16. Everett
“The team finances are up to date,” Priya says, moving the room service tray from the second chair before she sits down.
Her nose wrinkles slightly. “I’ve gone through all of it.
I’ve negotiated the arena lease too down to something that wasn’t outright criminal.
Still waiting for the docs to be signed but I think we’re clear.
Season-ticket renewals went out ten days late but we’re still above projections. ”
“Good.” I’ve not left the hotel room since I arrived. I haven’t wanted to.
I know.
From trapped in one room to voluntarily stuck in another. The irony isn’t lost on me.
I have not heard from him. For the record, I have not messaged him either. I have barely messaged anyone. The file is closed, the app is deleted, and closed is what I wanted. I have thrown myself into enjoying it.
“Callahan’s got away with four games. Dorn’s been fined.”
I frown. “Did you point out that they are facing serious liability if he kills someone.”
“Uh huh. We put in an official complaint but that’s still working its way through the legal eagles. Of course, they’re charging per letter just the way they like. The more letters they send, the better they like it. You want me to light a fire under them.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But don’t worry about the cost. Just make sure they get the point across.”
I saw Callahan on television after the hearing. Five minutes after, the news crew started interviewing people in the street asking them what they thought. It’s easy for me to forget how famous he is here and how well loved.
More than well loved. There was more than one squeal at the news that he was back in the game. It’s easy to see why he gets the fans going.
Then they turned to highlights of his career. I turned it off just as they started showing clips from old interviews.
I don’t think I could have heard his voice and not gone completely insane. I can still smell woodsmoke on me.
Sensitivity to scent from the heat is meant to fade within the week. It hasn’t yet. I still catch him everywhere and I know it’s me and not real. I’ve had the hotel send up scent neutralizers almost every single day.
He’s inside me.
“The office is packed up,” Priya continues. “I let Sacco take what he wanted. Then I had someone appraise for memorabilia. There are a few items that are worth something. You want me to offer those to the team or let them go to auction?”
“Team first, then auction.”
“You sure you don’t want to keep anything?”
“Definitely not.”
“Fine. The general manager search, then.” She pushes a folder toward me. “This is the guy. He’s got great credentials. Name is Belanger.”
The name rings a bell. “I know him.”
“Another of your father’s old colleagues. He has everything we need: the experience, love of the game and the team. The team will like him. He’s a good match.”
“And he didn’t come up earlier because?”
“Out of the country. Just got back a few weeks ago.”
“Perfect. Give him whatever he’s asking for.”
“I already have but he’s asked to meet you before he signs his side.”
“Why? He’s met you. You’re the one he’ll be working with.”
“If you can’t be produced for one hour, he’ll start wondering what’s wrong, and he’ll be right to. It looks strange.”
I look at the folder and say nothing.
“The team has an away day Thursday,” she adds, looking at the folder rather than at me. “Community appearances. The full roster, out of the building by nine.” There’s a small pause. “You wouldn’t run into anyone.”
There are days I could swear the woman invoices me extra for discretion. “Thursday,” I say. “One hour.”
*
The arena on a game night can be heard from the highway. On a Thursday morning, the place echoes. My shoes tap down the concourse. The ice sits gray and unlit while one man on a machine takes it in slow ovals. Nobody checks my pass.
Priya meets me at the executive elevator with a clipboard. “Mr. Belanger arrives at ten,” she says. “The papers are on the desk. You have forty minutes.”
The office is boxes, labeled in her block capitals: FRANCHISE — LEGAL. FRANCHISE — HISTORICAL. PERSONAL — HOLD.
Forty years of my father’s life in cardboard boxes. The photographs are off the wall and wrapped, but darker squares on the walls show where they hung.
One of the wrapped frames has a corner of bubble wrap torn back, and I can see a sliver of it. Silver jerseys. A cup going up over somebody’s head. He is in there somewhere, nineteen years old.
There is nothing in this room I want. He would have minded that. At the end, all he wanted was for me to be as obsessed with this team as he was.
He would have hated this. I don’t feel bad about that, nor do I feel particularly pleased. I just want it to be done.
Fortunately, Belanger arrives early. He turns out to be a big man gone silver at the temples. He shakes my hand firmly: two pumps and a squeeze at the end like punctuation.
“Mr. Rourke. Sorry about your dad. Gordie was one of the good ones. Threw me out of a stick room in Hartford thirty years ago and bought me a beer the same night.”
“That sounds like him,” I say, as I shake the hand, and smile the smile.
He walks me through his read on the lease, the deadline, a plan for renewals.
I ask questions because I probably should and he answers everything easily and gets the numbers right.
He is perfectly competent, exactly what I need.
That’s when the noise starts.
Voices first, a lot of them, coming up a stairwell. Then pucks going off boards, that flat crack, over and over. I know the sound of a full practice by now.
Priya is already at the door with her phone to her ear. She listens for ten seconds, says “thank you” in a clipped, annoyed tone, and turns around.
“The away day is canceled. Coach Sacco called it off at eight this morning, when he heard Mr. Belanger would be in the building.” Her jaw is tight.
“Ah, Sacco,” Belanger says, sounding delighted. “Great. It’s been far too long.”
“We can have you out the freight elevator in four minutes,” Priya says to me, quietly.
I could take her up on it. Instead I follow Belanger down, because I really need to get this signed off and bolting out of a service exit is not going to be a good look.
The corridor outside the dressing room smells of rubber and sweat and tape, and then of alpha — a whole hallway of alpha. I breathe through my mouth. It doesn’t help. I find the woodsmoke in it before I ever see him.
When they see us, they come off the ice in twos and threes, helmets off, soaked, enormous.
Callahan comes off the ice last.
Wet hair, helmet under one arm, tape hanging off one wrist, deep in some conversation with JP Tremblay — and then not, because he has seen me. He checks for half a stride. Then he keeps coming, and his face shuts, and he walks past eight feet away from me like I am a rack of chairs.
I keep my eyes off of him and make sure that my breathing is even. Still, the whole time I know exactly where he is behind me, the same way you know where the sun is with your eyes shut.
His scent hits me like a freight train. Woodsmoke over clean sweat, twice as strong coming off the ice, and my body reacts far too quickly. My mouth waters.
Sacco is at the tunnel mouth with his arms crossed. He gives me a nod that would look neutral to anybody else.
“Mr. Rourke.”
“Coach. I understood the building would be empty.”
“Yeah,” he says, not sounding sorry about it. “I heard that too.” Then he looks past me at Belanger and takes his time about it.
Belanger doesn’t wait. He wades in — handshakes, first names, a word for everybody. He knows Marchetti’s college and Ozzy’s junior team, and inside three minutes the noise has changed pitch. Whatever else the man is, he is good at this.
I keep my eyes on Belanger. It helps about as much as the mouth-breathing did.
Of course Tremblay notices. He is propped against the glass stripping the tape off his stick, and I watch him watch Callahan not look at me, and then watch me not look at Callahan.
He catches my eye for half a second, perfectly friendly, then nods. I would rather he glared.
Callahan looks good. I wish he didn’t.
Belanger puts his hand out to him. “And the man himself.” The handshake, then the shoulder. “Four games for putting Cade Dorn in the third row. Hell of a bargain.” He turns to the group, grinning.
The hallway laughs. Most of it. Marchetti’s smile takes a moment to arrive. Callahan’s face doesn’t move at all. Sacco grunts.
Then Belanger claps him on the shoulder twice and time feels like it stops.
I watched my father do that. On the last night of his life, my father clapped his shoulder, beaming.
Inside an hour, Belanger has produced an identical gesture. You cannot hire your way out of a religion.
And that’s what this sport is. It’s religion to the players and the fans. I was never a devotee.
Nobody in this hallway needs me. That is the other thing I understand, standing there with my folder while Belanger starts a story about a bench-clearer in ninety-six.
The papers are signed. Belanger is hired, and the room already likes him better than it ever liked me.
The coach has his roster and the captain has his C.
I make the goodbyes a man makes. Belanger gives me the double handshake.
Sacco nods at a spot to the left of my head.
Callahan stands half out of his gear with his back to me, saying something to Ozzy, and does not turn around, and I look at the back of his neck one second longer than I have any excuse for.
Then I take the freight elevator after all.
The woodsmoke comes with me. In my clothes, in my throat, down the parking level and into the car.