Power Play

by Avon Gale

  Misha pushed a file folder across the desk to Max. “The last coach left me this.”

  Max opened the folder. He looked up at Misha. “All that’s in here is a Post-it note that says ‘Good luck, sucker.’”

  Misha’s mouth twitched. “Yes.”

  “Are we on a reality show?” Max looked around the room. “I’m not signing any consent forms if we are.”

  “Don’t give Belsey any ideas,” Misha said. Max made a little noise at that. A laugh, maybe, if he didn’t seem so tense.

  Max drummed his fingers on the table. He was prone to nervous gestures like that, Misha noticed. It was unclear whether it was usual for Max or if it was because Max was around Misha. “We could just get an entirely new team. Start over.” He cut his eyes toward Misha. “Give the season a whole theme, or something.”

  Misha wasn’t sure if Max was serious. Being around him shook Misha’s equilibrium, more often than not. “That might be a good idea.”

  “Or we could put a bunch of kittens on skates and see how that works.”

  For a moment, Misha thought he’d misunderstood the English, and his brow furrowed. “Kittens?”

  “Puppies? Toddlers? Small, adorable bunny rabbits?” Max scowled. “You keep agreeing with me.”

  “I don’t think the bunny rabbits are a good idea,” Misha said, blinking. “But I have seen, one time, a dog on ice skates.” He thought for a moment. “Maybe there is a spot on the fourth line.”

  Max snorted and then leaned back in his chair. He stretched his arms over his head and twisted in his seat. Misha watched him—the way his body moved—then viciously told himself to stop. “You don’t seem to want to argue with me.” Max directed that to the wall, not Misha.

  “I didn’t think you were serious,” Misha said. “About the kittens. If you were, I would probably argue.”

  Max looked at Misha. He looked perilously close to smiling. “You don’t argue with anything I say, I mean. Do you think we should scrap all of last year’s players and start all over, or what?”

  “I think we should consider it. Yes,” Misha said, confused. “I do not understand, Max. Am I supposed to argue with you?”

  “I just don’t want—” Max looked down, and the tips of his ears turned red. “Never mind. Look. We have to think of something. Camp starts in a few days, and we have to have some kind of plan for the team.... Don’t we?”

  Misha leaned back in his chair and looked down at his notepad, where he’d been taking notes. And drawing—to keep his hands busy during the inevitable uncomfortable silences. Maybe Max was used to nervous gestures, but Misha was not.

  “Samarin, seriously. A plan. You’re the head coach. They pay you slightly more than me to come up with this stuff.”

  “There are two ways we could proceed,” Misha said slowly. The doodle on his notepad was of the Spitfires’ logo, an old WWII-style airplane. He added a few tendrils of smoke around the nose of the plane. “We have a plan and we choose the players. Or we choose the players and we come up with a plan.”

  “So what’s it gonna be, Coach?” Max leaned across the table, and the fabric of his jacket pulled across his shoulders. “We could flip a coin and let random chance decide.”

  “Is this like the kittens?” Misha asked, drawing another Spitfire, and then another—a squadron.

  “I have no idea what you mean by that. Wait. Do you mean am I serious? Kinda.”

  Misha thought for a moment and then looked at his notepad. All of the cartoon planes were on fire. “We should pick the team first. This is what I think.”

  “Let’s make sure to tell Belsey how confident we are in our plans for the future of his team,” Max said and then, “What are you doing? Drawing? You are, aren’t you? I thought you were taking notes, and you’re doodling. Does that help you think?”

  Misha nodded, then turned the notepad over so Max could see it.

  Max took in the little squadron of fiery Spitfires and said, “New logo. I like it. Think we could get Belsey on board?”

  “A team rises and falls together,” Misha said by way of explanation. The back of his neck was hot, unused as he was to showing anything to anyone. “If one of them crashes and burns, they all do.”

  “Not always,” said Max, but he wasn’t looking at Misha.

  Misha didn’t answer. There didn’t seem to be anything to say.

  Chapter Three

  Max leaned back against the boards, watched the skaters as they flew by, and made some notes on his clipboard. Every so often he blew his whistle to change up the drills, called some encouraging words, and went back to observing.

  Misha was across the rink, watching and making notes of his own. Or drawing more cartoon airplanes caught in their death throes. For some reason Max couldn’t get that little drawing out of his head. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because he didn’t expect Misha to be any good at art. Though why Max thought that, he wasn’t sure. They didn’t know each other at all.

  Misha, made impossibly taller by his skates, wore a black zip-up fleece that made his fair skin look even paler than normal. He was a striking man, a study in contrast as his pale face and his light-blond hair made his pitch-black eyes look even darker. Max wondered why the hell he even noticed. He had always conflated Samarin’s appearance with black and gold... and red—the spoked B of his Bruins uniform and the spill of blood on the ice.

  The Spitfires hopefuls were arranged in lines on the ice. Sweaty, tired athletes stood alone or in groups, drinking water and trying their best to impress the coaches. The team might have the worst record in the entire league, but it was still a professional hockey team, and there were a lot of guys who wanted to play.

  They hadn’t started over from scratch, as the team had players under contract, although not that many. Some had elected not to return. There were still more spots than returning players, which was a bit daunting, but it was also a good chance to start fresh, and Max was looking forward to it. Even if his so-called “fresh starts” hadn’t gone entirely as planned, surely he’d get lucky eventually. Right?

  “I said don’t get in the fucking crease. Do you need a goddamn fucking diagram?”

  Max tried—and failed—to stop the wince as he heard the goalie, Isaac Drake, lose his temper again at one of the skaters. Drake was contracted to the Spitfires for four years and was actually a very talented player... when he could keep his mask on and his shit together, that was. He was intense and quick-tempered and had almost as many penalty minutes last season as the team’s enforcer, Matt Huxley.

  Right then Drake was standing on the ice, glaring at the shooter with narrow-eyed rage and his cobalt blue hair messy and standing up in sweaty spikes. He also had a lip piercing, which Max had done his best to convince Drake to remove. It hadn’t worked.

  “Drake,” Max said, rubbing at his eyes. His stomach rumbled, reminding him that he missed breakfast. As usual. Being a grownup was hard. “Put your mask back on.”

  The poor guy who was supposed to shoot the puck looked like he wanted to turn and run away. Skate away. Whatever got him out of the furious goalie’s field of vision the quickest. “I’m just saying, Coach, that it’s a shooting drill, not a fucking snow-the-goddamn-goalie drill.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t intentional,” Max pointed out, trying not to glance at his watch. He wondered if hockey coaches could have a beer at lunch, and if Misha would go for a minifridge under the desk in his office so they could have them when needed. Max had spent too long as a professional athlete to be much of a drinker, but he was starting to develop a new appreciation for the soothing effects of alcohol. Max nodded at the kid who was waiting to shoot. “Your turn, Wolfe.”

  Drake pointed his stick at Wolfe. “Stay the fuck where you’re supposed to or I’ll fucking hit you until you get the goddamn message.” He yanked his mask back down over his face, went into his stance, and tapped the stick on the ice to show he was ready. Some goalies were easy and loose in goal. Not Drake. Drake was tens
e, like the skaters heading toward him were shooting bullets instead of pucks. But despite his relatively smaller frame, he moved gracefully. Like a dancer.

  Just a really angry one.

  Max blew his whistle and Wolfe skated forward, stopped a good five feet from the goal, and shot the puck directly into Drake’s glove.

  “You can get a little closer than that,” Max said, amused despite himself.

  “I don’t know about that,” Wolfe said, eying Drake. “I played here last year, Coach. One time he hit me with that stick. It hurt.”

  “You’ve got on all that padding, though,” Max pointed out. “It couldn’t have hurt that bad.”

  “Yeah. Well, I’m usually not wearing it in the locker room,” Wolfe muttered, but he skated off before Max could say anything.

  After the day’s drills were over, Misha and Max would meet to go over the day’s results, decide who to cut, and then have an awkward moment where they said good-bye and then left to go their separate ways.

  That day, though, when they met in Misha’s office, Max said, “Can we do this at a bar? Or somewhere with beer? Because I need a drink.”

  Misha surprised him by nodding. “Me too.” He ran a hand through his hair. “In Russia once I had a coach who put vodka in a flask. When he pulled it out and started drinking on the ice, we knew we were in trouble.”

  Max laughed, and he realized it was the first time Misha had made a single reference to his playing career. Obviously they didn’t talk about The Game, and that was fine with Max. Still, Misha had played for a long time. There were other games he could talk about, given the length of his career, and Max wished he was chattier about it. Their shared history aside, Misha was the one with the playing experience, and Misha had spent the last five years as an assistant coach in the AHL.

  They ended up at Sidelines, a sports bar a few miles away, which thankfully wasn’t very crowded since it was the middle of the week. He and Misha took a table near the back, and Max perused the menu as he tried to make some kind of small talk. Why he thought adding alcohol and a social environment to his and Misha’s already awkward relationship was a good idea was anyone’s guess.

  When their server came by, Max ordered a beer and some cheese sticks, because he could only imagine how much worse it would be if he drank alcohol on an empty stomach.

  “The appetizers are buy one, get one free right now,” their server, Kyle, said.

  “Oh.” Max looked at Misha, who’d ordered a beer instead of the vodka Max expected him to drink. Maybe it was too early in the day for hard liquor. Then again, after that practice, maybe it didn’t matter. “You want to split some chicken nachos?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Max’s Midwestern gene kicked in. “Did you even eat lunch, though?” He turned red and wondered what the hell he was doing. It shouldn’t matter if Misha ate lunch or not. Stop being polite, Max.

  “Maybe he doesn’t like nachos,” Kyle suggested. At Max’s look, he shrugged. “What? He might not. We have other stuff.”

  “I don’t eat meat,” Misha said, by way of explanation.

  Kyle tapped his pen on the notepad. “We do have vegetarian nachos. They’re made with beans. You want those instead?”

  “Sure,” Max said, handing over his menu. If Misha didn’t want them, he’d put them in a box and bring them to work the next day instead of a sandwich. Or he’d forget and leave the box at the restaurant, which is what he usually did with leftovers.

  “So why are you a vegetarian? Animal lover or health nut?” Max asked once they were alone again. He realized how it sounded and winced. “Sorry. That’s probably not any of my business.”

  Misha just shrugged. “It’s all right. Neither really. My father was a butcher.”

  Max nodded. “Of course. Your father was a butcher, so you don’t eat meat. Is that like, the Russian version of teenage rebellion?”

  That got him the slightest of smiles. “Maybe a bit.”

  All Max knew of Russia was secondhand information from movies and playing hockey with other Russians. “You’re actually Russian, though. Right? From Russia.”

  Misha gave him a strange look. “Yes.”

  “It’s just, one time on the ice, I called this guy a Russian, and he got pissed,” Max explained. “He hit me.”

  “Did you call him a communist? Or a Marxist?”

  “Huh?” Max scowled. “No. I think I just called him a cocksucking Russian. Russkie maybe.” Thinking about cocksucking suddenly made Max remember the trip he took a few years before to Mexico. It was supposed to be his honeymoon, but after Emma left, he decided to just make it a trip with some friends, instead.

  He showed up at the all-inclusive resort determined to get laid and drink a lot. And that’s exactly what happened—only Max found himself on his knees blowing the very hot male bartender instead of hooking up with random hot girls, as was the plan.

  I went to Mexico and all I got was a sunburn and cocksucking lessons. After the upheaval of the past few years, that was a surprise, but not entirely an unwelcome one. So he liked blowing dudes. Lots of people experimented on vacation.... Didn’t they?

  With drugs, usually. But okay.

  “Then why was he insulted?” Misha asked—and wow, Max should really stop thinking about sucking cock.

  “He was Ukrainian. I guess they don’t like being called Russians.” Max considered that. “Or maybe he didn’t like me calling him a cocksucker. But who doesn’t get called a cocksucker on the ice?”

  Misha looked down at the table. “It could have been either. Probably it was the first. But it is not.... That is frowned upon in Russia.”

  “Being Ukrainian?”

  “Well. By some.” Misha’s mouth turned up at the corner for the briefest of moments. “Mostly I meant the other thing.”

  “Calling someone a cocksucker? Or being one?” Why was he still talking about that?

  “Yes. Being one.” Misha’s expression was inscrutable. Any hint of amusement was long gone. “It is illegal in Russia.”

  “Really? That’s stupid.” Max had played hockey with gay guys before, and while he wasn’t sure if liking to suck dick sometimes made him gay, bi, or what, he still didn’t want to deal with homophobia on top of all the other problems the Spitfires had.

  He crossed his arms and gave Misha what he hoped was an imposing glare. “I’m not going to care about that. If any of our players are cocksuckers.” He cleared his throat. “I mean... you know what I mean. If they suck cock, like, for real.”

  He heard a throat-clearing noise from beside the table. “Your drinks are.... Here you go.” Kyle set the drinks down and then drew himself up. He looked to be about seventeen, maybe a little older. High school kid working a summer job, probably. “My brother’s gay. If you say anything homophobic, I’ll charge you for those nachos. I really will. They’re not technically on the half-price appetizer menu, but I was trying to be nice.”

  “I’m not homophobic,” Max protested. He looked at Misha. “I’m just checking to make sure he’s not.”

  “Shouldn’t you have figured that out before you went on a date with him?” At Max’s glare, Kyle hastily said, “I’ll go check on your food,” and made a quick retreat.

  “I’m not—I don’t have a problem with that,” Misha said, so quietly that Max almost didn’t hear him. “If that is... what someone is.”

  “Gay? Well, that’s good. ’Cause I don’t have a problem with it at all.” Max looked up from his drink to meet Misha’s dark eyes, which were focused so intently on Max that it gave him a chill—and it wasn’t from some memory of the accident, half-buried in his consciousness.

  If anything it was a memory of hot night air and tequila, salt and ocean waves, fingers in his hair, words in a language he didn’t understand, and the feel of concrete beneath his knees.

  “I’m glad you don’t,” Max said. He shut every metaphorical door as quickly as he could and threw all the deadbolts, for good measure. He didn’
t hate Misha and he never really had, but that didn’t mean he should want to blow him.

  There’s a setting between “hate” and “sucking his cock,” Max. Find it and dial it there. Quick.

  Max took a fortifying drink of his beer, and luckily Kyle returned with their food.

  “Sorry for the delay. The first order, the chef put bacon on them. I don’t know why you’d do that when they’re vegetarian nachos. Maybe it’s not even really bacon, but I wasn’t sure. So....” Kyle placed the plates of food on the table. “He’s high a lot. The chef.”

  “Why would you put bacon on nachos in the first place?” Misha asked.

  “Dude. We’re in America. We put bacon on everything. Thanks,” Max said to Kyle. He thought about pointing out they weren’t on a date, but decided maybe to let it go.

  They were there to talk about the team. Which they did as they ate. They went over the roster that was slowly taking shape.

  As usual Max hesitated when he got to Drake’s name. “This kid has an attitude problem the size of... Russia. Russia’s big, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Misha said. “Very.”

  “I know he’s got a contract, but maybe we should trade him for someone. I think the other players are scared of him.”

  Misha considered that. Max had insisted Misha try a fried mozzarella stick, but he was eating it with a knife and a fork—proving that he was not, in fact, a normal person. “Maybe that is a good thing. Hmm? He could keep them in line.”

  “He almost has as many penalty minutes as our enforcer,” Max reminded him.

  Misha arched an eyebrow—because of course he could do that. “Maybe we should tell Huxley to get in more fights.”

  “That’s not how you eat mozzarella sticks,” Max groused, slouching in his chair like an ill-tempered teenager. “Fine. So we’re keeping Drake?” Max put his head on the table and groaned. “He has a lip piercing.”

  “What was that? I can’t hear you. Did you say he... has a hip replacement? He’s so young.”