Nan’s hand lands on the back of my neck. “You don’t have to say who,” she says. Then, quieter: “But you should know your face isn’t doing what you think it’s doing.”
Guy nods. “Your face is doing a lot.”
“My face is eating pho.”
“Your face is eating pho like a man who is thinking about someone who is not in this restaurant. That is not a pho face. That is a person face.”
“It’s new,” I say. Which is the minimum I can give and still not say anything.
“Is it good?” Guy asks. The volume drops a notch. The real question underneath the performance.
“Yeah.” My voice comes out quieter than I planned. “It’s good.”
Nan’s hand squeezes once. Then lifts. She picks up her chopsticks and says, “The vermicelli is better here than it was in December,” and the conversation moves to safer ground because Nan knows when to hold a thing and when to set it down. Guy catches my eye across the table with a look that says this is not over. I give him one back that says I know.
***
When I get home, Parker is on the couch in the exact position I left her, which either means she hasn’t moved in three hours or she heard my key and rearranged herself to communicate that my absence did not inconvenience her.
I sit. She evaluates my lap. One paw, then the other. She steps onto my chest, circles once, and settles into the hollow below my collarbone, disregarding whether I invited her.
The purring starts. Low and steady. Her head tucks under my chin. I put my hand on her back and feel the vibration move through my palm into my ribs, and I stay still because moving would disturb her and because something inside me settles and I don’t want to disturb that either.
Chapter 19 — TEO
The locker room sounds like it always sounds, which is like fifteen conversations happening at once and none of them waiting for the last one to finish.
Davis went to Charleston for ASG break and will not stop talking about shrimp and grits. Mäkinen went back to Finland and brought everyone licorice that Hájek tried, made a face, and then tried again because Hájek gives everything a second chance. Thompson went fishing somewhere and caught something he insists was enormous but for which no photographic evidence exists.
“The phone was in the boat,” Thompson says.
“The phone is always in the boat,” Mueller says. “Every fishing story you tell ends with the phone in the boat.”
“Because that’s where phones go when you’re fishing, Mueller. In the boat. Where the fish are.”
I’m lacing my skates and half listening and mostly thinking about how good it feels to be back in this room. The break was fine. Jersey, nonna, my sisters, Parker FaceTiming with my mother who held the phone at an angle that showed mostlyceiling while Parker stared at the screen like she was being personally disrespected. But this room is the thing I missed. And the person working down the hall.
Berger comes in while Fontenot is telling Hájek about some restaurant in Savannah. Berger drops his bag at his stall and opens it and starts pulling gear out without saying anything.
Davis asks him something about the break. I don’t catch the whole question because Thompson and Mueller are still arguing about the fish, but I see Berger’s head turn toward Davis and I see his mouth form a word that might be “good” or might be “fine,” and then he’s looking at his gear again. The one-word version of a man who usually takes paragraphs to say what a sentence could handle.
A minute later he stands up and walks out. No explanation. No gear on. Just stands and goes, his bag still open on the floor, his phone sitting on the bench. I know he’ll come back. He’ll rate the pregame coffee and the ice and everything else. Maybe the break was just long and he’s tired and I’m making something out of nothing.
My shoulder rolls clean when I pull my jersey on. Full rotation, no catch, no hesitation. Six months ago that motion had a ceiling, and now it just works smoothly. Zay’s hands did that. He rebuilt something that was broken without ever makingmefeel like something that was broken. And now we are down to sessions twice a week instead of three. The reason I walk into that treatment room is disappearing and neither of us has said what happens when it’s gone.
We are playing Toronto and the arena is more packed than it was in October. The expansion novelty wore off by November but something else replaced it. Twenty-two games left and the Firebirds are sitting on the edge of a wild card spot that nobody predicted and everybody in this room is superstitiously not talking about.
The first shift of the game, I take a hit along the boards and my shoulder absorbs it and stays. Six months ago that hit would have been an immediate pause, a check-in with my body to see if the joint held. Now it’s just hockey. The contact registers and passes and I’m already moving, cutting toward the net, finding the lane between the defenseman’s stick and his partner’s skate.
The puck comes off Hájek’s tape and I get my stick on it in front and redirect it low and the net jumps and the horn goes and the bench erupts. Hájek crashes into me along the glass and his helmet clips my visor and he’s laughing, screaming something I can’t hear over the horn.
The second period, I take another shift where everything connects. My legs are pushing hard enough, my hands quick enough, the instinct to go where it hurts. A defenseman cross-checks me in the crease of the net and I don’t move. Plant my feet. Take it. The whistle comes and Coach Bodie taps my helmet when I get back to the bench and says nothing, which from Coach Bodie is a standing ovation.
We’re up 3-1 in the third when Thompson points to the larger scoreboard during a TV timeout and notes a score. “Miami won.”
“Of course Miami won.” Mueller leans over to look. “They’ve won six of eight.”
“Mercy’s got twenty-two goals already,” Thompson says, scrolling. “He’s been unreal since before the break.”
