Page 13 of Cross Check
"It's not effortless."
"I know. That's what makes it impressive."
The words hung between us, unexpected and strangely intimate. Walsh didn't seem to know what to do with them. His hand came up and rubbed the back of his neck, the first unguarded gesture I'd seen from him. The kind of thing a controlled man does when control briefly slips.
"Any superstitions?" he asked, the redirect almost audible in its desperation.
I let him have it. "I tape my sticks the same way every game. Right to left, four wraps at the top, three at the blade."
"What happens if you go left to right?"
"The universe implodes."
Walsh grinned. An actual grin, brief and real. The sharp lines of his face rearranged into something warmer and younger. For a disorienting half-second, he looked like someone I could have known before all of this. Someone I could have been friends with in a different life, where the wordfrienddidn't feel like a weapon other people aimed at you before pulling the trigger.
"I put my left pad on first," he said. "Always. If someone hands me the right pad, I have to set it down and start over."
"That's weirdly specific."
"Says the guy with a tape ritual."
"Fair point." I grabbed the throw blanket off the back of the couch and wrapped it around my shoulders without thinking about it. The fabric was soft and worn, the kind of blanket that had been washed a hundred times. "You tap the posts before faceoffs?"
"Every single one. Three times."
"Why three?"
"No idea. Started doing it in juniors and couldn't stop."
"I tap my stick twice on the ice before every shift." I demonstrated with my hand, two quick taps against the marble counter. "Drives the equipment guys crazy during warm-ups."
"Eriksson won't get on the ice unless he's the last one out of the tunnel."
"Hayes eats the same meal before every game, right? Chicken and rice?"
"With hot sauce. Specific brand. He brings bottles on road trips."
I laughed. The sound came out before I could catch it, brief and surprised—a reflex I'd thought I'd trained out of myself. It felt wrong and right at the same time, like a muscle stretching after months of disuse.
"We're all insane," I said.
"Completely."
The conversation loosened after that, the way ice loosens in a river when the current underneath finally wins. We traded stories, favorite saves, worst losses, the bizarre habits of teammates past and present. I did an impression of my Minnesota coach's pre-game speeches, a monotone, dead-eyed delivery of clichés so profound in their emptiness that you could feel your IQ drop in real time. Walsh actually laughed. A real laugh, brief and startled, the sound foreign in the quiet apartment.
Somewhere around 4:30, we'd settled into the couch cushions. My legs were tucked under me. The throw blanket pooled in my lap. I was comfortable, not the manufactured comfort of a man pretending, but the real thing. The muscles in my shoulders had unknotted. My jaw had unclenched. My hands, which had been in fists or wrapped around ceramic for two and a half weeks, were resting open on my thighs.
Walsh had noticed too. I saw him clock it, his goalie's eye tracking the change in my posture the way it read a shooter's weight shift. He didn't comment. He just sat in the armchair across from me with his empty mug balanced on the arm and let the silence settle.
"My mummu," I said. The word slipped out in Finnish before I caught it. "My grandmother. She's the one who reads me theKalevala. She lives outside Helsinki. Tiny house in the forest, wood-burning sauna out back." I stared into my empty mug. "She'd hate Chicago. Too flat. She says land without hills is land that hasn't made up its mind."
"She sounds opinionated."
"She's Finnish. It comes standard."
"When did you last see her?"
"Fourteen months ago." The number sat in my chest like a stone. "Before the investigation went public. I haven't—I can't call her. She'll hear it in my voice and she'll worry, and she'seighty-three and she's already lost too much to worry about me too."
