4. Everett #2
“You did, in fact.” Sun turns the folio around on the coffee table.
A scanned intake form, and at the bottom, unmistakably, my signature at eighteen.
It was a pre-departure medical, from the last time I visited the United States.
Of course it was. Of course they folded a registration into the paperwork. I was stupid. I should have noticed.
“Non-resident status suspends matching,” Sun says. “It doesn’t cancel it. Your residency declaration re-entered you into the pool the day it was processed, and the algorithm ran the same night.”
“Fine. Go through the rules.”
Sun is brisk and thorough. The initial compliance window is fourteen consecutive days of cohabitation, to commence within the week.
Check-ins at random, at least one a day.
Some might be in person. Others will require us to download their app and take regular selfies together.
We are allowed to miss a certain percentage as long as they are not too far apart and we give a reason.
Callahan can still go to training without arousing suspicion.
After the two weeks are up, we are free to go our separate ways, but the way Sun speaks about it, it’s clear that he assumes that we will be happily entangled in each other by the end of it.
Finally, he looks at each of us in turn.
“I’m obliged to say this part plainly. The accommodations Mr. Rourke negotiated are conditional.
If either party breaches — a missed check-in, broken cohabitation, anything that misleads this office — the agreement is void and your file reverts to standard process.
Standard process is the downtown office and the public record. ”
“Meaning cameras,” I say.
“Historically,” Sun says, “cameras have occurred.”
“Here’s what I don’t get.” Callahan is talking to Sun, one thumb tipped at me like I’m furniture. “What’s the point? It’s clear he doesn’t want it. And if he doesn’t, it’s never going to happen. So what exactly are the two weeks for?”
“The law doesn’t require you to like each other, Mr. Callahan. It requires fourteen days cohabitation. What you do with that is your own business.” Sun smiles at the folio. “Though I will note, since neither of you will ask, that 98.1 is the highest index I have personally administered.”
“Administer it to someone else,” I say, and Sun smiles wider, as if I’ve said something charming. It wasn’t the cleverest comeback that I’ve ever come up with.
There is exactly one part of the meeting where Callahan and I are on the same side: nobody finds out.
“Not the room,” he says. “Not my coach, not the league, not anybody. We’re in the middle of a playoff push. My team doesn’t need the distraction. No one knows.” He stops there.
“Fine,” I say. “Then we understand each other.”
In the armchair, Callahan has gone very still. “Great,” he tells the window. “Can’t wait.”
“Priya will draw up an agreement,” I say. “Three parties. Confidentiality obligations on all sides, the venue terms, the check-in schedule, remedies for breach. I expect you to sign before we move in together.”
He drags a hand down his face. “Very corporate. My word’s not good enough?”
“No.”
He makes a sound that isn’t quite a laugh and looks at Sun. “Is he always like this?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Sun says happily. “But the proposed contracts that he sent were immaculate, and in this job that is rarer than you’d think.”
“Location,” Sun says, pen ready. “Cohabitation requires a shared residence. I’ll need the address in advance.”
“Priya will source something private. Short lease, prepaid, held through a company with nothing traceable in the —”
“My place.”
I stop. He is looking straight at me for the first time since the handshake that didn’t happen.
“A new lease means a landlord, an agent, cleaners, neighbors who notice a moving van,” he says.
“My house already exists. There’s a garage in the base of it.
You drive in, the door comes down, nobody sees anything.
Security’s a private firm, nine years with me.
There’s been more than one obsessive fan over the years, and not one of them ever got past the gate, and not one word of it ever reached a paper.
It’s the quietest building in this city that either of us can get into by Monday. ”
I’m not moving into his house. That’s my first thought. The second is that he is right.
Anywhere new attracts the looks of neighbors.
And according to the sports fans of this city, Brody Callahan is practically their god.
The most difficult part of all this, other than actually having to be stuck in with Callahan, was going to be finding a place where he could get in and out unnoticed.
“Fine,” I say.
Sun beams and writes it all down. “I’ll have the amended contracts sent to you by this evening.”
Callahan is looking at me with an expression that I don’t know how to read. He looks like he’s thinking. The brute thinks. That’s a surprise. Half of those guys have been hit in the head so many times I’m not certain there’s anything going on in their brains.
“What?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing. Guess I’ll see you Monday.”
He gets to his feet, surprisingly graceful despite his size.
At the door he stops, half turned. “For what it’s worth,” he says, “I’m sorry about your father. I didn’t get it said last time.”
“Thank you,” I say, to a point slightly to the left of him. He waits one more second. Then he goes, and the door closes behind him.
Sun looks at me and beams. “That went well.”
The man is mad. I raise my eyebrows.
“Oh, you should see some of the other matches I get,” he says with a chuckle.
I give him a polite smile and show him out gratefully.
Then I am finally alone. The hotel room smells like both of us. I stand in the middle of it with my arms folded.
I should open the windows. I walk toward them and do not arrive.
The armchair. He was in it for less than half an hour, one arm along the rest, too big for it the entire time.
I stand over it. Then I go back and check the door, actually check the lock, and I come back and bend down and press my face into the wing of the chair where his neck rested, and breathe in.
My knees loosen. I breathe in again. A third time, longer, and a sound comes out of me, low and wanting, that I have not made once in thirty-four years.
I stay there, bent over a hotel armchair, breathing him in.
I straighten up. Nobody saw, and nobody will ever know, and neither fact helps in the slightest.
My father would have loved this. That is the part I keep arriving at, standing in a room that smells like his captain. His son and his hockey player, wired together at the cellular level. I am grateful, in the ugliest way a son can be grateful, that he is not alive to see it.