Page 141 of Full Contact

“She looked back,” I said.

“She always looks back.”

Twenty minutes later, Dr. Feld came in with the results printed out and Peaches’s chart under her arm. “Her thyroid’s right where it should be. Her weight’s up two ounces, which I’m happy about, and her kidney values have come back down from the spike in the fall.” She tapped the page with her pen. “She’s in remarkable shape for a fifteen-year-old cat.”

Trier exhaled.

He buckled the carrier into the back seat, and Peaches was quiet all the way home.

At his condo, Trier opened the carrier, and Peaches walked out on her own, crossed the kitchen, and drank from her water bowl. Then she climbed the little wooden chair and sat on the counter beside the treat jar, looking at it instead of at either of us.

“She thinks she’s owed one,” Trier said.

“She was very cooperative.”

“She was adequate.”

He gave her a treat anyway. I stayed until she’d eaten it and walked back to the window bed and settled with her paws tucked under.

Trier still had the empty carrier in one hand as he walked me to the door, and when I turned around, he kissed me with the carrier bumping against the back of my knee. He didn’t put it down. He kissed me until I laughed into his mouth.

“Same time in June,” he said.

“Put me down for June.”

***

An unexpected email arrived at work between a conversation about postseason credentials and a call I was already late returning.

It was from Graham Whitfield at the league office. I’d worked with Graham in the past on All-Star logistics and rule-change rollouts. His emails were usually about deadlines. When I saw his name, I expected something about the postseason communications schedule.

Mark,

I’m writing in a different capacity from usual. We’re restructuring communications at the league office, and we’re looking for someone to lead it, a senior vice president reporting directly to the deputy commissioner. Your name came up early and more than once.

I’d like to know whether you’d be open to a conversation about it. No commitment, just a talk. I’ve attached the position description.

Graham

I read it again, slowly. Then I opened the attachment.

It would be a big upward move. The job would cover league-wide communications strategy, with me reporting directly to the deputy commissioner. My team would be about forty people, compared with the eleven I supervised for the Ironhawks.

Halfway down the second page was a sentence saying the position would set standards for club communications departments. I’d spent eleven years negotiating with the league from the club side. This would be a reversal for me.

I started making a list of questions on the legal pad beside my keyboard. Who did the forty people currently report to? How many of the positions were filled? Was the authority over club standards real, or did it mean writing memos the clubs could ignore? Who had the final word when the league and a club disagreed about something public?

I could picture doing the work, and I could picture liking it.

Then I read the line at the top of the description again: Location: New York.

I put the pen down.

My life was in Chicago. That meant Dana and Felix.

And Trier.

My mother was a short flight away. I had the climbing gym and symphony subscription.