Page 26 of Omega’s Forward

I did not expect that and it takes me a second. “Then you’re an idiot.”

“Probably.”

“Is that it?”

“What do you want me to say?” He is not shouting. He has his hands on the counter, the same counter where we did that. He is looking at me steadily. I am not going to look away first. “I meant it. I’m not going to stand here and tell you I didn’t mean it.”

I stand there a moment longer. His scent is all over me. The suppressants have not gone down yet, and I want to close the distance so badly that I have to put my hand on the door frame.

“The league has called. Sponsors have called. One of them is worth nineteen million dollars. Maybe you’ll care about that. So now I have to go sit in my father’s box later and get photographed enjoying the game, because the captain of this team went out drinking and decided to have a moment.”

“Oh no,” he says, rolling his eyes. “What a terrible ordeal. I hope you’ll be okay.”

“Oh fuck you.”

“Fuck you too.”

I am absolutely ravenous. I’ve not eaten yet but there is no way that I am going past him to get to the fridge or attempt to close the gap between me and the coffee machine.

*

I have to sit in this damned box for three hours. I’ve not been in it since I was a child. Nothing has changed. Same grubby seats, same brass rail, same view down onto the ice from behind the net.

There is a photograph of Dad on the back wall now, next to the one of the 1998 team.

His usual seat was the fourth one along. I sit in the second.

The sponsors arrive at ten to seven. The naming rights man shakes my hand for a long time and says all the correct things about my father, and behind him is some kind of vice president whose name goes out of my head in the second it takes him to say it.

He sits down next to me and immediately starts talking a mile a minute.

“Now this is the thing about this building,” he says, before the anthem has finished. “Shot volume. You watch the shot volume tonight. They’re second in the league for shot volume and twenty-second for goals, and you know what that tells you.”

“Mm.”

“Shooting percentage. It’s all shooting percentage. Your father and I had this exact conversation, must be three years ago now, and he said to me, he said—”

He is off. He talks through the anthem and the puck drop and the first shift and he does not require anything from me at all. Every so often I say “Mmm” or “Right.” The other guy doesn’t watch the game at all. He’s on his phone, not paying much attention to anything else.

Maybe it’d be better if I had something to distract me too. I can’t spend my time on my phone. It’d be all over the media that I wasn’t into the game after that little stunt Callahan pulled.

I have to pretend to watch the hockey. That isn’t as hard as it sounds, but only because if I were being honest, I’m not really watching the hockey. I am watching number eight.

He is the biggest man on the ice and he skates differently from the rest of them, lower, no wasted movement, and he never looks like he is hurrying and he is always there first.

The building changes when Callahan is on. It gets louder in a different way. Everybody notices. I am not special.

None of this is because I have any interest in the sport.

Second period. He gets hit into the boards in front of us and the whole glass moves and my hand is on the rail before I have decided anything at all.

He gets up. Of course he gets up.

“That’s the thing about Callahan,” the naming-rights man says. “Fifteen years. Fifteen years in one city, you don’t see it anymore. Your father used to say he was the last one of those.”

“Mm.”

“They’ll all be gone in ten years, that type. All these skill guys now.”