Page 7 of Summer Skate

“Absolutely not. I never run that way.”

“Never? How come?”

“Because I don’t have a death wish .”

I laugh. “A death wish?”

“It’s dangerous! The cars barely have room to avoid hitting each other, let alone swerving to avoid runners.”

I look at the road. Looks safe to me.

“I don’t even like to drive on this road,” she says. “But I’m a lousy driver . . . I’m using the car of the guy whose house I’m borrowing and the other day, I accidentally drove it into town with the emergency brake on.” She winces. “Also, I don’t make left turns.”

“What do you mean? Ever?”

“Nope. No thanks. Don’t make ’em. Not interested.”

“How do you get anywhere?”

She smiles. “I don’t get very far, to be honest. But I’ve committed to a life without left turns. Some people don’t eat meat. I don’t make left turns.”

“Thank god you ran into me,” I say. “I’m gonna solve all your problems right now.”

She puts her hands on her hips. “Oh really?”

“Hand signals.”

She looks at me skeptically. “Hand signals?”

“You roll down your window and stick out your hand and make a big fuss to everyone involved over what move you’re about to make. Honk your horn. Wave your hand up and down. Do whatever you have to do to get everyone’s attention, then you can go wherever the fuck you want.”

She laughs. “I’m not doing that.”

“How about that race? Come on. Loser buys the winner lunch. I don’t want to sweeten the deal too much, but I have a live lobster clawing its way around my house right now. You can put it in the pot yourself. I mean it—I’ll just watch. You can do the honors.”

She exclaims: “What if I were an animal rights activist?”

I laugh. “Are you?”

I feel like she can’t fool me, like we’ve known each other for a while. This is Jessica. And Jessica is not an animal rights activist.

She points at me, smiles. “No . . . but you didn’t know that.” Didn’t I?

She turns to run in the opposite direction. And then, suddenly, I’m desperate to keep her from leaving, this girl I barely know. I have the odd sensation that I’ll miss her company. She’s made me laugh three times in the past three minutes.

“I’ll give you a five-second head start! Have you ever dropped a living thing in boiling water? It’s thrilling .”

She waves. “Bye, Carter.”

When I get back from my run, I text the guys:

Going to the rink today. Pick you up in front of the party at 2 .

I don’t give them the option to weigh in, or to bow out.

I pick them up in my car after they’re done with work and drive us all to the nearest rink, which is an hour away in Hauppauge.

The manager of the rink made some kind of arrangement with the Rangers’ strength and conditioning coach and the ice is available to us for the summer months, from six to eight A.M . or three to six P.M .

The drive takes us out of the unique area that is the Hamptons and into more standard suburbia.

Here, in vague parts of Long Island that nobody talks about, it reminds me of where I’m from in Pennsylvania: a ramshackle town that has a tavern and a few memorials and not much else.

It’s kind of like going back in time. Johnstown, Pennsylvania: home of the steel plant where they invented barbed wire.

Ninety percent of the people I grew up with stayed there, became pipe fitters or electricians or worked in a mine, which I can almost guarantee you is not as much fun as it sounds.

Iron, coal, or steel—take your pick. If someone is athletically gifted, they might make it out, but it doesn’t happen too often.

All my friends were basically fuckups. But my parents were teachers.

The picture of middle-class stability. They weren’t drug addicts or drunks, just people hardened from growing up in Johnstown, where there are a lot of floods, widows, death.

The average annual household income is twenty-three thousand dollars, and twenty-six percent of families live below the poverty line.

That I would someday require ice time within driving distance of the Hamptons was about as good a bet as the Americans beating the Russians in the 1980 Olympics.

When we get to the rink, everyone makes a big deal out of me being there. We shake hands with the manager, Tim McDonald. Tim has given us the referee’s dressing room to leave our equipment in for the summer, so we don’t have to lug it back and forth from the house.

JT takes a burning-hot shower before going out onto the ice, to warm himself up. Harps bounces a squash ball against the wall to get his auditory system going. He’s quiet as he gets dressed, but fast. An NHL player should be able to go from undressed to dressed in under four minutes.

I’m all too familiar with their routines. They’re not only my closest friends but also my training partners. It’s our first summer in the Hamptons, but our fourth summer training together.

We walk out onto the ice. An arena has a different smell when it’s hot outside. It’s the lingering scent of work versus fun. Players on the ice during the summer are all business.

People start to gather around the rink to watch us. They take pictures.

The rink is a little watery. I tell Tim the setting on the Zamboni must be off.

You need to use less water during the summer, because it’s not as cold outside.

He tells me he’ll have that adjusted right away.

The guys look at me like I’m nuts, but everything counts, and I’m not practicing on a watery rink while my competitors, in some other town, on some other practice rink, are getting it right.

As I circle the ice, JT starts chirping at me: “Ladies and gentlemen, the future holder of the record for most penalty minutes by a rookie in the NHL!”

Harps is laughing through his helmet.

“Can we get some music?” I say to Tim, who is standing at the side of the rink, watching us.

He shakes his head. “Sorry. House rule. No music during ice rentals.”

I look at him with wide eyes. “Are you serious?”

JT turns to Harps and sighs. “Here we go.”

Tim replies: “I’m afraid I can’t break this particular rule. Not even for you, Hughes.”

“I’m not asking you to break this rule. I’m asking you to invest in the future of the city of New York.”

Tim laughs.

“We’ll play better with music, don’t you think? Don’t you want us to go harder?”

He rolls his eyes.

I go on. “And what’s the harm? You go for a run and wear your headphones, don’t you? No music? Who made this rule? I guess I just really gotta question your dedication here, McDonald. Do you want to see the Rangers win a Stanley Cup or not?”

“Hughes . . . ” Tim is caving.

I smile widely. “You’re a team player, McDonald! I can feel it!”

Tim shakes his head and holds up his hands, laughs as he walks away. “I didn’t see anything.”

I skate over to the scorekeeper’s box and plug my phone into the speaker system. I put on CMG The Label’s album Gangsta Art .

We get Harps warmed up first. Two hundred shots in ten minutes.

It’s a feeding system whereby we shoot fifty pucks at his glove hand, fifty off his blocker, fifty right pad, fifty left pad.

We play a game of one-on-one. Me versus JT.

It gets the blood flowing. Our hands warmed up.

The only rule is that there’s no hooking or slashing because the last thing we need is a fight before we’ve even started the workout.

But then JT hits Harps on the shoulder with a shot and I go into defender move.

“You gotta keep your shot down in warmup! NHL players know how to control their shot!”

And then JT says: “Fuck you! I’m warming up too!”

We almost go at it, but don’t. Hockey players have the unique ability to fight each other in any situation. Doesn’t matter if they’re brothers or best friends. Immediately after it’s done, there’s no grudge held. The fight is the removal of the grudge.

We have a forty-minute skill session. We work on stick handling, passing, careful to keep our heads up the entire time.

We do one-on-one battle drills from below the hash marks.

Transition into some shooting from the face-off dots.

We practice quick-release shots. JT is giving me bad passes intentionally.

I have a fraction of a second to adjust. There’s no perfect pass in a game.

And we want to practice like we play, to expect the unexpected.

It’s a hundred shots from each corner. Harps has taken about a thousand shots at this point. By the end of forty minutes, it’s up to three thousand.

I face off against JT in the offensive zone. We race and battle for the puck. JT is continually hooking me and I’m getting annoyed. After the sixth hook, I make a quick stop, turn, and slash JT with a two-handed baseball swing across his legs that snaps my stick in two.

He yells over at Harps, “Discipline’s always been a problem with our buddy Carter.”

I get in his face. “My hands are too expensive to fight you, but I get my sticks for free.”

He shakes his head, skates away. “You’re an arrogant piece of shit.”

“Yeah, I am. You should try it sometime. You might make the team!”

He needs the motivation. To have my words ringing in his ears. That’ll help him a lot more than if I told him a bedtime story.

We do a “bag skate” at the end, which is slang for when a coach gets angry, and they say: “We’re gonna skate your bag off.” We go from one end of the rink to the other, touching each line, then skating back to the original starting point.

When we finish, JT and Harps are keeled over. Dead. Ready to get off the ice.

“Let’s have a breakaway competition,” I say. “Five breakaways each. And then we can go home.”

JT looks up at me. “You’re serious?”

“If you don’t have the ability to be the last man out and the first man on, you might as well just go the fuck home right now.”

He stares at me, raises his arm toward the net. “Let’s go.”

The two of us square off against Harps for the next ten minutes. Then we tap our sticks on the ice and head off.

“How was the practice session, boys?” Tim says to us as we change back into our normal clothes.

“Oh, it was awesome ,” I reply. “Really great. Top level. Quite a facility you’re running here, McDonald. Thank you very much for everything.”

I am feeling fantastic. Take all the breaths you want. The only thing that never fails to manage anger? Physical exhaustion.

“He’s getting all the bounces today,” JT says, glancing back at me. “Picking all the corners. He got his music. We can all rest easy now.”

“The only rest you need is a nap this afternoon so that you’re ready to go tonight,” I say.

Tim laughs. “I guess I won’t be seeing you guys in the morning.”

“You’ll see me,” I say.