5. Maren
Maren
From the press box you see a game differently than the broadcast does.
You see the whole sheet at once, all five skaters, the way a team’s shape comes apart before the goals do.
I’m not a hockey person and even I can see it tonight, the Crowns playing like men waiting to be told they’re not good enough, cheating the hard reps, flinching at contact, the puck always a half-second behind where it should be.
Twenty thousand people are disappointed by the end of the first period, and disappointment has a sound, a low collective exhale every time it goes the wrong way, and tonight they exhale a lot.
Down on the bench Rhett stands with his arms crossed and doesn’t flinch when the third one goes in, or the fourth.
By the sixth even his stillness has started to look like a statement.
I find myself watching him instead of the ice, the way he holds perfectly still while his first night in front of this city curdles in real time, and I recognize the posture, because I built a version of it myself a long time ago.
It’s the face of a person deciding not to let anyone see it land.
The trouble is, a face that controlled reads as a face that doesn’t care, and I’m already three drafts deep before the horn because the scoreboard is cashing checks the man’s expression is writing.
By the time the horn goes I’ve settled on the version I like.
Calm. Steadying. We’re installing a system, these are the growing pains, you’ll see the real team in October.
The grown-up in the room voice. I bring it to Rhett’s office twenty minutes before he has to face the cameras, and he reads it once, sets it down, and says, “No.”
“It’s the right read,” I say. “You got embarrassed at home. The room out there is deciding right now whether this hire is a disaster. You give them calm and steady, you take the air out of the panic.”
“I give them calm and steady, I sound like a man making excuses for a 6–1.” He’s at his desk, tie loose, and he doesn’t raise his voice, he never raises his voice, he just plants the word down like he’s done with it. “I want to say we were bad and it’s on me.”
“You can’t lead with you were bad. That’s the clip. That runs under your face for a week.”
“It’s the truth.”
“It’s preseason. The truth is it doesn’t matter, and my whole job is to make sure nobody decides it does.
” I hear myself getting sharper and I let it happen, because I’m right about this, I’ve done two hundred of these and he’s done zero.
“I need you to trust the read. Calm. Steady. Two messages. We talked about this.”
He looks at me for a second, and there’s something in it I’ll think about later, a man who spent twenty-two years inside the actual thing weighing whether to be managed by someone who’s only ever stood next to it. Then he says, “Fine. Your read.”
I should hear the warning in how fast he folds. I don’t. I’m too busy being right.
He goes out there and he runs my play. Calm, steady, system, growing pains, you’ll see the real team in October.
He hits both messages clean. And I watch it die in the room in real time, because calm-and-steady after a 6–1 doesn’t read as leadership, it reads as a man who isn’t bothered, and these reporters wanted to see if the legend would bleed, and instead they got a corporate update, and a guy in the second row, the AP guy, the one who always finds the soft spot, leans into his mic.
“Coach, that’s a pretty relaxed take on getting outscored six to one at home. Some fans are going to hear that and wonder if you’re taking this seriously.”
And there it is. The exact hole my safe answer dug. I feel it open under me from the side of the stage.
Rhett pauses. He could give me the company line again.
I’ve trained him to. Instead he leans into his own mic, and he sets my script down somewhere I can see him do it, and he says, “You want me serious? We were bad tonight. The bad part’s on me, not them, I’ve got these guys playing a system they’ve had for three weeks, and tonight it showed, and that’s a coaching problem before it’s a player problem.
You’ll see a different team when they’ve had it for three months.
But yeah. I’m taking it seriously. I’m taking it personally. That’s why I came back.”
The room wakes up. Pens move. It’s honest and it’s accountable and it’s got teeth, and it’s everything I told him not to say, and it’s better than what I wrote.
He saved it. He saved it by throwing out my read in front of forty reporters, which means the story tomorrow is good, and the story inside the building is that the comms lead’s plan flatlined and the coach had to rescue himself.
Both of those are true. I get to live in both of them.
***
Here’s the part where I find out I have an enemy, and that she’s good at it.
I’m in the comms bullpen at eleven the next morning when Camila Ellis does her thing.
Camila is twenty-six and ambitious in the specific way that wears a cardigan and calls everyone “friend.” She’s been circling the Mercer account since the day it landed on my desk instead of hers.
She waits until the room’s full, three of our staffers, the social team, the guy from ticketing who didn’t need to be here, and then she says it like she’s doing me a favor.
“Hey, so, I pulled the sentiment on last night’s presser.
” She turns her laptop around so everyone can see the graph.
“The coach’s accountability stuff popped huge, which is great.
The earlier part, the system-and-patience messaging, kind of fell flat?
I just want to flag it so we learn from it.
I think the takeaway is he’s better off his own instincts than on a script.
Honestly I already looped Caden in, I hope that’s okay, I figured he’d want the read while it’s fresh. ”
It is a masterpiece. I have to respect it even while it’s going in.
She didn’t say Maren’s plan failed. She said the script fell flat and he’s better off his instincts, and the script is mine and the instincts are the thing I told him to suppress, and she’s already walked it up to my boss with a smile and a hope-that’s-okay, so that by the time I get to defend it the frame’s already set.
She made me the cardigan villain by being one better than me.
Camila is what I’d be if I’d decided the way up was through other people instead of through the work.
Same animal, she just hunts. I’ve been so busy managing a coach I forgot to manage the woman three desks down who wants my chair, and that’s a mistake you only get to make once in a building this size.
“Thanks, Camila,” I say, because the only move worse than what she did is letting the room see it land. “Send me the raw numbers and I’ll fold it into the weekly.”
“Already in your inbox, friend.” She closes the laptop. Smiles. “We’re all on the same team.”
We are not on the same team. We are on two teams that happen to share a logo, and I just got scored on, at home, 6–1.
I do not cry in the stairwell. I want that on the record.
I go to the stairwell, which is where I go when I need to breathe, and I stand there for exactly as long as it takes to want to cry and decide not to, and then I go up to Caden’s office, because the only thing worse than Camila getting to him first is letting her have the last word.
He’s at his desk with the photo turned away and last night’s clip already pulled up.
“Camila flagged the presser,” he says, before I sit down.
“I know. She told the entire bullpen she flagged it, which was the actual point.” I sit.
I don’t soften it; he doesn’t respect soft.
“Here’s what happened, unspun. I made the wrong call.
I read the room for damage control when the room wanted accountability.
Your father overrode me on live television and he was right to.
The good story today is his. The bad process yesterday is mine, and I own it. ”
Caden looks at me. I’ve surprised him; people don’t usually walk in and hand him the knife.
“That’s a confident thing to admit to the person who decides if you keep the account.”
“I’m not admitting it because I’m confident.
I’m admitting it because if I spin you the way Camila spun the room, you’ll never trust a word I bring you the rest of the season, and this only works if you trust me.
” I hold his eyes. “I was wrong about one presser that didn’t count.
I will not be wrong about the ones that do. Keep me on it.”
He’s quiet for a moment, turning the pen over, setting it down. The micro-tell. I’m learning his.
“Keep the account,” he says. “But Maren, Camila’s not wrong that he’s better off his instincts. Build the plan around that. Stop trying to put my father on a leash. It doesn’t suit him and it doesn’t suit you.”
He glances at his monitor, at something I can’t see, and the executive cadence tightens half a step.
“One more thing. Brunner watched the game from the suite. Didn’t say much afterward.
” A pause, and something passes behind his eyes I’m not quick enough to catch.
“He likes you on this, by the way. Brunner. Said the rollout’s been clean.
” He says it like it’s a compliment but it doesn’t land like one; nothing involving that man lands like one.
“Keep the weekly reports coming. He reads them. Apparently he reads everything.”
“They’re coming. Friday, like always.” I stand. “Honest and boring, exactly how ownership likes its paper.”
“Honest’s good.” Caden’s already back on his monitor, but there’s a beat where he isn’t, a half-second where he looks at me like he’s about to say a second thing and thinks better of it. “That’s all. Thanks, Maren.”
I go back to my desk. Camila’s gone home, her little victory banked for the day.
The building’s down to its after-hours hum.
I open the file with the boring title and I write Friday’s report a day early, because I can’t sleep anyway, coach demeanor: 4, trending up; media readiness: developing; room: cautious but warming, honest, thorough, exactly what they asked for, exactly the thing I’m best at in the entire world.
I have no idea I’ve just added another page to the thing they’re going to use to bury him. Nobody shows you the knife when they hand it over. They hand it to you wrapped as a formality, a TPS report with a Crowns logo, and they tell you the only thing they want from you is honesty.
I’m so honest. It’s my best quality.
It’s going to be the worst thing I ever do to a person, and I do it at my own desk, at night, alone, certain I’m helping.
I press save. The cursor blinks back at me, patient.
Somewhere upstairs a man who watched the game from a suite and didn’t say much is already counting the ways this season ends.
I don’t hear the clock start. You never do.