Page 26 of Thin Ice

"Jen's doing the brisket," he said. "Maddie's got an entire presentation about the pads. She made a YouTube video."

"Video?"

"She's her mother's kid. Bring an appetite and applause."

We walked out the back together, past the equipment room and the loading bay, and Brick didn't shut up the whole way.

"Forty years. You believe this city?" He wasn't really asking. "I heard they sold out the watch parties. People are paying money to stand in a bar and look at a screen. We're playing four blocks away."

"You could sell them your ticket."

"I could sell them Maddie's ticket. She's not using it. She wants to watch from the couch with her goalie pads on."

A Zamboni sat off to the side with its guts open. A guy from ice ops was half inside it, and Brick slowed down. "Hey. You need this ice by Thursday, you know that, right?"

The guy flipped him off without climbing out of the machine.

"Love this guy," Brick said, and kept walking. "Jen's already crying. The series hasn't started yet. She's crying in advance. I said save some for the actual thing, and she looked at me like I don't understand her at all, which—fair."

Brick's truck was in the players' lot, two spots down from where Elias had parked the SUV. I waited for a comment from him the entire way. He never let things go without comment. He'd once chirped me for a haircut in Winnipeg from forty feet away in a hotel lobby.

He unlocked the truck, threw his bag across to the passenger seat, and stopped with one hand on the door. The comment appeared sideways.

"Tall guy's all right," he said.

That was it, nothing more. He got in and drove away.

***

The night before Game One, I worked on my hip in the living room. I'd never done it out in the open.

It wasn't a conscious decision. I came out of the shower, and the mat was still rolled in the bedroom closet. Elias was in the living room with hockey running on the big-screen. It was Boston's forecheck, and he'd queued it himself.

It was nine o'clock, and the joint needed forty minutes of attention whether or not anybody watched. Doing it in the bedroom would feel like hiding.

I carried the mat out, dropped it by the recliner, and got down on it in stages, hand to the chair arm, good side leading.

Elias didn't say anything. He turned the tape volume down two clicks and kept watching the TV.

I did the knees-to-chest work first, one at a time. The outside air pressure had been dropping all day. The hip signaled its annoyance. Storms were moving in from Kansas City.

The roller was in the basket by the window. Elias got up, crossed the room, and handed it to me without a comment.

"Boston pinches hard on the weak side," I said, working the band down the outside of the thigh. "Watch—their second pair especially."

"I saw it."

"Somebody's going to get a breakaway off that this series."

"Might be you."

"Might be Jamie. He's faster than me."

The tape ran, and the cathedral bells tolled ten. I got the lacrosse ball under the glute and leaned my weight onto it against the floor. The pain was sharp and familiar.

"Ask me the thing," I said.

Elias looked over.