Tonight, he’s two stalls down from me on the matchup grid.
22 — Carrigan — RD.
His name has been up on the whiteboard at the front of the visitors’ room since morning skate. Fuller drew the grid in red marker at breakfast and tapped it once with the cap, which is what Fuller does when he wants you to remember a name. I haven’t needed help remembering this one. I’ve been ready for this game since the lines posted on Wednesday. I’ve been ready for this game since June.
I sit in my stall in the visiting room, and I tape the blade of my stick. The tape is the wrong color. White, when our away jerseysare black, when the tape on every other guy’s stick in this room is black. I had a fresh roll of black in my bedroom, but Benson swore up and down that I needed to try this one, so I’m just rolling with it. I’ve been wrapping it for ten minutes. My hands need a job tonight. If my hands stop having a job, they’re going to do something I’m going to have to explain to the trainer in the morning, and I am not in the mood to explain anything to anybody in the morning.
I keep my head down and wrap.
Across the room, Stanley laughs at something Rowan said. Percy is at the end of the bench in his pads with his mask off, doing the slow staring-at-the-floor thing he does ninety minutes before a puck drop. Benson is two stalls down from me pulling his Under Armour over his head.
He’s been watching me since I walked in. He hasn’t said anything. He pulls the shirt down and picks up his shin pad.
“Golding.” Stanley drops onto the bench next to me. He’s already in his pads. He’s bouncing his leg, and he smells like the Old Spice he sprays in lieu of showering when we’ve been on a bus for four hours. He’s grinning at me like he’s about to say something I’m not going to like. “What’s the wrap count on that stick?”
“What?”
“The blade.” He nods at it. “You’ve been wrapping it since I sat down. I sat down ten minutes ago. How many wraps you got going there, Bluey?”
“I’m taping my stick, Stan.”
“You’re embalming your stick.”
I don’t answer.
He bumps his shoulder against my left side. Stanley has known about the shoulder since Monday morning, when he saw me wince while putting on my hoodie and made a joke about it and then dropped it for the rest of the week.
“You good?”
“I’m fine.”
He looks at me for two seconds longer than Stanley ever looks at anybody. Then his face changes. The bit comes back.
“All right,” he says, standing up. “You look beautiful tonight, by the way. Like a man about to commit a felony. Very handsome.” He walks off.
Benson catches me in the hallway on the way out of the room. He puts a hand on my good shoulder as he passes and says, without looking at me, “Don’t make me have to talk to you tonight.”
I keep walking. “Heard you, cap.”
He goes past. The tunnel mouth opens onto the ice, and the sound hits me — the rink hum, the canned music, the announcer working the crowd, the scrape of skates already cutting up the corner. I pull my helmet onto my head. I take the bench rail with my glove. I push through the door onto the ice.
The kid is at the far blue line stretching with his stick across the back of his shoulders. I do my warmup loop and find him on the third lap. He smirks at me like a little bastard. He’s been waiting for this game too.
Good.I think it loud.Good. He’s been waiting too. This is fair. So this is two guys who have something to settle and tonight we settle it.
The story I am telling myself feels good. It feels right. It fits. I lap him again. He doesn’t look at me the second time.
I stand on the blue line with my helmet under my arm, my eyes on the flag, and I feel the thing in my chest that has been there since Saturday tighten one more degree, and I tell itnot yet, not yet, not yet.The anthem ends. The crowd does its thing. We tap our helmets back on. We line up.
First shift, I’m out with Benson and Stanley. Lowell wins the draw clean. The puck swings to the kid at the point, and I closeon him at the half-wall faster than he’s expecting. I don’t hit him. I brush him. Shoulder to shoulder, just enough to put his head into the glass, just enough to tell him I’m here.
He says something on the way past that I don’t catch. I skate back to the bench.
Stanley, on the bench, leans into my good shoulder without looking at me. “Golding.”
“What?”
His eyes meet mine, and he’s being serious. “Easy.”
