Page 6 of Summer Skate

CARTER

I AM MAKING COFFEE WITH A coffee machine I didn’t buy, in a kitchen I don’t own.

I stayed out later than everyone else last night, yet somehow I’m up first. Yup.

It’s just me and the girls, the random girls strewn about the house.

They’re in the bedrooms. They’re by the pool.

But they aren’t making anybody breakfast, so that’s what I do.

I pour raspberries and blueberries out of their green cartons onto a large plate. I cut peaches into neat slices. There’s something soothing about this ritual, arranging fruit in the morning, like you can erase whatever chaos came the night before and start over.

I rent this house with my former college teammates, Harps and JT.

Scott Harper is a goalie from upstate New York.

He’s quiet, so quiet that you can’t tell if he’s depressed or happy.

You’d have to decipher whatever wildly outlandish thing he says under his breath.

He’s into astrological signs. From Monday to Thursday, he does sunrise yoga, reads the classics—Hemingway, Kerouac—and looks through his telescope.

What’s he looking at? Nobody knows. But then, Friday to Sunday, he goes, and he goes hard. Booze. Girls. A lot of cocaine.

Jack Thomas, JT, is a left winger from Canada.

He loves electronic music, like deep house.

He plays it every chance he gets. He dresses like a white rapper and doesn’t give a fuck about anything.

He’s always high, always going up or down.

He sniffs out all the late-night parties.

But he knows who he is. He’s accepted it.

And I mean that. He has an arm tattoo that says I am what I am .

A scout from the Rangers came to see me at UNH during my freshman year and ended up drafting all three of us.

I was a first-round pick, meant to finish my degree and go straight from college to the NHL.

JT and Harps will go to Hartford to play in the American League for a few years before they get a chance at the show.

The Hartford Wolfpack is the New York Rangers’ minor league team in the AHL.

It’s where most draft picks go to play for a few years until they’re ready for the NHL.

I’m putting the peach slices next to the berries in an orderly fashion. The girls occasionally walk by with their tight tank tops, high ponytails, and 90s sunglasses, the thin lenses barely covering their eyes. They look like snakes.

There is a knock on the door and the sound of somebody letting themselves in.

“Hello?” a female voice bellows from the front hallway. It’s JT’s older sister, Jill.

“Hi,” I yell back. “The guys are still asleep.”

She comes into the kitchen wearing a long, pink-and-white checkered caftan and pink clogs.

She’s the one who hooked the boys up with their summer job, a catering gig.

They’ll make a ton of money, she assured them.

I have a signing bonus, so I didn’t need the job.

All I had to do was spend the summer in close proximity to New York City to be available for the team.

I ask, “What’d you get up to last night?”

She doesn’t respond, just sighs audibly, and then goes banging on doors, barging into the bedrooms clapping her hands and clicking her clogs, waking the guys up.

“What is going on in here?” she shouts from the upstairs hallway. “It’s almost ten! Why isn’t anyone awake? You do realize that you have an obligation ?”

“Could you chill ?” I hear JT say to her. “It’s an eleven o’clock party. We have, like, ten hours.”

“ What? The party is at eleven a.m .!”

“Eleven a.m .?”

“Yes! It starts in an hour.”

“What kind of party . . . It’s not at night?”

“Why would you just assume it’s at night?”

“It said, ‘Welcome to the jungle’ on the invitation! In neon lights! I thought it was a Guns N’ Roses–themed rager.”

“Oh my god. It’s a nine-year-old’s birthday party. Junglethemed.”

I start cackling.

Jill comes up to me, grabs my chin, and says in a sing-songy voice: “If you don’t stop laughing, we won’t bring you back any cake.”

I shake my chin loose and get back to my fruit. She is aghast at our kitchen, holding up an empty bottle of tequila and throwing beer cans into a garbage bag. JT is walking around in his white wifebeater, looking confused.

“Your uniforms are at the venue,” she says to him. “Just put on anything.”

Harps puts on a hooded sweatshirt, left arm first. Like all goalies, he’s superstitious. Left shoe first, left arm first. Always.

Jill says: “Christ. You’re going to be late for your first gig. I’m so glad I recommended you for a job at Celebrate. That was a very shrewd move of mine.” They start moving at a faster pace.

“That’s what the company is called?” I ask. “ Celebrate ?”

“Yeah . . . so?”

I throw my hands up into the air. “It has no cachet, no island flair!”

She rolls her eyes and looks at the couch, starts collecting all the handbags off it.

“All right, ladies! Show’s over. Ubers, everyone! Back to Gurney’s! Last Jitney is leaving the station!”

One girl pouts and shouts something at her in Russian, presumably curse words.

JT crushes Adderall with a credit card onto the kitchen table. He and Harps both snort. Nose to table.

I shake my head at them. “You should have taken your Adderall an hour ago! You know what this is? This is an American League mindset. No berries for you.”

They ignore me completely. Harps grabs a bag of hamburger buns for the road. JT drinks water out of what appears to be a vase, leaves without shoes on, then comes back for them.

“Have you seen my shoes?”

“Get the fuck out of here! Your lack of motivation is contagious,” I say, and then catch a glimpse of the cover of the book on my kitchen counter.

The Mindful Path: 9 Weeks to Emotional Clarity and Inner Calm .

I had to take an anger management class in college, a decree from the coaching staff.

I keep the book around as a reminder, occasionally flipping through it.

I fight the urge to say more to them. If I stop talking and focus on my breath, I might achieve inner calm. Also, I won’t have to open that damn book.

“What are you going to do while we’re gone?” JT asks me. “Don’t get bored and fuck shit up, okay?”

“What am I going to fuck up here at this house at ten in the morning?”

JT throws his hands into the air. “Who knows what you’re capable of?”

Jill holds the front door open, glares at JT. “He’s fine! Let’s go !”

JT yells back at her, “You think he’s fine, and then suddenly some girl is calling me crying and he needs bail money! He’s a stealth bomber!”

The entire crew funnels out, and suddenly I am alone in this house and it feels strange. When you’re used to a steady level of noise, the quiet is jarring. But it feels good. I can lie around. Do whatever. Crank the music up.

I decide to go for a run.

It’s a foggy morning. The windows are so clouded up that I can’t see out of them.

I open the door to get a sense of the day.

The sky is white with a layer of mist transforming the landscape from green to gray.

The further away the trees, the whiter they appear.

Our house is mostly surrounded by woods.

It is silent. I see a bird on one of the steps that leads up to our door.

It is darting its head around, evaluating the situation, just like I am.

I feel a certain camaraderie with this bird.

I listen to it squawk, then wait with it in the silence for another to respond.

I start to wonder about birds and if they’re communicating with specific other birds or if every squawk is just a general message, out into the ether. Is anybody out there?

I hold my hand out to check for rain. If it’s raining, I can sit inside and do nothing, which would be super. But it’s not. I should go.

I go back inside, down a handful of berries, and then lace up my sneakers.

I head down the street, running at a steady pace.

I pass a few houses, their gardeners hard at work, trimming and raking.

I wind up in front of a farm. I see a woman in black bike shorts and a black T-shirt, hair in a low ponytail, running toward me.

Nice body. Is that the chick from a few nights ago?

Looks different in a ponytail. She sees me and quickly darts to the opposite side of the road, passes me by.

Well, we can’t have that.

“Hey!” I call, and then wait for a car to pass. I run across the street to catch up to her. She glances back and then stops running, stands there catching her breath. She has a look on her face that is not pleased.

I smile. “Did you finally get to sleep the other night?”

She rolls her eyes. “I did. Your evil plan didn’t work.”

“Huh?”

“Your evil plan . . . to keep me up all night.”

“What?”

“ Huh? What? ” she says, mimicking me. “Clearly, your hearing is impaired. You should try turning the music down.”

I laugh. “You know that expression . . . the music is so loud you can’t hear yourself think? I believe that was the point . . . Anyway, um . . . Feel like we got off on the wrong foot.” I stick my hand out. “Carter.”

She looks at my hand, then shakes it.

“Jessica,” she says, her slightly sweaty palm attached to mine.

On one side of us is an endless field of wheat, blowing in the breeze. On the other side, cars and trucks zoom by.

“Out for a run?” I ask her.

She smiles. “Nothing gets by you.”

I look down. I like her sneakers. Or maybe it’s her ankles.

I squint at her, holding my hand above my eyes to block the sun. “Do you want to race until the end of this wheat field?”

“I do not,” she says, without hesitation.

“Why not? It’ll be fun . . . or one of us will get hit by a Jeep Wrangler. Either way it’ll be memorable.”

Her eyes widen, suddenly animated. “Do you think it’d be a hit-and-run or would they hide the body?”

“Hide the body? Nobody in the Hamptons knows how to shovel.”

She laughs, shakes her head.

“So, how about it? End of the field?”