Page 28 of Home Ice

Ten minutes later, while I was putting my equipment in my duffel:

Max: RAFE

Max: the 14th. the FOURTEENTH. do you understand what they’ve handed us

Max: no you don’t. that’s fine. that’s why I’m here

Max: I’m calling my tailor tonight. he’s going to be so angry with me and he’s going to do it anyway

I sent back a thumbs-up and finished packing. It was nothing. Two hours in a hotel ballroom for kids with heart conditions. It made me feel good to say yes.

The steakhouse did one thing and did it correctly, exactly as advertised. I got back to the hotel after midnight with my coat smelling like char, and I checked my phone in the elevator.

Niko: You cut it with a knife and a saw instead of a plane. Sever the fibers before you remove them. The tearout happens because you’re lifting fiber, so you cut the top of it first and then take the waste out underneath. Slow. You can’t hurry a board like that, and you can’t muscle it either. It doesn’t care how strong you are.

I stood in the hallway outside my room, imagining the message in Niko’s voice. Then I went in, undressed, set the alarm, and lay there thinking about a man taking his time cutting boards.

***

The next morning we left Winnipeg through the little private terminal with frost on the inside of the windows. We’d be on the ground in Chicago a little after noon.

I had my headphones on and nothing playing when Trier sat down beside me. He had a coffee in each hand and gave me one.

“So the vet moved Peaches.”

I took the coffee. “Peaches?”

“You’ve seen four hundred photographs of this animal.”

“I’ve never heard her name.”

“That seems unlikely.” He sat back. “Originally she was Tuesday, ten a.m. It was perfect, and the catsitter was available. Peaches is calm in the morning. She goes in the carrier without the thing she does.”

“What does she do?”

“You’ll find out.” He drank some coffee. “They moved her to Thursday, one thirty, because their tech’s on leave. At one thirty in the afternoon, a fourteen-year-old cat who’s had a bad morning is a different animal in that carrier.”

“Okay.”

“So my treatment was Thursday, one thirty. I called and tried to change it, but it’s Danny’s last slot of the day. He’s my PT.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Here’s the part that concerns you,” he said.

“Okay.”

“When you get her home from the appointment, she gets the thyroid dose from you at three. It’s a gel. It goes in the ear, the inside flap, and you rub it in, and you don’t touch your own face afterward. She takes it fine. She’s not dramatic about the medicine; she’s dramatic about the carrier.”

“Right.”

“Then she needs somebody in the house for a while after. That’s also you. It’s not because anything happens. It’s because she’s been in a car and handled by strangers, and she comes home and sits under the bed. If there’s nobody in the condo, she stays under the bed all night and doesn’t eat, and then Friday I’m dealing with a cat who’s decided to act insulted for a week.” He drank. “You don’t have to do anything. You sit on the couch. She comes out on her own schedule and pretends it was her idea. Forty-five minutes. By then, I’ll be on my way home after Danny and groceries.”

“Okay.”

“Thursday. One-thirty vet, gel at three, and she eats after. Key’s under the thing by the meter.”

He didn’t ask a question, but it wasn’t an imposition. Trier was trusting me with the most important thing in his life.