Page 82 of Puck Me Like You Own Me

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Roth is in the players’ garage on Wednesday at ten past four.

Not by my truck this time. He’s standing under the light between bay eleven and the pillar, coat on, hands in his pockets. He picked a spot where a man coming out of the stairwell has to pass him.

I have my bag on my shoulder and a coffee in my hand. Two of the equipment staff are loading a cart forty feet away. Neither looks up.

He takes his hands out.

“The twenty-fourth,” he says. “Toronto. First period, level score. She wants your answer today.”

I put the coffee on the roof of the truck.

I’ve had a week to think about this, and I haven’t needed it. I’ve known the answer since Thursday afternoon on the stairs in the port district, and it hasn’t changed.

“No.”

He looks at me.

“The twenty-fourth,” he says again, in exactly the same voice at exactly the same speed. “Toronto, at home. First period.”

“No.”

He takes the notebook out. He doesn’t write anything in it yet. He holds it closed against his leg with two fingers on the elastic.

“You understand what you’re saying.”

“I do.”

He lets that sit between us.

“The twenty-fourth.”

“No,” I say for the third time. My hands are level. My heart is going hard enough that I can hear it.

A couple of times a season in the crease, the puck comes off a stick in the slot and I’m already where it’s going before I decide anything. For about a fifth of a second, my whole body is one piece. It’s the only good feeling I’ve ever fully trusted.

This is the opposite. My mouth has gone dry. Sweat runs down my back under a coat in a cold garage. The muscle over my left hip has locked while I stood still, so I put my weight on the other leg while a man in a gray coat decides what to do with me.

Then he opens the notebook and writes. It takes him a while, more than three words’ worth, standing under a light in a concrete bay. He puts the notebook away. His hands go back in his pockets.

“Right,” he says, and goes.

I stand with my hand on the door of a fifteen-year-old truck for a while after the sound of his car has gone up the ramp.

Nothing happens. The wet patch under the pipe is still there. A cart holds two bags of pucks. Somebody whistles in the corridor behind the door. I just said no to the syndicate that owns my life, out loud, three times.

I pick the coffee up off the roof. It’s gone cold.

Nils has me in his office on Thursday morning for eleven seconds.

He doesn’t sit down or ask me to. A clipboard is against his chest. He has on the same quarter-zip he’s worn since 2016. Saturday’s forecheck is on the whiteboard behind him.

“Sandoval has the next two.”

“Okay.”

He looks at me. “That’s the season,” he says. “Get the hip seen to.”