by Dave Belisle
Out of the corner of his eye, Erskine wondered if the agent could tell that the gazelle had a nose job. For this reason, Erskine often made visitors wait outside his office for up to thirty minutes. It forced the visitor to get to the heart of his business with Erskine right away, eliminating any small talk of interior decorating and Erskine's errant aim. Erskine would while away this time by practising his putting stroke on the Hack Shankless Porta-Putter.
The putting apparatus was laid out on the carpet beside his desk. The three-by-fifteen-foot strip of artificially-crushed Kentucky Blue Grass sparkled under the fluorescent lights. The Porta-Putter promised green conditions similar to those on the back nine at Pebble Beach. Its undulations were adjustable by remote control. A vibrating mechanism simulated the rougher terrain found while playing winter rules. Erskine's last secretary, a buxom brunette from Oakville, was introduced to this ground-breaking concept first hand late one night after the rest of the workers had gone home. Ever since that bump-and-run night, the machinery hadn't performed up to par.
"So your boy has been turning heads in the Western League, eh ... Mr. Sloane?" Erskine asked, slowly pacing the room.
"Yessiree. A solid thirty-goal man. He put the speed in Speedy Creek."
Speedy Creek. Swift Current. Erskine detested how the westerners seemed to find a nickname for everything. Did they all sit around campfires, armed with branding irons, waiting to label the first beast -- animal or human -- that ran by?
"I've looked at everything that straps on shin pads in the junior leagues ... twice," said Erskine. He stopped beside Sloane. Sloane averted his attention back to the shocked gazelle. There was a portrait of Nixon beside it. In the picture, Nixon had both arms thrust high in the air, performing his obligatory two finger "peace-victory-four hot dogs, please" salute. Nixon's suit looked two sizes too small. There was an open area on the wall to the right of the gazelle, however. The agent mentally calculated the possibility of his own head showing up in this space. Erskine loomed over him.
"What's your bottom line ... Speedy Creek?" Erskine asked.
"Uh ... ten thousand ... plus a percentage of the gate."
Erskine strolled over to the telephone intercom on his desk and pressed a button.
"Next!"
Thirty seconds later, player agent #2 sat across from Erskine. Number two was wearing a turtleneck with a sports jacket. Erskine reclined in the large, black leather chair behind his desk. Small talk had quickly gone from the brisk winds outside ... to the second base situation with the Blue Jays. Agent #2 had completely ignored Erskine's grazed gazelle. The agent stole a glance at the Herculean president.
It was not time to seque to the Blue Jay's pitching rotation.
Erskine's eyes were already on him. They impatiently scorched a hole the size of a dime in agent #2's forehead. The room became warmer with the help of Victor's flaring nostrils. Time was money, and Erskine banked it by the nanosecond.
It was bottom line time and agent #2's mind was mush on low boil. He almost forgot why he was there. He was about to blurt out Duane Ward, then stopped.
"Seventy-five hundred ... and a grand for each goal," he finally stammered.
Agent #2's heart palpitations and acute noodlehead nausea didn't disappear until an hour later while standing outside on Yonge Street. He cured himself by winking at passing female pedestrians for 15 minutes. The resulting shock treatment of high-pitched profanity and open-handed slaps worked wonders.
Agent #2's seat in Erskine's office was still warm, but the plaid-clad buns of agent #3 had barely basked in the heat before Erskine looked down his nose at him and rolled his index finger in forward, circular motions. Get on with it.
It had been awhile since Agent #3 had been forced to make a sales pitch on the fly. Not since a pot-welding housewife had chased him and his encyclopedia prospectus down the street one hot, Killing Fields-like evening in Kingston. The steely-eyed stare from Erskine did little to dispel Agent #3's flashbacks. It was now or never. The man in plaid abruptly leaned forward in his seat. He coughed and prayed his voice would immediately sound laid back and at ease ... like they'd been chatting about which player had the best backhand in the game, and had simply lost all track of the time.
"Five thousand ... and an appearance fee."
Disheveled Agent #4 sat across from Erskine.
"My client is simply looking for a little exposure ..."
Erskine motioned to the door.
"Out! Let's go. Move it!"
He hustled Agent #4 out of his office. They marched around the corner and into the reception area, still at cheek-to-jowl seating capacity. Erskine looked over the upturned faces of the expectant executives. He was Noah, checking to see if a third member of any species had tried to embark the ark.
"Hah! You're too late. Thank you all for coming. But the players you represent simply aren't good enough ... to fly the Herculean colors."
... 2 ...
The flags of several Soviet republics flapped vigorously in the wind outside the concrete building that had been constructed with an eye for the Byzantine. The May-Ja-Look scouting trip had landed at the Russian Embassy.
Derek eyed the Soviet concierge suspiciously.
The concierge, Vyacheslav Triblinkov, stared straight ahead. His feet hurt. Triblinkov had just immigrated to Canada two months before. He hadn't had to move more than twenty feet from when he signed his landed immigrant papers to landing his first job. He longed to move up in ranks for a door posting where he'd be outside in the sun. There ... he could play "eyeball tennis". This was the favorite pastime of the concierges ... so named for ogling the girls walking by -- without breaking the embassy's policy of turning your head while on duty.
Triblinkov had just finished unscrambling his fourteenth word from "TOLSTOY" and began mentally calculating the area of the Red Square. It was at this point he realized he was being watched by a gawking Derek. In the background, Artie poured over a pile of ledger books at an information desk. Marcotte leaned into Triblinkov's face.
"1972. Remember?"
The guard remained motionless. His inner security system pressed the mute button. He would pretend he didn't understand English.
"Of course you do," Derek said. "Does the name ... Paul ... Hen-der-son ... ring a bell?" Derek annunciated Paul Henderson as if he were giving the Russian a Spooked on Spelling refresher course.
The guard knew damn well who Paul Henderson was. When the Canadian capitalist scored that fateful goal with 34 seconds to go in the eighth and final game of the series, Triblinkov had kicked his dog, drank two bottles of vodka and broke up with his girlfriend. The order in which it all happened was still a bit muddy. The apple juice he drank at lunch now raced through his blood stream like Spinoffs vodka. Eight games worth of life-defining moments flooded back.
It was the image of his dog, Sascha, however ... looking up at him dolefully ... that caused Triblinkov to flinch slightly. Derek saw the chink in the guard's armour.
"Sure it does," Derek said. "He's the one who blew it by Tretiak. Perhaps this will jog your memory."
Marcotte cupped his hands over his mouth and impersonated Foster Hewitt via a muffled, crackling radio broadcast, "Esposito takes a whack at it. The puck is loose in front. Henderson ... He shoots! He scores! Paul Henderson!"
Derek punched the sky and twirled around.
"He took three shots!" Triblinkov exploded.
An elderly woman stood in line close by. After 23 years, she was mere seconds away from receiving final approval for renouncing her Soviet citizenship. She promptly put her papers back in her purse and headed for the exit. Maybe it wasn't so bad to wait three hours in line for a loaf of bread.
"We won, we won," said Derek, nagging.
"Hey, Derek! C'mere."
It was Artie. He'd found something.
Marcotte welcomed the distraction. Triblinkov glared at him. The guard remained rooted to the spot, albeit shaking with anger.
"Relax, Boris. Th
e cold war is over."
Derek joined Artie at the information desk. Artie pointed to the ledger.
"Bingo. A pair of Red Army all-stars from '89. A Latvian by the name of Alexei Starsikov. And Helmut Hutchny ... an Armenian."
Marcotte looked over Hammond's shoulder at Triblinkov. It would be two weeks before the mad Russian would get back to calculating the area of the Red Square.
"Just make sure their stalls are at opposite ends of the dressing room."
Halfway across the country in Winnipeg, Erskine and one of his henchmen, Billy Slager, stood outside the Swedish national hockey team's dressing room. The game had ended half an hour earlier and players were exiting the room. A tall dazzling blonde stood near the door. She wore tight jeans and an angora sweater that was suddenly back in style. Slager had mentally separated her from both, half a dozen times in the past twenty minutes. Some strange form of telekinesis alerted her to this ignominious indecency ... and she glowered at Slager before turning away. She was not upset for long however, as the object of her desire strode out of the dressing room.
Erskine's eyes lit up as well.
"There he is. Christian Sandersson. The best thing to come out of Sweden since ABBA."
The statuesque blonde and Sandersson locked arms and walked past Erskine and Slager. Erskine nodded hello at Christian. The Swede acknowledged Erskine with a quick flip of the hand before diving back into his post-game dessert with a helpless shrug.
Erskine smirked, then turned to Slager.
"What do you think of that prize-winning catch?"
Slager's eyes followed the blonde's well-worn wiggle as the couple waltzed away. For Slager, it was like looking down a stretch of asphalt highway in 120-degree heat, such was the heat radiating from her shimmering, shimmying thighs. The lower lip of his gaping mouth was crested by an outgoing tide of spittle.
"Forty-two ... twenty-eight ..." Slager said.
"Eh? I'm sure he had more goals and assists than that."
... 3 ...
Derek entered his apartment and closed the door behind him with a slam. He dropped his keys on the floor. As he reached down to pick them up he spotted the rubber-tipped, metal-coiled door stop. He bent it sideways and let go. The resulting thw-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ng reverberated down the hallway, startling even him. He headed for the kitchen.
Marcotte retrieved a bottle of beer from the fridge and slammed the door shut. It was a four-magnet slam. That's how many of the kitchen curios fell to the floor. He took a half step forward with his left and followed through with his right leg, mimicking a straight-on field goal kicker. He connected on three of the magnets, sending them skittering across the linoleum for parts unknown.
Following a long swig, Marcotte nestled the bottle cap onto the ball of his right thumb and pressed the edge of it tightly with his ring finger against the meat of his thumb. Derek was ready to snap his cap. He took aim at the waste can in the corner.
Snapping caps at garbage cans has long been a male bastion, a cause celebre for bachelorhood. A comparable scenario would be a gymnasium with basketballs lying loose on the floor. If one were to pick up a basketball, the urge to shoot one more basket outweighs the desire to put the ball away. Thus, the balls remain on the floor until the consequence for not putting them away outweighs the pleasure of "hitting nothing but net" from three-point range.
It was the same for bottle caps and waste baskets. The cap shooter will wait until the caps pile up like losing peel-and-win lottery tickets in a Winnipeg hotel lobby -- if it takes that long to hit the can from a distance worth bragging to his buddies about.
Marcotte snapped the cap. It clanged off the side of the metal waste bin. Mission accomplished. He smirked and took another swig. He hadn't wanted to sink it. He wanted to make some racket. Marcotte followed up his waste bin ricochet with a Henry VIIIth fourth course-like belch.
He sauntered into the living room and found Helen in her night robe on the couch, reading a book.
"Oh. Uh ... you're up."
"I couldn't sleep," she said. "Did you eat?" She was about to get up but he motioned for her to stay seated.
"What?" Derek said. "You mean you're not going to ask me where I've been?"
Helen looked at him. She wasn't sure if he was joking or not. She felt uncomfortable when he did this to her. It's not like she didn't have a sense of humour. But most of the jokes she brought home from the second floor ward at Our Lady of Pitiful Mercy Hospital ... only brought forth an obligatory smile from Derek. They were "safe" jokes. They may have started out in the gutter, but they were quickly wrapped in gauze, quarantined and pronounced fit ... so as not to embarrass. Pecker and balls became penis and testicles. Either way, she wasn't in the mood to laugh. She was too busy worrying ... again.
Derek had only been back for a week and she could sense something was different. This hockey game he was chasing after, had changed him. He was charged up. She hadn't seen him like this in a long time. She was happy for him -- but she wasn't included in the happiness. She felt stranded in a life raft on the Oceanus Procellarum, a vast sea about one hundred kilometres northwest of Grimaldi. On the moon.
Derek waited, watching her closely. Uh-oh. She was thinking again.
She recalled how rocky the last few years had been. There were times she felt she was hitting menopause ... while he was busy parallel parking Konk-Ya Toys. Life was a tough road with her civil servitude on a wildcat strike. The questions nagged at her like gouging potholes. Did he love her? When was the last time he'd told her that? Most likely while celebrating a Leafs' goal.
She had poured her heart into their relationship ... much like her job. She treated people in a hospital bed with respect and dignity. Was she bringing her work home with her and driving Derek away in the process? Maybe she was smothering him with the wrong kind of attention. Had her passion for professionalism pushed her passion for romance down some heart string-snagging escalator? Her head hurt. She bit her lip for having forgotten to pick up more extra-strength anything at the corner drugstore.
Their eyes met. He waited for her to speak. He'd do this when he was determined to make a point. He'd load up a series of biting repartee to fire away at her next response. His face was set. There was a hint of a grimace that reminded her of ... the accident. Chills did the conga line up her spine as she recalled the incident like it was yesterday.
As Derek crumpled to the ice, she'd sprung into action. A little voice in her scolded her for being a nurse grandstanding at hockey games. Who was she? Florence Nightengale taking up a foxhole position on the front line? She reminded that little voice that they only have one ambulance stationed at most hockey games. Her response time had been commendable.
In the weeks that followed, she'd nursed Derek back to health. For all the attention, warmth and love she'd poured out ... her ring finger was still naked. There had been the plastic decoder ring he'd dug out of a bag of especially greasy caramel corn, one summer night back in 1989. They'd been sitting high atop the Ex in the Ferris wheel when his hungry hand collided with it. The whole scene was almost romantic, if she could have gotten over the nausea brought on by her fear of heights.
She looked down at her left ring finger sans ring ... and back to him.
Did she need a ring? She racked her brain for all the statistical surveys and data found in the women's intuition magazine, Osmo (short for osmosis). She had to base her existence upon something. She needed some sort of foundation, however fashionable. Hold the rouge.
Derek grew tired of watching her blank expression while the projector behind her eyes whirred away. He'd heard that women used eight times as much of their brain to worry as men do, and all eight cylinders of Helen's were humming right along.
The extent of his feelings for her over the years could neatly fit on the back of a postcard.
Hi. Wish you were here.
So why did she stay? The accident had been over eight years ago. She supposed they'd developed a kind of comfort zone. They shared a
bed, all-fluff-no-substance pillow talk and a song by Boston, Foreplay ... Longtime. It was one of Derek's favorite shower songs. The chorus rang in her ears, "It's been such a long time, I feel I should be leaving." Did he really mean it when he sang it? After all, he was still here.
She wasn't going anywhere. She loved him. Or did she? Derek wasn't a bad human being. She supposed she could do worse. The last guy she'd dated only knew ten months of the year. She was ahead of the game with Derek. How far ahead?
Their sex life was adequate. But having an "okay" sex life was like observing the speed limit when you're driving an Italian sports car. She'd never participated in sex while standing on her head ... and with good reason. She'd administered to too many patients who had done so, lost their balance and fallen against furniture, into beer bottles, etc.
Her worrying meter was close to expiring ... or tilting -- like the large, red flashing fluorescent signs on the old pinball machines. She was well versed in Derek's various moods. He hated it when she asked him, "What's wrong?" ten times a day. She'd been working on halving it to five. At first she'd blamed his hostility on the hard times that had hit his company. Then she'd blamed it on the Leafs, which caused him no end of grief in the late 80s. She didn't think it was her. Not until lately.
Now she was so preoccupied with it, she couldn't go shopping for groceries without changing her mind, aisle-by-aisle, that he did or didn't love her.
She calmed herself by pretending she was back in the grocery store, walking through the dry goods section. This had been a good aisle, promising her she could have her cake and eat it too ... that Derek was a good husband and they'd grow old together, plastic decoder upgrade or not. She fantasized about the moustached man with the feather in his cap on the 10-pound bag of flour.