Delay of Game

by Tracey Richardson

  “What’s wrong, Mom?” Rory’s uncanny ability to read her mind was as strong as ever.

  “Nothing, sweetie. Just thinking about how glad I am that you’re here.”

  “When will Eva be coming out?”

  “The athletes will come out in a few minutes. And since Eva’s with the United States, she’ll be near the end.”

  Rory was as fixated on Eva as ever, and Niki didn’t know what to make of it.

  “Look,” Niki said, pointing to the eight Royal Canadian Mounted Police in their bright red uniforms and Stetsons, parading a large Canadian flag onto the floor.

  “That’s what I want to be when I grow up.”

  “I thought you wanted to be a hockey player?”

  “I do, but you can’t be a hockey player forever, Mom.”

  Niki wasn’t thrilled with the idea of her daughter being a cop or a hockey player, but she squeezed her arm with encouragement anyway. She was proud of her for having ambitions.

  They watched the athletes enter through a tunnel and onto the perimeter of the main floor, garbed in the colors of their countries. They waved and smiled, as though simply by being there they’d already won the biggest prize. Sharp-eyed Rory picked Eva out of the crowd of athletes right away, in her white pants and blue bomber-style jacket, and she waved frantically at her, even though there was zero chance Eva could see her. When the Canadians, as host team, came out last, Rory immediately proclaimed that their outfits of black pants and red parkas with their fur-trimmed hoods were much cooler than anybody else’s. She was awed, however, by the aboriginal dancers clad in white and the giant air-filled polar bears that glimmered and stretched toward the ceiling.

  By the time k.d. lang took the stage in her white suit to sing “Hallelujah,” Niki could put it off no longer. She broke the news to Rory that they needed to go back to the hotel right away, that there was important work she needed to do back in their room. Rory pleaded to stay with her Aunt Jen to watch the rest of the ceremonies, but Niki needed Rory for cover in case anyone questioned her absence. “They’re almost done, honey. After k.d., there’s just some boring old speeches, and that’s it, I promise.” By the time she dangled the bait of Rory hanging out with Eva for an afternoon, the negotiations were all but over.

  It didn’t take much convincing of the hotel night manager to let her into Lynn’s room with a pass key—a flash of her identification and a vague muttering of a work emergency was enough to do the trick. She looked around the room, not wanting to disturb anything in too obvious a way and not wanting to take too long in case Lynn returned to her room early. Plus Rory was alone in Niki’s room three doors down, watching the rest of the ceremonies on television.

  Everything seemed in its place. Clothing neatly in drawers and in the closet. A single glass and a coffee mug, both clean, on the dresser. An unopened bag of nuts. The bar fridge contained bottles of water, a six-pack of beer. There was nothing personal, like books or photographs or little mementoes. Lynn’s was an antiseptic life that could easily be transported from hotel room to hotel room. She’d never known her to have long-term relationships, though Niki had met a couple of her short-term girlfriends a long time ago. It was a mystery as to whose company Lynn kept nowadays.

  Lynn’s laptop sat closed on the desk. Niki opened it, booted it up, typed in the password. She clicked on the email icon, but it was password protected. She tried a couple of guesses but none of them worked. Next she clicked on the finder window, scanned over the documents there. There were notes about the team, on-ice drills, articles saved about things like nutrition, leadership, scouting reports on their opponents. Then Niki saw a folder with the initials N.H. Her initials, she realized with a start. Her heart fluttered like there was a moth in her chest as she clicked it open. And then her heart stopped altogether. The picture of her and Eva in the hot tub, kissing, stared out at her. The exact same picture that had spread like wildfire through the media. She clicked on a file called Whistler 01/2010. It contained a list of dates and places Eva and Niki were known to have been together during the week in Whistler, as though somebody had been keeping track of their every movement.

  She sat down heavily on the chair, her mind as blank as a white sheet of paper, disappointment so palpable that she thought she might faint. So Lynn had betrayed her. But why? So she could become head coach? Had Lynn been setting her up all along, convincing her to take the job in the first place only so she could later lead her like a lamb to slaughter? Had she thrown Eva into her path to lay down the trap Niki had so neatly and hopelessly fallen into? It would have been easier if Lynn had simply competed for the job to begin with, instead of dragging others into it, but her cynical side said Lynn didn’t have what it took and probably never would have earned the job on her own.

  She tried to clear her head, put aside her emotions—she’d grown good at that part over the years. Eva would tell her that what she’d found wouldn’t amount to more than her word against Lynn’s if she didn’t walk out of the room with some hard evidence. She withdrew her BlackBerry from her pocket and snapped several shots of Lynn’s computer screen, showing the files and the hot tub photo. She couldn’t exactly take a screen shot and email it to herself from Lynn’s computer, so this would have to do. She remembered to clear the computer’s cache so Lynn wouldn’t see that someone had been snooping, logged out and shut it down.

  She was breathing hard by the time she returned to her room. Adrenaline pounded through her body with no means of escape. What the hell do I do now? she thought. If she confronted Lynn and Lynn denied it or blamed someone else, then what? Without a confession that she was actually involved, it wasn’t really enough to go to Dan Smolenski. And even then, would he be prepared to do anything about it, now that the Games had begun? It’d be a terrible scandal for Hockey Canada and for the Games itself if it was revealed that Lynn was involved in some sort of conspiracy against her. Several people could kiss their careers goodbye if this blew up publicly.

  It was an impossible situation. She wished Eva had never convinced her to go down this road. Life was so much easier if you stuck your head in the sand, if you gave people the benefit of the doubt, even when they didn’t deserve it. But there was no going back now. If she let this slide, then Lynn and whoever else was in this with her would win. Cheating would win. Hurting other people would win. And Niki would lose, same way she and Eva had lost when a lie got between them twelve years ago. She wouldn’t let that happen again, and neither, she knew, would Eva.

  * * *

  Her first shift on the ice, a blindside hit in the corner from one of Team China’s brawny players gave Eva notice that the exhibition season was over; the Games had begun. And it was going to be painful. Full body checks weren’t allowed in women’s hockey, but it didn’t mean you didn’t regularly get knocked around. There was contact along the boards and in front of the net every single shift. And if a player felt like giving you an extra shove or slammed you into the boards, they didn’t mind taking a penalty. For teams that knew they were in a losing contest, sometimes laying on a big hit was the only satisfaction there was; they were more than willing to trade two minutes in the box for it.

  On her second shift, Eva niftily kicked the puck from her skates to her stick and snapped a wrist shot into the top corner and past the goalie’s shoulder for a goal. The Americans were having their way with the Chinese, dominating puck possession and pace. Eva only needed to exert about fifty percent of her energy, which was fine with her. After this, there were two more round robin games, then the semifinals, followed by the finals. If all went according to plan, her team would steamroll its way to the gold medal final. Each game would get tougher, more challenging, so she’d need to conserve as much energy as she could.

  Her conservative approach was sneered at by Alison, who kept giving her the stink eye from the bench. Canada had beaten Slovakia 18-0 earlier this afternoon, and while Team USA handing China its ass was a foregone conclusion, Alison wanted an equally lopside
d score to keep up with the Joneses. She ordered her team not to hold back, but Eva had other ideas. She would be thirty-seven in a few weeks, and she’d be damned if she was going to put her body through the wringer before the playoff portion of the tournament. She had nothing to prove. A little more swagger in her step at the expense of a knee or a shoulder wasn’t worth it.

  By the second period, the score was six to one, and Eva took her foot off the gas a little more. Her shifts got shorter and she avoided the corners. She passed the puck more than she shot. By the third, Alison dropped her to the third line, which failed to rattle Eva. Less ice time meant more rest, as long as she made it back up to the first or second line by the time the semis rolled around. She told her teammates to stop celebrating goals after their eighth, because it wasn’t classy and only served to rub the other team’s nose in it. There’s honor in winning, she said, but not in humiliating your opponent.

  As the final buzzer sounded, Alison leaned over from behind the bench and gave Eva shit for not scoring a couple more goals. The twelve goals the team did score weren’t enough, she said. They needed to show the world, especially the Canadians, that they could score a barrel of goals whenever and wherever they damned well felt like it. Whatever. Eva bit her tongue to keep silent. If Alison couldn’t figure out by now that none of this meant a damned thing until the semis and the finals, then screw her. Like any good veteran player, Eva knew when and how much to turn it on.

  She stepped out of a scalding shower, then lowered herself an inch at a time into an ice bath. Pain, razor-sharp from the frigid water, sliced into her, raising her heart rate and making her lungs clench. She cursed out loud, devising new phrases with the word fuck in it. She dreaded these damned ice baths, but they helped her sore muscles, and they’d help her stay off pain pills. The pills were a crutch, a crutch she’d been using a little too frequently since she’d rejoined the team last summer, and she was through with them. They made her dopey, but worse, she feared growing dependent on them. The pain, she reasoned, wasn’t a bad thing, because it was a tangible reminder that her playing days deserved to be in her past and not in her future. She’d pushed her body to its limits lately, and if she pushed much more, she risked suffering permanent damage. Like, for instance, a full knee replacement before she was forty-five.

  “Hey.” It was Kathleen, setting a pile of warm towels on a table near the tub. “Nice and hot and fluffy.”

  “You’re an angel, Kath.” She started to rise.

  “Oh no you don’t. How long have you been in there?”

  Eva gritted her teeth. “Come on, I’ve been in here at least four minutes, I swear.”

  “Good. Four more and you can get out.”

  Eva’s teeth chattered, but she was still able to call Kathleen an evil, sadistic witch.

  Kathleen laughed. “I love it when you talk dirty.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Listen. Niki texted me a few minutes ago from her sister-in-law’s phone. She wants you to see Stanley tonight, whoever that is.”

  Eva’s blood warmed at the invitation. And at the idea of kissing Niki again up against that old tree and holding her in her arms. But it wouldn’t be a social call. Niki was supposed to have searched Lynn’s room and her laptop last night during the opening ceremonies. She either had something, or she had nothing and was going to suggest stopping their little investigation.

  “When?” she asked Kathleen.

  “Eleven o’clock. Do I tell her yes?”

  “Yes. Now let me out of this torture chamber.”

  “Wait, one more thing. Since you don’t have a game tomorrow, she wondered if you can do lunch with Rory. Is that her daughter?”

  Eva smiled. Rory did that to her. “Yup. And tell her absolutely yes. Now let me out of this damned thing or I’m going to give you a taste of your own medicine.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Charging

  Niki glanced nervously at her watch. Nineteen minutes after nine. She’d have to leave the hotel in an hour to make it to the rendezvous point with Eva in Stanley Park, but Lynn was taking her sweet time. They’d agreed to meet in the hotel’s lounge at nine for a quiet beer together. Now as she watched the beads of sweat slide down her glass, Niki berated herself for not ambushing Lynn in her room instead of trying to be civilized about it. A drink in public signaled that they could work things out, that they could talk things over, that things were less serious, less confrontational, less final, than having it out in private, where it could get ugly.

  Lynn finally waltzed in, her shoulders squared for a fight and haughtiness stamped on her face. She sat down across from Niki and ordered a beer, failing to apologize for being late. I’m doing you a big favor by being here, her attitude suggested.

  “What’s on your mind?” Lynn said directly, then failed to wait for an answer. “Because if you’re going to dump all over me for trashing your attack-first approach, forget it. It’s better to sit back the first period, lull our opponents to sleep, let them think they’ve got a chance against us, and only then let them have it. It’s the approach we’re taking from now on.”

  Niki hated the approach because it flirted with danger, especially once they faced the better teams, like Finland and Sweden. And of course, the Americans. The problem with sitting back is that you couldn’t always switch it on again. Sometimes you simply lulled yourself to sleep too. No. It was far more effective to attack right out of the gate, to keep your opponent on the mat without a glimmer of hope of getting into the game. But Lynn was the boss now, a fact she liked to throw in Niki’s face at every opportunity.

  “I’m not here to argue about your game philosophy, Lynn.”

  “Good.” Lynn’s smile was sickly sweet and only underscored her autocracy. “Because everyone’s watching to make sure you’re falling in line. If our opponents—hell, our own players too—see any sort of crack in our unified front, that’s it, we’re finished.”

  Niki held back an urge to be sarcastic, to verbally hit back at Lynn and knock the smugness from her. If Lynn was innocent in the coaching swap, she wouldn’t be acting as if she’d not only won the lottery, but that it was some kind of divine justice. The charitableness toward Lynn, not that Niki had much of it to begin with, began to disappear as fast as the beer from Lynn’s glass.

  “But there is something we need to discuss. Something very serious.” Niki tried to keep her voice steady, but her temples throbbed, and her hands, which she stuffed under the table, had begun to shake. “It was that picture of me and Eva in the hot tub that led to all of this, and I want to know who was behind it.”

  “Who cares who was behind it, Nik. It’s done. Over. You can’t change any of it now, and even if you tried, it would only lead to more distraction, more digging up of dirt. Dan would have your head.”

  She was right, of course she was, but so what. Right didn’t make Niki feel better. “I don’t care. I’m tired of being the fall guy here. I didn’t do anything wrong, save for a fleeting, misguided kiss that I thought was in private. And I think it’s time the truth came out that somebody’s railroaded me.”

  Lynn’s nostrils flared, the only indication that she might be unnerved. “It’s all about perception. You know the game. If people think you’re trading secrets with the enemy, then it’s as good as true. That photograph doesn’t leave room for explanations.”

  Niki’s blood pounded in her ears, and any chance of her remaining diplomatic, of taking the high road, flew out the window. “Well, you would know all about that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Niki pushed away her half glass of beer, her thirst gone. “You took that picture, didn’t you? Or at least, you know who did. Why else would it be on your laptop?”

  Lynn’s mouth gulped for air like a fish out of water. Then she clamped it shut with a loud crunch of her teeth. Her eyes were flinty, unforgiving. “You had no right to look at my laptop.”

  “Technically, no, but tell me what right you had to follow m
e around, hoping to entrap me, and then taking a picture for all the world to see. And…and misconstruing what you saw.”

  “I didn’t take any damned picture.”

  “Then tell me who did. And why it’s on your computer.”

  They were two bulls in a ring, staring each other down.

  “I tried to protect you, Nik. That’s why the picture is on my computer.”

  “Oh, really? The same way you jumped to my defense with Dan? With the media? The way you defended me when you happily took the head coaching job?”

  Lynn remained silent, and it was all Niki needed for confirmation. “What happened to you, Lynn? Did the desire to be head coach of Team Canada give you the license to screw people? To screw your friends? To trample on every rule in the book?”

  “I didn’t need to screw anybody.” Lynn’s voice was like a hammer. “You screwed yourself because you couldn’t resist Eva. And you put this entire team at risk. I hope she was worth it.”

  Niki grabbed her coat and stalked out, unable to sit across from her former friend any longer. She shouldn’t have expected Lynn to take responsibility for her actions, to confess a damned thing. Lynn had proven once again that she was only out for number one.

  * * *

  One look at Niki’s stricken face and Eva threw her arms around her. “It was Lynn, wasn’t it?” she whispered thickly, her voice quaking with anger.

  “I don’t know.” Niki burrowed further into Eva’s coat.

  Trying to protect Niki wasn’t necessary and never had been, because she could certainly take care of herself. But the urge, especially now, was too powerful for Eva to deny. Guilty or not, she’d love to give Lynn a piece of her mind. And more. “What do you mean?”

  Niki took a step back, cleared her throat. “The picture of us in the hot tub was on her laptop. I met with her, told her I saw it, but she didn’t offer an explanation. She said it was on there because she was trying to protect me.”