Chapter 4 #2
“Five. When this is over, we go back to being colleagues. We do not pretend it didn’t happen, but we do not also pretend it did.
If you and I sit on the lobby bench in March and drink coffee and never talk about February, that is allowed.
If we sit on the lobby bench in March and laugh about February once, that is allowed.
We don’t owe each other a script for after. ”
He nodded once.
“Agreed.”
“And six —”
“You said five.”
“Yes, and I’m adding six. Pay attention, Berglund.”
He laughed. Very quietly. He noticed Sully’s head, two booths up, twitch.
“Six,” Ada said. “Whatever your second and third reasons were yesterday. The not-pitch reasons. We don’t have to talk about them. But you don’t lie about them either. If I ask, you can say I’m not telling you. You don’t get to say there are no other reasons.”
He looked at his coffee.
“Agreed,” he said.
“That’s it,” she said. “That’s six rules. Are there things I missed.”
He thought.
“One thing,” he said. “Money.”
“Money.”
“If Tidemark pays anything — appearance fees, anything — we sign it over to the rink. Not split. Not negotiated. Full transfer. You and I are doing this for the building. Anything we are paid for it goes back into the building.”
“Yes,” she said, and her shoulders moved a half-inch downward, as though that one had been waiting in her chest for ten minutes. “Yes. Full transfer.”
“Then we have a deal.”
She closed her notebook.
She held out her hand across the table.
He took it. Her hand was small and cold and her palm was lightly callused — figure-skater hands, he registered without commenting, lifted-too-many-times hands — and she shook his hand once, like a contractor signing for a porch repair, and let go.
“Berglund.”
“Halloran.”
“This is going to be a thing,” she said.
“I know.”
“There’s going to be a photo of us in the Mercer Bay Reporter tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“My mother is going to text me about it.”
“My mother is going to text me about it,” he said, “but my mother is going to text me about it once and then never again, because that is the kind of person my mother is.”
“Lucky you.”
“Lucky me.”
She looked at him a beat longer.
“Berglund,” she said, “for what it is worth — thank you for the rule about the exit word.”
“Halloran,” he said. “For what it is worth, you walked in here with a list. You’re going to be fine.”
She slid out of the booth. She pulled the canvas jacket on.
She did not look back at him. She nodded to Bridget.
She passed Sully’s booth and said, in a normal speaking voice that was nevertheless calibrated to fly straight into Sully’s ear, “Hi, Sully,” and Sully nearly choked on his sandwich, and Ada walked out the front door of the Penalty Box and into the late-January light.
The bell rang behind her.
Wes drank his coffee.
Sully turned around in his booth like a slow tank.
“Wes.”
“No.”
“Wes.”
“No.”
“Wes Berglund. Did you just shake hands with Ada Halloran.”
“Sully Petrov, eat your sandwich.”
“That was a contract handshake, Wessie. I have seen you shake hands like that exactly twice in my life. Once when you signed with the Pilots. Once when you bought your truck. I —”
“Sully.”
“What.”
“Are you here as my friend or are you here as the team gossip.”
“Both, Wessie. I am always both. You know me.”
“Then as my friend, I am asking you to keep your mouth shut for forty-eight hours, because there is going to be a Mercer Bay Reporter item tomorrow and Pete needs to control the story, and as the team gossip, I am asking you to be the first one in the dressing room with the news so the rest of the team finds out from you and not from a forwarded text from Coach’s wife. ”
Sully sat back.
He looked, for a long, satisfied moment, at the ceiling.
“Berglund,” he said, “that is the kindest thing you have ever said to me.”
“I know.”
“I am going to keep my mouth shut for forty-eight hours and then I am going to talk.”
“Thank you.”
“You and Ada Halloran.”
“Eat your sandwich, Sully.”
Sully ate his sandwich.
Wes did not, in the end, drink the rest of his coffee at the booth. He took it with him. He walked out of the Penalty Box, around the side of the Barn, into the parking lot, and stood for a minute by his truck with his head tipped slightly back, watching the gulls turn over the harbor.
He did not feel triumph.
He felt the specific clean tiredness of a goalie who had said yes to a third period he hadn’t expected to play.
In his jacket pocket, his phone buzzed.
Coach Frenchie Beauchamp: we need to talk
Wes looked at the text. Then he looked at the gulls.
Then he typed back: on my way, and put the phone away, and got into his truck and started the long, easy drive across the parking lot — fifteen feet — back to the Pilots’ staff entrance, because Frenchie was already in the staff door and Frenchie was already going to ask the question Wes had not yet decided how to answer.
The question was probably: why.
He thought about that for the entire fifteen-foot drive. He parked. He got out. He locked the truck because Sully had once put a goose in the cab of an unlocked truck as a prank and the universe had not forgiven Sully and Sully had not forgiven the universe.
Frenchie was in his office in his usual flannel and his usual gravelly mood. He had a stack of game tape on his desk. He had a coffee mug that said Coach in cracked white letters. He pointed at the chair across from him without looking up.
Wes sat.
“You volunteered,” Frenchie said.
“I did.”
“You did not run it past me.”
“I did not.”
“You did not run it past Joanna.”
“I did not run anything past Joanna because Joanna would have run it past me, and I would have ended up volunteering anyway, and Joanna would have lost a night’s sleep first.”
Frenchie grunted.
“Theo,” Frenchie said, “is going to be the first person in this building tomorrow who has feelings about this.”
“I know.”
“Theo, when he has feelings about things, is — Theo. You are aware.”
“I am aware.”
“Wes.”
“Yes.”
Frenchie looked up. He had eyes the color of wet stone and a mustache that had not changed shape since 1996.
“You good,” Frenchie said.
Two words.
It was the kindest sentence anyone in the Barn had said to Wes in a long time.
“I’m good,” Wes said.
“Goalie good or human good?”
“Both.”
“Liar.”
“Frenchie.”
“Wes.”
“I’m good enough for this. I am asking you not to ask the next question. I am asking you to let me be in this on my own terms. If at any point I am not good enough for this, I will come to you first.”
Frenchie watched him for a long count.
Then Frenchie nodded once and went back to his game tape.
“Theo’s at practice in twenty minutes,” Frenchie said. “He’ll know by then.”
“I know.”
“Suit up.”
Wes stood. He went out of the office. He went down the hall, past the equipment closet, past the dressing-room door, past the boards. He went and got his pads.
In his head, very quietly, he said: Henrik, I’m in.
He had not asked Henrik for permission about anything in ten years.
He did not, now, ask Henrik for permission.
He just said it. As a fact. As a check-in. As the thing he said instead of praying.
Then he put his pads on and went to skate.