Page 17 of Thin Ice

"See, that's a bluff right there."

"It's really not. You can park anywhere if you stand next to the car looking serious. That's a perk."

Jamie laughed hard enough to knock over his stack.

It was a relaxed room. None of us mentioned the Final simmering in the background. Elias followed his trademark pattern: ask, listen, ask.

Elias's phone buzzed once in his pocket. He glanced down but didn't reach for it. He moved his chair back three inches, ending up with the window on his left and the door in his sightline.

Nobody else looked up, but for me, the temperature in the room had changed.

"Mercer." Misha said. "Are you in or are you decoration?"

"In," I said, and put money on a hand I hadn't registered.

The evening ended how it always did. Wes cashed out first, twenty up, citing a six-year-old who woke at dawn. Jamie was next. Brick counted the kid's money for him at the door, declared him solvent, and told him to take a cab and not tip like a rookie. That left Brick and Elias at the table, with Misha and me. Brick complained about a hand he lost in Winnipeg in 2019.

Misha got up and headed for the kitchen, nodding just enough for me to get the hint. The kitchen had a refrigerator, sink, six feet of counter and an induction burner. He pulled an electric kettle out of a cabinet, filled it, and plugged it in.

"Good game in Vegas," I said.

"Game was good," he said. He had thirty-eight saves, two of them impossible, and "game was good" was all he told the reporters.

He opened another cabinet and took down a glass. It was one of those Russian ones in a metal holder. He set it on the counter and squared it to the edge, the way he squared the deck. Behind me Brick's voice rose, "I had it won, full house," and Elias said something too low to hear. Brick whimpered.

Misha watched the kettle.

"Body is talking, Mercer," he said.

The refrigerator hummed.

"You listening?" he asked.

He wasn't looking at me. He was talking to the kettle. I'd had a response ready for months. Sooner or later, one of my teammates would say something. Thirty-four, everybody's body talks, mine says good morning was the plan.

"How long have you heard it?" I asked instead.

Misha considered the question, and then he shrugged.

"I watch. Is the job." The kettle started to steam. He took it off before it whistled and poured. The smell of black tea filled the small kitchen. "In game, everyone watches the puck. I watch bodies. Shooter says nothing, but his body says everything. Always." He set the kettle down. "Your body talks too, Mercer. You tell it shut up, but it talks to me."

"Is that a compliment?"

"No."

He picked up the glass by its metal holder and drank. Vern had seen the hip from a chair in Dogtown with his eyesight fading. The trainers saw it and adjusted my program in silence. The coaches shortened my shifts.

And now Misha, who read bodies for a living because his living depended on it, was telling me mine had been talking to him. Every single person who'd heard it decided the polite thing was to let me keep pretending it hadn't said a word.

"How long have you known about the hip?" I asked again.

"Long time." He drank. "Is not my business."

"Then why say anything now?"

Misha looked at me over the glass. "Because now is important time," he said. "Okay."

That was the end of the conversation. For Misha, okay was a period, full-stop.