by Sarina Bowen
The goal in question was the result of a messy rebound. The puck shook loose in front of the net after getting momentarily stuck in the goalie’s shin pad. Then the goalie’s own teammate overskated the puck while trying to clear it.
I pounced on it like a cat on a stunned mouse, poking it toward the net. And it only worked because my opponent blocked his goalie’s view of me. It’s what we call an ugly goal, and Doc Mulvey knows this.
“My point is—how are those visualization exercises going?”
After a moment’s indecision, I decide to level with him. “I gave up on that pretty fast. It just wasn’t working for me. After a few minutes sitting there with my eyes closed, I get sleepy. Or my mind wanders. I find myself visualizing my sushi order instead of the rink.”
“Uh-huh. So you don’t believe that visualization can help you?”
“No, sir. I guess I don’t.”
“Hmm. When we’re young, we do tend to believe visualization works. So if you feel this way now, then you probably feel that visualization has failed you. Humor me, okay? Tell me about a time when you were visualizing hard, and nothing turned out like you planned.”
“Uh, okay. How about my marriage?” Jordanna and I visualized our future together with so much gusto that we bought a five-bedroom house, intending to fill it with little Tankiewiczs.
Spoiler alert: there aren’t any little Tanks in the world.
“That’s a good answer. Your wife said ‘until death do us part,’ but then asked you to move out.”
“Exactly,” I agree, because it’s easier than going into detail. “The way you look at it, every failed marriage is a failure of visualization. Do I sound like a shrink now?”
He ignores the jab. “Failed visualization and failed teamwork. Last night your ugly goal put a score on the board. But it wasn’t the kind of teamwork a player dreams about, right?”
“Although it still counts,” I point out.
“Go Brooklyn,” he agrees. “But I’m still a believer it’s all connected, Mark. If you can’t visualize the kind of teamwork that gets your production up, then you’re closed off from that success. And the reason you can’t visualize it is because other people on your team have let you down so badly. Including your wife.”
“Whatever. Fine. I’m willing to accept some of the blame. But only up to a point.” My teammates have been particularly cool to me lately. Because I let Bess down. I don’t know what they’ve heard, exactly. But the chill factor is real. “It’s pretty hard to picture a day when I’m on the same wavelength as this team.”
“Mmm,” he says, maddeningly. “But when you’re open to the universe, you’re open to the puck finding your stick.”
“That is some really woo woo shit, Doc Mulvey.”
He laughs. “And I love woo woo shit. I was that kid who stood in the middle of my basement holding a plastic light saber, trying to feel the force.”
“Yeah?” I laugh. “Fine, me too. But that’s every little boy.”
“Here’s the thing, though.” He leans forward in his chair. “Did you feel the force?”
I blink. He’s right, damn it. As a kid, I’d stood there, eyes closed, knowing to my bones that my X-Wing fighter was parked beside me in the sand and feeling an unexplained energy ripple through my body “Sure, I felt it. But not since I was seven.”
“Try again, Mark,” Doc Mulvey whispers. “Humor us both. Try to feel it again. Whether you call it the force, or luck, or meditation. Try to see yourself at one with this team. Your stick is that light saber, okay? And there’s a magnet inside it that draws the puck whenever you’re ready.”
I do my best not to roll my eyes. Sure, pal.
“Feel the force, man. What do you really have to lose?
When my thirty-minute session is up, I swing by the locker room to grab my gym bag.
The only guy around is Jason Castro. The moment he sees it’s me, he shoves his ear buds into his ears and makes himself busy with his phone.
I don’t like it, but I don’t even blame him. He’d warned me not to hurt Bess, but I did anyway. I deeply regret it, but nobody cares.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s that Bess isn’t my agent. Thank God for Eric. If I had to chat with Bess about hiring a New York accountant or finding an apartment I would probably lose my mind.
I might be losing it anyway. It kills me to know that she’s right here in Brooklyn, yet I can’t see her. I should have known that it would turn out this way. None of this is her fault. It’s all mine. She asked me for the one thing I couldn’t give.
It’s lunchtime, so I take myself out to eat. As I’m finishing up, my phone buzzes with a text, and I have a knee-jerk moment of optimism, wondering if it’s from Bess.
As if. It’s from Henry Kassman. Got something for you. Come visit.
Finally, I reply. This afternoon?
Sure, he says, as if he hasn’t steered me away every other time I’ve asked.
Instead of taking a nap, I catch the ferry across the river and walk up the East Side to Kassman’s fancy apartment building.
The moment after I enter Henry’s penthouse, I understand why Bess ended up in my hotel room that afternoon, crying her eyes out all over my T-shirt. Even from fifteen paces I can see that Henry Kassman looks dreadful. He’s horribly thin, and his skin is gray. He’s wearing pajamas in the middle of the day, which is just plain wrong.
Now I want to cry, too.
“Tank, my boy,” Henry says in a slow, thready voice. “You’re looking well.”
I take a deep breath and man up. “You flatter me, Kassman.”
“Nah. Everyone looks well compared to me.” He takes an audible breath just to finish the sentence. “Take the compliment.”
I pull a chair a little closer to his hospital bed and sit down, and the silence threatens to choke us both. What do you say to a man who’s dying? “Is there anything at all I can do for you? Any of your favorite foods you need me to fetch?”
“Not a thing,” he wheezes. “Unless you’ve got any decent gossip. It’s boring being old and sick.”
“Huh. Okay. This year I think I am the gossip.”
“This too shall pass.” He removes a folder from the table by his bed and hands it to me. “These are for you.”
I flip open the cover, and I’m staring down at a set of documents that I’d forgotten about. “Final decree of divorce,” I blurt. What’s the proper reaction to receiving one’s divorce decree? If there’s a right way to feel, I don’t know what it is.
I’m failing at this, too.
“Yeah. You don’t even have to sign it. Sorry, kid,” Henry says.
“No, I’m really okay.” I remove the paper from the folder, fold it into quarters and tuck it into my jacket pocket.
“Take care of that,” Henry says, pointing at my pocket. “You’ll need it if you get remarried.”
I laugh suddenly. “No chance of that.”
“You say that now, but…” He gives me a fond smile. “You know how after a disappointment some coaches say: ‘We’re having a rebuilding year’? Well, this is a rebuilding year for you, personally.”
“I might need more than one year.”
“You have time,” he says. And that’s a refrain between us. It has been for years.
Henry first approached me when I was a teenager playing juniors hockey. My father had left the family by that point. I was the man of the house, and I had a giant ego at seventeen. I thought I was going to go directly from juniors to playing beside my idols in the NHL.
I was really good at visualizing. The team shrink would have loved it.
Henry knew better. When I was nineteen, he talked me into applying for college. “Go to school. Play some hockey. Gain forty pounds of muscle. Skate faster. And get an education. You have time. The big leagues will still be there when you’re ready.”
It had worked out just like he’d said, too. I’d made it to the Show at twenty-three, without bouncing around in the minors.
“Did you find an apartment yet?” he asks eventually.
“No, but I got a guy working on it for me.” Finally.
Henry clicks his tongue. “I wish I could help you with that. I’m sorry to abandon you.”
“You never did,” I say as my throat grows thick. “Not once.”
“Gotta get yourself another agent, son. A while ago I told Bess Beringer she should take you on as a client. She had all those opinions about what you needed in order to settle in.”
“Yeah.” I swallow hard, thinking of Bess. “Actually, I’m gonna go with Eric Bayer.”
Henry tilts his head and seems to consider this. “He’s a good man. Not so much experience, though. You and Bess don’t get along?”
I force my face into a smile. “Oh, we get along. We got along too well. But she’s not exactly speaking to me at the moment.”
“Oh dear. You sly dog,” Henry says, and then he coughs. “Wait a minute. Didn’t you and Bess have something together some years ago? Wasn’t that you?”
“Ancient history, but yeah. She was working for you back then. You weren’t supposed to know about it.”
“Ah, well. I did know.” He leans back against the pillows. “I’d forgotten all about it, and now I wonder if I did you two a disservice.”
“How so?”
He closes his eyes. “I heard the rumors. Couple of players made some jokes, you know? And I felt bad for Bess because she seemed like the kind of girl who wouldn’t like people talking about her. I didn’t know what to do about it, though, because I didn’t like the idea of telling a young woman how to run her life.” He opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling, as if deep in thought. “So I asked Pines to give her some perspective.”
“Oh.” I try and fail to keep the disappointment out of my voice.
“Pines is a great agent, but she’s a little…”
“Bitchy?” I supply, because I’m not over that woman telling Bess that she was a whore.
“Acidic is the word I was looking for. Anyway. I didn’t know what to do. I guess I could have ignored the whole thing.”
“Maybe,” I agree, wishing he had. But he hadn’t meant to make Bess feel bad, and it’s not like I’d banged down her door to tell her I loved her after she’d dropped me. Nope. I was too stupid to do that.
Still am.
But our little tragedy wasn’t Henry Kassman’s fault. “Bess still feels it’s unprofessional to date a player. And we’re not together anymore. So don’t tease her, okay?”
“Not even a little?” Henry asks. “I don’t get much entertainment.”
“Tease her as much as you want, Henry. But not about this.”
“Fine,” he grumbles. “I can see you two as a nice couple. You both have a lot of spirit. I know I shouldn’t hand a man his divorce papers and then press him about his love life, but…”
“Don’t rush me, old man. And Bess and I aren’t meant to be. I don’t think I’m meant to be with anyone. I can’t go through it all again.”
Henry makes an impatient noise. “If I’m still here a year from now, I’m gonna ask you again. I bet you’ll be singing a different tune.”
“You go ahead and ask me. In fact, I’ll set a reminder in my phone,” I say, because I can’t bear the thought of Henry dying. “But my answer will be the same. Bess wants a marriage and a family, and I can’t give that to her.”
“That’s bullshit, Tank.” He folds his hands over his belly. “I bet you didn’t even tell her why your marriage to Jordanna fell apart.”
“It fell apart for the same reason all marriages fall apart—a lot of disappointment and not enough love.” I will never get over the sound of my wife crying night after night in the bathroom, where she thought I couldn’t hear her.
It wrecks a guy.
“That’s oversimplifying things,” Henry scolds me. “You got to bring the dark stuff out into the sunlight, or it won’t ever go away. You want someone to spend your life with? There’s no reason you shouldn’t have that. You’re healthy. You’re still rich, thanks to the prenup this old man made you sign. You’re not bad looking. And your new team is just about to figure out how to use your best skills on the ice. Any second now.”
I snicker. “Sure they are.”
“And most importantly…” He reaches over and lays a hand on my elbow. “You’re a good man, Tank. I have always thought so. And I always will.”
Fuck me. My eyes get hot. “Thank you, Henry. And right back at you.”
“I have one more document for you. But this one you have to sign.” He reaches for the bedside table again and grabs another folder, opening it and handing it to me.
“What’s this?” There are only a few lines of text on the page.
* * *
Dear Henry Kassman,
You are hereby fired as my agent.
Although the stated terms of our original contract do not require an explanation, only a waiting period of thirty days, and a settling of accounts pursuant to a very boring paragraph on page four, I feel the need to explain myself. I have already heard your best jokes, and I am tired of steak dinners and red wine. So let’s just end this thing amicably.
Sincerely,
Mark Tankiewicz
P.S. I still regret the million dollars you got me for shooting those underwear ads.
* * *
Slapping a hand over my mouth, I laugh. But, damn it, my throat is tight. I don’t want to sign this paper. Ever. And it kills me that his last professional act for me was making the fucking thing funny, so I wouldn’t feel so guilty that I’m living and he’s…
I inhale carefully through my nose, controlling myself. “Why do we need this?”
“So nobody has to second guess Bess and Eric’s right to represent you.” Henry hands me a pen. “This is really for them. That’s why you have to sign.”
I quickly scribble my name on the line and hand it back to him. My throat is a desert, and my sinuses feel prickly.
A nurse comes into the room, announcing that Henry needs medication and a bath. So—after extracting a promise from him that I can come back next week—I show myself out.
It isn’t until I’m taking deep, cleansing breaths in the elevator that I realize something. Signing that document to separate my business from Henry’s hurt me a hell of a lot worse than taking delivery of my divorce decree.
“It’s a rebuilding year,” I say to nobody as I leave the building and head for the ferry.
I’m crossing the East River toward Brooklyn when my phone rings again. The caller ID says BERINGER & ASSOCIATES, and my stupid heart gives a kick just seeing Bess’s name. But the caller is Eric. Of course it is.
“Hey, Tank,” he says. “Are you nearby, perchance?”
“On the ferry back to Brooklyn. Why?”
“We’ve got to get you out of that hotel. Last week I slipped a C-note to the concierge at 220 Water, and asked him to tip me off if any apartments came up for lease or sale.”
I give a low whistle. “Smart man.”
“I’m feeling pretty smart already, because Miguel just called me to say there’s a Corcoran realtor showing a two-bedroom right now. So I speed-dialed another realtor at Corcoran, and got him to find the listing in their system. It isn’t even on the website yet. But if you jog over here…”
“Yeah! Dude. Thank you. Give me fifteen minutes.”
The second the ferry docks, I don’t stop running until I arrive in front of the Million Dollar Dorm, as the guys refer to it. Hell, it doesn’t even matter if the apartment is a wreck. I’ll buy it anyway, before the other buyer gets a chance.
Eric waves me into the lobby, introducing me to a young broker named Wilson. Then he high-fives the concierge and ushers me toward the elevator banks.
“Sorry to hustle you,” Eric says as the elevator doors open. “But things in this building tend to move fast.”
“Don’t apologize. If the price isn’t egregious, I could move fast, too.”
&n
bsp; Wilson grins like a guy who’s just won the lottery. He’s about to earn a fat commission for fifteen minutes’ work. “It’s a second-floor unit,” the kid says. “But this building has great windows, and I’m sure the light will still be adequate.”
“We’ll have to see,” I say, because I don’t want to sound like a sucker. But I’m all in. I want to walk a block and a half to practice and live in the same building as my teammates.
Not that I’d repeat this aloud, but I’m honestly starting to trust some of them.
The doors slide open again, and I follow Wilson out of the elevator. At the end of a long hall, we arrive at Apartment 212. Wilson tries the door. It’s locked, so he knocks.
When it swings open, another realtor is standing there, clipboard in hand, irritated look on her face. “This unit isn’t even on the website yet.”
“But it’s already in the database,” Wilson says, widening the door and stepping inside. “And I’m watching this building for my client.”
Eric and I exchange amused glances. Our boy Wilson has some hustle. I like him already.
And the apartment is great, too. It’s got the same wide-plank wood floors and brick walls as Delilah’s place. I’m standing in a generous living room, and I can see into the kitchen. It isn’t as flashy as Delilah’s, but it’s fine.
“Nice bathroom,” Eric says from down the hall. “And this must be the master.” He pokes his head into another room. I follow him, and when the door swings open, I catch a glimpse of a gorgeous bedroom.
“There’s an en suite bathroom,” the listing agent says. “You might as well take a look, but don’t crowd my client. She’s checking out the second bedroom.”
“We’re not crowding anyone, Lily,” Wilson argues. “Go ahead, sir.”
I’ve forgotten how odd it is to inspect a stranger’s home. There are family photos on the wall, and I feel a twinge of guilt when I open the closet in the master bedroom to check its size.
“Why are they moving?” Eric asks, perhaps just to make conversation.
“There’s a second baby coming,” the listing agent sniffs. “They need more space.”
