Page 8 of Payback On The Ice

His goalie bag is the size of a body and it smells like one, too.

I carry it from the lot behind Kettle Arena, across the bike racks, through the side door and down the long cinder-block hallway to the room, and every guy I pass watches me do it.

"Looking good, Lindqvist." Gunnar is holding the door open for himself and not for me. "Real good look for you."

"Thanks, bud. I've been working on my posture."

"Do you need a hand with that?" says somebody behind me, deadpan, and three people laugh.

I keep walking. The strap is cutting into my shoulder. My ribs are fine, my legs are fine, I'm a hockey player and I can carry a bag, but the thing about a goalie bag is you can't carry it like you don't care. You have to lean. Everyone can see you lean.

The door to the room swings shut in my face. I catch it with my foot.

Someone catches it for me from the other side.

It's a defenceman I haven't talked to yet, number twenty-two, a big quiet guy with a buzz cut and a face like a golden retriever who's had a hard week. Abernathy, says his stall. He holds the door until I'm through. He doesn't say anything, and he doesn't look at me, but he holds it.

I set Dane's bag down in front of Dane's stall. Dane is sitting there already, in shorts and a T-shirt, rolling his ankles.

"Your bag, sir."

He unzips it and checks it, actually checks it, like I might have stolen a pad on the way in.

"Fine."

"I'm sorry, did you just say fine? Can I get that in writing? Frame it?"

He's already looking past me.

Thursday is team dinner.

I find out because there's a sign-up sheet taped on the whiteboard in the room, and my name is the only one that isn't on it. Somebody has written it in at the very bottom, in red, with a little arrow:

LINDQVIST — PENALTY TABLE

"That's a joke, right?" I ask the room. "That's a Graymoor joke?"

Jace Pruitt is buttoning his shirt. "Graymoor tradition," he says. "Ask your integration guy."

Team dinner is at a supper club on the edge of town called the Lantern. It's wood paneling and deer heads and a fish tank with one fish in it, and it's owned by a booster who played here in the eighties and who gives the whole team the back room every Thursday for free. There's a long table set for twenty-five.

And in the corner, by the kitchen door, there's a card table with one folding chair and a hand-lettered sign propped against a ketchup bottle.

SIN BIN.

"Oh, come on," I say.

Dane is already at the long table. He doesn't stand. He doesn't need to. He points at the card table with two fingers, the way you'd tell a dog where its bed is.

So I sit in the sin bin.

When twenty-five guys are waiting to watch you get humiliated, you can take it or you can own it. If you take it, they'll smell it on you for the rest of the year. If you own it, at least it's yours.

So I own it.

When the waitress comes, an older woman with reading glasses on a chain and a name tag that says MARCY, I give her my most charming smile and say, "Hi, Marcy. I'll be dining alone this evening. It's a whole thing. Long story. What's good for a guy who's been sentenced?"

Marcy looks at me. She looks at the sign. She looks at the long table.