“True?”
“True – and I’ll be on again, too, right after I moon ’em all New Year’s Eve.”
Big, who’d been taking money from the other boys, turned with a perplexed look on his face. “You what?”
“We got a plan,” Nish went on. “Fahd here, and Data, he’s back at the hotel, they got it all figured out how we can bump the live broadcast and get my bare butt on the big TV screen over on Times Square.”
Travis wished Nish would just shut up. This was a stupid thing to imagine, let alone tell a total stranger.
But Big was interested. For the first time, he smiled, flashing a gold tooth. Travis did a double take. He hadn’t seen a gold tooth since Sweden, when the Russian mob had kidnapped him and several other peewee hockey players.
He wondered for a moment if Big’s gold tooth was a knockoff, too – maybe made of plastic and painted gold.
“Tell me more,” said Big.
“Fahd and Data are computer geniuses,” said Nish. “We got a video camera and we got a system all figured out where we can bump off the regular programming and get me on for a minute – it’s gonna get me in da Guinness Book of World Records, Big.”
“I’m sure it will,” said Big. “If it doesn’t get you busted.”
“Not a chance,” said Nish. “We got it all figured out – they won’t even know what happened until it’s too late.”
Travis couldn’t help himself. He poked Nish in the ribs. Nish turned slightly and swatted at Travis as if he were a pesky mosquito.
The boys had all the fake watches and sunglasses they could afford. Big rolled up his loot and closed the half-empty briefcase. Travis wondered how much of a killing he’d made. What were the ten-dollar watches really worth? Five? Two?
“See you around, eh, Big?” Nish said as they departed.
“You bet, Nish,” said Big with another flash of his gold tooth. “I’ll watch for you on ‘Letterman.’ ”
8
The Screech Owls played their first game in the Big Apple International Peewee Tournament that evening. It was, for the Owls, little more than a warm-up. The team they were up against, the Long Island Selects, weren’t much better than the Burlington Bears. The main difference was that this game would count in the standings; the shinny game against the Bears mattered only as a memory.
Sam and Sarah both played exceptional games. Sam was back on defence, and she blocked shots and carried the puck and helped Jeremy clear away rebounds so easily it seemed she might keep the Selects off the scoreboard all on her own.
Sarah was in one of her playmaking moods. It didn’t matter how many times Travis or Dmitri set her up, she would pass the puck off. She simply refused to take an easy shot on goal, dropping the puck back to the point instead, or spinning around to try to set up Dmitri or Travis. By the third period, Dmitri and Travis had two goals each, and Nish also had two pinching in from the point.
“Slow it down,” Muck instructed during a brief break.
He didn’t need to say any more. Every one of the Screech Owls knew how Muck refused to embarrass another team or coach in a tournament. Even in a tournament where it was possible the standings might be decided by the number of goals scored, Muck would refuse to let the Owls run up the score.
An instruction of no more scoring was like an invitation to Nish. If a game truly mattered, if the Owls absolutely had to have a goal, there was no one they’d want on the ice more than Nish. Nish, even more than Sarah, had the knack of scoring when it counted. But take away a reason to get serious, and Nish would try anything, no matter how crazy. His big ambition, he’d told Travis, was to score a “Pavel Bure goal”: taking the puck behind the opposition cage, flipping it high into the air so it floated back over the goal, and then skating out in front quickly enough to be there in time to baseball the puck into the net. He must have tried it a hundred times in practice, without a single success.
But Nish was nothing if not determined. He picked up the puck behind his own net, skated out slowly, and faked a pass up to Liz on the left, then broke with the puck into the open space.
Travis was sitting on the bench when Nish began his charge. He lowered his head, almost wishing he weren’t in the same building.
“The show’s on,” said Sarah, sitting beside him.
“I know,” said Travis.
And what a show it was. Nish skated up and cut diagonally across centre, stickhandling beautifully. He had his head up, and Travis wondered if it was to see if there were any cameras on him.
Nish worked his way across the Selects’ blueline and down into the corner. He then faked a pass to Sam, who was charging in from the far point. Sam angrily slammed her stick onto the ice when Nish hung on. He had other ideas. He kept stickhandling behind the net, watching.
“Here comes his ‘Bure,’” Travis announced on the bench.
“Such a surprise!” said Sarah.
Nish tapped the puck so it stood on edge, then lifted it high so it floated, spinning, over the net and over the head of the little Long Island goaltender.
Nish dug in hard, churning round to the front. He flew out from the boards and passed the left post moving backwards, away from the net, the puck still in the air.
He swung mightily, the play perfect – except for one small detail. He missed the puck, and fell with the effort.
A huge laugh went up from the sparse crowd watching in this little rink down by the East River.
Nish got up and chased hard back down the ice as the Selects managed a three-on-one break and scored on a good screen shot that ripped into Jeremy’s glove and then trickled into the Owls’ net.
“He’s benched,” Sarah said, as she shifted over to make room for the players coming off.
“Guaranteed,” agreed Travis.
Nish came off, his face beet red, and didn’t even bother looking over at Muck. What was the point? He plopped down beside Travis, ripped his helmet off, picked up the water bottle, and sprayed his face, hair and, a bit, into his open mouth. He swallowed, spat, and turned to Travis.
“What’s with Muck?” he asked.
“You have to ask?” Travis said.
“I’m benched,” Nish said as if it were an announcement.
“You’re surprised?”
“Hey,” Nish grinned. “He told us not to score, didn’t he? What more can I do for this team?”
Travis grabbed the water bottle and sprayed it as hard as he could directly into his own face.
It did no good. When he opened his eyes Nish was still sitting there, smiling at him.
“It’s time!” called Fahd, as if they didn’t know.
It was also way past bedtime. Mr. Dillinger had said there was a 10:30 curfew – “Lights out and no portable CD players!” It was now 11:30, and while the lights were out, no one was asleep. The television was on, flickering like a ghost at the foot of the beds where six of the Owls lay, watching and waiting.
“Think they’ll open with me?” Nish asked no one in particular.
The “Late Show” was just coming on. Letterman was doing his stand-up act, an endless string of jokes about the storm, half of which the Owls didn’t get, and then came an interview with a giggling, gum-chewing actress about being stranded in a taxi and missing her opening-night act at one of the New York theatres.
“Bor-ring!” Nish moaned.
“We’ve got some footage from around the city,” Letterman said to the still-giggling actress. “Would you like to see what the storm did to a few other New Yorkers?”
“Yeah, sure,” she said, snapping her gum.
“Here we go,” announced Fahd.
With David Letterman cracking more jokes in the background, they showed dozens of clips of the city coping with the Storm of the Century.
There was a rhinoceros at the zoo pawing the snow like he’d never seen it before. Letterman cracked a joke about Africa.
There was a beggar lying on the street, cup held out and brimming with snow. Letterman
cracked a joke about being poor that Travis didn’t like.
There were shots of cross-country skiers in Central Park, a dozen shots of people trying to push or pull their cars free of snowdrifts, several shots of people falling on the street – all accompanied by more cracks by Letterman.
But nothing about Rockefeller Center. Nothing about the outdoor skating rink.
Nothing about the two “Olympic ice-dancers.”
Nothing about Nish.
“What kind of rip-off is this?” Nish howled when the footage stopped and the show returned to the host and his guest, now with a full-blown bubble hiding her face.
“Maybe they’re saving you?” Fahd suggested.
Nish liked the suggestion. “Yeah, they’re saving the best for last,” he said.
But there was nothing more. Travis grew sleepy, turned around, and tucked himself into his bed. He heard Fahd do the same, and eventually the television was clicked off and the odd colours stopped dancing around the room. It was pitch black, and very, very late.
It grew quiet, very quiet, and then Travis heard Nish clear his throat.
“It means I have to moon now,” Nish said.
No one said anything back to him.
“I’ve no choice.”
9
“We lost.”
Lars’s voice was shaky coming over the line. But whether it was the transmission or Lars himself, Travis couldn’t tell. Lars always took losses hard. There was no reason why he wouldn’t take a loss with his old team in Sweden just as badly.
“We won – easily!” Nish practically shouted into the small microphone Fahd had set up so they could all speak more easily to Lars.
They talked for about fifteen minutes. Lars was finding it difficult readjusting to European-style hockey. He partly blamed himself for losing the game. They talked a bit more about everything the Owls had been doing in New York and then Lars signed off. He had a game to go to.
“Fahd and I have been thinking about this,” Data said as he turned off his laptop. He turned towards Nish. “And I e-mailed a couple of computer buddies back in Canada. There’s no way you can do that thing you want to do live.”
“I can’t?” said Nish, suddenly distraught.
“We’ll film it on this camera and save it on the computer,” Data explained. “That way, if we can actually jump into the transmission, all I’ll need to do is click the mouse a couple of times.”
“And you won’t have to freeze your butt off,” added Fahd.
“But it’s not the same!” Nish whined.
“What do you mean?” asked Data. “It’ll still be your butt up there – no one else’s – so what’s it matter if you do it live or not?”
“But it’s no good,” Nish protested. “It’s like – like the difference between a goal and an assist.”
Travis couldn’t believe his ears. Only Nish would think of something like that. Travis prided himself on his assists. And Sarah had once said she’d rather set up a pretty goal than score one herself.
“Take it or leave it,” said Data. “It’s the only way.”
Nish was wringing his hands. His expression kept twisting back and forth between agony and disappointed acceptance.
Finally he said, “Okay – when do we do it?”
“Right now’s as good a time as any,” said Fahd.
Nish looked up in surprise. “Here?” he asked.
“Sure,” said Fahd. “Why not? We have the camera out anyway. Data can then save it to disk.”
“Here?” Nish practically wailed.
Data shook his head. “Here is where we are, Nish. Let’s get it done.”
Nish looked around the room, panicking. “Not with all you here!”
“What’s your problem?” asked Andy.
“No way I’m mooning any camera unless you guys leave,” Nish announced. “Fahd and Data can stay.”
Travis couldn’t help himself. He leaped up off the bed to face his best friend. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You want to moon Times Square and a billion people around the world – but no way you’re dropping your pants in front of your own friends.”
“No!” Nish almost shouted. “I need privacy.”
Travis started walking towards the door. “You need a psychiatrist,” he said.
Nish, looking miserable, shot out his tongue in response.
“We’re outta here,” Travis announced, pulling the door open. The rest of the Owls, the three plotters excluded, were right behind him.
“We’ll leave you here to make an ass of yourself,” Travis said.
“Very funny,” Nish snarled. “Very, very funny.”
They played again that afternoon. They were lucky. The continuing storm made it impossible to reach the outlying rinks in Rye and Long Island, and so more of the games had to be scheduled as close to downtown as possible.
“We’ve had a change of facilities,” Mr. Dillinger announced at lunch.
“What rinky-dink rink are we at next?” Nish asked. He hadn’t been impressed with the facility for their game against the Selects. “Or are we playing this one outdoors?”
“Not quite,” said Mr. Dillinger, no longer able to hide his smile. “This one’s at Madison Square Garden.”
“MSG!” Fahd shouted.
“The one and only,” said Mr. Dillinger. “Let’s get going.”
All Travis’s worries were suddenly lifted from his shoulders. He no longer cared about the storm. He no longer even thought about Nish and his ridiculous scheme to get himself – or at least a part of himself – into the Guinness Book of World Records. All he could think about was that he was going to play at the rink where Wayne Gretzky had played his very last game.
It was a rink like no other he had ever seen. They entered at a huge side entrance, big enough to take a tractor trailer and a bus, and then walked up a long spiral ramp that left them breathless. “The ice surface is six floors up,” said Mr. Dillinger.
They came out at the Zamboni entrance and then turned left into the narrow corridor leading to the dressing rooms. They would be dressing in the visitors’ room, where Orr and Dryden and Paul Kariya had dressed.
After he had his shin pads and pants on, Travis went out and walked up and down the corridor in his socks. All along the walls were huge, photographs of famous people who had played Madison Square Garden. He walked along, checking the names: Elton John, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, the Beatles, Wayne Nishikawa …
Wayne Nishikawa?
Travis stopped so abruptly he slipped in his socks and almost fell.
Nish?
Taped over the photograph, with black hockey tape, was one of Nish’s hockey cards from the Quebec Peewee tournament. Nish’s smiling mug was covering the face of Elvis Presley. Nish’s name – cut, it seemed, from the program for the Big Apple tournament – had also been taped over Elvis Presley’s name at the bottom of the framed picture. Nish’s mother would have been outraged. She called Elvis Presley “The King” and had most of his records.
“Like it?” a voice called from down the corridor.
It was Nish, half-dressed, sticking his head out the dressing-room door. He was grinning.
“I’m sure Elvis would be pleased,” said Travis.
“He’s dead,” Nish said. “I’m the new King.”
“King of what?” Travis asked.
“King of Hockey,” Nish began. “King a da Big Apple. King of the Guinness Book of World Records – you name it.”
Okay, Travis thought, I will. He forced a grin back at his weird friend: “King of Jerks.”
Nish suddenly looked hurt. “What’s dat for?” he asked.
“You’re acting stupid,” Travis said. “You’re going way overboard on everything. That stupid New York talk. That stupid mooning idea that’s just going to get everybody in trouble.”
“Relax,” Nish said, his old grin rising back into his face. “Nobody’s gonna get hurt.”
“They better not,” said Travi
s.
Nish shook his head. “Relax, pal. Enjoy the Big Apple. And don’t forget – one day you’ll be able to say you knew me.”
“What good’s that, even if you do it? It’s not like anybody’s going to know it’s you.”
“My butt will be world-famous,” Nish said. “It’ll be like saying you saw Niagara Falls being formed, or the pyramids being built – you know what I mean?”
Travis just shook his head. No, he didn’t know what Nish meant. And when he tried to force his mind to work it through, it was like his brain was a computer that had suddenly crashed.
10
They were to play a team from Michigan called the Detroit Wheels, one of the top-ranked peewee teams in the United States.
Muck seemed apprehensive. “This is a smart team,” he said. “Well coached and well conditioned. You make a mistake, it’s in our net. So we play safe at all times – understand, Nishikawa?”
“Understand, Coach,” Nish mumbled, his head between his shin pads, his helmet on, his stare straight down between his legs.
Sarah rolled her eyes at Travis from across the dressing room. They both knew how much Muck hated being called “Coach” – “This isn’t football,” he’d say, “I’m ‘Muck’ or, if you have to, ‘Mr. Munro,’ but I am not ‘Coach’” – but they also knew that Nish was in game mode, head down, full concentration. Travis took it as a good sign.
Travis had played in a lot of wonderful rinks: the Olympic rink in Lake Placid where the Miracle On Ice game had been won, the Quebec Colisée during the Quebec Peewee, Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto before they built the Air Canada Centre, the Globen Rink in Stockholm, and even Big Hat Arena in Nagano, Japan. But still Madison Square Garden was special. It was as if they were skating under a huge, sprawling, golden church ceiling. And the seats somehow seemed closer to the ice, even though that was impossible. The Stanley Cup banners and retired jerseys in the rafters only made it feel all the more important, all the more special.
Travis liked the feeling of being here. He liked the way Nish had prepared for the game. He liked the way Sarah had skated during warm-up, her strides so smooth it sounded like she was cutting paper with scissors as she took the corners. He liked the fact that he hit the crossbar with his first shot of the warm-up.
The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 4 Page 4
