Chapter 5 #2
My voice comes out flat and carrying, and the drill comes to a stop around me as heads turn.
She stops as well.
She looks at me with that expression - measured but patient - which makes me feel like I’m being handled.
“It’s a turning drill,” she says.
“It’s a pirouette,” I say again. “We’re hockey players. I’m here to score goals, not pirouette around the rink like we’re auditioning for the ballet.”
Silence. The silence of twenty people deciding very carefully not to avoid each other’s eyes.
“That’s interesting.” Her voice is very calm and very cold. “Perhaps you’d have liked to try scoring some last night?”
I go still.
For a second there’s nothing in my head except the buzzer and the humiliation of standing there while Northern State celebrated.
Something rips loose.
“If you’re so good,” I say, “if you’re so talented and so much better than all of this-” I gesture around the rink, at the boards, at the college banners, at all of it.
“Why are you here? Why are you coaching a college team that can’t even win a home game instead of competing? It’s not exactly an upgrade, is it?”
The words are out before I’ve finished thinking them.
I know immediately. I know from the way Chen glances at me and the other guys look down at the ice. The temperature of the whole rink seems to drop by several degrees.
And I know from her face.
It’s the first time I’ve seen her composure actually fracture. It’s small - she goes still and there’s a strange expression on her face - and it’s gone almost before it’s there.
But I see it.
She looks at me for a long moment.
“Get off my ice,” she says with a finality that leaves no room for negotiation.
I open my mouth.
“Now, Russo.”
Calloway’s expression is closed and professional. He gives me the smallest nod that means you did this, deal with the consequences.
I skate to the gate without another word.
I don’t slam it. I’m not going to give anyone the satisfaction. I step off and walk the corridor to the locker room and sit down on the bench and put my head in my hands and sit with what I just did.
The rink is quiet through the walls. Then, after a moment, I hear the drill start up exactly where it stopped, like I was a brief interruption in an otherwise normal morning.
ELIDA
I watch him go.
I watch him skate to the gate with his back straight and not a single glance backward, and I wait until the gate has closed behind him and his footsteps have faded down the corridor, and then I turn back to the ice.
Twenty faces. Various degrees of discomfort.
“From the top,” I say. “Tighter rotation this time.”
Nobody moves for a half second, and then Chen pushes off first, and the rest follow, and just like that we’re moving again.
I don’t let myself feel it. Not yet. That’s the skill, the one that took years to learn and cost more than I want to think about - the ability to put things in a box and close the lid and deal with it later, when there’s no one watching, when the music has stopped and the cameras are off and you’re finally alone.
I move through the group.
I correct Ward’s shoulder. I tell Mercer his edge is better today, which is true and which surprises him enough that he almost says thank you. I watch Chen move through the sequence competently and give him a nod that he returns without making anything of it.
I do not think about what Russo said.
I don’t think about it when I extend the drill, or when I call out corrections, or when I run them through the final sequence and Calloway steps onto the ice to add some tactical work at the end. I stand at the boards with my notebook and I watch and I make notes.
Calloway dismisses them forty minutes later and they file off, subdued still, the loss sitting over everything. Calloway heads to his office.
The gate closes behind them.
I stand on the ice alone.
I’ve always loved this part. Even as a child in the Stockholm rink where I spent more hours than I spent anywhere else - this was what I loved. The stillness after.
I skate a slow circle. Not thinking. Just moving.
Why are you here? Why are you coaching a college team instead of competing?
I stop at center ice.
He doesn’t know. He said it to wound me and it worked, and he doesn’t even know why, which is almost funny, except it isn’t funny at all. He threw something jagged in the dark and had no idea what he hit.
I pick up my bag and my notebook and I go to find Calloway.
His office door is half open. I knock and he gestures to the chair across from him without preamble, which I’ve come to appreciate about him. He gives you space to say the thing you came to say.
“Russo,” I say. “I made a call and I stand by it. But I want you to know I’m aware it could be seen as an overreach.”
“He crossed the line first,” Calloway says. “He’ll apologize.”
“I’m not asking for that.”
“I know you’re not. I’m telling you anyway.”
“I want to be honest with you. I was brought in to coach the women’s program.
That’s what I prepared for. This-” I stop.
Start again. “I’m a figure skater. I know skating and I can translate that, I believe I can but managing a locker room full of - handling the ego of a captain who doesn’t want to be here-” I shake my head.
“I could focus only on the women’s team. ”
Calloway is quiet for a moment.
“No,” he says finally. “It isn’t what you were trained for.” He leans back in his chair. “But Elida - the women’s program. Are you happy there?”
I think about yesterday afternoon’s session. The girls still finding their feet, still figuring out what they’re capable of.
“Yes,” I answer honestly.
“You’re making a difference with them. And you are with this team as well - they just don’t all know it.” He sets down his papers. “Tell me about the practice. What you’re seeing.”
I open my notebook, more out of habit than necessity. I know what I want to say.
“The skating is inconsistent. Some of them are responding well, making real adjustments. But the improvement isn’t cohesive because it isn’t coming from the top.
” I pause. “The captain sets the pace and his skating is flawed. Everyone in that rink watches him, consciously or not. He’s not the worst skater on that ice.
But everyone watches him. If he changes, they change. If he doesn’t-”
I stop.
Calloway nods slowly, like I’ve confirmed what he already knew.
“He doesn’t want to be coached,” I conclude.
“Not by me. He’s decided what I am and what I can offer and he’s not particularly interested in reconsidering that.
Which-” I stop again, choosing carefully.
“Which is his prerogative as a person. But as the captain of a team that needs to get better, it’s a problem.
His attitude gives everyone else permission to have the same attitude. ”
“He’s running out of time to get scouted,” Calloway says. “He knows that. It makes him-”
“Harder to reach.”
“Yes.”
We sit with that for a moment.
Then Calloway says, almost as an aside: “I saw you talking with Jake Skelly last night. After the game.”
I can’t quite read his expression. I wait for what comes next - the careful word about mixed loyalties or about the optics of the visiting team’s assistant coach and the home team’s new skating coach leaving a game together.
Instead, he says: “He’s a good guy.”
I blink. “He seems it.”
“Good coach, too.” Calloway picks up his papers again, signaling that the conversation is winding down. “You could do worse for a friend in this town. It’s a small place. People who understand the sport are rarer than you’d think.”
I stand, gathering my things. “Thank you. For - all of it.”
MATEO
I shower. I change. I sit in the empty locker room for twenty minutes and stare at my hands.
Chen comes back in at some point, retrieves something from his stall, and doesn’t say a word, which is the most eloquent thing anyone could have done.
By the time I walk the corridor toward Calloway’s office, I’ve decided two things: I’ll apologize for what I said to Elida because it was out of line and I know it, and then I’ll have a quiet word with Calloway about whether this arrangement is actually working, because this morning was not working, and someone needs to say it.
I’m rehearsing it as I round the corner.
The door is ajar. Voices inside.
I stop.
I should knock. I should announce myself or come back later. But I stand in the corridor and I don’t do either because I hear my name and I freeze.
Her voice. Calm and clear.
The captain sets the pace and his skating is flawed.
I stand very still.
Running out of time to get scouted.
My hand is flat against the wall.
I step back from the door.
The corridor feels smaller than it did thirty seconds ago.
She questioned my skating as well as my leadership.
And Calloway said nothing to contradict her.
I push off from the wall and walk back down the corridor the way I came.
I don’t go back to the locker room.
I push through the exit and I’m outside before I’ve decided to be, cold air hitting my face, and I stand in it and breathe.
The apology will have to wait.
Right now I don’t trust myself to open my mouth and have anything useful come out of it.
She thinks I’m holding them back.
The worst thing is, once I put aside my humiliation and the shock of hearing it said out loud, is that I’m not so sure that she’s wrong.
ELIDA
Iris picks up on the second ring, which means she was already awake and has been waiting for this call.
“You seem tired,” she says, in Swedish, and her face on the screen is so familiar and so far away.
“It’s early here,” I reply in Swedish, which feels like taking off shoes I’ve been wearing too long.
“It’s always early there. You always call when it’s early.” She shifts on her sofa - I can see the lamp behind her, the coziness of her apartment in Gothenburg, the cat that isn’t technically her cat but lives there anyway crossing behind her. “How is it?”
“Fine.”
She looks at me.
“It’s fine,” I say again.
“Elida.”
“The women’s program is good. Really good, actually. They’re keen and they work hard and there’s real potential there.”
“That’s the women’s program. How are you?”
Outside my window the campus path is quiet, the yellow glow of the lamps and the dark pressing in at the edges. Minnesota is not so different from home in that respect - the cold darkness that settles in for months and makes you live your life in small lit rooms.
“I had a hard morning.”
“Tell me.”
So I do. Not all of it. Just a player who doesn’t want to be coached. A confrontation on the ice. And Jake asking me out for coffee.
Iris listens without interrupting.
“That player sounds like a lot of work,” she says, when I stop. “And the other coach sounds hot. What does he look like?”
“Iris.”
“I’m just asking.”
“You’re not just asking anything, you never just ask anything.”
Instead of answering, I ask about the cat and she tells me about her work and we talk for forty minutes, the way you do with someone who has known you your whole life and doesn’t need the backstory to understand the story.
She doesn’t mention Erik.
She never does unless I do, which is the agreement we reached somewhere in the wreckage of six months ago without ever stating it explicitly. But near the end of the call, when we’re winding down and she’s pulling her cardigan around her against the Gothenburg cold, she says:
“You sound different.”
“Different how?”
She considers it, her head tilted, genuinely thinking about it rather than just saying something.
“Less far away,” she says finally. “Than you did last month. Than you did for a long time.”
I don’t know what to do with that, so I say goodnight and I love you and I’ll call at the weekend, and I close the laptop and sit in the quiet of the apartment.
I think about the ice this morning. The satisfaction of watching technique click in a player who didn’t think they could do it. Russo’s face when I said he should try actually scoring goals if that’s what he’s there to do.
I think about Calloway saying he’s a great guy about Jake Skelly like it was the simplest thing in the world, which maybe it is.
I stand up, stretch, and go to make another terrible cup of coffee.
My phone buzzes on the counter.
I pick it up.
Hey - Jake Skelly. Good to meet you last night. If you’re free on Saturday evening, there’s a place I think you’d like. Nothing fancy. Just a good spot if you’re still finding your way around town.
Before I can talk myself into or out of anything:
Sounds good. What time?
The reply comes back in under a minute.
Seven? And for what it’s worth - your guys weren’t bad last night. They’ll get there.
I set the phone down and pick up my coffee. I try to decide what I think about Jake Skelly, who is straightforward and texts back in under a minute.
I think about what Iris said.
Less far away.
Maybe.