The Tournament

by Angelo Kontos

  In the back employee area near the kitchen, thirty-eight year-old Curtis Lewis was preparing to enjoy his ten-minute break in the single stall employee bathroom. Curtis was 6’6”, about 250 pounds, and his movements were limited in the small space. When he sat on the toilet, his massive legs almost touched the door.

  Curtis stood and pulled out his cellphone to check how much time was left on his break. Eight minutes to go. That was still enough time, but he had to get going. He typed a website address into the search engine and waited for it to load. This had become a routine for Curtis, and he knew that he had to be careful. If anything went wrong and he got caught, there was no apology that could possibly make things better. He would be fired on the spot and that may not even be the end of it.

  He always triple-checked the lock on the bathroom to make sure it was in place. One time his server friend Megan knocked on the door while Curtis was right in the middle of things and startled him to the point that he tripped and fell back onto the toilet seat.

  Despite the fact the restaurant was so busy, Curtis just had to take a break. This was his twenty-fifth straight day working double shifts – serving at the restaurant during the day and then operating a warehouse forklift overnight. If he was lucky, he might get four or five hours of sleep in between. Curtis happened to be the only black waiter in a restaurant that was managed by a closet racist named Earl. He wanted to walk away from the place, but the money was too good.

  Curtis knew that Earl would want him back on the dining room floor shortly, but he needed to take care of business first. He always felt self-conscious and ashamed for carrying on like this in a place of work, but ironically Curtis felt a greater sense of privacy spending ten joyous minutes in that bathroom than he did anywhere else, especially at home where his mother always seemed to be hovering over his broad shoulders.

  He was so tired that he struggled to see the numbers clearly on the phone, but he managed to notice that his preferred website was not loading. Curtis refreshed the screen and hastily typed again: tits with tats. Soon, scantily clad young women covered in tattoos appeared on his phone as the website successfully reloaded. He pulled out the trusted double sock that he smuggled back and forth in his backpack. Using one hand, he put the sock in place and with the other held the phone out a short distance from his face. After making sure the volume was turned off, he hit play and a video started.

  With just over five minutes left on his break, Curtis was coasting and getting into the video. All that would be left to do after he finished would be to make sure there was no mess, then thoroughly sanitize his hands and delete his phone’s browser history. He had all of this down to a science.

  Curtis had seen this particular video more than once and it was one of his favourites. One of the women was designing a new tattoo on another woman’s shoulder. He worked the sock and timed the ending. It was going to be perfect…glorious and…Curtis took one last quick breath and felt the finish coming on when his phone suddenly vibrated at that crucial moment, causing him to drop it.

  After hastily removing the sock and pulling up his pants, he picked the phone back up.

  It was his mother calling. Of course.

  Curtis sighed and hit a button to answer the call.

  “Ma?” he said into the phone. “Ma? Can you hear me?”

  Curtis plugged his other ear with his finger and strained to hear. Dishes were crashing out in the kitchen.

  “Ma, we can’t use our phones at work. They warned us about that. What? A foot soaker? Oh, a foot spa? What’s the difference? Well, can I get it tomorrow? I don’t have much time between…okay, fine. Can you at least make sure they have it in stock?”

  Curtis’s manager Earl was a very stressed, pudgy and sweaty white guy. He banged on the bathroom door so loudly Curtis almost dropped the phone again.

  “Lewis! You in there? Your break’s over. Move your ass!”

  “Ma, I have to go. I’ll get the foot thing,” Curtis said and hung up.

  He quickly stuffed the cellphone and sock back into his apron and scrubbed his hands with soap in the sink before leaving the bathroom in time to see Earl balancing two hot trays.

  “We’re not on Jamaican time here, you understand?” Earl barked before going off to deliver the food.

  “Sorry, boss,” Curtis said as he tightened his apron strings. “Family emergency.”

  Curtis’ friend Megan was about to sit down with a bowl of soup to take her break. She smiled at him sympathetically after hearing Earl’s comment. Curtis always felt his heart flutter slightly whenever he saw Megan. She looked like one of the white tattooed girls in the video he had been watching on his phone just a few moments earlier.

  One of the line cooks in the kitchen put more dishes on the counter and rang a bell. Curtis grabbed the plates and rushed into the dining area. After he dropped the plates off to the two hungry suits that looked like they had been waiting all week for their food, Curtis surveyed his area. There were at least three new tables with anxious-looking people holding menus. He pulled out a notepad and hurried over.

  A man sitting with his face buried behind a menu grabbed his arm as he went by.

  “Hey, Curtis,” Corey Peters said as he lowered his menu. “Can I get some lunch?”

  Curtis needed a second, but soon recognized Corey. He remembered not liking him.

  “This is not my section,” Curtis said as he pulled his arm free. “I’ll get you someone.”

  “Hold on. I need to talk to you. Sit down.”

  “I can’t sit down. I’m working.”

  The people at Curtis’ three un-served tables looked like they were going to walk over and beat him into the ground with their menus.

  “Okay. Order me a clubhouse sandwich with fries and a chocolate martini. I’ll stick around,” Corey said as he folded his menu and handed it to Curtis.

  What was this about, Curtis wondered?

  “Lewis!” Earl yelled as he noticed the three un-served tables.

  “Yes, sir. On my way!”

  20.

  Other than her friend Kenny Hornsby, Pertia John could not remember the last time anyone else had been inside her home. She was excited to have Alex sitting in her kitchen and despite Ken’s objections, she insisted on making coffee and tea. Pertia was especially happy for Ken to be speaking with someone other than her. She had known him for nearly fifteen years, and could count on one hand the number of people she had seen visit him. Despite his warm personality, she found Ken to be reclusive.

  Pertia organized a plate of crackers and a few cookies. She limped over to the small kitchen table where Alex and Ken were sitting and put the plate down in front of them.

  “Now, you’ll have to get up to get your own tea or coffee,” she laughed. “I don’t trust myself to bring hot drinks over.”

  “That’s great, Mrs. John,” Alex said. “Thank you very much.”

  “My pleasure, dear. It’s so nice to have you here. I’m going to give you gentlemen some privacy.”

  Pertia left the kitchen and walked back toward her seat by the living room window.

  Alex smiled at Ken. “It’s very nice that you take care of her, Coach.”

  “She’s a wonderful lady,” Ken said. “We take care of each other.”

  Ken got up and poured coffee for them.

  “Look, Alex, it’s great seeing you after so long and I’m very flattered that you would think of me, but I’m retired. I haven’t coached since I left the university.”

  “So what? You’re Coach…that’s who you are.”

  Ken stopped pouring and raised an eyebrow at Alex. “Come on, Alex.”

  “I’m serious, Coach.”

  Ken brought the coffees over and went to the fridge to get milk. “You can call me Ken now.”

  “You’ll always be Coach,” Alex responded. “Look, I know you would’ve kept going if they hadn’t forced you out.”

  “That’s all in the past.”

  “Sure, but the way yo
u were treated was wrong. I wish that I’d done more but I remember you asking me to leave it alone, so I did. And even though I still don’t know what happened, I’m sure it was all BS.”

  “Things were a lot different then. Even though it was only fifteen years ago, it was a very different time.”

  “Yeah, well, BS is still BS,” Alex insisted. “You got a raw deal and all of us knew it, even though we didn’t understand why.”

  Ken smiled at Alex. “You were always such a loyal soldier, Alex.”

  “Why not jump back behind the bench for a few months?” Alex asked.

  “You said Corey Peters is organizing this team?” Ken asked. “I doubt he would want me.”

  “He doesn’t get me or my help, which means he won’t get the other guys, if you’re not coaching.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “This is just a little tournament, but maybe it’s a chance to escape for a while. I don’t know about you, but I could use that.”

  21.

  The Goalie – “Matt the Cat”

  It was a beautiful late afternoon in early spring and the air was cool and refreshing – light jacket weather. Near the lake, a wind picked up and forced people to hold onto their purses and bags.

  As a dominant sun lit the streets and began to set, Corey strolled down Bay Street near the lake. He asked his wife Helen, a social media bloodhound, to help him track down The Goalie, and she directed him to Toronto’s Harbourfront, where Matt Richards owned a boat. He was known to his old teammates as Matt the Cat because of his quick reflexes. According to his very infrequent online posts, he liked to spend most of his time on the boat.

  Earlier that afternoon, Corey arranged another rendezvous with his mistress before cutting the workday short so he could find Matt. He was becoming increasingly concerned after the Associate Lawyer mentioned the partner thing again. He needed to figure out that situation soon.

  It now appeared that fifteen cities were trying to put together teams for The Tournament and two of them were from Canada: Montreal and Toronto, with rumours that Ottawa was also in play. One of the American cities was New York, which was key because of the potential size of their market.

  One of the better-known Toronto sports writers, Brooks Edwards, even mentioned The Tournament in a blog the other day, although he was just poking fun at it. Underneath all of Corey’s bravado, there was a voice inside of him that doubted The Tournament would take off, but he tried to keep that voice quiet.

  For now, he had managed to convince Curtis Lewis of “garbage goal” fame to join the team. In the university team’s heyday, Curtis had been the leading goal scorer of the Deep Six and no one back then could believe it, including Curtis. He was a slow, awkward skater and not aggressive, but he used his size and long reach to stand in front of the opposing team’s net and create havoc. Curtis would park his large rear end in front of a goalie and tip shots in. He also stepped in front of rival defencemen and knocked in rebounds. He was even known to complete wraparounds from behind the net just by using his long arms to hook the puck in.

  Corey always knew Curtis and most of the other guys would turn out to be losers. Corey was a successful lawyer – a partner, with a gorgeous wife and two kids. He was not a waiter, or on leave from some community college, or living on a boat. These guys would thank him for providing them with an opportunity to take a break from their drab, boring lives. When he became mayor, they could say they knew him.

  As Corey walked up the dock, he started reading the names on the boats. It did not take long to find “The Cat,” which was written in a cursive style resembling whiskers. A door leading to the inside of the cabin was open and puffs of smoke drifted through it and into the air. Corey used a small set of boarding rails to climb onto the boat and he peered inside through the haze.

  The stench forced Corey to cover his nose with his hand. In a corner of the cabin there stood a naked woman by a table full of drug paraphernalia. She was in the process of shooting something up her arm. On a bed nearby sat a skinny, shirtless man with a joint in one hand and a beer bottle in the other. He had long hair wrapped in a bandana and he was sweating profusely.

  He tried to focus his glazed eyes on Corey. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Hey Matt,” Corey coughed. “How’s it going?”

  22.

  The Star – The Big Chief

  Curve Lake is a small jewel of a community a few hours east of the city, near a town rich with history named Peterborough. It is the home of two Ojibwe reserves and it was where Alex expected to find his old friend and teammate Mike Hill, or the Big Chief, as he had been affectionately known.

  Alex could not remember the last time he enjoyed a long drive this much. The scenery off the Kawartha Lakes was beautiful and relaxing. Long winding roads and rural communities near the reserve looked very peaceful. Alex was a city boy and never thought he could enjoy this slower pace on a daily basis, but it was a great getaway.

  As he shifted his eyes back and forth between the view of the water and the road ahead of him, he promised himself that he would find some local Kawartha ice cream before going back to Toronto.

  Lately, Alex was pushing himself more to avoid his sad cocoon. Whenever he sensed that overwhelming wave coming on, he would literally stumble out of his apartment and go sit in a coffee shop or the local library just to be around people.

  Alex thought about calling Diana, but he resisted the urge. He felt an invisible hand crawling up the back of his neck every time he recalled his recent conversation with Diana’s mother. Alex drove onto the reserve and followed the directions Mike had given him over the phone. Alex still had an aversion to GPS units.

  Mike Hill was one of the most thoughtful and humble people Alex had ever known. They were never best friends, but they had a deep respect for each other and were strong teammates during the Deep Six dynasty. In those days, that relationship was simple: Mike was by far the most talented player on the team, and Alex was the team captain who would rip anyone’s face off if they took a shot at Mike.

  The nickname for Mike was remarkably without controversy. Despite its obvious racist connotations, Mike’s two brothers came up with it and spread it around one night during a bonfire party. It was meant to be ironic, as Mike was not really big at 5’7” and he only weighed 175 pounds. At first, Alex was not comfortable saying it, but Mike soon made it known that he had no issue with his friends and teammates referring to him as the Big Chief. In fact, Alex came to understand the nickname had become a source of pride for Mike.

  Mike’s mother was of Italian descent and his father was Ojibwe. Since losing his dad, Mike became quietly but intensely committed to his Indigenous roots. Although he had not seen or spoken to him in nearly fifteen years, Alex knew that teaching on a reserve and raising his own children around Curve Lake was a perfect life for his old teammate.

  Alex parked his car outside a youth and spiritual community centre on the reserve where Mike volunteered. A large wooden sign read Aanin – Welcome. He asked the young woman at the front desk if she knew where Mike Hill was, and she directed him to a set of double doors that led to a large gymnasium.

  The happy noise of teenagers running around could be heard as Alex opened the door to the gym. A young man with a hockey stick ran by him. There was a ball hockey game in progress and Alex saw Mike across the floor playfully cross-checking a teenager. Mike looked a little older with some grey hair, but otherwise that was the Big Chief, clear as day.

  Mike saw Alex and smiled. He nodded toward a corner bench where there was a pile of sticks and motioned for Alex to pick one up.

  “You’re kidding?” Alex called out.

  “Let’s go!” Mike called back.

  Alex looked at the sticks. He wasn’t even wearing running shoes. Another boy ran by him to chase the ball.

  “Come on, sir!” he yelled as he ran by.

  Alex pulled his hands out of his pockets and took his jacket off.

  23.


  Right after they were married, Corey and Helen Peters purchased a detached house in the pricey High Park neighbourhood of Toronto before they could really afford it, and then spent a small fortune on renovations. It was all under control now that Corey had made partner in a successful law firm.

  Helen, who kept herself very fit, loved going for long runs through High Park. Her social media accounts featured almost hourly updates about being a proud stay-at-home mom. To Corey, she was a high-maintenance stay-at-home mom. She was always pestering him about something. Helen just never seemed happy, and this annoyed Corey to no end.

  He sat in front of his computer in the basement and studied the monitor while cradling a plate of food on his lap. Every few minutes he used a fork to stab at his dinner and take a bite.

  Helen appeared from the hall.

  “Why don’t you take a break and come eat with me?” she asked. “The kids are in bed.”

  Corey grunted something indecipherable through a mouthful of food and did not even look in Helen’s direction.

  “Pardon me?” Helen asked, visibly irritated.

  Corey swallowed. “I said that I can’t, alright? You know I’m busy setting up this tournament.”

  “I’ve helped you find some of your old hockey friends. Why can’t you just take a break?”

  “You helped me track down a few people, but there’s a lot more to it. If you’d like to help more, just let me know. I’m busy.”

  Helen leaned against the doorframe for a moment and watched Corey. Dejected, she finally left, and Corey sighed in relief.

  After about a dozen seconds, she reappeared with her arms crossed.

  “What now?” Corey said as he pecked away at his keyboard. For a lawyer and person of his generation, he was terrible at typing.

  Helen walked over to him, turned off his monitor and stood in front of it. Corey started to object, but he stopped himself and pushed his chair back.