-e
MARS
The team noticed. The team always noticed. Thirty men who spent more time together than most families developed a collective awareness that functioned like a distributed nervous system, each node detecting disturbances and transmitting them to the whole.
The disturbance I was producing was subtle. I was not behaving differently in the locker room or on the ice. My save percentage was .923, which was on pace for my career best. My positioning was clean. My rebound control was excellent. Professionally, nothing had changed.
Personally, everything had changed, and the everything was leaking through the seams of the mask that I had spent my career making seamless.
Luca was first. Obviously. The man's emotional radar operated at frequencies that NATO would have classified as strategic intelligence.
"You're going to the Decatur rink every morning," he said, appearing at my stall after practice like a friendly ambush. "At 5 AM. You hate mornings."
"I don't hate mornings. I am indifferent to mornings."
"You once told me, and I am quoting directly, 'mornings are an inconvenience invented by people who lack the discipline to accomplish their goals at night.'"
"That statement remains accurate. I have discipline."
"You have something." Luca sat down. The sitting was his power move. Once Luca sat down near you, the conversation was no longer optional. "You're different, Mars. I can't quantify it but I can feel it. You're less... fortressed."
"Fortressed is not a word."
"It's a Luca word. I'm Italian. We invent words when the existing ones are insufficient. You are less fortressed. The walls are the same height but there's a door now. And someone has been using the door."
I put on my headphones. Bossa nova. The universal termination signal. Luca accepted it with the patience of a man who knew that closed doors were not locked doors and that the lock would turn when the time was right.
Cole and Mik invited me to dinner again. The second time in a month, which constituted a pattern. At their apartment, eating Mik's surprisingly excellent Russian-adapted American cooking, I watched them exist together and felt the specific, sharp longing of a man who understood, finally, what he was missing.
Mik caught me at the kitchen counter while Cole was in the other room.
"The figure skater," he said. Not a question.
"How did you know?"
"I am Russian. We are observant and we do not waste time pretending we haven't noticed things." He poured me water with the precise, no-nonsense hospitality of a man who had grown up in a culture where guests were sacred and bullshit was not. "Cole noticed too. He is American and therefore slower, but he arrived at the same conclusion."
"The team doesn't need to know."
"The team will know when you decide they should know. Until then, the knowing stays in this kitchen."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me. Tell me: is he worth the door?"
I thought about 5 AM. The ice. The sound of a blade landing. The face across the lobby. The conversation that went longer every morning. The way he saw the seam in my mask and named it without judgment.
"He's worth every door," I said.
Mik nodded. The Russian nod. The one that carried volumes in a single motion. Then he returned to cooking and said nothing else, because Mik Volkov understood that some truths, once spoken, needed silence to settle.
THEO
The call from Fumiko came on a Tuesday.
"There's a regional in six weeks. Atlanta. Your city. Theo, the programs are there. The jumps are there. I've watched your practice footage. You're skating at a level that would medal at this event."
"You've watched my practice footage?"
