Face-Off

by Michael Betcherman

“They needed Peter on the set for another day,” Roman said. “They’re flying out tomorrow.”

  “Guess you didn’t make the provincials,” Bill Novak said to Alex. “That’s too bad.” Alex shrugged, then glanced involuntarily at Lara. “Or not.”

  Or not. That would depend on what Lara said when he told her how he felt.

  They sat beside each other on the plane, watching the city recede into the distance as they climbed higher and higher. As soon as they were above the clouds, Lara opened her knapsack and took out her biology textbook. “I hate it when teachers give you homework over the holidays,” she said. “Why do they do that?”

  “Because they’re sad and bitter people whose only joy in life is causing misery to others.”

  “That must be it,” she said with a laugh as she opened her textbook.

  Alex watched her as he pretended to look out the window. She’s so beautiful, he thought. It took all his willpower to stop himself from telling her how he felt, but he knew he had to wait until they were alone. Ten hours on the plane and two more to clear customs and get to the hotel. It was going to be a long twelve hours. And a long two weeks if she said she didn’t think of him the same way.

  If she said she just wanted to be friends, he’d nod and say that was fine, but he knew that wasn’t possible. Whatever happened, their friendship, as it existed, was over. Things could never go back to the way they were. He glanced at her. Her head was buried in her textbook. Yup. It was going to be a long twelve hours.

  He managed to get a couple of hours of homework done before he dozed off. When he woke up, Lara was asleep, her head on his shoulder. A few loose strands of her hair tickled his cheek. He gently tucked them against her head. A smile flitted across her face.

  He wondered what he should say to her. He knew what he wanted to say, more or less; he just wasn’t sure exactly how he should say it. I’m in love with you. It was direct, and it was the truth, but there was no way he could say that. It would probably just freak her out. He ran through a few other scenarios before he came up with one he liked. I know we’ve been friends for a long time, but my feelings for you have changed. Plain and simple. The key was to find the right moment.

  Bill Novak came out of the washroom and walked down the aisle toward him. He was bent over at the waist so his head wouldn’t hit the ceiling. He smiled at Alex and sat down in the empty seat across the aisle, his knees tucked under his chin.

  “What do you think of the Canucks’ chances this year?” he asked.

  “If Lou keeps playing the way he’s playing, they’re going to be tough to beat.”

  “Spoken like a true goalie,” Bill said.

  The two of them talked hockey for the next couple of hours, until the pilot announced that the plane would be landing and asked everyone to return to their seats.

  Two hours later, just after noon local time, Alex and Lara were wheeling their suitcases off the elevator on the twelfth floor of the Hotel Excelsior in Grabel, the capital of Maldania.

  “What room are you in?” Alex asked.

  Lara checked her key card. “1212.”

  “I’m in 1210.” Right next door.

  They got to Lara’s room first. She swiped her card and opened the door. “What time are we meeting Boris?” she asked.

  “Five thirty.” Boris had invited Alex and Lara to his house for dinner. He hadn’t scheduled anything for the tour the first day so that everybody could rest up after the flight. It was three in the morning Vancouver time, and the tour group members would need the day to recover from jetlag.

  “Are you tired?” he asked.

  “Not really. You?”

  Alex shook his head. “Want to go for a walk?”

  “Sure.”

  Alex and Lara spent the afternoon wandering along the cobblestone streets of the Old City. It was the first trip to Europe for both of them and neither of them had seen anything like it. Narrow streets barely wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side; stone churches that were more than eight hundred years old; old men with grizzled beards playing chess and drinking coffee at sidewalk cafés. Lara took a million photos.

  The Old City had been heavily damaged during the war but most of it had been rebuilt. Occasionally, however, they came across a wall pitted with bullet holes, a bombed-out house without a roof, a reminder of the dark reality that lay beneath the fairy-tale exterior.

  “That’s beautiful,” Lara said when they turned a corner and found themselves staring at the sea through an opening in the stone wall that surrounded the Old City. They walked through the opening and onto the beach. A few locals were sunning themselves on the white sand.

  They walked to the shoreline. Lara snapped another picture and then took off her shoes, rolled up her pant legs, and dipped her foot into the water.

  “It’s warm,” she said. She walked out up to her knees.

  Alex followed her into the sea. Sunbeams danced on the water. A sailboat scooted by in the distance. Lara closed her eyes and held her face toward the sun. There was nobody else around. Alex had been waiting for the right moment and this was it. I know we’ve been friends for a long time, he silently rehearsed, but my feelings for you have changed. Before he could get the words out of his mouth, a wave rolled in, causing Lara to lose her balance. She stumbled against him. He caught her, stopping her from falling in the water. She looked up at him, making no effort to disengage. Their eyes met. Alex hesitated, but just for a moment, and then leaned down and kissed her on the lips. Lara responded.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” he said when they finally separated.

  “Me, too. That was nice.”

  “Really?” he asked, as if she might be lying.

  “Maybe you’d better do it again just to make sure.”

  They made sure for another half hour. “We’d better get back before Boris sends out a search party,” Alex said finally.

  After they returned from dinner at Boris’s house, they went to Lara’s room and made sure some more. It was nearly midnight by the time Alex got back to his room. He’d been awake for twenty-five straight hours, but he was high as a kite. He knew there was no way he was going to fall asleep so he Skyped Stefan.

  “I hate to say I told you so,” his brother said when Alex brought him up to speed, “but I told you so.”

  Alex didn’t mind one bit. “You were right,” he said.

  “Just so you know,” Stefan said before they signed off, “condom is the same in Berovian as it is in English.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Boris led the tour group to the top of the tower of the fourteenth-century palace.

  “It costs a lot to run a palace,” Boris said, “but the king of Maldania had a very effective way of raising revenue. He would kidnap wealthy people and if their families didn’t pay the ransom, he would make them walk off the tower. Needless to say his collection rate was very high.”

  Alex and Lara laughed along with everyone else as they peered over the metal railing that rimmed the tower, looking down at the jagged rocks hundreds of feet below. Lara leaned out and snapped a picture.

  “You might want to consider paying me back the money I lent you yesterday,” she said, putting a hand on Alex’s back and pretending to push.

  Alex laughed again but his thoughts were elsewhere. Things had gotten pretty hot and heavy in the week since they had their first kiss but they still hadn’t had sex. It was all he could think about. He felt a little embarrassed at being so obsessed but that’s the way it was. He couldn’t help it. He glanced at Lara. He wished he knew what she was thinking. He was pretty sure she wanted to do it too, but he knew he was going to have to make the first move, and he was determined to make it tonight.

  “Want me to take your picture?” Bill Novak asked.

  “Sure.” She handed him her camera. He took their picture, and then Lara took one of him and Alex, and Alex took one of her and Bill.

  “Your boy Lou didn’t have such a good game yes
terday,” Bill said, needling Alex. The Los Angeles Kings had beaten the Canucks 5–1.

  “He’ll bounce back,” Alex said. “He always does.” A good goalie needs a bad memory. Alex realized he hadn’t thought about the hockey season since they’d landed in Grabel. A feeling of regret at never having had the opportunity to redeem himself washed over him, but one look at Lara and he forgot all about it.

  Boris led the group back down the tower and into the palace. One room looked pretty much like the next—stone floors and rugs on the walls—not that Alex was paying much attention. He was too busy trying to figure out how he could get to the pharmacy across the plaza in front of the palace before they returned to the hotel. He wished he’d taken the condoms Stefan had given him.

  When the tour finally came to an end, the group gathered around Boris in the middle of the huge entrance room. “The bus back to the hotel leaves in an hour,” he said, his voice echoing off the thick walls. “They have a nice gift shop here or you might want to walk around the neighbourhood. If you want to have a coffee and people-watch, any of the places on the plaza will do just fine. It’s our last night in Maldania and the hotel is putting on a special spread for us tonight. It starts at six o’clock so don’t spoil your dinner, kids.” Everybody laughed.

  “What do you want to do?” Alex asked Lara.

  “I’m going to check out the gift shop. See if I can find something for my mother.”

  Yes! “Okay. I’m going to walk around for a bit. I’ll catch you later.”

  Alex went up and down the pharmacy’s four aisles twice, but there were no condoms to be found. He walked to the counter at the rear of the store. The pharmacist was a woman. Just my luck, he thought. There were three customers ahead of him. By the time it was his turn, two elderly ladies had lined up behind him.

  “How can I help you?” the pharmacist asked in Berovian.

  “Kapet kondom limo,” Alex whispered. A package of condoms, please.

  The pharmacist asked a question in Berovian but she spoke too quickly and Alex didn’t understand what she saying. The two women behind him laughed. The pharmacist repeated the question, this time more slowly. “What size do you want? Regular, large, or extra large?” You’ve got to be kidding, Alex thought. He could feel his face flush with embarrassment. The pharmacist looked him up and down, as if she were sizing him up so she could help make the decision.

  “Large,” he said finally in Berovian.

  The pharmacist reached below the counter and took out six boxes of condoms, all made by different companies. She started to explain the difference but before she finished her first sentence Alex grabbed the first box he saw.

  He could feel the old ladies’ eyes burning a hole in his back as he walked out of the pharmacy.

  Alex Skyped Stefan when he got back to the hotel. “What do I say?” he asked when he told his brother that he was going to tell Lara he wanted to have sex with her.

  “Just don’t tell her it’s your first time,” Stefan said.

  “Why not?”

  “Do you think she and Jason had sex?”

  “Yeah.” He was almost sure of it. “What difference does that make?” Stefan let him figure it out by himself. “Right,” Alex said a few seconds later. If he told Lara it was his first time, she’d feel like she had to say something. And nothing would spoil the mood more than her telling him that she’d done it with Jason.

  Dinner must have been good, judging by the satisfied looks on the tour group members’ faces when they walked out of the hotel restaurant, but Alex hadn’t been able to eat a thing. He felt as nervous as he did before a big game.

  He and Lara went up in the elevator together. When they got to Lara’s room, she took out her key card. “Good night,” she said. “See you in the morning.” A comical look must have appeared on Alex’s face because Lara burst out laughing.

  “Very funny,” he said.

  “I thought so.”

  They went into the room.

  “Do you want to have sex?” he blurted out after they kissed for a few minutes. The words sounded stupid. He was about to tell her that they didn’t have to if she didn’t want to when she nodded.

  Afterward Alex told Lara about his adventures in the pharmacy.

  “You are so beautiful,” he said after they stopped laughing. She beamed. Then they did it again.

  You finally got laid, dude, he thought when they finished. He felt embarrassed for thinking it but he couldn’t stop the thought from entering his mind. What they had just done meant a lot more to him than that. He cared about Lara. He cared about her a lot. But part of him wanted to go out on the balcony and let the world know that Alex Petrovic wasn’t a virgin anymore. He laughed at the image.

  “What are you laughing about?” Lara asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. He hadn’t realized he’d laughed aloud. He turned back on his side and faced her. “You are so beautiful,” he said again. “I’ve got to stop saying that.”

  “Yeah. Girls hate being told that,” she said with a straight face.

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “You’ve got a lot to learn about girls.”

  You don’t know the half of it. “That was my first time,” he blurted out again, ignoring Stefan’s advice. Idiot, he said to himself.

  “I’m glad,” she said, touching his face. “It was my first time, too. First and second.”

  Alex reached for her. “Have you ever heard of a hat trick?”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The next few days were so great—for obvious reasons— that Alex didn’t think about the visit to the museum at the Church of San Marco until he boarded the bus that would take him there.

  The half-hour ride took place in complete silence. Everybody was steeling themselves for what lay ahead. The bus parked across the street from the church. The charred stone walls were still intact, a vivid reminder of what had happened. The church windows had been replaced by stained-glass images of the victims being consumed by flames. The look of agony on their faces was eerily similar to the way he had imagined it.

  Alex went inside the church. Sombre music played softly on the sound system. He stood in front of a glass case containing the items found in the church after the fire: keys, glasses, a crucifix, partially burned clothing. He wondered if any of them had belonged to his father.

  Just being in the church, standing where his father might have stood, brought home the horror in a way that he had never felt before. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine what it was like for his father and the other victims, the panic they must have felt when the church was set on fire, the pain as the flames consumed them. He remembered reading that mothers had killed their own children so they wouldn’t have to suffer anymore.

  He moved from exhibit to exhibit, but he didn’t take any of it in. His mind was blank. He was overwhelmed by sadness. After a few minutes of aimless wandering, he found himself standing in front of a picture of the Stork and the Snowman. It was the same one he’d seen on the internet. Zarkov towering over Koralic, a gun in his left hand, the two of them laughing.

  He quickly moved away. He couldn’t bear to look at their faces. The next exhibit featured stories of Berovians who had sheltered Maldans during the war, ordinary men and women who had risked their lives to save strangers. The stories of these heroes, right beside the picture of the Stork and the Snowman, reminded him of the quotation from his course on genocide. “People will do anything to, or for, each other.” Boris’s picture should be up here, he thought.

  Candles honouring the dead flickered on a mantel in the corner. Alex lit a candle for his father and put it into a bronze candlestick. He stood and watched the flame, and thought about the father he never had a chance to know.

  Lara came up beside him and took his hand in hers. She gave it a gentle squeeze that told him she knew just how he felt. He had never felt so connected to her.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  They sat on a bench
in the courtyard, waiting for the other tour members to come out. They were still holding hands. Neither of them had said a word since they left the church.

  Alex thought back on everything that had happened in the past year. He felt as if one chapter of his life had ended and another had begun.

  His whole life up to now had been about hockey. It had dominated his thoughts. He wasn’t sure if he was going to keep playing, but if he did he knew it would never be the obsession it had been. He didn’t know what the future held in store, but he would never again define himself as a hockey player.

  He was proud of the way he dealt with the crushing of his hockey dreams, and about confronting Mike Leonard. He had been tested, and he had found within himself an inner strength he never knew he had, an inner strength that had silenced the Voice forever.

  He remembered the joy he felt when he and Stefan found each other, and the sibling rivalry that nearly ruined the relationship. They’d gotten through that and now the two of them shared an unbreakable bond that would last for the rest of their lives.

  And then there was Lara. Until you experience love, he thought, you can’t understand what it feels like. He’d seen people in love in the movies and read about them in books. He’d seen it in real life, too. He had thought he’d known what it felt like. But all he had known was the yearning, the desire to be in love. He hadn’t known what it felt like to actually be in love, to have that yearning fulfilled. And now that he knew, he realized he had known nothing at all about love. It changed the way he felt about himself. It changed the way he looked at the world. It changed everything.

  Lara’s head was resting on his chest. His arm was around her shoulders. He wondered if she knew how he felt about her. He wanted to tell her, but just thinking about saying those three small words—I love you—filled him with fear, the fear that they wouldn’t be returned.

  He turned toward her. She looked up at him. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I love you.”

  Her face lit up with a smile that made his heart soar. “I love you, too.”