Page 24 of Thin Ice

I let it go, and the rest was the best two hours of shop talk I'd had since I left the faculty. I wasn't on guard. It was like sitting on a sofa at home.

Frey had a question for me. "So how does a guy like Mercer do load management in a run like this? He's thirty-four, and the clock has to be ticking."

"He does it on his own," I said. "Honestly, it's the best self-built maintenance program I've ever seen up close. He's disciplined like you wouldn't believe. Most of the real work is private. The team gets the finished product. If I could write him up as a case study, I would."

"Smart," Frey said. "The ones who last always figure it out on their own."

Chapter eight

Nolan

Elias took us out through the service entrance without asking. Fans and the media had found the back door two days ago. Now, the loading dock had a knot of twenty people, adults and kids, holding coffee cups and phones. One boy wore a Danaher jersey with the sleeves hanging over his hands.

"So much for a clean getaway," I said.

Fans called my name. Reporters held microphones over the crowd, hoping for something.

Elias loaded me into the SUV and pulled out. He threaded through haphazardly parked vehicles. Cars idled in the narrow gaps between buildings, and a van at the corner had its hazards blinking.

It was media day. The league flew in a hundred and fifty credentialed people to ask twenty men how it feels, and we'd spend four hours not answering or using the fewest words possible.

Hannah called before we'd cleared the block. Hannah Kessler was the only call I would have answered on the drive. She was an internal medicine doc at Barnes-Jewish, three blocks away from the Colchester, a friend who'd never once asked me for a ticket or a photo or anything she could tell somebody she'd gotten from me.

She'd figured out the hip at her kitchen table two years ago, watching me stand up from dinner. She confirmed the observation with me and never said another word about it. That was the whole friendship, right there.

"The whole city's lost its mind," she said. "I couldn't get a table at Winslow's. There's a line. People are wearing your face on a shirt, Nolan. It's not a good likeness."

Elias kept his eyes on the street and pretended he wasn't listening.

"No?" I asked.

"They gave you a chin you don't have. How are you, and don't give me the canned media comment."

With Elias eighteen inches away, I gave her less than she wanted. "Big day," I said.

A pause on her end. She heard me editing. "Okay," she said. "You're allowed to feel it for one day. Tomorrow you can go back to being a stone. Eat something that's fun, I'm not coming to the game. You'd hate me being there, but win it, for me."

"Will do."

"Goodnight, Nolan. It's still morning, but I'll say it now."

Elias drove down Lindell Boulevard and cut over to Market on Jefferson. Every planter on Market Street wore blue ribbons. City buses rolled past, wrapped in Steamers logos. At Kiener Plaza downtown, the fountains ran blue.

"You slept last night," Elias said.

"Some."

"You reached for the coffee with your left this morning." He changed lanes. "You don't do that on the days the hip's bad. The reach costs you on that side."

I looked at him. He knew my body as well as I did.

Elias slid his hand off the shifter, and for a second the backs of our fingers rode together on the console. Neither of us said anything. It worked.

At the arena, satellite trucks were stacked three deep on the east lot, dishes all tilted toward the same piece of sky.

"The Ringling Brothers would be proud," Elias said.

"There ought to be elephants—and clowns."