Page 4

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A ll the way from locker room to boardroom, the boys and men of Beartown Ice Hockey Club are brought together by a single motto: “High ceilings and thick walls.” Hard words are as much a part of the game as hard checks, but the building is solid and spacious enough to keep any fights that take place inside from spilling outside. That applies both on the ice and off it, because everyone needs to realize that the good of the club comes before anything else.

It’s early enough in the morning for the rest of the rink to be more or less empty, apart from the caretaker, the cleaner, and one solitary member of the boys’ team who’s skating up and down the ice. But from one of the offices on the upper floor, the loud voices of men in smart jackets echo out into the hallways. On the wall is a team photograph from about twenty years ago, from the year when Beartown Ice Hockey’s A-team was second-best in the country. Some of the men in the room were there then, others weren’t, but they’ve all made up their minds that they’re going back. This is no longer going to be a town languishing forgotten in the lower leagues. They’re going back to the elite again, to challenge the very biggest teams.

The club’s president is sitting at his desk. He’s the sweatiest man in the whole town, constantly worried, like a child who’s stolen something, and he’s sweating more than ever today. His shirt is littered with crumbs as he munches a sandwich so messily that you can’t help wondering if he’s actually misunderstood the whole concept of eating. He does that when he’s nervous. This is his office, but he has less power than any of the other men there.

Seen from the outside, a club’s hierarchy is simple: the board appoints a president, who is in charge of the day-to-day running of the club, and the president in turn appoints a general manager, who in turn recruits A-team players and employs coaches. The coaches pick the teams and no one pokes their oar into anyone else’s job. But behind closed doors it’s very different, and the club’s president always has reason to sweat. The men around him are board members and sponsors, one of them is a local councilor, and collectively they represent the largest investors and biggest employers in the whole district. And of course they’re all here “unofficially.” That’s how they describe it, when the men with all the influence and money just happen to gather to drink coffee together in the same place so early in the morning that not even the local reporters have woken up yet.

Beartown Ice Hockey’s coffee machine is in even greater need of a serious cleaning than the club’s president, so no one is here on account of the contents of their cups. Each man in the room has his own agenda, his own ambitions for a successful club, but they have one important thing in common: they agree on who ought to be fired.

***

Peter was born and raised in Beartown, and he has been a lot of different men here: a kid in skating classes, a promising junior, the youngest player on the A-team, the team captain who almost made them the best in the country, the big star who went professional in the NHL, and finally the hero who returned home to become GM.

And at this precise moment he is a man who is swaying sleepily back and forth in the hall of his small house, hitting his head on the hat rack roughly every third time and muttering, “For God’s sake... has anyone seen the keys to the Volvo?”

He hunts through all the pockets of his jacket for the fourth time. His twelve-year-old son comes down the hall and skips nimbly around him without having to take his eyes off his cell phone.

“Have you seen the keys to the Volvo, Leo?”

“Ask Mom.”

“Where’s Mom, then?”

“Ask Maya.”

Leo disappears into the bathroom. Peter takes a deep breath.

“Darling?”

No answer. He looks at his phone. He’s already received four texts from the club’s president telling him he needs to get to the office. In an average week Peter spends seventy to eighty hours at the rink, but even so, barely ever has time to watch his own son’s training sessions. He’s got a set of golf clubs in the car that he uses maybe twice each summer if he’s lucky. His work as GM takes up all his time: he negotiates contracts with players, talks to agents on the phone, sits in a dark video-room studying potential recruits. But this is only a small club, so when he’s done with his own work he helps the caretaker change fluorescent light bulbs and sharpen skates, reserves buses for away matches, orders equipment, and acts as a travel agent and building manager, spending as many hours maintaining the rink as he does building the team. That takes the rest of each day. Hockey is never satisfied being part of your life, it wants to be all of it.

When Peter accepted the post, he spent a whole night talking on the phone to Sune, the man who has been coach of Beartown’s A-team since Peter was a boy. It was Sune who taught Peter to skate, who offered him a place to stay when the boy’s own home was full of alcohol and bruises. He became far more of a mentor and father figure than a coach, and there have been times in Peter’s life when the old man has been the only person he felt he could really trust. “You need to be the lynchpin now,” Sune explained to the new GM. “Everyone’s got their own axe to grind here: the sponsors, the politicians, the supporters, the coaches and players and parents, all trying to drag the club in their direction. You have to pull them all together.”

When Kira woke up the following morning, Peter explained the job to her in even simpler terms: “Everyone in Beartown has this burning passion for hockey. My job is to make sure no one catches on fire.” Kira kissed him on the forehead and told him he was an idiot.

“DARLING HAVE YOU SEEN THE KEYS TO THE VOLVO?” Peter yells to the house in general.

No answer.

***

The men in the office go through what has to be done, coldly and dispassionately, as if they were talking about replacing a piece of furniture. In the old team photograph, Peter Andersson is standing in the middle; he was team captain then, GM now. It’s the perfect success story—the men in the room know the importance of building up that sort of mythology for the media as well as the fans. Next to Peter in the photograph stands Sune, the A-team coach, who persuaded Peter to move home from Canada with his family after his career as a professional player came to an end. The pair of them rebuilt the youth team with the ambition of one day having the best junior team in the country. Everyone laughed back then, but no one’s laughing now. Tomorrow those juniors are playing a semifinal game, and next year Kevin Erdahl and a few of the others will be moving up to the A-team, the sponsors will pile millions into the club, and their challenge to get back to the elite will begin in earnest. And that wouldn’t have happened without Peter, who has always been Sune’s best pupil.

One of the sponsors looks at his watch irritably.

“Shouldn’t he be here by now?”

The president’s phone slips between his sweaty fingers.

“I’m sure he’s on his way. He’s probably dropping the kids off at school.”

The sponsor gives him a condescending smile. “Has his lawyer wife got a more important meeting than him, as usual? Is this a job or a hobby for Peter?”

One of the board members clears his throat and says, partly in jest and partly not, “We need a GM with steel-toed boots. Not slippers.”

The sponsor smiles and suggests, “Maybe we should employ his wife instead? A GM with sharp stilettos would work pretty well, wouldn’t it?” The men in the room laugh. It echoes, all the way to the high ceilings.

***

Peter heads for the kitchen in search of his wife, but finds his daughter’s best friend, Ana, instead. She’s making a smoothie. Or at least he thinks she is, because the whole countertop is covered with an evil pink sludge that’s oozing steadily toward the edge, preparing to attack, conquer, and annex the parquet floor. Ana takes her headphones off.

“Good morning! Your blender’s super-complicated!”

Peter takes a deep breath.

“Hello, Ana. You’re here... early.”

“No, I slept over,” she replies breezily.

“Again? That makes... four nights in a row now?”

“I haven’t been keeping count.”

“No. So I see. Thanks. But don’t you think it might be time to go home one evening and... I don’t know... get some fresh clothes from your own closet or something?”

“Don’t have to worry about that. I’ve got pretty much all my clothes here anyway.”

Peter massages the back of his neck and really does try to look as delighted at this as Ana does.

“That’s... just great. But won’t your dad be missing you?”

“No worries. We talk a lot on the phone and stuff.”

“Yes, of course. But I suppose you’ll have to go home one day and sleep in your own bed? Maybe?”

Ana forces rather too many unidentifiable frozen berries and pieces of fruit into the blender and stares at him in surprise.

“Okay. But that’s going to be seriously complicated now that all my clothes are here, isn’t it?”

Peter stands motionless for a long while, just looking at her. Then she switches on the blender without putting the lid on first. Peter turns and goes out into the hall, and yells with rapidly increasing desperation:

“DARLING!”

***

Maya is still lying on her bed, slowly picking at the strings of the guitar and letting the notes bounce off the walls and ceiling until they dissolve into nothingness. Tiny, desolate cries for company. She hears Ana on the rampage in the kitchen, she hears her frustrated parents push past each other in the hall, her dad barely awake and vaguely surprised, as if every morning he wakes up somewhere he’s never been before, and her mom with the body language of a remote-controlled lawn mower whose obstacle-sensor has broken.

***

Her name is Kira, but she’s never heard anyone in Beartown say that. In the end she just gave up and let them call her “Kia.” People are so sparing with their words here that they don’t even seem to want to waste consonants. Back at the start Kira used to entertain herself by saying “You mean Pete?” whenever anyone in town asked after her husband. But they all used to look at her so seriously and repeat, “No, Peter!” Like everything else, irony freezes here. So now Kira merely amuses herself by noting that her children have names that demonstrate an exemplary economy with consonants, Leo and Maya, to stop anyone’s head exploding at the council registry office.

She moves through the little house with practiced movements, getting dressed and drinking coffee simultaneously as she progresses ever onward through the bathroom, hall, and kitchen. She picks up a sweater from her daughter’s bedroom floor in passing and folds it in one fluid motion without for a moment interrupting her exhortations that it’s time to put the guitar down and get up.

“Go and have a shower; you smell like you and Ana set the room on fire and tried to put it out with Red Bull. Dad’s driving you to school in twenty minutes.”

Maya rolls out from under the comforter, reluctant but wise from experience. Her mom isn’t the sort you argue with; her mom is a lawyer, and she never quite stops being one.

“Dad said you were driving us to school.”

“Dad has been misinformed. And will you please ask Ana to clean the kitchen when she’s finished making her smoothie? I love her dearly, she’s your best friend, I don’t care if she sleeps here more often than she sleeps at home, but if she’s going to make smoothies in our kitchen she’s going to have to learn to put the lid on the blender, and you need to teach her at least the most basic functions of a damned dishcloth. Okay?”

Maya leans the guitar against the wall and heads toward the bathroom, and when her back is turned she rolls her eyes so far that an X-ray would have confused her pupils with kidneys.

“And don’t you roll your eyes at me. I can see you doing it even if I can’t see you doing it,” her mom snarls.

“Speculation and hearsay,” her daughter mutters.

“I’ve told you, people only say that on television,” her mom retorts.

Her daughter responds by closing the bathroom door with unnecessary force. Peter is yelling “Darling!!!” from somewhere in the house. Kira picks up yet another sweater from the floor and hears Ana exclaim, “Oh, hell,” just before she redecorates the kitchen ceiling with smoothie.

“I could have done something else with my life, you know,” Kira says quietly to no one at all as she slips the keys to the Volvo into her jacket pocket.

***

The men in the office are still laughing at the joke about stilettos when the sound of a tentative throat clearing reaches the desk from the door. The club’s manager beckons the cleaner in without looking at her. The cleaner apologizes to them all, but most of the men ignore her, even if one of them helpfully lifts his feet when the woman reaches to empty the wastepaper bin. The cleaner thanks him, but no one notices. It doesn’t bother her; Fatima’s greatest talent is not disturbing anyone. She waits until she’s in the hallway before clutching her back and emitting a short groan of pain. She doesn’t want anyone to see and tell Amat. Her beloved boy always worries too much.

***

Sweat is stinging Amat’s eyes as he glides to a halt by the boards down on the rink. His stick is resting on the ice, the moisture in his gloves makes his fingers slip a bit, his breath catches in his throat as lactic acid fills his thighs. The stands are empty but he keeps glancing up at them every now and then. His mom always says they must be grateful, the pair of them, and he understands her. No one is more grateful than her, toward this country, this town, these people, and this club, toward the council, their neighbors, her employer. Grateful, grateful, grateful. That’s the role of mothers. But the role of children is to dream. So her son dreams that his mother will one day be able to walk into a room without having to apologize.

He blinks the sweat from his eyes, adjusts his helmet, and pushes his skates into the ice. One more time. One more time. One more time.

***

Peter has now missed four calls from the club’s president, and glances anxiously at the time as Kira enters the kitchen. With a smile she looks at the sticky disaster on the countertop and floor, and knows that Peter must be screaming hysterically inside. They have different ideas about cleanliness: Kira doesn’t like clothes on the floor, but Peter really loathes anything sticky and messy. When they first met his entire apartment looked like he’d been burgled, apart from the kitchen and bathroom, which looked like operating rooms. Kira’s apartment was the exact opposite. It would be safe to say they weren’t an obvious match.

“There you are! I’m late for my meeting at the rink. Have you seen the keys to the Volvo?” he splutters.

He’s tried to put on a jacket and tie, with mixed results, as usual. Kira’s outfit is impeccable, as if the fabric were in thrall to her body. She’s drinking coffee and pulling her coat on in the same fluid, one-handed gesture.

“Yep.”

He stands there red-faced, his hair on end, his socks smeared with smoothie, and asks: “Do you feel like telling me where they are?”

“They’re in my pocket.”

“What? Why?”

Kira kisses his forehead.

“That’s a very good question, sweetie. I suppose I thought they’d come in handy if I was going to drive the Volvo to work. Seeing as it might be thought a little inappropriate if my clients’ lawyer turned up in a hot-wired car.”

Peter scratches at his hair with both hands.

“But... what the... You can take the other car, can’t you?”

“No, because you’re taking the other car to the garage. After you’ve dropped the kids off at school. We talked about it.”

“We haven’t talked about it.”

Instinctively, Peter wipes the bottom of her coffee cup with a piece of paper towel. She smiles.

“Darling, it’s written on the calendar on the fridge.”

“But you can’t just put things on there without talking to me.”

She carefully raises one of her eyebrows.

“We did talk. We’re talking now. We do nothing but talk. Listening, on the other hand...”

“Please, Kira, I’ve got a meeting! If I’m late...”

“Absolutely, darling. Absolutely. If I get to work late an innocent person might end up in prison. Sorry, I interrupted you. Tell me more about what happens if you’re late?”

He breathes through his nose, as calmly as he can. “It’s the biggest game of the year tomorrow, darling.”

“I know, darling. And tomorrow I’ll pretend that it’s important. But until then you’ll have to make do with the rest of the town thinking it is.”

She’s hard to impress. That’s simultaneously what he finds most attractive and most irritating about her. He tries to find a stronger argument, but Kira just lets out a theatrical sigh, puts the keys to the Volvo on the table, and clenches her fist in front of her husband.

“Okay. Rock-paper-scissors, then.”

Peter shakes his head and tries to stop himself from laughing.

“What are you? Eight years old?”

Kira raises an eyebrow again.

“What are you? A coward?”

Peter’s smile vanishes in an instant as he fixes his eyes on her and clenches his own fist. Kira counts to three out loud, Peter does paper, Kira very blatantly waits half a second longer and then quickly forms her fingers into scissors. Peter yells at her, but by then she’s already snatched up the keys and is heading for the door.

“But you cheated !”

“Don’t be a sore loser, darling. Bye, kids, be nice to Dad. Or at least reasonably nice.”

Peter stands where he is in the kitchen, shouting:

“Don’t you dare leave! Cheat!”

He turns to look at the calendar on the fridge.

“There’s not even anything on here about taking the car...”

The front door closes behind Kira. The Volvo starts up outside. Ana is standing in the kitchen, grinning, with a thick smoothie-moustache on her upper lip.

“Have you ever got the better of her at anything, Peter?”

Peter massages his scalp.

“Would you mind fetching my son and daughter and telling them to put their clothes on and get in the car?”

Ana nods eagerly.

“Sure! I just need to clean up in here first!”

Peter shakes his head imploringly and takes out a fresh roll of paper towels.

“No... no, Ana... please don’t. I can’t help thinking that would only make things worse.”

***

Once the laughter in the office has subsided, one of the sponsors looks grimly at the club’s president, taps his knuckles on his desk and asks:

“So? Is there going to be any problem with Peter?”

The president mops his brow, shakes his head. “Peter does what’s best for the club. Always. You know that.”

The sponsor stands up, buttons his jacket, and empties his cup.

“Well, then. I’ve got another meeting to go to, but I trust you’ll explain things to him. Remind him where the money for his wages comes from. We all know how he feels about Sune, but we can’t allow any leaks to the media about internal conflict here.”

The club’s president doesn’t have to answer. No one knows more about the thickness of the walls than Peter. He’ll put the club first. Even today, when he’s going to be ordered to eject Sune from it.