Page 10 of Summer Skate

CARTER

W E ’ RE DONE TRAINING FOR THE DAY . Game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals is on.

I have a house full of a hundred of my closest acquaintances.

What more could you want from a summer night in the Hamptons?

I am flying high, high , as I move about the living room full of girls trying everything in the book to get me to go up to my bedroom.

Can I do cocaine in your bathroom?

Sure. Go ahead .

You won’t do a bump with me?

Maybe later .

I’m cold. Do you have a sweatshirt I can borrow?

You can check .

I don’t go. I don’t go because it’s too easy . I’ve seen this dance before. It’s sex without the chase. Hard pass.

Then I see my neighbor walk into our house in a white dress, like a fucking angel. She looks so sophisticated and cool, like she should be at a different party. And yet: What’s she doing here? Maybe I wasn’t so repulsive to her, after all.

“Decided to join in on the action, huh?” I say, approaching her.

She replies: “I’m not technically crashing. Your friends invited me.”

“They did?”

“Well, first they fell through my hedges. Then they invited me.”

I look across the room, at JT and Harps sitting on our couch and watching the game. I am suddenly overcome with affection for them. “You gotta love ’em.”

My hand instinctively moves to touch her bare forearm, but I pull it quickly away, as if touching something hot.

“Let me get you a drink.”

She doesn’t reply. I turn to go. I turn back. “Is beer okay?”

She shrugs. “Sure.”

There is a goal called off. It’s going to a review. Everyone is yelling.

“Bullshit. There’s no way that’s offside,” I hear JT say.

I reply, “They changed the rule. If a player’s skate is in the air but isn’t completely in the offensive zone, he’s onside.”

“I guess I didn’t get the memo.”

I shake my head. “There’s that American League mindset again.”

“Fuck off.”

I go to the kitchen and return to Jessica with her beer. “So what’s all this about you playing for the Rangers?” she asks. “Madison Square Garden. Center of the universe.”

“Have you been to a game?”

She looks up, thinking. “No, but I’ve gone to many concerts there. My first was Bob Dylan when I was ten. Who else? Eric Clapton, Billy Joel, Elton John. Um . . . Phish, Grateful Dead, Dave Matthews, of course. You’re going to have to put on quite a show.”

“I’m planning on it.”

“You sound sure of yourself.”

“No other way to be.”

She nods, takes a long sip and then squints across the room, through the windows, at the table on our patio, which is littered with red cups. “Is that beer pong?”

“It sure is.”

She takes another sip. “Can I play?”

I glance outside. “You want to play beer pong?”

“Yes,” she says. “I sure do.”

I laugh and motion for her to lead the way.

We wait beside the table for the current game to finish. Jessica sips her beer. When the new game begins, I make sure we are teammates.

I miss my first shot but then sink the next two. She sinks her first two.

“I don’t want this to go to your head, but . . . ”

“I know,” she says. “I’m very good.”

“Ah. So it’s already gone to your head.”

She laughs, clutching her beer. Before long, we are within certain victory. With three cups left, she sinks two. I hit the last one. A new set of opponents wants to play. They begin setting up the cups.

“I see now why you wanted to play,” I say.

“I play to win,” she replies, swaying around, ignoring me in favor of the music.

She’s not kidding. She is hyperfocused on winning. She turns to the table. “Can you make the triangle a little tighter?” she says to the other team, arranging our cups.

Soon she’s all fired up about one guy who keeps leaning over the table. “His wrist is halfway across the table! An inch further and he’ll be touching my stomach!”

Instinctively, I look down. Her dress is tight around her hips, and I can see the faint outline of her body.

“What do you want me to do about it?” I ask. “Lock him in the basement? Call a violation!”

“I’m not calling a violation! That’s absurd.”

At one point, our opponent sneezes. “Bless you,” I say.

Jessica turns to me. “Why would you say that? He’s our enemy.”

“It was a hesitant ‘bless you.’ My heart wasn’t in it.”

“He’s our enemy and he’s cheating.”

“Don’t have such a chip on your shoulder.”

“I always play with a chip on my shoulder. That’s why I’m so good.”

She hands me the ball and my fingertips graze hers. She winces as somebody turns up the volume on the music.

“I just realized that all I know about you is that you dislike loud music and can’t play hockey for shit.”

She rolls her eyes. “What would you like to know?”

Where have you been all my life?

“Is that house . . . where you live . . . all the time?”

“I live in Manhattan. Upper East Side. I grew up in the Village. I’m just here for a month.”

“Wow. So you’re actually from New York?”

“I am.”

“That must have been so strange, to grow up there.”

“Not really. It’s all I know. Where are you from? A frozen lake somewhere?”

She tosses the Ping-Pong ball. This girl is sinking every shot.

“What’s your last name?” I ask.

“Riley.”

“Is that your married name?”

She stops and stares at me. “It’s my name name.”

I can’t bring myself to inquire directly. At this point, I don’t even care.

“So is Harlem really a dangerous place?” I ask.

“No. There’s a Rao’s.”

“What’s a Rao’s? Is that like . . . a Mafia thing?”

“It’s more of a tomato sauce thing.”

I toss the ball and it clunks off the edge of a cup. I try to think of another New York question.

“Is the pizza really that good?” I ask.

She gives me a long look, like I’m a fucking idiot, but then she starts to smile.

“In some places, yes. I’m partial to the Village places.

But it really depends on what you’re looking for.

John’s on Bleecker has the best pies, with toppings.

Onions and meatballs, if you’re serious, and I think that you should be.

If you’re looking for a plain cheese slice, I’d go to Joe’s.

But not just any Joe’s. The Joe’s on Carmine Street.

But you can’t get it delivered or purchase the slice and then leave.

You have to eat it there, within the establishment .

Seriously, if you take it a few blocks away to Washington Square Park, you’re eating something else entirely. ”

I am amazed. “I should write this down.”

“You absolutely should,” she says. “You never left college to come to New York?”

“No,” I say. “I didn’t have any money. So what’s your book about?”

“You can’t ask a writer that.”

“Why?”

“Think about the plot of any book or movie. In isolation, it always sounds idiotic.”

“Try me.”

She sighs. “It’s a retelling of Ulysses as a romantic comedy, about a girl in college who wants to sleep with her James Joyce professor. It takes place in modern day but there’s a lot of Greek mythology feathered throughout. Basically, it’s playing with the classic ‘hero’ story of The Odyssey .”

“So it all happens in one day, or what?”

“You’ve read Ulysses ?”

“I know the general plot. I’m not a total blockhead, Jessica.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

Who knows how many beers later, she is about six inches in front of me and I’m watching the bottom of her dress sway as she moves. It’s taking all my powers of restraint not to take one step forward.

“That’s a nice dress. You aren’t fucking around in that dress.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You know exactly what it means.”

She shrugs with a smile. “I grabbed the first thing I saw.”

“Well, it’s working for you.”

As time goes by, I am inching closer and closer to her. Before she takes her next shot, she stops, looks back at me, dark hair covering most of her face.

I freeze. I am two inches from having my arms around her.

She opens her mouth, eyebrows raised, and says: “Can you move?”

I don’t know. Can I? I move my head closer to her face, pretend that I can’t hear her. “What?”

“You’re crowding me,” she says, in a low voice.

“Oh. Sorry.” I back away, our eyes locked.

“Are we playing a game here or what?” our opponents yell from across the table.

“Sorry, guys! I was just telling Carter how my back is hurting . . . from carrying the team.”

I am amazed at how nothing is awkward with this girl.

She rolls with everything, gets along with everyone in the room.

My mind is flooded with calculations. Don’t go in for the kill tonight.

Play it cool. Don’t come on too strong. Just get her number or make a vague plan and then you can follow up later.

Ask her more questions about herself, then break it off, disappear, act aloof, leave her wanting more , which is a perfect plan except that she smells so good and everything in my body is screaming now, now, now .

“Oh my god!” A girl approaches Jessica. “Are you Jessica Riley, the author? I loved your book so much!”

“Yes!” Jessica says.

“Okay,” the girl says. “Stop everything. I need the inside scoop on how you came up with the character of Ben. He is so boyfriend goals! Is he your husband or something?”

I hold my breath. A girl comes up to me to ask if I can FaceTime her dad. Apparently, he’s a huge Rangers fan. I do it so that I can pretend I’m not listening to Jessica’s conversation, but I am. I have my eyes one place, and my ears another.

“No. No. Just a totally made-up character,” she says. “A little bit of this person and that.”

“Are you writing anything new?”

“I’m working on my second novel now.”

“That’s so exciting! How’s it going?”

She laughs lightly. “Okay . . . I came out here to concentrate, which is working . . . somewhat.”

“Do you live in the city?”

“Yeah!”

“Me too! That’s so funny! Whereabouts?”

“Upper East Side.”

“Oh my god! Me too !”

Well, well, what do you know . And then I hear a roar from the other room. My friends are freaking out over something. Jessica and this girl move across the room. I go to see what all the fuss is about.

A penalty call has turned into a fight. Crosby is pretending he got hit in the face. “Look at this fucking faker,” somebody says.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what he’s doing,” I say. “But so what? He’s trying to win the Stanley Cup. Get the fuck out of here—faking. What does that even mean?”

“It means play the game! It’s not honorable . It’s disrespectful. Total bullshit. He’s done this before.”

“Yeah, so? He didn’t invent it.”

The third period is over, and the game is going to overtime.

We are all glued. I am watching but also searching for Jessica in the crowd.

I am scanning scanning scanning for brown hair and a white dress.

Then I spot her and breathe a sigh of relief.

She’s still talking to that girl. It’s fine.

She’s still here. She’s occupied. I am praying she doesn’t leave, a bead of stress running up my spine.

I turn to Harps and say: “All right. Who’s going to score the overtime winner?”

“Crosby,” he says.

“No,” I say. “It’s going to be Max Talbot. He always plays his best in the most crucial moment. He’s not afraid to run into the fire.”

The Penguins score in the first two minutes of overtime—Crosby indeed—and win the Stanley Cup. I lose myself in watching the celebration. The greatest trophy in sports. And then, I lose Jessica. I look around the room. I turn to Harps.

“Have you seen Jessica?”

“No . . . but you know she’s married, right?”

I can barely hear him. I’m too busy scanning the room.

“Carter?” he says to me. “HELLO?” I don’t answer. He grabs me by the shoulders to get my attention. “Are you going after her?”

Carter?

Hello?

WHY?

I look at Harps, the TV screen, then back at him. “What do you mean ‘why?’ For the love of the game ,” I say.

He is silent.

I walk around the house, which is more difficult now, as it’s gotten even more crowded. Jessica is nowhere to be found.

She probably left. Fuck .

I push through all the bodies and check every room and can’t find her anywhere.

I go outside to smoke something, drown my sorrows.

And there she is, by the pool, talking to JT. They’re both laughing. Well, I wanted her before, but now I have to have her. And it has to be tonight.

She touches her fingers to his chest, pushing him slightly. He pretends to fall dramatically backward. Hamming it up as always. But every girl at this party is the same to him.

My body is tense, operating without my control. I can feel a knot inside of me, threatening to expand, the slight vibration of my bones. I walk up to them.

“Hey,” I say to him, not looking at her. “Can you take out the garbage?”

He stares back at me. “Absolutely. Give me ten minutes.”

They are clearly in the middle of something, and there is nothing left for me to do but walk away.

In my walk of shame across my own house, I am wondering if I’ve played this all wrong.

I feel my irritation rising, a poison needing to escape.

I think about that damn book. Chapter 7 : Tackling Daily Life: Any reaction you have to anything that’s above a six is a reaction to something else .

Ten minutes? Okay. Ten minutes.

I push my way through the crowd and go down to the basement where it is quiet. I put on Nirvana. “Lithium.” I set the boxing clock that we keep in our basement for training to ten minutes. The oversized clock begins to count down, the numbers in menacing red.

I stand on the synthetic ice and fire pucks into the net. I am hitting them hard. I am starting to sweat.

I shoot until I hear the buzzer and see the 00:00 flashing.

Time’s up.

I rush back upstairs. Back outside to the pool area. But I can’t find JT or Jessica. To get my heart to slow down, as I move about the room, I do one of my exercises.

Identify five things you can see . . . a blue hat, an open window, plastic cups, lit cigarettes, smoke.

Four you can touch . . . my jeans, the hair on the back of my neck, the hard bone at the top of my nose, the skin on the inside of my palm.

Three you can hear . . . the bass of the music, people shouting, sportscasters on the TV.

Two you can smell . . . beer, sweat.

One you can taste . . .

And then I see her, walking through the sea of bodies that is our living room, toward the door.

I need to get to her before she leaves. Luckily, it is difficult for her to get through.

She is moving slowly. I push people. I make my way.

Once I’m behind her, I get as close as I can, until I can feel the temperature of her skin, and then I run my hands down the side of her body, her waist, hips, the sides of her legs. She turns.