Page 25

First stop is Denver, which means a rematch with the team that beat us, which means everybody on the plane has already watched my overtime turnover at least once. The hotel is one of those tall, shiny ones downtown with a lobby that smells like a candle called Luxury. The travel coordinator, a small tired woman named Beth, stands by the elevator handing out key cards in little paper sleeves.

"Castel," she says. "Fourteen-twelve. With Hale."

A couple of guys waiting for the elevator turn around to look at me. Brandt's one of them. He smiles.

"Big day," he says. "Sleepover with the captain."

"Jealous?"

"Terrified," Brandt says. "For him."

The elevator comes. I don't get in. I wait for the next one, alone, and I ride up fourteen floors watching my own face in the gold doors and trying to decide what kind of face to have when I walk into the room.

Hale's already there.

It's two queen beds, a desk, a TV, a window with a view of a parking structure and, past it, a stripe of mountains going pink in the last of the sun. Hale's suitcase is open on the bed closest to the door, and everything in it is folded. Not packed. Folded. In squares.

He's sitting at the desk writing something on the hotel notepad. He doesn't look up.

"Hi, roomie," I say.

"Don't call me that."

"Hi, roommate. Hi, colleague. Hi, Captain Hale, sir."

He tears the page off the notepad, then the one under it, and holds them out without turning around.

I take them. It's two full pages, both sides, in the same blocky capital letters he used on my puck.

RULES.

"You're kidding," I say.

"Read it."

"You wrote rules at the top. In capital letters. You underlined it. Twice."

"Read it, Castel."

I sit down on the other bed, cross my legs under me, and read out loud, because if he's going to make me read it, he's going to have to listen.

"One. Lights out at ten-thirty on game nights. Eleven-thirty on off nights." I look up. "Are you my grandmother?"

"Keep going."

"Two. No music without headphones. Okay, fair. Three. Bathroom schedule. I shower first in the morning. You shower first at night." I flip the page over. "You thought about this."

"I had a flight."

"You had a three-hour flight and you spent it writing a bathroom schedule." I keep reading. "Four. Clothes stay on your side of the room. Gear bag goes by the door, not on the bed. Five. No visitors." I look up again. "Who do you think I'm going to bring up here? It's Denver. I don't know anybody in Denver."

"You'll make friends. You make friends with everybody."

"That's nice. That's almost a compliment."

"It's not a compliment. It's a risk assessment."

I laugh. I can't help it. Voyons, a risk assessment. It comes out loud in the quiet room, and his shoulders move, just a little, like he's trying not to react to it.