He says it flat, and it lands soft anyway, the way the true things he says always do. I take the last puck on my blocker and let it die in the corner because the ten minutes are up.
We come off last, the two of us, same as all year. The calm I built on a hotel floor at six a.m. is still holding, through the cold and the rattle and the empty sheet, because I made it hold this morning, same as every morning. It held easier today than most days. I don't go looking for why. There's a Game 2 tonight in a building that wants us gone. A quiet guy clomping up the tunnel beside me in his skate guards has scouted how I'm supposed to keep my own head on straight. Somewhere in the next twelve hours the two of us have to go steal another one. That's plenty to carry up the tunnel. I carry that.
Chapter 3: Soucy
The home ice is built right, which is the first thing my body registers and the last thing it will thank me for. Because a room built right is a room you stop noticing, and not noticing is the whole luxury of it.
My stall is mine. The geometry holds.
Eighteen thousand people are above us tonight wanting the opposite of what Tampa's barn wanted. The noise comes down through the ceiling as a pressure I can lean into instead of brace against. We split the two in their building. We had no business stealing the one we did. Now we're home and the room knows it.
"You see the panel walked it back?" Thompson drops his bag. "Two games in, and now we're 'a problem.'"
Marchetti, from the trainer's table in the corner, holds his wrist up. "I'm a problem with a sore wrist."
"You're a problem with a wrist that's getting taped whether it needs it or not," Thompson says. Brooks, taping, doesn't look up. That's when Lundy says it from two stalls down, low, just for us.
"Brooks and Marchetti."
"Marchetti didn't ask," I tell him. "Brooks had the tape out and the table cleared before Marchetti walked over. He just had it ready."
"Three seconds," Lundy says.
"What?"
"His hand. After the tape was done. Brooks left it on the wrist three full seconds after the job was finished. Professional touch is one second. Friendly's two."
"Three's a data point."
"Three's a data point." He nods in agreement.
"And look at the table." I tip my chin at it. "He pre-cuts the tape. Tears the strips before Marchetti's even sat down and lays them along the edge so he's not fumbling for them with a wrist in his hand. He set the whole thing up before Marchetti walked in the room. You don't do that for a guy you're just processing. You do that for a guy you've already built a system around."
"A system."
"That's most of what caring is on a team. A system you build quiet enough that it reads as efficiency, so nobody has to say the other word for it." I tape my own cuff. "Brooks's been doing it so long he doesn't know he's doing it. And Marchetti's been getting it so long he thinks it's just how the world treats him."
"Huh," Lundy says.
"What."
The pen stops. Lundy is quiet a second. "Maybe he likes not knowing," he says. "Maybe it's easier to take if you get to call it a wrist."
"Maybe." I don't look up. "It's still a wrist that doesn't need taping."
"It's still a wrist that doesn't need taping," he agrees, and goes back to the puzzle. Across the room Brooks is already onto the next guy and Marchetti is flexing a wrist that was never the point. The whole thing closes over itself like water. We let it.
That's a thing I haven't done before. Let something close with someone already in it, already reading the same shape. He saw Brooks's three seconds the same time I did. Most people on this team need the thing pointed out. He was already there. A man who handles the quiet the way I handle the count, by being inside it before anyone notices he arrived. I don't look at what it costs me to notice.
***
The game is the kind we didn't used to be allowed to imagine. We score early, then again, and the building gets louder with each one. Lundy stands at the far end making the hard saves look easy.
By the middle of the second it's four to one and the Tampa bench looks like men doing math they don't enjoy.
Thompson drops next to me at a TV timeout, breathing hard. "You see Berger's face? He's drafting the parade route."
"There's no parade for round one."
