Page 23 of Summer Skate

CARTER

I’m riding such a high that I want to get after it now. I want to get it done. I’m the one to suggest it. I get everyone in the car and drive us to the nearest track.

At the track, I look up at the scoreboard: Southampton High School in white and maroon lettering, looming over the football field. The track surrounds the field.

I’m killing JT and Harps.

“You’re feeling awfully good about yourself today,” JT says, taking a sip of water. “Is this the Jessica effect?”

“No,” I say. “Last month of training. That’s all.”

I will admit nothing.

After the fourth lap, Harps is gasping for wind. By the fifth, JT starts to spit as we run, sucking snot in through his nose and mouth, basically falling apart.

Shirts come off. We’re grabbing towels. The time it takes to get our heart rates down gets longer.

“Holy fuck,” I hear JT say after the sixth lap. He’s breathing through his mouth. He’s done.

We’re pouring bottles of water on ourselves. Sweat is rolling down my forehead, the salt burning my eyes. We’ve got sweat bands on our wrists, and we’re using them, but with all the sweat, it’s still like running blind.

We are trying to push each other. We are shouting things like:

You have to dig deep in overtime!

Do you want to be a great third-period player? DO YOU?

By the eighth lap, we lose the ability to form words. JT quits altogether. On lap nine, Harps is dry heaving.

It’s like a tidal wave. I feel like I’m under ten feet of water, which turns into twenty. The mountain is getting higher and higher. I want to finish faster than I started, but it’s hard.

Once we’re done, I lie on the grass next to the track.

My phone rings from an unknown number. Oyster Bay . I pick up.

“Carter Hughes?”

“Yeah?”

“This is Mr. Howard’s executive assistant. He’d like to speak to you.”

I clear my throat. “Okay.”

I expect to hear him take the phone, but instead she says: “There’s a helicopter waiting for you at the East Hampton airport. It’ll be there for the next hour.”

“For me? Now?”

“Yes, Mr. Hughes.”

“Can I ask what this is regarding?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Do you know what this is about?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

I pause. “Is there any information you can give me?”

“We’ll see you soon.”

“Wait. Hold on.”

I hear the line go dead. FUCK. What is this?

“Who was that?” JT says.

“Nobody,” I say.

“Sounded like somebody,” says Harps.

They’re pretty out of it, too tired to ask me anything else. I say: “Let’s go.”

I don’t call my agent. I don’t tell my friends.

Nobody needs to know that Ryan Howard, owner of the Rangers, has called me for an impromptu meeting.

But they can see something is off. I’ve raced home, showered, and now I’m headed to “see a movie” in the middle of the day by myself. Not suspicious at all.

I drive to East Hampton and turn when I see the sign for the East Hampton Airport.

I walk onto the tarmac. There is a whole crew that greets me there, in navy polo shirts and pressed khakis.

They look like they’re about to welcome me onto a yacht.

I can’t believe this type of thing exists in real life. Why is this being sent for me?

On board, there are two pilots. A pretty flight attendant sits across from me.

We take off. It’s an incredible ride, flying over the edge of Long Island, following the coast and endless beaches.

Unfortunately, I can’t really take it in.

I don’t understand where I’m going or why.

A half hour later, we land on a helipad with the MSG logo on it.

They take me to the house in a golf cart.

The house is a large brick compound, with a long stone wall running along the edge of it. Inside, it is empty, but for the one woman showing me where to go.

We pass through a room with red walls, red chairs, and a massive gold chandelier.

Another room is pale blue, with a cabinet full of teacups and a dresser displaying pottery and porcelain plates.

There is a hallway filled with oil paintings and sculptures, a library with tiers and tiers of bookcases, a large fireplace adorned with marble busts of men.

It looks like an Italian museum, like the Vatican, or a scene out of The Godfather .

The ceilings are painted. The staircase is made of dark wood that is carved into leaves and flowers and the face of a lion.

She instructs me to go outside, which is where I find Howard, sitting on his expansive patio with his feet on the table and a newspaper in his hand. The patio is enclosed by stone pillars, and beyond that is a formal garden, roses and marble benches, hedges shaped like elephants, a velvet lawn.

He barely looks up at me. “Carter Hughes,” he mumbles. “How are you?”

“I’m good, boss. How are you?”

“How are you feeling? How’s your weight?”

“Great.”

“Do you feel strong? Ready for the season?”

I sit across from him and nod.

“How about something to drink? Water? Whiskey? A protein shake?”

I smile. “Is this a test?”

He juts out his lower lip. “I don’t have time for tests.”

I ask for water. I see no people anywhere, yet somehow the glass appears within no time.

He has a cigar in his mouth but it’s not lit. He just chews. He appears to be doing a crossword. He still isn’t looking at me.

“So you’re out in the Hamptons this summer.”

“I am,” is all I can muster.

“Heard you bumped into a friend of mine in Sag Harbor . . . ” He keeps talking to what seems like himself. “Heard you bumped into him quite hard . . . You don’t have many friends in business . . . The king has many servants, but not a lot of friends.”

Is he the king and I’m the servant? Or am I the king? And who’s the friend?

I am silent.

“Look. I like you. Not everyone does. But I do. So I’m going to be honest with you.” He looks at me directly for the first time. “It seems like you’re making a lot of assumptions.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, you think you can throw somebody across a restaurant. You think you can fuck other people’s wives. And everything will remain in place.” He pauses.

I take a sip of water. Other people’s wives . I’m not sure whether he’s talking about JT or Jessica.

“And the thing I love about hockey . . . the thing that you probably love about hockey . . . is that it’s always moving.

A play in any other sport doesn’t move nearly as fast. The whole sport is on wheels.

When I look at you, I see a guy who has crossed the line many times.

I see a guy who thinks that everything he has now will always be his, no matter what. ”

I feel a tightness in my throat.

He asks: “Are you familiar with Hindu philosophy?”

“Not really.”

“The Bhagavad Gita. Three-thousand-year-old Hindu scripture. Gotta be good, right?”

“I guess.”

“There’s a part in there I particularly like. It says: You’re entitled to your labor. You’re not entitled to the fruits of your labor.”

I stare at him.

“That’s it,” he says, looking up at me briefly. “You can go now.”

I pause, then stand.

As I walk out the door, I can hear him mumble: “The UV index is going to be high for the next few days. I would wear sunscreen if I were you.”

“Okay, boss. Thanks again.”

I leave in a fog. I am being ushered out of a house in Oyster Bay.

I am headed back to the Hamptons, to a house that isn’t mine.

There is no anchor in any of this, no way to see the center of gravity.

I feel like somebody has taken the ground from beneath me, and all that’s left is for me to float in space, and for some odd reason, in a helicopter.

When I get home, I don’t talk to anyone. JT and Harps go out. I don’t go. I need to stay home, where I’m surrounded by four walls, by my belongings, by things that feel real, that are certainly mine.

I shoot pucks and then go in the pool. When I go back into the house, I hear the door open. It’s JT’s sister, Jill.

“Where are the guys?” she asks me. “I have their paychecks.” She puts two envelopes on the kitchen table. She touches her hand to her forehead. She is wearing baggy sweatpants and a cropped T-shirt. She looks exhausted.

“They went to a vineyard,” I say. “And then they’re going to some beach barbecue/bonfire/clambake.”

She groans. “I have had it with the Hamptons,” she says, and plops down on our coach. She looks at me in a daze. “Do you have something that we can smoke?”

“I do,” I say. I go about preparing a joint.

She takes a couple of hits and rambles in between. She doesn’t stop talking, just unloads a series of long monologues on me.

“Everyone is white and rich and nobody has any concept of what life is like outside of this. It’s like this weird little alternate universe where everyone can ride around in their giant fucking SUVs and feel entitled.

Ohhhh those flowers are too big! It looks like Bloomingdale’s!

Do you have a more bohemian tablecloth? Bohemian, but sophisticated bohemian.

I don’t want it to feel like Vermont! The canapés should be bite-sized!

Otherwise, it’s just grotesque! And the worst part is not the excess or the waste, which is considerable, it’s the fact that they don’t even realize how abnormally privileged they are.

They think that people are just irrationally jealous of them and how dare they sometimes show it. This is a legitimate woe of theirs.”

“Well, at least you haven’t become bitter or anything.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “I will tell you this. I am not the same person that I was at the beginning of the summer, Carter,” she says, shaking her head. “And you know what? I’m okay with that.”

At some point, I am just high enough to come clean about everything. I tell her about the incident at Tutto, about my meeting with Howard. After I’m done, she is quiet, contemplative.

“How bad is this?” I ask.

“You are such fucking idiots,” she says.

“Okay. Fine. But worst-case scenario, what can this guy do to us?”

“Well, JT could get his contract ripped up. That would take about eight seconds out of his day. And you could be traded to Winnipeg for spare parts.”

“He wouldn’t do that.”

She laughs. “Oh, he wouldn’t? You’re dealing with the owner of the Rangers, the Knicks, Madison Square Garden.

He doesn’t just own the teams. He owns the arena, the network.

And he’s the only owner in all of sports that has a setup like this, across all leagues.

He can sway political elections. Nobody has more juice than Ryan Howard. ”

“He wanted me on his team. I could have gone anywhere.”

“ Please . You think he gives a shit about you? His job is to manage his assets, and when he feels like an asset is no longer working for him, he gets rid of it.”