Page 2 of Before the Fire
"I just found out." My voice is even. I make sure of that.
Laura exhales hard. "Avi, I am so sorry. I got a call from the front office at six and I've been trying to reach you since. This was not the information I had. Everything I was hearing said you were protected."
"I was running. Phone was off." There’s a pause, and I try to catch my breath.
"I'm sorry." She means it. I can hear that she means it, and I can also hear the two years between us. The distance between an agent who's had you since you were twenty-one and the one who took you on at thirty-two. Laura is sharp, really good. But Laura wasn't the one who told me to sign the extension. Laura wasn’t my agent when I had that conversation with the front office about my personal life being private and I needed assurances.
That thought stops me. I push it aside. Can’t think about that right now. Not on the walking path along the river, where anyone could come up to me and I need to focus on the life crumbling around me and try to hold it together.
"What happens now?" I ask.
She walks me through it. Expansion draft mechanics, timelines, that Atlanta's been signaling their interest in me. Her voice is steady and organized and I hear all of it and none of it. I remember random snippets. Opportunity.Fresh start.I know this feels like being thrown away.
She doesn't know me well enough to say that last part, which is the whole problem, which is why I'm standing on a trail in Philadelphia learning the shape of my own disposability from a newspaper beat reporter at seven in the morning.
"Avi? What do you need from me right now?"
"I'll call you back."
I hang up. Put the phone in the armband. The screen is still lit up with texts I haven't opened. Teammates, maybe. People who heard the rumor. People performing shock or sympathy or whatever you're supposed to perform when someone you shared ice with for seven years gets left on the curb, and you remain safe. Hard to watch, but also grateful it’s not them.
The walk back to the condo takes twenty-two minutes. I know this because I've done it hundreds of times; the distance between the trail and my building so familiar it exists in my legs more than my memory. Philadelphia. The condo I've owned for sevenyears. The one with the crack in the living room ceiling that I've been staring at since I moved in, that I’ve had patched twice and that keeps coming back, a thin dark line running from the window to the light fixture like the building itself can't hold together.
I let myself in. Lock the door. Stand in the hallway where the light from the kitchen window falls in a stripe across the floor.
The place is quiet the way it always is. No music, no television, no other person's noise filling the gaps. My running shoes are by the door next to my winter boots, still out from March. A framed photo of a Finnish lake on the wall that my mother sent two Christmases ago, the only personal thing visible from the entryway. Everything else is behind doors, in closets, packed into the controlled interior of a man who learned a long time ago to keep the surface clean.
Maybe they found out. Maybe someone talked. Maybe years of locker rooms and road trips and carefully not looking too long finally caught up with me. I can’t help the spiralling that happens given how everything is crumbling around me.
Seven years. I gave Philly seven years, and they didn't even have the guts to call me. Didn’t give me any warning. It may not be official yet, but it feels like it’s all but over.
The ceiling crack is there when I look up. Still there, still spreading. The same thin line it's always been. I stare at it until my breathing evens out and my hands stop shaking, and I press them flat against my thighs, and I stand in my hallway, and I don't call anyone.
Chapter 2: Avi
Richard Hastings has a framed photo of his kids on the desk, angled so visitors can see it. I've been in this office maybe a dozen times over seven years, and the photo has moved twice. The frame gets nicer, but the angle stays the same.
Laura sits to my left. Hastings sits behind the desk with the assistant GM beside him, a guy whose name I know and whose presence I understand. Witness. Record-keeper. The organizational equivalent of a dashcam.
"Avi, I want you to know this was one of the hardest decisions we've made as a group." Hastings leans forward, hands clasped. The posture of a man who has practiced looking pained. "Your contributions to this franchise, your leadership. We were lucky to have you."
I watch him talk. I count the platitudes the way I count passes in a neutral zone.Contributions. Leadership. Tough decision. Valued member.He uses the wordtrajectoryonce, about the organization's future, and I feel Laura shift beside me. She'stoo professional to react, but I've learned her tells. The slight adjustment means she's angry on my behalf and containing it.
"We think this is a real opportunity for you," Hastings says. "Atlanta is building something exciting, and a player of your caliber is going to be central to that."
An opportunity. When someone takes something from you and hands you shit wrapped in pretty tissue paper, it’s still shit no matter what they call it.
"Thank you, Richard." My voice is level. "I appreciate the transparency."
Which is ironic since there was no transparency. I found out from a beat reporter while standing in running shorts on a public trail. But the sentence does what I need it to do. It ends the meeting without giving him anything. Laura asks two questions about contract logistics. Hastings answers both. The assistant GM writes something down. We shake hands. His grip is firm and brief and tells me nothing I don't already know, which is that this man made a decision about my life without telling me and would like to feel good about it.
Laura walks me to the hallway. "You okay?"
"I'm fine."
She looks at me the way she does when she knows I'm not but also knows pushing won't get her anywhere. "I'll send you the timeline tonight. Atlanta's moving fast. That's a good sign."
"Okay."
