I want to email Dan Parker—my contact at the magazine—right away, but the Goode Night Inn doesn’t offer internet and it’s four in the morning. Also, I know it’s a good idea to take time away and reread the piece with some distance. Trying to sleep is useless, though. I’m too amped up and my mind won’t stop racing, thinking and rethinking about what Dan’s response might be. Then something else nags at me. A loose thread in my otherwise fantastic first draft.
I listen to the tape again.
“Well, shit. He had it coming.”
Click. Rewind.
“Well, shit. He had it coming.”
Click. Rewind.
I repeat this a dozen more times and then I pick up the phone. He had it coming. He. I know what I want to do, but I’m not entirely sure how go about it, so I call 4-1-1 for help.
“Directory assistance, how can I help you?”
“Hi, I need to track down a phone number in Sweden.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
By the time I get off the phone and add three new paragraphs to the article, it’s a little after seven. I grab a quick shower, toss my laptop into the truck, and drive over to Jennifer’s, hoping to catch her before she leaves for work. She’s surprised to see me, because who wouldn’t be surprised to have someone show up unannounced at their doorstep first thing on a weekday morning.
“Why are you here?” she asks with more force than I’d hoped for. “Sorry. That was rude. I’m not good at mornings. Hello, Adam,” she says with no trace of humour. “Lovely to see you again after, what, like thirty-six hours? Seriously, why are you here?” She’s about half-ready for the day: hair is gorgeous as usual, the little makeup she uses is on, but she’s still wearing a housecoat, which I find sexier than I ought to. She seems frazzled and me showing up isn’t helping with that.
“Sorry, I know it’s early and I should have called. I need to use your computer. Well, your internet. I have a laptop,” I say, holding my computer up as if she couldn’t possibly make the connection between my words and the object in my hands. “The motel doesn’t have web access and I need to send an email.”
“Email?”
“Yes. And then I was kind of hoping maybe, if it’s okay with you, if maybe I could hang around to see if I get a reply.” I sound like a lunatic. I barely know this woman and I’ve just asked if I can sit inside her house while she’s off at work. I know Mac doesn’t own a computer and the only other place I could think to try is Paulie’s parents, which I quickly relegated to Plan B.
“You want to hang out here all day?”
“I do. Well, until I hear back. I promise I won’t do anything creepy like put on your underwear.” Jesus, shut up, Adam.
“You know what, it’s actually perfect,” she says. “Elvis claims he’s too sick for school, even though he’s very obviously not sick at all.” She yells that last bit behind her into the house. “Phil’s parents are away and my mother is mad at me right now, so I don’t want to ask her. I wasn’t sure what to do other than force him to go, but then he’ll be a little shit all week. But now you can babysit.”
“Babysit?”
“Yes, babysit. You’re familiar with the concept? There’s a child and it’s your job to make sure he doesn’t die.”
It’s not that I dislike kids, I just don’t have a lot of experience with them. Plus, I’m pretty sure I want to have sex with this kid’s mother. It feels inappropriate to spend the day with him first, which is both stupid and presumptuous, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling it, anyway.
“He’s nine,” she says. “It’s not like you have to change his diaper. He’s completely housebroken. Those are my terms, take it or leave it.”
“Of course. Absolutely. It’ll be fun. We’ll have fun.”
“Great,” she says with a smile. “He’s eating breakfast. Help yourself to the cereal.”
I poke my head into the kitchen. Sure enough, the kid from the hockey game is sitting at the table wearing Montreal Canadiens pyjamas and eating Cap’n Crunch. His hair is a disaster, dark and shaggy, flattened against his skull on one side, sticking out every which way on the other.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi. I’m sick.” He doesn’t seem all the concerned about me being in his house.
“I heard something about that. Looks like I’m the guy looking after you today.”
“Cool. Do you wanna play Xbox?”
“Sure. I just need to send a quick email first.”
•
Like any self-respecting kid, I loved video games when I was young. Dave and I would play Nintendo for hours until our mothers forced us to go outside. In university, my freshman roommate had a Genesis with NHL Hockey and the entire floor of my dorm sacrificed points on their GPA to the game. We’d lose whole days playing, and a guy we called Tool flunked out because of it. While it’s been years since I’ve played, I thought I could probably still hold my own.
It turns out the reason we, as a society, haven’t cured cancer or economic disparity or, really, anything, is because our smartest and most talented people have spent the last several years devoted to video game advancement. Suggesting that the game I’m playing with Elvis and the game I devoted so many of my university days to are related is like equating a gas station pastry with Hamlet because they’re both Danish.
The controller is enormous and my hands cramp up in the first fifteen minutes. Elvis tries to explain that the joystick on the left is the player’s skates and the joystick on the right is the player’s stick. Managing both together requires the sort of hand-eye coordination you’d need to dock a space shuttle or cut out a spinal tumour. The graphics are amazing. I remember blocky guys that vaguely resembled hockey players if you squinted hard. These players look like tiny people living inside the television that respond to my every whim. It would feel Godlike, except I make them skate into each other and pass the puck to nobody. Elvis beats me in three straight games by a combined score of 36–1. In between each game, I check for a reply from Dan, but there’s nothing.
In the middle of the fourth game, he quickly goes up 3–0 and finally looks at me. “Do you even like hockey?”
I can’t tell if he’s really asking or just talking shit. When I was his age, it would have been talking shit, but maybe this kid is more sincere than I ever was. “Yes, I like hockey. Do you?”
“Well yeah, look at the score. And I play on the AAA team and I have the third most goals.” Elvis is a smug little shit.
“Just third?”
“I’d have more if they let me play centre. But mostly they make me play left wing.”
“Left wing is cool. My dad was a left winger and he played in the NHL.”
“As if,” he says, voice dripping with derision.
“He did.”
“What was his name?”
“Terry Macallister.”
“Oh, him. People say he played in the NHL, but I’ve seen him around the rink and he doesn’t look like it. He walks all bent over.”
“Have you ever asked him if he played in the NHL?”
“No. He doesn’t talk to people, except to yell at us to clean up after ourselves in the dressing room. If he played in the NHL he’d have a billion dollars. I saw a picture of Wayne Gretzky’s house in a magazine. It probably cost a billion dollars. NHL players are rich. That’s why I’m going to play for Montreal someday and make all kinds of money.”
“Well, not all NHL players make a lot of money, especially a long time ago when my dad played. Plus, he didn’t score as many goals as Wayne Gretzky.”
Elvis is distracted by the conversation, and I manage to score two quick goals. “Watch out now, kid. I’m getting the hang of this.”
“Oh yeah, watch this,” he says, marching his little red-shirted guy through all my little white-shirted guys and scoring. Then he does it twelve more times and I suggest lunch. I check my email one more time and mak
e us some tuna melts.
“Are you dating my mother?” Elvis asks, his mouth full of sandwich.
“Um, well, we went out the other night, but it was just to catch up. We’re old friends. I wouldn’t call it dating.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“It is, is it? Why’s that?”
“Mom doesn’t go on dates.”
“She doesn’t?”
“Nope.”
“Maybe she just doesn’t tell you about it.”
Elvis considers this possibility for a few seconds, that his mother has a secret dating life to which he isn’t privy. “No. If she went on dates, I’d know.”
He seems convinced and says it with enough conviction that I am, too. We munch our melts silently for a few minutes and then he asks me, “Hey, can you introduce me to your dad sometime so I can get his autograph?”
•
When Jennifer walks in at about five-thirty, Elvis has switched to handing me my ass in a World War II game that’s realistic in a way that makes me uncomfortable, though the kid doesn’t seem bothered.
“Have you two just been playing games all day?”
“Is that not what I was supposed to do with him?” I ask. “I don’t babysit a lot. Actually, the TV did most of the work. I’d have been lost without it.”
Elvis laughs. Jennifer shakes her head, but doesn’t seem angry that I’ve let her only child waste a day of his life. She drops her bag at the door, kicks off her boots, and heads straight to the kitchen.
“Are you staying for dinner?” she calls out.
“Sure,” I yell, then quieter to Elvis, “Is your mom a good cook?”
“She’s okay.”
Leaving Elvis to the game, I join Jennifer in the kitchen. She’s making fajitas. I would offer to help, but I’d just slow her down.
“I am a good cook, I’ll have you know,” she says.
“Heard that, did you?” I ask, hoping I can flash a charming smile and power through.
“I hear everything in this house.” She’s chopping green peppers. “Thanks again for staying with him today.”
“No problem. Really, it wasn’t hard. If I’d known kids were this easy, I’d have had a couple myself.”
She stops chopping and looks over her shoulder at me.
“Sorry.” Don’t make jokes about kids, dickhead.
“Mm-hm.”
Over dinner, Elvis fills his fajitas with sour cream and cheese. I try to cover for him by stuffing extra peppers into mine. When it was just us playing video games, I wasn’t trying to impress him. Now that Jennifer is here, I really want this kid to like me. As a consequence, I’ve gone from actually being a pretty cool guy, one willing to play games for nine hours, to one trying to seem cool, which is inherently uncool.
“So what’s your favourite class at school?”
“I dunno.”
“I always liked recess,” I say, winking at him. He doesn’t laugh, and I fear I’ve already become lame Uncle Adam.
When Jennifer asks the kid to clear the table, I immediately jump in. “He’s sick. I can do it. Besides, I owe you guys for feeding me.” They both just look at me and shrug.
By eight o’clock, the kitchen is spotless, and while I’m aware I’m wearing out my welcome, there’s still no reply from Dan. It’s unlikely he’ll respond this late, but I’m not sure what I’ll do with myself if I can’t check every five minutes. Fortunately, Jennifer spares me the trouble of looking for excuses by handing me a bottle of wine and a corkscrew.
“Here, you start on this, I’m going to put little man to bed,” she says.
“Aw, Mom. It’s not bedtime yet.”
“But you’re not feeling well. You’re sick. You need your rest. Unless, of course, you were lying to me this morning.” She’s good. And it works. Trapped in his own fiction, Elvis begrudgingly heads for the stairs.
“Say thank you to Adam,” Jennifer prompts.
Elvis stops and turns back. “Thanks, Adam. You can practise on my Xbox if you want.”
“Thanks, E. I might just do that.”
When Jennifer comes back down about twenty minutes later, I’m drinking my second glass of Merlot and checking for email again.
“You might want to talk to someone about that internet addiction. I hear it can really ruin your life,” she says, pouring her own glass from the bottle I left sitting on the coffee table and sinking into the couch.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” She sniffs the contents of her glass. “How’s the wine?”
“Good, I guess. I don’t drink a lot of wine.” I leave my laptop open on the desk in the corner of the room and make my way over to sit next to her on the couch.
She takes a mouthful of wine and, with her eyes closed, lets it drain down her throat. I can see the stress of the day exit her body as she exhales. Finally she opens her eyes and looks directly at me. “So, when that email comes, what happens?”
“Depends on what it says. If they like my writing, I suppose I finish the article, collect a paycheque, and try and spin it into more work. If they don’t, I have no idea. I guess send it to other places—the Hockey News maybe—and hope for the best.”
“And there’s a chance they won’t like it?”
“Yep. Very much.” Jennifer lets that sit there with no response, so I take a sip of wine and decide to let her in on my little secret. “The truth is, they aren’t even really expecting it. I met Dan—he’s a senior editor—at a sportswriters’ conference in Vancouver about eight months ago. I accosted him, basically, hoping he could give me some good career advice. He was a nice guy and indulged me over a drink. I could tell he wasn’t interested in anything I had to say, so I name-dropped Dad and that got his attention. Old hockey players turn up all over the place, old-timer tours and things like that, but not my dad. Anyway, Dan said it sounded like there might be a good pitch in there somewhere and I should call him about it sometime. I didn’t really think he was serious. He was probably just being nice. But then I got laid off and a little desperate. So I came up with an angle for the story and decided to just go for it. I still haven’t called him because I’m too afraid he won’t remember me, or that he’d say no on the spot. But I thought maybe if I wrote it first, then he’d see how good it could be, and the rest would just sort of happen.”
And there it is. Jennifer says nothing.
“I’m not kidding when I say I don’t know what I’ll do if they turn the story down, which they absolutely probably will. There’s no backup plan. I’ll have to go find a real job somewhere.”
She smiles at that. “That’s funny. My whole life is contingencies and backup plans. Not sure I could handle the stress of no safety net.”
“That makes sense. You have Elvis. I must seem reckless to you.”
“You seem a bit lost, honestly.”
We both take another drink.
“I’m sorry about high school. About us. I know we were seventeen and it was forever ago and it doesn’t really matter, but still. I was stupid and embarrassed. Mostly stupid.” I’d wanted to say this to her the other night, even though I know it’s an unnecessary apology. We were seventeen. But part of me is worried it will haunt me forever if I don’t say something.
“It’s okay,” she says. “I probably owe you. You dumped me, I went out with Phil, and now I have Elvis. Like a butterfly effect or whatever.”
“You think it was fate?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s like that Pearl Jam song from high school. What’s the line? ‘A small town predicts my fate’?”
“I remember it. I think I still have that CD buried in a box in my truck.”
“Fate or not, things happen and you make the best of it. I’m grateful for what I have.”
A discussion on the nature of fate is a good segue to kissing, in my opinion. And while it’s hardly been a
deep discussion, I don’t want to be alone at the end of the night again regretting that I didn’t give it a shot. So I do.
I’m good at kissing. Girls have told me this. It really is all in the lips, which seems obvious, but a lot of people screw it up with too much tongue. Kissing Jennifer is fantastic. We have both improved at this since high school. I want to involve my hands—caress her cheek, brush her neck, and so on—but facing her, my left arm is pinned against the back of the couch, and I still have a glass of wine in my right hand. The kissing continues for seconds or minutes or hours, I can’t really tell, but I finally break off so I can get rid of my glass. As I lean back in, she puts her hand on my chest to hold me back, and I hate myself for stopping in the first place.
“We shouldn’t,” she says.
“Yeah. No. It’s fine.” Except. “Um, why shouldn’t we? Because that was kind of great.”
“It was—don’t get me wrong. It’s not unappealing or anything.” Hey, there’s something every guy longs to hear: You are not unappealing. “It’s just it doesn’t really work. For me.”
“I’m not sure I’m following.”
“Any second you could get an email and be gone. Or you could not get an email and still be gone. And that’s okay. Really. But it doesn’t work with my life. You said it yourself—you don’t have a backup plan. Things in my life need to be more concrete than that for Elvis. And for me.”
“Right. That makes sense,” I say. “It’s very practical and I should probably learn from your example.” I think about the other night and how I was so sure I’d stay here forever if she asked me to. But it’s not fair of me to say that because she’s absolutely right about me, and that sucks. “Still, you’ll let me be disappointed about it, right?”
“I would never stand between a man and his disappointment.”
•
Dan still hasn’t replied to my email, but hanging around after being deemed an unfit sexual partner isn’t something I’m prepared to do. I make a quick exit, leaving my laptop behind and asking only that she check it in the morning and call me at the motel if something shows up.
Searching for Terry Punchout Page 13
