Page 64 of Power Play

Iris finished, informed us that Gerald was due for a check, and left.

I started clearing plates.

“Can I say something about the cat?”

“No,” Eli said.

“I’m going to say something about the cat.”

“I’m aware.”

“Gerald hasn’t come to the table in weeks. That dragon has more discipline than half the men you play with.”

“That dragon is being held hostage by my daughter.”

“That dragon is a political prisoner and you are the regime.”

He turned his water glass around and didn’t drink out of it.

“Cole put a cat bed in my stall,” he said.

I stopped with both plates in my hands. “He did not.”

“Tuesday. Gray one. Fish on the side of it.” He let it sit the right amount of time. “Nobody’s moved it. There are four pucks in it now and as of Saturday a granola bar, and I’ve been getting dressed around it since Tuesday.”

I pulled together about as much composure as a person could on no notice, and then lost all of it. It wasn’t a polite laugh. It bolted out of me and I had to set the plates back down before I dropped them.

When I got myself back he was watching me with his chin down and both eyebrows up.

“You know you’ve lost,” I said.

“I haven’t lost.”

“Eli. You’ve lost. You lost the morning that dragon sat down.” I picked the plates back up. “The only thing left to negotiate is whether you get to look like it was your idea.”

“There’s no cat coming into this house.”

“There’s a cat coming into this house.” I said it in the voice I used to tell him what time Iris had gymnastics, and his hand stopped on the glass. “Your daughter has the entire roster. Cole is running supply and coaching the witness. He told her to her face that her daddy is a big softie and she should be patient about it, and she has been patient about it in a manner I find frankly menacing.”

“Cole talks too much.”

“Cole handed Iris a strategy.” I got to the doorway with the plates and turned around. “You’re going to take that bed home. Some Tuesday when the room’s empty you’re going to put Cole’s stupid cat bed in your truck and carry it in through the garage so nobody sees you do it. That cat is never going to sleep in it, either. It’s going to sleep on your pillow, and I’m going to watch every minute of it and not say one word.”

He kept his eyes on me long after either of us should have blinked. The plates were starting to rattle in my hands, and I matched him anyway.

Then he stood up, walked around the table, and took both plates out of my hands.

“You cooked,” I said.

“You’ve been at me for four solid minutes. Sit down.”

So I sat down, and a six-foot-three professional hockey player did a sink full of dishes in front of me with a black eye darkening by the hour. He didn’t say another word about the cat all night, and he never told me I was wrong, either.

Maren: so

Maren: i am not going to ask

Me: good