Page 109 of Full Contact

“You didn’t have to,” Heath said. He stopped and cleared his throat. “Thank you. Hog. It’s—thank you.”

Hog nodded.

Heath wound the scarf once around his neck, over the suit. The tie was still untied underneath. Then he turned to Pickle, who hadn’t said anything for nearly a minute.

“You guys came a long way,” Heath said, “for four minutes on the ice.”

“We didn’t come for the ice.”

“There’s a game, too. The seats are—“

“We came to see you,” Pickle said. “That’s the whole trip. You. The rest is extra.”

Heath opened his mouth. I watched him look for the joke, the one that would get him out of the moment, and I watched him not find it, or decide not to use it.

“Okay,” he said.

Pickle nodded. “Okay.”

The door opened behind me. Mark stood in the doorway with a lanyard looped around one wrist and his phone in his other hand.

“Just checking in,” he said. “You’ve got until five ten. The committee’s settled. Nobody needs you before then.”

“Is everything all right out there?” Heath asked.

“It’s fine.”

I stayed another five minutes. Then I told Heath I’d see him at his stall.

Heath entered the locker room at five eleven, still wearing the scarf over his suit.

He sat at his stall, unwound it, and began to fold it. He picked off a dog hair, considered it, and dropped it back on the scarf.

Varga watched from across the room.

“Do you need tissue paper?” he asked. “I can have somebody bring tissue paper plus a box and a ribbon.”

“He’s jealous,” Rook said.

“I’m not jealous.” Varga looked at the scarf. “Nobody’s ever knitted me anything.”

“I’ll ask Hog,” Heath said. He didn’t look up from the scarf.

“You don’t have to ask Hog.”

“I’ll ask him.”

Varga sat back. After a minute, he said, “Red. If he asks what color.”

Heath laid the folded scarf on the shelf of his stall and squared the edges with his palm.

***

The lights went down at six fifty-eight. We stood along the bench. Cold came off the ice and rolled over the boards. The surface shone under a single spotlight at center, where two people in winter coats waited on a strip of red carpet.

“That’s Denise,” Heath said, beside me. He had his helmet off and his gloves on the boards. “The one with the long hair.”

As the announcer’s voice boomed over the speakers, the gate beside us scraped open. Danny stood just inside it, holding the door with one hand.