opposing defensemen. But one glass splinters, spider-webbing in my grip, and blood spreads through soap suds, dark red mixing with gray foam.
“Coming out of your check!” Derek shouts over the music.
The one that’s already spent in three different dimensions?
I wrap a bar napkin around the gash—high-quality first aid right there—and dive back into dishwater that stings like personal betrayal. Girls stumble past toward the bathroom in a drunk chorus line, the middle one crying about someone named Brad, and the one on the left wears a PBU Hockey jersey.
My number, stretched across her back.
She doesn’t register my existence.
Why would she?
I’m furniture that moves.
Not the guy whose name she probably screamed when I went five-hole on Vermont’s starter, and whose name she’d probably scream in bed if I bought her a few drinks at a much nicer bar than this. If I could afford drinks, anyway. So, instead, I’m scrubbing her lipstick off a glass.
Welcome to rock bottom. Population: me.
Cold doesn’t exist at dawn—only degrees of fucking miserable.
The rink air knifes through my gear, and each breath crystallizes into ice shards in my lungs. My throat burns copper, and the overheads drill into eyes that shut maybe four hours ago and then opened again twenty minutes before practice.
I look like death, and I’m skating worse.
As my legs pump on autopilot—brain checked out somewhere between mopping beer vomit at three and hauling ass to practice at eight-thirty—the ice hisses beneath my blades. Usually, it feels like home, but today it feels foreign, and every other player on the ice is skating rings around me.
Fake. Fraud. They all know.
Coach blows the whistle and orders a corner drill. For me, it should be automatic, but I catch an edge and tumble. My shoulder eats it first, and the impact plays through my bones. High notes from the shoulder, bass line from my ribs, and the urgent chorus of get up before ? —
“Hamilton! What gives?”
Coach Pearson’s bark cuts through everything.
After letting my head rest on the ice for a second, the cool jolting my exhausted body like an espresso shot, I scramble upright, ice shavings clinging to my jersey.
The grin I force probably looks more like rigor mortis setting in, but I’ve got a reputation to maintain.
“Quality control, Coach.” I mumble. “Gotta make sure it’s reg?—“
“Save it.” His voice tells me he’s low on patience. “Run the drill or get off my ice.”
Twenty pairs of eyes dissect me with surgical precision. Even Rook keeps his mouth shut, and the apocalypse is fucking nigh when James Fitzgerald stops chirping. The silence may as well be a shout: Maine Hamilton, team clown, dying on the ice.
Next drill, three-on-two rush. Baby stuff. Mike feeds me at center, and for half a heartbeat, everything crystallizes. Schmidt’s jersey glows in my peripheral. The d-man commits, the shooting lane opens wide. This is home. This is where Maine Hamilton eats .
The setup is perfect, but the shot is off.
“HAMILTON!” The ice in Coach’s voice could end global warming. His blades spray my shins with ice shrapnel as he closes in. “Hungover or just mailing it in?”
The accusation burns worse than frostbite. Pearson doesn’t yell, but here is Sophie’s dad, Mr. Orange Slices, going drill sergeant on my ass while the boys watch my funeral. It just caps off what has been a shitty day, week, month… few months.
“No, Coach, I?—“
“Save the excuses. Suicides. Now. The rest of you, back to work.”
Suicides. The skate designed to make you puke, pass out, or reconsider your life choices at the best of times.
But on four hours of sleep and a stale granola bar, this should be fucking poetry.
I head for the goal line, aware the guys are all watching me out of the corner of their eyes as they drill.
I start. And, for the first few strides, it’s like dragging anchors through quicksand. By the blue line, my thighs scream. Goal to blue and back. Goal to red and back. Around there, my lungs decide oxygen’s overrated. Goal to far blue, then back to the start to do it all over again.
I continue to hear practice sounds as if they’re from another dimension.
Tape-to-tape passes. Coaches calling plays.
Hockey continuing while I’m stuck in purgatory.
Sweat pours down my spine, ready to freeze the second Coach blows the whistle for me to stop or I collapse on the ice, whichever comes first.
Sprint seven. The far blue line wavers in my vision. My edges go to shit—not skating anymore, just negotiating with physics, each stride a union dispute between will and flesh—and, for the first time, I glance at Coach. He’s watching me, no mercy, so I gut it out and keep going.
It’s sprint nine when he finally takes pity on me, and as he blows the whistle, I collapse on the ice with the grace of Bambi on benzos. I should get up, but part of me—the exhausted, beaten, done part—wants to stay. Melt into the surface. Become part of the playing surface.
Maybe they’d even make me a little plaque.
Here lies Maine Hamilton: Who Died After Being Too Proud to Ask for Help.
“Get up.” Coach’s voice is quiet. It’s worse than yelling, because being disappointed means he’s downgraded his expectations.
I push up on noodle arms, and when I meet Coach’s eyes, something in my face shifts his from fury to concern or pity or both. “Sorry, Coach.”
“Hit the showers.” He sighs. “And Hamilton?”
I wait.
“If you need help, ask for it.”
I nod and head for the tunnel, twenty gazes on me.
I keep my chin up—take your beating standing even when you’re hemorrhaging internally, that’s my motto—but I’m not sure my legs and my body have ever felt this broken.
Exhausted from working dozens of extra hours while trying to moonlight as an elite athlete.
In the locker room, I collapse on the bench and start to strip out of my armor.
The boys filter in slowly, keeping their distance.
They undress in funeral silence—no chirps, no tunes, not even Rook’s awful singing—because everyone knows I’m drowning in shit.
I should crack a joke to break the ice, but I’ve got nothing left.
“Rough night?” Mike says as he sits down next to me.
“Something like that.” I yank laces like they owe me money.
“It wasn’t booze.” It’s a statement, not a question. “What’s going on?”
I hesitate. Mike’s seen me play through hangovers that would kill civilians, scoring hat tricks while sweating Bud Light, so he knows this is different. He’s basically my brother—one of the few guys I’d ever let see behind the mask even a little—and the truth sits between us, heavy as my gear.
Last semester, I told him my roommate moved out and I needed cash.
He’d offered, I’d refused, and we’d left it at that.
But now, months later, it’s clear he knows there’s a problem I’m dealing with, but I’m not sure if he knows exactly what or how bad it is.
I could lie, but I’m so fucking tired of drowning alone.
“I’m fucked, Mikey.” The admission scrapes my throat raw. “Need a roommate yesterday or I’m…”
I can’t finish. Can’t say homeless . Can’t mention shifts until three before practice at eight-thirty or that I’m one sick day from living in a Honda that won’t start below freezing.
Because those details would shatter the illusion completely and transform Maine Hamilton from entertainer to charity case.
“How bad?” There’s no judgment, no interrogation, because Mike has been to rock bottom and back himself in the last few years.
“Like, close to sleeping-in-my-car bad.” I finally get the skates off and toss them with disgust. “Gene’s ready to evict my ass, and I just…”
I can’t admit the comedian’s out of material and options, and I’m glad he keeps quiet, for just a bit, thinking. There’s no offer of charity I won’t take, or pity loans that’d worsen this, just quiet backup from someone who gets that sometimes you need a hand without the full autopsy.
“I’ll ask around.” Mike squeezes my shoulder and heads for the shower.
The others follow, until it’s just me. I know I should shower, wash off desperation and bar funk I was too tired to rinse off last night, but instead I sit, head in hands, staring at the floor like the tiles have answers to questions I’m too scared to ask.
My phone buzzes—either Derek wanting another shift, or Gene inventing more fees, or Mom needing money or sunshine blown up Chloe’s ass while I self-destruct in real time—but I don’t check it. My tank is empty, so fresh hell can take a number.
Instead I sit, listening as the guys talk shit and shower nearby. I wonder how long I can fake it before the mask cracks my skull? How long until my legs refuse the con? How many grins before my face says screw this and goes on strike?
And the answer to all three questions settles heavily.
Fuck all.