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Gus meets me at the side door with a ring of keys and a look that says he's decided not to ask anything. He flips on the lights over one half of the ice and leaves the other half dark. The Zamboni's done its last pass for the day, and the ice is perfect. Clean and wet-looking and completely smooth.

"I'll be in the shop," Gus says. "Back room. Headphones on. Can't hear a thing."

"We're doing drills, Gus."

"Didn't say you weren't." He hands me the keys. "Lock up after. Leave them on my bench."

Castel comes in five minutes later. Not late. He's got his skates over his shoulder and a stick in one hand and a coffee in the other, and he stops in the doorway of the rink and just looks at it. The empty stands. The dark half of the ice. The quiet.

"Whoa," he says.

"It's a rink."

"It's a rink at night. It's different. It's like a church." His voice echoes off the boards, and he grins at the sound of it. "Hello!"

Hello, the rink says back.

"Put your skates on," I say.

I start with gap control.

I skate backward across the blue line, and he comes at me with the puck, and I close on him and take it off his stick. Again. Again. Every time, he tries something fancy. Every time, I take it.

"You're watching my stick," I tell him. "Stop watching my stick. Watch my chest. The stick lies. The chest doesn't."

"Your chest lies all the time."

"My chest goes where I'm going."

He comes at me again. This time, he watches my chest. He sees me commit left and goes right and gets past me for the first time.

"Ha!" He spins around at the far boards, arms up. "Did you see that?"

"Now do it again."

He does it again. He gets past me again.

After an hour we switch. Now I've got the puck and he's defending, and he stays between me and the net and doesn't chase. That's all he has to do.

He chases. Every time.

"Stop reaching," I say, after I walk around him for the fourth time. "You reach, you're off balance. You're off balance, I'm gone."

"You're slow. I can catch you."

"You can catch me when I'm thirty-five with a bad knee. You can't catch Varga."

"Varga's slower than you."

"Varga's stronger than you. He'll put you through the glass if you reach."

He stands there, breathing hard, and pushes his wet hair back off his forehead with the palm of his glove.

"Again," he says.

We do it again. This time he doesn't reach. He stays square, he stays between me and the net, and he waits, and when I try to cut inside, he's there. He doesn't chase the puck. He just takes away the space, and I run out of room, and he lifts my stick and takes it.

He doesn't celebrate. He just looks at me. Surprised.