I don’t say anything. I’m staring straight ahead at the far boards. My heart is pounding and a weird ringing has started in my ears.
“Also,” he says, “the hallway smelled like perfume. Not a little bit. Like she had just walked through there.”
Barrett’s whistle screams from center ice. “RODRIGUEZ. ARE YOU PLAYING HOCKEY OR ARE YOU APPLYING FOR A JOB AS A GOALTENDING COACH? GET BACK IN LINE.”
Rodriguez skates away but he’s back ninety seconds later.
“I’m not done.”
“I figured.”
“So there’s a girl.”
“There’s no girl.”
“Thereisa girl in your apartment who laughs and wearsperfume and you’re not answering your phone on a Friday night. That’s a girl, Z. That’s definitively a girl.”
Barrett’s whistle shrieks again. Rodriguez leaves then comes back the minute Barrett is distracted.
“I’m not doing this with you.” I tell him.
“Because I’m trying to narrow it down. It was like kind of florally, with maybe vanilla?—”
“RODRIGUEZ!” Barrett’s voice bellows across the ice. “IF I HAVE TO BLOW THIS WHISTLE ONE MORE TIME I’M SCRATCHING YOU FROM THURSDAY.”
Rodriguez skates away for real this time and I stand in my crease and stop twelve more shots but with every single one of them I’m thinking about the fact that Mackie was in my apartment Friday and Rodriguez was outside my door. He could hear her laughing and he could smell her perfume which means this is going to get worse before it gets better.
The locker room is where it gets worse.
Rodriguez is still getting his pads off when he starts back up and Dex and Brody migrate over because it’s clear that it’s feeding time at the aquarium and I’m on the menu.
“All I’m saying is that Z had a girl in his apartment Friday night and he won’t tell me who she is.”
“I didn’t say I had a girl?—”
“Perfume in the hallway. Girl laughing. Phone off.” Rodriguez ticks each one off on his fingers. “That’s an airtight case.”
“What did the perfume smell like?” Dex asks like this is a real investigation.
“I don’t know but I was going to go to the mall this weekend to see if I could figure it out.”
“So we don’t know who she is,” Brody says. “Also, why would knowing what the perfume is help us narrow it down?”
“You don’t know anything,” I say.
“We know she exists and she smells good and she makes you act weird at practice,” Rodriguez says. “That’s a lot, actually.”
Brody leans back. “What if she doesn’t live here. What if she’s from out of town.”
“Why would she be from out of town?” I ask, and I know as I’m asking it that I should just stop talking entirely.
“Because you never go out. You never bring anyone around. You don’t date locally. You’re like a monk except apparently on Friday nights when a mystery woman shows up at your apartment.”
“Z.” Rodriguez points at me. “Where did you play junior?”
“What does that have to do with?—”
“Vancouver. You played junior in Vancouver. You lived there for what, three years?”
