24. Eric
ERIC
“Good work today,” Chip says.
“Thanks,” I grunt at the therapist, accepting the towel he hands me. I’m starving, and all my muscles are screaming. I swear Chip is trying to kill me.
Rehab is the worst. Ask any athlete. It’s all pain without much gain. It didn’t help that I was up late last night driving around the city like one of my brother's operatives.
And now I have to hustle to make my lunch date. Although “hustle” is a relative term on a knee you’re trying to rebuild. I walk slowly down the Brooklyn sidewalk, taking care to use a measured gait that would make Chip proud.
I pass myself in the plate glass window of a Brooklyn cookie shop. My reflection shows a guy in the prime of his years, looking fit and healthy after a morning workout. I only feel old, I suppose. And did I mention that rehab sucks?
My phone buzzes with a text from my agent. Eric, I hope you’re almost here because I ordered two hot appetizers. We’re starting with the Thai wings and the avocado tacos.
Thank God for Bess Beringer. She knows exactly how to cheer a guy up. I’m so in. Order me the pulled pork sandwich with fries. I’m two minutes away.
When I finally walk into the bustling restaurant, she waves me down from a table in the corner that’s already loaded down with a bread basket so appealing that I nearly let out an unmanly whimper.
"Hey, Bessie," I say as she stands up to receive a kiss on the cheek.
“Sit down, sit down! The focaccia is barking our names.”
I take my seat and we dig in. "Good to see you in New York," I say after my first bite. “What’s the big occasion?” Bess is based in Detroit, so I don’t see her on my home turf very often.
“Get used to it. I plan to spend more time here,” she says. “I need to see more of my brother and his family. I’m not getting any younger.”
“Same,” I grumble. "And that makes your job harder. This spring you need to convince the Bruisers to hang on to my geezer ass. And you’re probably renegotiating Dave at the same time, right?
" Bess’s brother is my teammate, Dave Beringer.
I expected him to sign an early extension over the summer, but then it didn’t happen.
I wonder if the team is balking at resigning two of its older players.
Bess can’t tell me. She would never reveal the confidential negotiations of another player. But I’m sure hoping she says something to put my mind at ease. Anything really.
I’m reaching for the breadbasket again when she grabs my hand to give it a squeeze. "Eric, if you rehab like a trooper these next few months, Brooklyn will offer you an extension."
"Did you hear something that I didn’t?"
"No. But I don’t need anyone to tell me how valuable you are to your team.
You bring so much more to the room than your score tally.
Without you, they’d have a really young forward lineup.
You have wisdom that the younger guys need time to develop.
And your temperament is rock solid. Coach Worthington knows better than to staff himself with a bunch of young hotheads. So it’s not all about points."
“Yeah, sure.” This sounds like something an agent says to a client who’s in a perilous position. “It’s only, like, ninety percent about points.” Luckily, I’ve got months to prove that I can come back.
“You don’t have to listen.” She shrugs. “The rehab is the same either way. At least until the moment you have to decide whether to have that other knee surgery, or to wait.”
“I haven’t made any decisions.”
“Uh huh. You forget that I know you. You’re going to avoid that other surgery and try to skate on your right knee.
You’re going to do the macho thing and play through the pain.
And that’s your choice. But promise me you won’t hurt yourself just because you’re worried about your contract extension. That’s not the most important thing.”
“Of course it’s the most important thing. What else is there?”
She sets down her butter knife and gives me a green-eyed glare. “Your life, dumbass.”
But hockey is my life.
“Look.” She goes back to buttering a piece of bread rather violently.
“You told me after your 2012 season that you regretted putting off that shoulder surgery. That you never wanted to play another entire season in pain. You said, ‘I got the stats I wanted, but I was miserable from December to May.’”
“Good memory,” I mutter. Because that does sound familiar.
“Yeah, well I hope my memory isn’t better than yours. If you put off the meniscal repair because you’re so desperate for a contract extension, it might be 2012 all over again.”
“Except for the part where I’m seven years older.”
“Except for that.” She shoves a piece of bread in her mouth and then waves over a waiter who’s holding our platter of wings.
“I need that contract extension,” I remind her. “And so do you.” Fifteen percent of nothing is nothing.
“Not if you’re miserable, Eric. Not if you regret it.”
This is why I trust Bess. This is why I signed with her when she was just a green agent at a big shop. And this is why I followed her to the boutique firm she runs now.
Just as I’m picking up a chicken wing, she points her phone at me and takes a photo. “Say cheese and thank you!”
“What’s that for? Social media?”
“Well, you’re wearing a tight Brooklyn shirt and dining in a local restaurant. The fans will eat that up. So thanks for the suggestion. But I really took it to send to you later.”
“For what?”
“Someday soon, you’ll find this photo in your inbox. And you’ll say—’oh yeah, I remember eating avocado tacos with Bess on a day when I thought avocado tacos were all I had going for me. She was right. I have so much to celebrate. Actually Bess is a genius.’”
“That doesn’t sound like something I’d say. And what the hell is an avocado taco anyway?”
Even as I say it, another plate lands on the table, laden with tiny little taco shells stuffed with bright green guacamole. And my mouth waters on command.
I pick one up and bite into the creamy, spicy goodness. And, wow. Avocado tacos might actually be the best thing in my life.
“Take another one,” Bess says. “If I eat all those, my ass will be as wide as the F train. Besides—rehab takes energy.”
She’s not wrong. So I reach for another one.
After lunch and a nap, I’m feeling almost human again. So I do some stretches in the practice facility gym and wait for my workout buddy to show up.
“Drake, you’re late!” I call from the mats when the rookie finally walks in.
“Dude, I didn’t know you were coming!” He removes his backward baseball cap and grins at me.
“What do you mean? It’s Saturday, right?”
“Yeah, but…” he drops his gym bag. “With your knee, I thought you’d skip.”
“Skip chest day? Who’s going to motivate you? Who’s going to teach you about nineties grunge music? Put some plates on the bar.” I clap my hands together. “Let’s go.”
“Wait. Isn’t it my turn to pick the music?” Drake asks.
“I guess.” Last time I put on Soundgarden, and the rookie claimed he’d never heard “Black Hole Sun” in his short little life.
Kids these days.
Drake fires up some Twenty-One Pilots, which I can live with. And I slide onto the bench for the warmup set. The music is already pumping when I push the bar overhead for the first time.
“So it’s chest day!” the new trainer says, strutting into the room like a muscle-bound peacock. His name is Gino, and he enters bodybuilding competitions when he’s not training hockey players. “Anybody need a spot?”
I sit up after my set. “Drake will need you in about ten minutes. I’m not allowed to spot him on this knee yet.”
“No problem. I’m here for you guys.”
We rotate through some sets, and Gino spots Drake when the weight starts to climb. And when Drake steps out to refill his water bottle, he spots me, too.
“How’s your knee?” he asks between sets.
“It’ll get there. I have daily PT with Chip.”
“No, I meant your other knee. The stiff one.”
“Oh. The same, I guess.”
“You gonna have the surgery?” he asks. “I wouldn’t.”
My first reaction is a grumpy one. Who asked you? But I’m curious anyway. “Why wouldn’t you?”
“If you let them tidy up your meniscus, that’s a big, destabilizing surgery. Guys never really come back from that. Not at the same level.”
He’s not a doctor, I remind myself. “I’ll take that under advisement,” I grunt.
“But there’s a lot we can do to make you more comfortable. You could have some injections in the right knee and play like a champ just as soon as your left knee is ready.”
Now he’s got my attention. “What kind of injections?”
“Hyaluronic acid. Or corticosteroids. I know a doctor you can see for that. He trains at my gym. He can take care of your pain, and the swelling, too. You could finish the season.”
“What’s his name?” I hear myself asking. Nobody mentioned this option to me, and now I wonder why.
“Ivanov. I have his card in my locker.”
“Yeah, okay. Do that.” A little research wouldn’t hurt, right?
Drake comes back. “Ready to switch it up?”
“Sure. Leverage decline press?”
“Let’s go!” the youngster says. Then he shakes his hips. “This is the music, geezer. This right here.”
I squirt him with my water bottle, and he lets out a howl. “That’s for calling me a geezer.”
To think that I get paid for this job. It’s like summer camp every day.
When five o’clock comes, I shower and then check my phone. The screen lights up with texts from teammates who are trying to decide between poker and clubbing. I don’t feel like weighing in, because I haven’t decided if I’m going out.
First, I’ll need to call Alex to see how she’s holding up.
But just as I’m putting my gym shoes back into my locker, the phone rings. It’s a number I don’t recognize. But there’s an icon of a skeleton key beside it, meaning that the call is coming from someone inside The Company.
I answer immediately. “Hello?”
“Eric! This is Duff. The bodyguard from last night?”
“Sure, man. What’s up? Is there a problem?”
“Sort of.” He drops his voice. “Alex is in a bad way. There was a break-in last night. A real pro job.”
“A break in… where?”
“Dude—her apartment. These guys rappelled off the roof of her building and came in through the kitchen window. There was nothing on the hallway security video.”
My heart leaps into my mouth. “Jesus Christ. Was she home?”
“No! It was earlier. While we were busy evading that motorcycle, they broke in and planted a device that stole the data off her phone.”
“Back up,” I grunt. “So the motorcycle was a diversion?”
“Exactly. Kept us busy, right? It was quite the caper—they shut off her internet to prevent any security devices from functioning. Then they swapped out her phone charger for a fake. She plugged in her phone, unlocked it and boom. The phone gets a lobotomy. She couldn’t tell anything was wrong until this morning when it was too late. ”
“Oh, fuck.”
“Yeah. I mean, she’s perfectly safe. These guys were after her data, not her person. But she’s shaken up. She’s in the baby’s room trying to build something with, like, hammers. And she won’t let me help. I was wondering if…” He pauses.
“If what?”
“If you could, like, calm her down.”
I let out a snort. “You’re sending me into the lion’s den?”
“Something like that.”
But of course I’m going over there. “How about I pick up some dinner and come by in an hour?”
“Would you? Thank fuck.”
“What do you think she’d want to eat?”
“Dunno,” the kid says. “Just get a lot of it. She was too freaked out to eat lunch. And when that appetite kicks in…” I can almost hear him shiver.
“Roger. See you soon, man.”