Chapter Seven
Layton
The gift on my desk was a visual reminder throughout every single meeting I had right through to the weekend. I tried putting it in the drawer, but then I imagined Adler coming in and somehow knowing it was in there and that I’d accepted it. I’d considered calling him in earlier and telling him he’d left it, but that would’ve meant I’d have to see him again. In my office. This tiny cramped space with no windows. Adler was scheduled in for a session, but he’d already canceled twice, and part of me was happy about that. Of course, the professional side of me abhorred the fact that he wasn’t receiving the right information and education, but I wasn’t ready to see him again, not yet.
All because of that kiss.
From wanting more all the way through to panicking had taken no more than a few seconds, but it had felt like forever. There was a reason every lover I’d had since college had been smaller than me, or at least less of a physical presence than Adler was. I’d felt suffocated even as I was turned on, and I replayed in my head the words that my therapist had taught me in my darker days. I’m strong. It wasn’t my fault.
The words were hollow; momentarily I had felt out of control, and I didn’t like the feeling.
So I hid the gift under a folder on my desktop and tried to ignore it, pushing it and the folder right to the edge.
The team had left on a road trip that afternoon, and the only meeting I’d had before they left was with Ten, who seemed to me to be getting more nervy with each passing day. I’d noticed that Jared held his hand in meetings, and that when Ten was alone with me he fidgeted a lot. I made a mental note to sit down with him for a longer chat.
Felix Cote poked his head around the door with an accompanying knock, and I smiled up at him.
The team owner was a big bear of a man; a true seventies hockey player. There were photos of him in the corridor in all kinds of bad outfits, from seventies flares to a full-on eighties mullet. When he interviewed my firm for this position, he’d talked at length about playing against some guy called Mario, whom I didn’t know from Adam, but it turned out now owned a team of his own and was considered to be a hot player. The only name I’d known before coming here was Gretzky, and that had only been because a kid on my floor at college had a motivational poster of him with wise words about chances, or scoring, or something like that.
You’d better believe I researched Mario, and Felix, and the whole seventies/eighties environment that surrounded hockey.
Right now, Felix looked very calm and collected, unlike in the original meeting where, to put it bluntly, he’d been close to losing his shit at any given moment. While everyone around him saw the Ten/Jared situation as a chance to promote equality and give the team a positive marketing spin, all he could see was the amount of money the team would lose if butts left seats. I didn’t blame him; after all it was his investment on the line.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
I gave formal written reports daily, although I wasn’t sure his PA, Jane, passed them up to her boss. She probably summarized them for the man, who seemed to be constantly wheeling and dealing with an eye to taking the Railers to the top of the league.
“Good.” I reached over for the folder of information I was compiling, along with the infant marketing plan, and gestured for him to come in. I assumed he wanted details, but it soon became apparent that he had something else on his mind.
“So, I was thinking…” He stopped, turned around, and shut the door behind him. I didn’t feel panicked, not like when I’d had the team in there, which was stupid, because Felix was just as big, and fit for his age. “May I sit?” he asked, ever so politely, and I nodded.
“Of course. Is something wrong?” Worry gripped me. Was he there to say Ten and Jared had changed their minds, or that he didn’t want me working on this?
He coughed to clear his throat. “My wife, bless her soul, married to me thirty years and counting, a good woman who’s put up with a lot over the years what with hockey and… well, hockey is everything, really. She said I needed some sensitivity training.”
If I hadn’t had so much experience at schooling my expression, my eyes would have been wide and my mouth would have been hanging open. I’d never expected the owner of the team to get involved.
“Sure, we can do that.”
Felix sat back in his seat. “Can you do it now?” he asked.
I had the impression he wanted to do it then because the team was away. The arena emptied for road trips, apparently, all but some admin staff and the general employees working other events.
“Of course.” I pushed the marketing plan to one side and reached for the other information, at the same time knocking the temporary gift-hiding stationery onto the floor. Felix reached down and picked up the small wrapped gift.
“Is it your birthday? Did we miss it? You should tell Jane and she’ll pick up a cake or something like she does for the rest of us.”
“No, my birthday is November,” I said.
I reached out for the offered gift, tucking it in the drawer along with all thoughts of what Adler would say if he knew where it was. Felix looked like he was going to say something else, but I headed him off at the pass.
“Tell me where you’d like to start.”
He sighed and squirmed in the chair. Even though I’d swapped the smaller chair for one that actually allowed hockey asses to fit, it was still a tight fit.
“So, when I played, it was the seventies, and things were…” He searched for the right word, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Different,” he offered, with a shrug to indicate how lame he thought it was. “When I played… hell, sexuality, gender, it wasn’t the issue it is now.”
He held up a hand to stop me, clearly expecting me to argue that those things had been an issue for the longest time. He didn’t know that was the last thing I’d do. The history of equality has been a bumpy road that’s still being fixed on a daily basis, but I knew to frame people’s experiences based on their age, or even the state or country they were born in.
He paused again, then exhaled noisily. “I remember one day, in the early eighties, the worst chirp was using the whole AIDS thing to piss a rival off. You know, that was shit then, and it was still something guys used throughout that decade. In the seventies there was this whole Russian–US Cold War thing, but that died. Am I making any sense?”
He looked at me hopefully, like I’d be able to help just from that short explanation. Lucky for him, I could.
“Absolutely,” I said, and leaned forward. Explaining how there were a hundred factors in how you spoke or what your beliefs were was a simple thing. The last thing I wanted with any of the older staff was resentment that I was telling them their actions twenty years ago had been shameful. I had to be pragmatic and explain clearly how things had changed.
When he left, he hesitated by the door, “You should come to dinner Tuesday, when the boys are back. Lillian will expect you and be happy to see you. You could meet the team in less formal surroundings.”
I so did not want to be at any dinner with any of the team, but this was a suck-it-up situation, and I could hope Adler wouldn’t be one of the skaters there.
“That would be lovely,” I said formally.
“Jane will email you,” he said, and left, leaving the door open, as I liked it.
True to his word, the email arrived at the same time as Edgar at the door. Edgar was part of the communications team, a reluctant supporter of the team Twitter account. He knocked, and I smiled at him the same way I had at Felix.
He looked gray.
I instantly thought the worst. “What happened?” I asked.
Mutely, he handed over his iPhone, and I saw Arvy’s Twitter. I knew it wasn’t Arvy who had posted the short sentence. I knew Arvy. He was a good guy, very respectful, and this was someone else who’d taken his phone.
The message was simple and involved a joke about women. Great. I went into action mode.
Within ten minutes the tweet was deleted and the culprit—one of the junior equipment guys, a kid of no more than eighteen—was relieved of his job. Not my call. That was all Felix, who blustered and cursed and talked about the Railers family and how one bad apple could ruin everything.
I knew it could, but I didn’t panic, and managed the situation.
By the time I left the office, I was more exhausted than when the team was in and out of my office for their sensitivity chats.
But I didn’t sleep. Because, hey, who needs sleep anyway? All I could think of was Adler and his stupid gift and the casual way he talked about his family and their complete lack of interest in him. Or at least that was what I’d got from his little speech.
Then my thoughts changed, became less concerned with work, the pen, or Adler’s family. No, this was more about that kiss and the brief moment when I’d actually enjoyed being held and kissed like that.
Before the panic had set in.
* * * * *
Tuesday came around way too fast. I’d managed to avoid talking to my mom for most of that, but when she pinned me down, it turned out she wanted me home for Thanksgiving.
“Just one day when I have all my babies under one roof,” she’d said.
Actually she said that every year, and she deserved us all to be there, but I had work to do, and the announcement had been set for two days after Thanksgiving, which was only two weeks away. The date had been chosen to fall between two home games, and my next job was to coach Ten and Jared in what to say in answer to questions. I’d seen them both briefly that morning, and Ten had looked less shifty, like maybe getting away from Harrisburg had been a good thing for him.
Of course they’d won all three of their away games, so the entire team was on a high.
The entire team was also at this damn dinner.
Finding Felix’s house was easy; his was the huge mansion at the end of a cul-de-sac. Getting in was harder, as there was a speaker you had to talk into, and it crackled a lot. In the end I followed a scarlet Ferrari in, and sighed when I saw that it was Arvy getting out. I hadn’t seen him since the whole tweet incident. He saw me and stopped me before I even spoke.
“New code on my phone lock, and it never leaves my side,” he said, and waved his phone at me like that proved how responsible he was being. “And I did what you said and tweeted the apology, and a picture of my dog, and another of me without a shirt.”
“I saw,” I said, with a twitch of a smile.
“Cool,” he replied, then walked at my side up the length of the long driveway to the imposing front of the house.
“So you going home for Thanksgiving?” I asked when we ran out of conversation that wasn’t about Twitter. It wasn’t like I could talk hockey, although I was learning from my Dummies book and watching so many old recordings on YouTube that I could explain the game with some authority. I just hadn’t tried it on a hockey player yet for fear of being laughed at. And it was a very long driveway. I considered laying my Mario Lemieux knowledge on him, but even that had its limits.
“Nah,” he said. “We have a game either side of it, and the guys will meet up at someone’s house here. You?”
“Probably not.”
We reached the front door and knocked, and a woman answered who I knew was Lillian, Felix’s wife. Small, immaculately dressed in a simple black dress with pearls, she welcomed us in and showed me around a little. There were so many photos of the teams that Felix had played for, from old black-and-white photos of a kid, right up to the signing ceremony for the Railers franchise.
Along with Arvy, all of the players were ranged in a large reception room, making the place look untidy. I knew it was only a matter of time before I found Adler. Luckily, that didn’t happen until dinner. Unluckily, Lillian sat me right next to him, with Stan on my other side.
“Hey,” he said, and moved in his chair, his thigh against mine. I moved as well, away from him, knocking my water in the process and nearly spilling it.
“Hello.” I said. “So I saw you won your three games.” Safe subject. Hockey information I could talk about; team wins and losses.
“Yeah,” he said. “It was one of those road trips where everything gelled. A good bonding exercise. Nice to get to know the guys a bit more.”
The starter was served, a mushroom soup sprinkled with parsley, along with crunchy bread, and thankfully Felix began talking about the road trip and how pleased he was. There was wine; I stuck to water.
“Good,” Stan said, nudging me in the side and nearly causing me to fall the other way into Adler’s lap. I looked sideways at him and waited for more. He indicated my mushroom soup and repeated that single word again. “Good.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Da,” I added.
“Snow sicks,” he added, and narrowed his eyes at me. I got the feeling I was being warned off of doing something there. I thought he’d said snow sicks, or maybe no sicks, or… who the hell knew what he’d said? “Eat.”
“Okay,” I said, and carried on eating, listening to the quiet rumble of Stan’s voice as he talked in low Russian to the only other guy on the team who knew what he was really saying, Anatoly Sokolov.
“He says you need to eat all your soup,” Anatoly said helpfully. His voice was less growly Russian, and more American but with an accent. I knew he’d been playing for US teams for the last ten years, so there was hope that one day Stan would become more understandable, or more likely that the team would learn enough Russian.
“I am,” I said, and pointedly scooped up another spoonful of soup and swallowed it. I even exaggerated the action, and felt like I was receiving approval from both Russians.
“He says you must eat and not make yourself sick,” Anatoly added.
I glanced at Stan. What? He just smiled at me, but not in a friendly, open way—more in an understanding, sympathetic way. What the hell?
“He says he sees chocolate on your desk a lot, and coffee. Too much coffee.”
I felt like everyone was looking at me, but a quick glance showed me that no one was paying any attention.
“Okay,” I said to Stan and Anatoly.
They both nodded at me, but in my peripheral vision, I caught Stan looking at me. I ignored him, trying to focus on something else. I zeroed in on one particular conversation, then wished I hadn’t.
“So I said, sixty-nine plus me is the number seventy I wear on my back.” Denton was talking. He was a winger, and sitting the other side of Adler. I liked Denton, but he was a bit of an idiot, who made jokes about everything.
“She fell for your shit?” Arvy asked.
Evidently I’d tripped into listening to Denton explaining a pickup line.
“Yeah, she was hot to trot, and the sixty-nine…” He trailed off and looked at me past Adler. “My bad,” he said. But he was smiling like he wasn’t apologizing at all. And hell, why was he even apologizing to me? My mouth opened before my brain kicked in, the very thing I’d warned the entire team about. And what I said fell into an unfortunate lull in conversation.
“Hell, what is it with hockey players and their addiction to sixty-nine?”
Silence.
Complete, stone-cold silence.
And then the laughter started, and right in the middle of it I could feel myself turning scarlet. This was like I was back at college; this was me saying something idiotic and having people turn on me. I was hot, and I pushed back my chair, aiming for composed.
“Excuse me,” I said.
And before anyone could stop me, before I’d finished the soup that Stan so desperately wanted me to; I left.