See Jane Score

by Rachel Gibson

  “Not for long,” he boasted, then walked up to the toe line and threw a double bull and a single twenty.

  Dang. Time for a little trash talk of her own. “Hey, Martineau, is that a pumpkin on your shoulders or is that your vacuous head?”

  He glanced at her. “Is that the best you can do?”

  The rest of the Chinooks seemed equally unimpressed.

  Darby leaned toward her and whispered, “That was kind of lame.”

  “What the hell is vacuous?” Rob asked.

  Darby answered for her. “It means empty or hollow.”

  “Why didn’t you just say that, Sharky?”

  “Yeah, you can’t trash-talk using words like that.”

  Jane frowned and folded her arms across her chest. Vacuous was a perfectly good word. “You guys don’t like it because it doesn’t start with an F.”

  Luc threw his third dart and scored a total of eighty points. Time to quit playing around and get serious. She walked to the line, raised her arm, and waited for the heckling to begin. But Luc remained silent, unnerving her more than his insults. She managed to shoot a triple twenty, but when she took aim again, Luc said, “Do you ever wear anything besides black and gray?”

  “Of course,” she said without looking at him.

  “That’s right.” Then, just as she was about to shoot again, he added, “Your cow pajamas are blue.”

  “How do you know about her cow pajamas?” one of the guys asked.

  Mr. Information failed to answer and she looked over at him, surrounded by his teammates, his hands on his hips and a smile on his lips.

  “The other night I left my room to buy some M &M’s,” she told them. “I thought you guys would all be in bed, so I wore my PJs. Luc snuck up on me.”

  “I didn’t sneak.”

  “Sure.” She lined up her shot and threw a double ten. Then he waited until the exact moment she released her third dart to say, “She wears lesbian glasses.” She missed the board completely. That hadn’t happened in years.

  “I don’t either!” Only after she denied it did she fear she may have objected a bit too vehemently.

  Luc laughed. “They’re horrible little black squares like all those NOW girls wear.”

  The rest of the Chinooks laughed too, and even Darby said, “Oh, yeah, lesbian, all right.”

  Jane pulled the darts from the board. “They’re not. They’re perfectly heterosexual.” Geez, what was she talking about? Heterosexual eyeglasses? These guys were all making her crazy. She took a calming breath and handed the darts to Luc. She would not let these dumb jocks rattle her. “I am not gay. Although there is certainly nothing wrong with it. If I were gay, I’d be out and proud.”

  “That would explain the shoes,” Rob joined in.

  Jane looked down at her boots. “What’s wrong with my Docs?”

  For the first time that night, the Stromster decided to speak. “Maahhn shuz,” he said.

  “Man shoes?” She looked into his young face. “Since I defended your Mohawk earlier, I expected better of you, Daniel.” His gaze slid away and he took sudden interest in something across the room.

  Luc moved to the line and scored forty-eight points. When it was her turn again, all the guys on the sidelines took turns heckling her. The conversation turned severely politically incorrect when they decided that the reason she wore dark colors had to be because she was depressed about being gay.

  “I’m not gay,” she insisted. She was an only child and hadn’t been raised around boys, except her father, of course, but he didn’t count. Her father was a serious man who never joked at all. She had no experience with this sort of teasing.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart,” Luc reassured her. “If I were a girl, I’d be a lesbian too.”

  Jane figured she had two choices. Get upset and indignant, or relax. She was a journalist, a professional woman. She wasn’t traveling with the team to become buddies, and certainly not to be teased like they were all back in high school. But the professional approach hadn’t worked so far, and she had to admit that she liked the teasing better than being ignored. Besides, these guys probably razzed male reporters also. “Luc, you’re already a prima donna,” she said.

  Luc chuckled and she finally got a laugh out of the others. For the rest of the game, she tried to give as good as she got, but these guys were much better at it than she and had had years of practice. In the end, she beat Luc by almost two hundred points, but she lost in the war of words.

  Somehow, during all the teasing and trash-talking, she’d moved up a few notches in their esteem. She probably could have done without their opinions on her clothes, shoes, and hair, but at least they weren’t talking about the weather, giving her one-word answers, or ignoring her altogether. Yes, this was definitely progress.

  After the game tomorrow night, they might actually speak to her. She didn’t expect for them all to become good pals, but perhaps now they wouldn’t give her such a hard time in the locker room. Perhaps they’d give her an interview and a break and keep their jockstraps up as she walked by.

  Behind the wire cage of his mask, Luc watched me puck drop and spin on its side. Bressler muscled the puck out of the play-off circle, and the battle between Seattle and San Jose began.

  Luc crossed himself for luck, but ten minutes into the first frame, his luck completely deserted him. Sharks right winger Teemu Selanne chipped the puck and it bounced into the net. It was an easy goal. One Luc should have stopped, and it seemed to trigger a complete blowout. Not only for Luc, but the entire team.

  When the first period ended, two Chinooks players required stitches, and Luc had given up four goals. At two minutes into the second frame, Grizzell got brutally cross-checked at center ice. He went down hard and didn’t get back up. He had to be carried from the ice, and ten minutes later Luc misplaced a puck in his glove hand and the fifth Sharks goal went up on the board. Coach Nystrom gave the signal, yanked Luc from the net, and replaced him with the second-string goalie.

  The skate from the pipes to the bench is the longest of any netminder’s life. Every goalie who ever played the game had an off night, but for Luc Martineau, it was more than that. He’d been through it too many times during his last season with Detroit not to feel it looming overhead now like an executioner’s ax. He’d lost focus out there, felt out of sync. Instead of seeing the play before it happened, he was one second behind it. Was this it? The first bad game in a downhill slide? A fluke or a trend? The beginning of the end?

  Apprehension and a real fear he didn’t even want to admit feeling squeezed his chest and bit the back of his neck. He felt it as he sat on the bench, watching the rest of the game from the pines.

  “Everyone has an off night,” Coach Nystrom told him in the locker room. “Roy got pulled last month. Don’t worry about it, Luc.”

  “None of us played worth a shit tonight,” Sutter told him.

  “We should have played better in front of you,” Bressler added. “When you’re in the goal, we sometimes forget to step in the crease and protect you.”

  Luc didn’t let himself off quite so easy. He’d never been one to blame others and was ultimately responsible for his own play.

  As the jet took off from San Francisco, he sat in the dark cabin reliving his past, and not the good stuff. The horrible hit to his knees, the surgeries and months of physical rehabilitation. His addiction to painkillers, and the horrible body aches and nausea that rolled through him if he didn’t feed it. And ultimately his inability to play the game he loved.

  Failure whispered in his ear as he headed home, telling him he’d lost his edge. The glow of Jane Alcott’s laptop screen and the click-click of her keyboard assured him that everyone else would know it too. In the sports section of the paper, he would read her report of that night’s disaster.

  At the airport in Seattle, Luc headed to long-term parking and caught a glimpse of Jane cramming her stuff into a Honda Prelude. She looked up as he passed, but neither of them spoke
. She looked like she didn’t need his help with her suitcase, and he didn’t have anything to say to the archangel of gloom and doom.

  A sprinkling of rain wet the windshield of his Land Cruiser as he made the forty-minute drive into downtown Seattle. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d been so glad to be home.

  Moonlight spilled through the eight-foot windows in the living room as he moved through his dark apartment. The light above the stove had been left on, illuminating the FedEx envelope on the counter. He walked into his bedroom and flipped on the light. He left the door partway open and tossed his duffel on the floor by his bed. Shrugging out of his blazer, he hung it next to his garment bag in his closet. He’d unpack tomorrow.

  Right now he was tired and relieved to be home, and he wanted nothing more than to fall face first into bed.

  He loosened the knot of his tie as Marie knocked on his door, pushing it open the rest of the way. She wore a pair of flannel drawstring pajama bottoms and a Britney Spears T-shirt. She looked about ten years old.

  “Guess what, Luc?”

  “Hey, there.” He glanced at his watch. It was past midnight; whatever she wanted, she obviously didn’t feel could wait until morning. He wondered if she’d managed to get kicked out of school since he’d spoken to her last. He was almost afraid to ask. “What’s up?”

  Her big blue eyes lit up and she smiled. “I got asked to the dance.”

  “What dance?”

  “The dance at my school.”

  He pulled the knot of his tie, and thought of the FedEx envelope sitting in the kitchen. He’d deal with it tomorrow. “When is it?”

  “A few weeks.”

  She might not be living with him in a few weeks. But she didn’t need to know that now. “Who asked you?”

  Her eyes lit up even more and she moved farther into the room. “Zack Anderson. He’s a senior.”

  Shit.

  “He’s in a band! He’s got a lip ring and his nose and eyebrows are pierced. He has a tattoo. He’s sooooo hot!”

  Double shit. Luc had nothing against a tattoo. But piercings? Christ. “What’s the name of his band?”

  “The Slow Screws.”

  Great.

  “I need to get a dress. And shoes.” Marie sat on the edge of his bed and shoved her hands between her knees. “Mrs. Jackson said she’d take me.” She looked up, her eyes pleading. “But she’s old.”

  “Marie, I’m a guy. I don’t know anything about buying prom dresses.”

  “But you have lots of girlfriends. You know what looks good.”

  On women. Not on girls. Not on his sister. Not to go to a prom she probably wouldn’t be here to attend anyway. And even if she was, not with Zack of the Loose Screws. The guy with the lip ring and pierced nose.

  “I’ve never been on a date,” she confessed.

  His hands fell to his sides and he looked at her closely. At her brows that were too thick and hair that looked a bit on the dry side. Damn, she needed a mother. A woman to help her. Not him.

  “What do boys like girls to wear?” she asked.

  As little as possible, he thought. “Long sleeves. We think long sleeves and high necks are hot. And long dresses with big puffy skirts so we can’t get very close.”

  She laughed. “That’s not true.”

  “I swear to God it is, Marie,” he said and pulled the tie from around his neck and tossed it on the bedside table. “We don’t like anything that shows too much skin. We like anything a nun would wear.”

  “Now I know you’re lying.”

  She laughed again and he thought it was a shame he didn’t know her better. She was his only sibling and he didn’t know her at all. And there was a possibility that he wouldn’t know her either. A part of him wished things could be different. Wished that he was home more, and that he knew what she needed.

  “After school tomorrow, I’ll give you my credit card.” He sat next to her and untied his shoes. “Get what you need and I’ll take a look when you bring it home.”

  She stood, her shoulders hunched, a frown pulling at her bottom lip. “Okay,” she said and walked from the room.

  Jesus, he’d made her mad again. But she really didn’t expect him to shop for a prom dress with her, did she? Like he was her girlfriend? How could she be mad at him for that? He didn’t even like to shop with girls his own age.

  Chapter 6

  Gassed: Cut from the Team

  When Jane finally forced herself from bed the next morning, she pulled on her laundry-day underwear and sweatsuit and hauled her dirty clothes to the Laundromat. As the machines washed and spun, she flipped open a People magazine and caught up on her reading.

  There was no place she had to be today. No deadline breathing down her neck. She didn’t have anything work-related until tomorrow night’s game. She bought a Coke from the vending machine, sat back in a hard plastic chair, and enjoyed the mundane pleasure of watching her darks tumble dry. She grabbed the real estate section from the local newspaper and checked out properties for sale. With her added income from the hockey columns, she estimated that by summer she’d have enough money saved to put twenty percent down on a home of her own, but the more she looked, the more discouraged she got. Two hundred thousand sure didn’t buy much these days.

  On the way home, she stopped at the grocery store to pick up a week’s worth of food. She had today off, but tomorrow the Chinooks were playing the Chicago Blackhawks at Key Arena. They had home games Thursday, Saturday, Monday, and Wednesday nights. Three days off after that, then it was back on the road. Back on the jet. Back on the bus and back to sleeping in hotel rooms.

  Reporting the Chinooks’ six-four loss to the Sharks was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. After she’d trash-talked and played darts with them, she felt a bit like a traitor, but she’d had a job to do.

  And Luc… watching the horror unfold in the net had almost been as bad as watching him sitting on the bench. Staring straight ahead, his handsome features void of expression. She’d felt bad for him. She’d felt bad that she had to be the one to report the details, but again, she’d had a job to do, and she’d done it.

  When she returned home, there was a message on her machine from Leonard Callaway asking her to meet him the following morning in his office at the Times. She didn’t think the message bode well for her further employment as a sports reporter.

  And she was right. He fired her. “We’ve decided it’s best if you no longer cover the Chinooks games. Jeff Noonan is going to fill in for Chris,” Leonard said.

  The paper was letting Jane go and giving her job to the Nooner. “Why? What happened?”

  “I think it’s best if we don’t get into that.”

  The Chinooks hadn’t played their best games the past week, ending in Luc’s spectacular blowout. “They think I jinxed them. Don’t they?”

  “We knew it was a possibility.”

  Good-bye to her chance to write an important article. Good-bye to twenty-percent down on her own home. And all because some stupid hockey players thought she was bad luck. Well, she couldn’t say that she hadn’t been warned or that she wasn’t half expecting it. Still, knowing it didn’t make it any easier to take. “Which players think I brought them bad luck? Luc Martineau?”

  “Let’s not get into that,” Leonard said, but he didn’t deny it.

  His silence hurt more than it should. Luc was nothing to her, and she was certainly nothing to him. Less than nothing. He’d never wanted her to travel with the team in the first place, and she was sure he was behind her getting the boot. Jane pushed up the corners of her mouth when what she really wanted was to scream and yell and threaten to sue for wrongful termination or sexism or… or… something. She might even have a case too. But might wasn’t a good enough guarantee, and she’d learned long ago not to let her hot temper burn bridges. She still had the Single Girl column to write for the Times.

  “Well, thank you for the opportunity to write the sports column,” she said and
shook Leonard’s hand. “Traveling with the Chinooks was an experience I won’t forget.”

  She kept her smile on her face until she left the building. She was so angry, she wanted to hit someone. Someone with blue eyes and a horseshoe tattooed above his private parts.

  And betrayed. She’d thought she’d made progress, but the players had turned on her. Maybe if she hadn’t beat them at darts, talked trash, and they hadn’t called her Sharky, she wouldn’t feel so betrayed now. But she did. She’d even felt bad for doing her job and reporting the facts of their last game. And this was how they repaid her? She hoped they got athlete’s foot. All at the same time.

  For the next two days, she didn’t leave her apartment. She was so depressed she cleaned all the cupboards. While she recaulked the bathroom, she cranked the volume on the television and felt only slightly vindicated when she heard that the Chinooks lost to the Blackhawks four to three.

  Who would they blame now?

  By the third day, her anger hadn’t diminished, and she knew there was only one way to get rid of it. She had to confront the players if she was to reclaim her dignity.

  She knew they would be at the Key Arena for the game-day skate, and before she could talk herself out of it, she dressed in her jeans and black sweater and drove into Seattle.

  She entered on the mezzanine level, and her gaze immediately fell on the empty net. Only a few players practiced on the ice below, and with her stomach in knots, she walked down the steps and headed for the locker room.

  “Hello, Fishy,” she said as she strolled toward him in the tunnel, a blowtorch in his hand as he warmed the blade of his stick.

  He looked up and shut off the torch.

  “Are the guys in the locker room?” she asked.

  “Most of them.”

  “Is Luc in there?”

  “I don’t know, but he doesn’t like to talk on game days.”

  Too damn bad. The soles of her boots squeaked on the rubber mats in the hallway and heads swiveled in her direction when she walked into the room. She raised a hand. “Keep your pants up, gentlemen,” she said as she moved to stand in the middle of the half-naked players. “I’ll just take a moment of your time, and I’d prefer you not do your synchronized jock-dropping thing.”