Page 15 of Rookie Mistake
NIKOLAI
The morning after the elevator, I make coffee and I do not make it for him.
This is deliberate. My coffee. My mug. My routine. The routine says last night did not happen. The routine says the control is intact. The routine says the man in my guest room whose mouth tasted like champagne and honesty at 10:14 PM in a mirrored elevator is a temporary housing arrangement, and the arrangement is concluding today. His apartment is ready. The proximity ends. Order restored.
The routine is lying. The routine knows it is lying. I know it is lying. The coffee knows it is lying and the coffee is just a liquid.
Mercer appears at 7:15 in sweats and the T-shirt he slept in, hair in every direction, barefoot on my hardwood, and the sight of him in my kitchen in the morning light produces a physical response that the control processes as a threat and that my body processes as the opposite of a threat.
"Morning," he says.
"Morning."
He looks at my coffee. He looks at the coffee maker. He looks at the absence of a second mug.
"So we're doing this," he says.
"Doing what."
"Pretending that if you act like a disappointed nutritionist, the elevator didn't happen."
"The elevator was a lapse in judgment."
"Your hand was in my hair."
"I am aware of where my hand was."
"And now your plan is to make one coffee, stand at the counter like a man reviewing tax documents, and act like the kissing was a clerical error."
"I do not review tax documents at the counter. I review them at the desk."
"Nikolai."
My name in his mouth. Two syllables. The same two syllables from the elevator, except in the morning these syllables are not breathless. These syllables are frustrated and direct and carrying the specific weight of a man who was kissed against a mirror and who is now watching the kisser drink coffee alone.
I do not respond. I drink my coffee. The coffee is hot and bitter and the bitterness is appropriate.
He pours his own coffee. He does not ask for a mug. He finds one (second shelf, left side, the shelf he should not know the location of after five days but that he knows because Mercer maps spaces the way he maps ice: instinctively, comprehensively, in the first five minutes of entering them). He pours. He drinks. He looks at me over the rim with an expression that is not the grin.
The not-grin is worse than the grin. The not-grin is the underneath, and the underneath is disappointed.
We drive to the facility in silence. The silence is not the safe silence I offered him in the kitchen the first night. The safe silence was an invitation. This silence is a wall, and the wall is mine, and the wall is doing the thing walls do when they are builtin response to fear rather than need: they keep out the things that should be in.
At the facility, I am professional. I am impeccable in my professionalism. I skate with precision. I execute drills with the mechanical efficiency that eight NHL seasons have encoded in my nervous system. I do not look at Mercer during practice. I do not look at Mercer in the cafeteria. I do not look at Mercer in the corridor where the fluorescent lights hum and where, five days ago, our fingers touched on a folder and the touching changed the molecular composition of my life.
I do not look. The not-looking is the control, operational.
Mercer skates well. I know this because I am not looking at him and therefore my peripheral vision, which does not follow the control's directives, reports his movements with comprehensive detail. His crossovers are cleaner. His forechecking decisions are smarter. He takes the elite option twice and both times the option produces results. He is getting better every day, and the getting-better is not relevant to the control and is therefore not something I should be tracking, and I am tracking it because I cannot stop.
The day passes. Practice. Film. Treatment. The structure of a professional hockey day, which is the structure I depend on, which is the control made schedule.
At 8:17 PM, the structure fails.
I am in the apartment. The apartment is clean. The apartment has been cleaned twice today because the first cleaning was insufficient and the insufficiency was not about the cleaning. The insufficiency was about the fact that Eli Mercer's things are gone (he moved to his own apartment this morning, two trips, the duffel bag and a grocery bag of items that had migrated into my space over five days) and the gone-ness of his things has made the apartment cleaner than it was before he arrived and the cleaner-than-before is the problem because thecleaner-than-before means the apartment noticed his presence and the apartment is not supposed to notice.
The knock is at 8:17. I know the time because I check the clock because the checking is the control, the documenting, the filing.
I open the door. Mercer is in the hallway. He is not grinning.
