Barrett puts his laptop on the ledge next to hisoffice door and takes the laces out of my hand. I let him take them because what am I going to do, play tug of war with my head coach while my girlfriend is topless forty feet away.
“Is Mackinnon in the video room?”
I don’t say anything, which is the same as saying everything.
Barrett exhales long and slow through his nose with his eyes closed, the exhale of a man who has been coaching professional athletes for decades and is no longer surprised by any of it but would very much like to be.
He loops the lace with a series of precise, fast movements and holds it up. “This is a quick-release bowline.” He tugs the tail and the knot opens, the laces falling apart.
He does it again, slower this time. As I watch his hands my brain is splitting into two completely separate processes: one is memorizing the knot because I’m going to need it in approximately three minutes, and the other is trying to understand how I arrived at a point in my life where my coach is teaching me bondage knots in a hallway.
“Over, under, through the loop, pull tight so the free end stays accessible.” He hands the laces back. “If you had used a square knot I would’ve had to kill you. Square knots cinch under load. You’d hurt her.”
“Yes sir.”
“And leave enough slack that she can make a fist for blood flow.” He unties the knot and reties it in maybe three seconds. “Do it once.”
“Coach, I really don’t think?—”
“Do it once, Almardon.”
I take the laces with shaking hands, looping them in the way he showed me and tie the knot. It takes me three tries because my fingers aren’t working but I get it and he tugs on it and it holds and then he pulls one end and we both watch it unravel.
“Good. That’s safe.” He hands the laces back. “I’m going topretend I did not see you, or these laces, or anything that is happening in this wing tonight.” He takes a step past me and stops. “Two things.”
“Yes, Coach.”
“One: tell Jack. Before someone else does. I’m not going to, but I’m not going to lie to him if he asks me directly. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Two: keep it out of my building after tonight. I mean it.”
I walk back to the video room, step inside, and lean against the door. My head drops back with a thunk and I shut my eyes. She’s in the chair where I left her, legs tucked under her, and she takes one look at my face and stops moving.
“Why do you look like that,” she says. “Like you just watched someone die. You’re white.”
“Barrett’s here. He saw me.”
“He SAW you?”
“In the hallway. With the laces.”
“Oh my god.”
“He taught me a knot.”
Mackie stares at me and the silence drags out between us. “I’m sorry,” she says slowly. “He did what?”
“A bowline. Non-binding, won’t tighten under tension, comes apart clean with one pull.” I’m reciting it from memory like it’s a play Barrett drew up on the whiteboard.
She gasps so loud that I startle. “SO THE RUMORS ARE TRUE! He didn’t even HESITATE? He just went straight into teaching mode. He had NOTES. That man has DONE THIS.”
“Please stop?—”
She laughs, falling backward in the chair with her hands over her face and her shoulders shaking, and I’m still standing by the door holding laces that my head coach just quality-tested. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or possibly request a trade.
I cross the room and drop to my knees in front of the chairshe’s sitting in because I don’t think my legs will hold me up any longer. I let my head fall into her lap and I feel her hands scrape through my hair. “Do you still want to do this here?” I ask, and it’s muffled against her skin and I look up at her thinking there’s no way she wants to see this through.
