"Thank you, Makinen."
"I said don't make it a thing."
He goes, and the shake sits at my elbow where he left it, and I understand the team is going to keep doing this. The small unbidden things. How I've done them all season. Every one is going to land on me now like a receipt for a debt I can't pay back. They hold me because I'm theirs. I used to think that was the same as being wanted.
Berger leans across two stalls. "Lundy. Settle it. Was the pregame pasta a seven-nine or an eight-two."
"It was pasta, Berger."
"That's what Soucy always says."
The name goes through the room how it goes through me. No different. To them it's just a name. Just the backup playing like a starter. Just a guy two stalls down. "It was an eight-two," I say. "Tell him I said eight-two." Berger grins and goes off to tell him. I don't watch where he goes.
Fontenot hangs over the back of my stall. "Book club Thursday. You're not getting out of it because you got your bell rung."
"I read the chapters."
"Did you? What happened in chapter nine?"
"The one where he finally says the thing. Out loud." I keep my eyes on my tape. "Before it's too late to say it."
Fontenot is quiet a second longer than Fontenot is ever quiet. "Yeah," he says. "That one." He goes, and I hold the look on his face, set it with everything else, and don't look at it again.
The crossword is on the bench between our two stalls, folded to today's grid, where it lives. It stays folded. I tape my stick and it stays folded and the room moves around it and nobody touches it. I don't touch it. That's all that happens with the crossword.
Tikh sits where Davis was. He doesn't say anything for a while, which is the most Tikh thing he does. "Marchetti and Zay made up, in case you're tracking. Zay brought him coffee this morning."
"I saw."
"You used to save those for someone."
I don't answer that. There's no answer to it that stays inside the calm. I used to narrate the room to one person, the small weather that only the two of us bothered to track. Nowhere to put it now.
"I'm not pushing," Tikh says. He puts his hand on my shoulder for exactly two seconds. Then he's gone. The two seconds sit on my shoulder after his hand is gone.
Thompson catches me by the water station. "You good?"
"Yeah."
He looks at me with the flat read he doesn't usually let me see. "You're not good."
"I'm handling it, Thompson."
"Yeah," he says. "You're real good at that." He lets it go, because Thompson knows when a thing won't move. He built this. The fish food and the book-club nudges. The step back at the show. He did all of it without a speech and it worked. Now he gets to watch it stop working. He doesn't say he's sorry. He just keeps me talking long enough to clock that I've filled the same cup three times and poured none of it out.
Soucy comes to the doorway when the room is half empty. He doesn't come in. He stays in the frame of it. Professional. The distance you'd keep from any teammate.
"Bodie wants the goalie meeting at four."
"I'll be there."
"He wants to talk about the Finals rotation. Whether you're cleared."
That's all of it. He nods and he's gone. The doorway he stood in stays empty in a way doorways don't usually stay empty. We had a language, not a figure of speech for one but an actual one, built out of a hundred small rooms and a season of mornings. We point it at meeting times now. We leave the rest in the case.
Bodie finds me last. "Doc cleared you. You're good for game one. Soucy goes back to the bench."
"He carried us through Montreal. He should keep the net."
