Page 68 of Power Play

“Hi.” She sounded a little breathless.

Breathless put me straight back against her door, and I shifted in the hotel bed.

“I would like it noted that nobody consulted me about this.”

“Noted.”

“She has a policy. It appeared out of nowhere a few weeks ago, it is non-negotiable, and it applies to the mailman.” She set a mug down on a counter. “You should know the eggs went extremely well. Four of them. One went on the floor, which is now Gerald’s egg, and he’s carved out an exception for floor eggs.”

“The strike?”

“The strike is a war of attrition and I want you to know that I’m neutral.”

“You are not neutral.”

“I am publicly neutral,” she said. “Privately I have opinions about a man who negotiates with his daughter like she’s a rival general instead of buying her the cat.”

“Delaney.”

“I said privately. She’s had her bath, she picked the whale book which means we’re doing voices, and at lunch she asked me how many sleeps until you’re back and I said three and she said that’s a lot and went back to her sandwich like it was fine. It wasn’t fine. She was being brave about it.”

I sat with that.

“Thank you,” I said.

“It’s the job.”

It wasn’t the job. It hadn’t been since October. I didn’t say so, because neither of us said anything true over the phone.

“Okay,” she said. “Goodnight, Eli.”

“Goodnight.”

I should have hung up.

“The light’s on,” I said.

She didn’t answer right away. When she did, she said it quietly, with no performance anywhere in it.

“I know.”

She didn’t explain it. I didn’t ask her to. I didn’t hang up and she didn’t either, and past a certain point that was a decision and not a delay. Her breathing carried, and the refrigerator behind her, and I was hard in a hotel bed over a woman breathing into a phone.

After the call ended I got up and did an hour on the bike.

We won in Calgary, lost in Vancouver, and won in Seattle. Through all three I played the best defensive hockey of my season.

Theo caught on during the third in Seattle. I’d taken a bad angle and recovered from it before anybody else clocked it, and he was waiting for me on the bench.

“Tu as décidé quelque chose,” he said. He was telling me I’d made up my mind.

“Play your shift.”

“C’est un oui.” He was taking that as a yes.

Calloway got me in the tunnel afterward with his hands in his pockets.

“You’ve been good,” he said.