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ChapterOne
Baskoro
“Hi, I’m Baskoro Huda, and every time I’m losing traction on the ice, I skate on over to Willoughby Tire Emporium located on South Glen Avenue. Not only are they the official tire supplier of the Watkins Glen Gladiators, they’re guaranteed to get you traction on the worst ice conditions. And I should know about icy conditions.”
Leaning into the camera, I wink, smile, and then slap my mask down over my face as I pray that take seventeen was good enough for Leonard Dopkick, the son-in-law of Willard Willoughby, owner of Willoughby Tire Emporium. Leonard liked to think he was the village’s answer to Quentin Tarantino. He’s not. Not even close. But his father-in-law has him direct all his commercials, and since I am contracted to do five, I’m stuck with the man.
“Cut!” Leonard shouted after the camera panned back from my close-up. The office of the tire emporium was deadly quiet. All the employees hid behind stacks of tires to give the massive space a feeling of inner-city grit. Leonard’s remark, not mine. I wasn’t sure one could get Watkins Glen to reflect inner-city anything, and I should know. I’d spent my first six years of life living in Bangkok, Thailand, before coming to the States with my family. My father is from Indonesia, my mother from Thailand, but they met in Bangkok and set up a home there for a few years. That’s why our names are Indonesian but we are strongly Thai in most other ways. Dad and his family fell out many years ago so he embraced all things Thai, including his lovely wife.
My older sister moved back to Thailand and now lives there with her husband and new son, the cutest baby in the world—thank you very much proud uncle here. So every summer I go to my birthplace even though I grew up in Columbia, South Carolina. So yeah, I knew big cities. Watkins Glen was not a big city. It was a charming village that I adored, but it was lacking in dark city grit. Unless there was a side street that I’d not discovered that had skyscrapers and subways. Neither of which was found here. Watkins Glen had wine slushie shops, trendy eateries, and a lake. Oh, and one sort of famous racetrack. “Okay, Baskoro, that was good, but I need gravitas from you.”
I blinked the sweat out of my eyes. It was miserably hot wearing full gear in early September and in front of a dozen bright lights.
“Uhm, I’m not sure exactly what you mean by that,” I replied foolishly, getting an eye roll from Leonard the office manager slash man who dreams of winning an Oscar for a thirty-second local commercial starring an incredibly handsome but unskilled in acting hockey player.
“Baskoro, Basky, can I call you Basky?” he enquired, sliding from his little director’s chair to hurry over to me, his hand nervously moving his combover to cover his sweaty bald spot.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” I muttered inside my mask.
“Okay good, so, Basky, you’re not giving me enough panache.”
I removed my catcher to take a bottle of cold water from one of the two cameramen Willoughby had hired to film this epic cinematic masterpiece. Both were film students over at the local community college. One of the dudes who had been hitting on me all day smiled as he passed me some spring water. Which, yeah, that was nice, and he was sort of cute, but I just wanted to get out of my gear and out of this place. The smell of rubber was not one of my favorite aromas.
Flipping up my mask, I took a drink, nodded thanks at the twinky blond making doe eyes at me, and stared at Leonard. The man had nose hair in bad need of trimming.
“Panache. So you want me to be more…” I let it dangle hoping he would fill in the blank. Leonard just gaped at me. “Sorry, but I’m not really up on stage lingo.” He continued to stare up at me in loss. “Damn it, Jim, I’m a hockey player not an actor!” I smiled at the rather good Dr. McCoy impression I’d just laid down on the man with the wild nostril hair. That hair crawling out of his nose was really distracting. He said nothing but blondie giggled madly. It was times like this that I wished Liam were here. My roommate would have roared over the Trekkie moment. My fellow tender and I were huge nerds and proud of it. “That was from Star Trek,” I tacked on just because I felt like the lone Cardassian at a Bajoran party.
“Look, Basky, what I need from you is more flair!” Leonard stated, then wiped his wet brow on a hankie that he carried in his back pocket. He liked to wave it around to be dramatic, or something…I don’t know. All I knew was that I was soaked through to my nuts. “Try to put more feeling into your lines.”
“Dude, I’m hawking tires. How excited do you want me to be about retreads?” I asked with a bit more attitude than I should have. Zena, my agent, would not like me being snippy with someone who was paying me—and her as she got her 10 percent—a nice sum for these ads.
“Maybe you can pretend that you’re trying to talk a Klingon into giving up his mug of blood wine for a virgin margarita?” I heard Liam shout from the bay doors. Finally. It had taken him long enough to kiss his boyfriend goodbye at the airport.
I yelled back a curse in Klingon that made my roomie howl in amusement. Leonard spun around and gave Liam major shit for sneaking into a closed set to steal his creative ideas.
“Dude, I’m his roommate,” Liam said as he backed out of the emporium.
He was unceremoniously shown out, and the doors were locked, which cut off any air that might have been circulating around us. The temperature rose by ten degrees in five seconds. Leonard was fired up now. We did five more takes until my gravitas pleased him. I’d never been so happy to get out of a tire warehouse in my life. Liam was waiting for me in the parking lot, smirking at me as I stamped out into the warm September sun, toting all my goalie gear.
“Where are we going to place your Oscar when you win it?” he asked as I neared his car parked beside mine. With a grunt, I chucked my stick and my massive duffel into the back of my Jeep.
“I have a few places we can put it,” I slung back and got a chuckle from my buddy. “That man,” I jerked a thumb back at the tire emporium building, “is certifiable.”
“Yeah, he’s a tool. You hungry? I could go for Mexican.”
I nodded. The waters of the lake sparkling under the bright sun and a few of the trees along the Finger Lakes beginning to turn soft yellow as the days got shorter might brighten my mood when we drove past. It generally did. We have our first preseason game tomorrow night against the Comets. And just like that, the shitty day spent saying the same lines over four dozen times while baking like a cupcake got even worse.
“What was that look for? If you’re not feeling food then just say so,” Liam said, then went back to checking his phone.
“No, I’m starved. I was thinking about the game tomorrow night,” I mumbled. He grunted but said nothing else about the Comets. He, and the rest of the team, knew that Marcus Newley and I were adversaries on and off the ice, but none of them knew why I disliked the man so much. Only my old friend and I knew what had been said back in college and neither of us was keen to spread it around.
“Right, well, just keep your cool,” Liam said, pocketing his phone to stare at me with soulful, green eyes. “Maybe if you would talk about what went down with you and Marcus, it would help? I mean, the guy that I spent time with in developmental camp was pretty cool.”
“It’s personal,” I answered as I always did. Liam nodded. Nothing more was said. All I knew was that it thrilled me that Newley had not made the team and had been picked up by Wilkes-Barre. I wasn’t sure I could look at him day in and day out.
“Okay, that’s legit. Oh hey, speaking of legit, are we still down to do our bit for the talent show fundraiser that Greck is setting up for the queer theater group?”
“Yeah, totally. We can rehearse in downtime and shit.” I thumped fists with Liam.
