Hard Knocks

by Ruby Lang

  Adam had insisted on calling her a cab to take her home last night. He even sat with her to wait for it—he on one section of his long couch and she stiffly on another—because that was the way he was. It was uncomfortable and terrible, and yet as she sank in the cab, she was grateful for that stupid annoying decency of his. And that realization made her heart wrench even more.

  Now, she was wandering around Adam’s apartment building in the dark and quiet of an early winter morning, looking for the familiar shape of her hatchback. She hadn’t been able to sleep in the night, and she felt numb, as if she’d screamed herself hoarse and deafened herself, too. As if her muscles had tensed so long that she’d forgotten how to move them. She would find herself stopped in front of a truck, an SUV—a vehicle that did not remotely resemble hers—because she couldn’t see through her tears. She couldn’t even lift her hands to her face to brush them away.

  After what must have been an hour spent circling the area around Adam’s building, Helen gave up and went back to the office. It was still early, but Petra was already there making coffee. Not wanting to talk to her friend, she grabbed a cup and shut herself in her office until her first patients arrived. Unfortunately, she’d scheduled them late so when Sarah breezed in without knocking, her friend caught her staring dull-eyed at the wall.

  “Did you really bike in?” Sarah asked. “It’s too damn cold for that today.”

  “I can’t find my car.”

  Sarah snorted. “Typical Helen.”

  Helen tried to laugh but failed. “I looked for a while, then gave up.”

  “Where’d you leave it?”

  “Not far from here,” Helen said.

  “Maybe it was stolen,” Joanie offered from the doorway. “We got a flyer from the precinct about an uptick in car thefts in the neighborhood.”

  At Sarah’s urging, they spent their lunch break driving around the neighborhood looking for it. It was definitely gone. Petra accompanied Helen to the police station to file a report and called the insurance company.

  Helen let herself sink back into her friends’ efficiency. She let Sarah put her and her bike into Sarah’s car. She didn’t argue when Sarah turned on her GPS. “I can’t decide if you’re less upset about this than you should be or more upset,” Sarah said.

  Helen didn’t respond.

  She got through the rest of that night. In the morning, Petra drove her to pick up a rental car. But when she slid into the hatchback and turned the ignition, the radio blared to life, preset to a sports call-in show. Within seconds, Adam’s voice—instantly recognizable yet oddly sonorous because of the deep bass of the car’s stereo system—surrounded her. At this volume, she heard his breaths, the sound of his tongue against his lips as his mouth moved to make words. She could feel the vibrations of his voice through the seat. She closed her eyes and let the pleasure-pain of hearing him seep deep into her.

  “I thought you’d be right behind me,” Petra said when Helen arrived at the office.

  Helen shrugged and looked down. She knew Petra was eyeing her.

  She didn’t think. She worked. She rode her bike, ran, and did yoga. She let her thoughts rest delicately on the line above the memory of her last few days. The awareness was always there, but she didn’t allow herself to remember. When she couldn’t sleep, she dosed herself with pills.

  If anyone had noticed how quiet she was for the rest of the workweek, they didn’t say anything. Maybe they thought it was the trauma of the theft.

  Her mom made her talk to her dad on Sunday night. Oddly, the silence between their sentences was not as fraught this time. She had no energy to keep up a stream of chatter between his slow, thick speech, and the grief numbed her against the sound of his difficult swallowing.

  She told him a little about the cases she’d seen that week, as she usually did. In the middle of it, he asked, “Why are you sad?”

  “I—my relationship isn’t working out,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “I keep imagining losing him,” she said. “And it scares me.”

  Of course there was a long pause while Harry Frobisher worked through her words. Or maybe he hadn’t even understood them. She sighed. “It was good talking to you, Dad,” she said, getting ready to hang up.

  “Helen,” he said, his voice suddenly clear.

  She could almost hear the fighter he’d once been. “Yes, Daddy?”

  “Don’t be afraid of losing.”

  • • •

  By early Sunday evening, Adam had received a phone call from his sad manager, Bobby, who said that there was growing interest in him from a few East Coast teams. Bobby sounded excited. Energized. “Keep this up, and you may have a chance of big success next year,” he yelped.

  Adam should have been excited, too.

  More options yawned in front of him, huge and dark and empty. He flipped through his graduate school acceptance letters again. Portland State wanted him to earn more credits before admitting him to the school of social work. In San Diego, he’d be plunged right into the psych program. He’d have a fresh start. He could surf and run in the sand. He’d refashion himself as a California boy. No more hockey, no more skating. No one would know who he was.

  Well, there would always be people who knew him. Helen, for one.

  He hadn’t made any decisions yet. If the team managed to do well, if he continued on his streak, then sticking with hockey for another year at least would probably be the most sensible choice, moneywise. Above all, he was sensible Adam Magnus, Minnesota farm boy.

  Sensible and alone.

  To avoid hurting his knee, he’d been wearing his brace religiously and working his core and his arms. And he listened to choral music. Helen’s gift had started him on it. Now Bach’s Mass in B Minor lived alongside Black Sabbath’s “Spiral Architect.” The wrath of God section from Verdi’s Requiem accompanied him on the treadmill. Angels and seraphim sang him to sleep—when he could sleep. Right now he was supposed to get some rest. He stretched himself in his bed, naked, his earbuds buried deep in his head, a mask over his eyes, an ice pack strapped around his knee. He’d taken some Tylenol. He’d rubbed cream on his muscles. He smelled like an old man, but anyone looking at the wires and packs attached to him would probably think he was a creature of science fiction. If he ever did earn big money, he should buy a traveling hyperbaric chamber. Yevgeny Molotov probably had one.

  Helen had once told him that someone had made up the “fact” that people only used about ten percent of their brain, that the rest of it was submerged in some sort of gelatinous liquid of possibility. In reality, all areas of the brain fired and returned shots, functioning with the others. Damaging one part of the brain affected another. Every part had a function; every part was connected to the other.

  She had been lying on top of his chest, he remembered, her fingers mapping his skull as if she were feeling all synapses zapping in his brain. When her restless body shifted, she would knead his thigh muscles in increasingly glorious and uncomfortable ways. But he hadn’t rolled her to his side. He hadn’t wanted to move. So he had gritted his teeth and watched her through half-closed eyes, until finally her hands had walked down his nose and lips, down his chest, and to the dark places between them.

  He couldn’t go there now. It was too painful.

  The arena vote was soon. Despite the anti-Yevgeny campaign, it looked like the billionaire would win. Adam would win. He should be happy that he was a man of possibilities. He could put off major decisions for another year or two. Maybe he could stretch it out even longer, give himself more time, more money.

  He must have fallen asleep because when his phone rang, he jerked up and sent his ice packs flying. He glanced at the screen. It was Serge. “We need to talk.”

  • • •

  “I’m retiring, Adam. I wanted you to hear it first.”

  Adam sat heavily in the hospital chair, careful to keep his leg straight. He’d left his brace at home.

  Serge be
gan to laugh. “Look at us old men with our trick knees.”

  Serge gave his offending limb a pat. “ACL tear with MCL strain.”

  His voice was tight but clear. Certain. Adam shook his head, trying to understand. “What happened?”

  “It wasn’t feeling good after ... the game the other night.”

  “After the brawl,” Adam said, flatly.

  “Right. But I ignored it.”

  “Serge.”

  “Hey, we all play through pain. And this wasn’t new or different. So then I maybe overdid it during practice.”

  “But you never—”

  “I never overdo it during practice?” Serge laughed. “True. That’s why I’ve lasted so long. But, you know, we’ve been doing well lately. And I felt like I had something to prove. We’ve all felt that way lately. But I just had a little swelling. Iced right away. The physio told me to take it easy. I had a good weekend. Slept. Watched some tape. Normal things. And then this morning, I almost knocked my brand new iPhone off the breakfast bar. I swiveled off my stool to catch it goalie-style, knocked my knee against the corner just as my foot came down, and my knee torqued. I heard a pop. And well, that was it. I was on the floor. Caught the phone, though.”

  Serge grinned, then grimaced. “Betrayed by technology,” he said with a shrug.

  Adam shook his head slowly. He still couldn’t grasp it. “You can come back after a ligament injury.”

  But Serge had his jaw set. He shook his head. “I’ve been thinking about it all day while they’ve been assessing me. Those orthopedic surgeons and team docs, they told me I’d need surgery. I can tell it’s bad, Adam. They’ll have to operate. It will be months of rehab to just get myself back into shape. And then, to get it to the point where I can drop down to my knees or stay in a squat? The team’s only begun to recover. I think it’s time, Adam.”

  Adam got up and sat down again, but he was beginning to realize that he wasn’t going to convince Serge. Another voice was asking him why he was so intent on it, when he himself had been willing to give up just a month or two ago. Serge was his best friend. They’d started out together, and Serge had been there when the drinking had gotten bad and when recovery seemed worse. “Give it a day or two, Serge. Let the drugs wear off. Have you talked to Bobby?”

  “Bobby? Are you kidding? I’m letting you know now, then I’m telling my parents. Then, after they give me the next dose of drugs, I’ll tell Bobby and let him screech and wail and he can break it to the team. I’ve got this planned out.”

  “I just don’t understand,” Adam said, even as understanding began to dawn on him. “You were so set on playing until you couldn’t anymore. You were upset that I was thinking of getting out.”

  Serge considered a moment. “Well, now that I’m resigned to it, it doesn’t seem so bad.” He said, more quietly, “I was envious, you know, when you started talking about retiring. You had a university degree. You had a doctor girlfriend. You had possibilities. I just had hockey and more hockey. And the hockey I had—well, we were a shitty team. All I had for the future was blowing all my savings, then serving poutine to tourists at my parents’ restaurant. But we pulled the team out of a slump—I mean, the season is still long and we’re still low in the standings. It’s a small step, but I feel happy about what we have done and I still love the game. It’s a good way to end when you think like that.”

  They were quiet for another moment.

  “I don’t love it anymore,” Adam said.

  “I know. But I don’t understand why you are still playing?”

  “Money.”

  “Hah. I guess that’s another reason. But you have enough, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Serge shrugged. “Listen, Adam. I’ve known you for a long time. Unless you are spending all your cash on fancy scarves—and that is a possibility—then you probably have enough if you are sensible. And you are. And with wealth, well, you can save and save, but you get to a point and you can’t plan. Anything can happen. All of the stocks and banks in America could go under. You don’t know the future, and you can’t live like the worst will happen. You have no idea what will happen.”

  “That’s what I told Helen,” Adam said, slowly. “I told her the difference between her and me was that she thought she had to do something, to prevent the worst from happening. For her, it was dementia, and for me ... I guess it’s money.”

  “See? You are a pretty smart guy. Now, do you want to sit here while I make my phone calls? I might need your help with Bobby.”

  “Huh? Yeah, sure.” Adam nodded absently. His mind was still reeling after all of the blows he’d been dealt in the last hour. But the worst one was the one he’d dealt himself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Janel had brought in a group of new interns, and Serge’s retirement was their first major press conference. The room buzzed with their young energy. Now, they were throwing out ideas to make Molotov more palatable.

  “Maybe if Molotov were a kinky billionaire, people would like him more. People love those,” a pale, blonde intern was saying.

  “Only in books, dumbass. It’s not going to win over legislators,” countered her buddy.

  “Well, it should.”

  Serge and Janel were huddled together in a corner, their heads practically touching, as they went over what Serge was going to say. Janel had seized on it as an opportunity to talk about the vote without actually talking about the vote. Bobby had flown in from LA overnight and was under strict orders to be quiet. He was pacifying himself with multiple cups of coffee.

  Adam leaned against a wall, surveying the room. He supposed he could join the interns. He was one of them—albeit better compensated. But he was learning the ropes, just the same.

  Still, he needed a moment.

  After leaving Serge at the hospital, he hadn’t been able to sleep.

  He’d gone through all of his options again, going through all the permutations and possibilities. But mostly, he’d paced in the dark, his steps slow and uneven as he favored his sore knee. He stared out the big window of his apartment, staring at the lights of the other buildings, down, down at the elusive glimmer of the Willamette. And he thought of Helen and how scared she had been for him and how much she did love him to be so hurt when he was hurt. She’d been scared for him, and he hadn’t given her any reason to not be scared.

  They drove to a hotel where Janel had arranged for the reporters to meet them. The place was bristling with microphones. They shuttled quickly to an office and shut the door. Janel had instructed Adam to wear a suit. He also had a brace on over his trousers today, partly out of solidarity to Serge. Why bother hiding it, anyway. Janel had tried to fluff his hair, but Adam batted her hands away. Serge got to wear whatever he wanted. His dark blue jacket matched his own proudly displayed brace, and he’d wrapped his crutches in navy hockey tape. He let Janel smooth his shoulders, and he sent Adam a wink when Janel started to fiddle with his coif.

  Adam rolled his eyes, dug his phone out of his pocket, and scrolled through a long list of messages. Of course, Helen hadn’t called. Why would she after what he’d said, after what he’d demanded? It seemed so reasonable at the time to expect her to want security, but he had been the one asking her to wait for him—to worry too much for him. Clearly, he could do enough worrying for both of them. She had been looking out for him, in her own way. But had he been looking out for her?

  His stomach roiled as he followed the others into the press room. His best friend wouldn’t be on the road with him. He was playing a game he didn’t like and working for a man he loathed. And he didn’t have Helen. Sure, he’d have some semblance of security, but what exactly was he trying to preserve?

  Janel had been going over the basics, and now it was Serge’s turn in the spotlight. He started off by thanking the team, the coaches, his family. He even managed to acknowledge Molotov International, although his huge smirk at the end was probably going to elicit a few questions.


  “I want to take a moment to thank my teammate and my friend, the best guy I know, Adam Magnus. Sometimes in this game, it seems like we’re just a bunch of guys trying to bash each other’s brains out—”

  Janel flinched.

  “But the most important thing I’ve learned from Adam here,” Serge continued serenely, “is that who you are on the ice—who people think you are—doesn’t have to be all that you are in life. The ice is just the surface we play on. So despite the fact that my career ended before I thought it would, I’m looking forward to my retirement. I’m looking forward to the rest of my life. Thank you.”

  A small silence followed Serge’s words. God, was he getting choked up? Serge stumped over and gave him a half hug. Then he gestured down at their matching knee braces, and the reporters laughed and took pictures, and the room buzzed as journalists started asking questions.

  Adam wasn’t sure when exactly it was that he sensed Helen. But he found himself turning her way before he could question why, and there she was, almost hidden behind a pillar at the back of the room. And her eyes were on him.

  Janel was answering a question at length and hadn’t noticed, but Serge had seen her and he grinned at Adam then gave him a nod. No one would miss him.

  Adam excused himself from his seat and walked carefully around the periphery of the room, partly because he was afraid that if he moved faster, the dream would dissipate. When he reached her, he could see she was pale and worried. Her eyes darted searchingly across his face, as if she couldn’t believe he was there. She had dark circles under her eyes, and her fingers clasped and unclasped as she gazed up at him. She’d never looked better. He put his hands on hers—her hands so alive with muscle and nervous energy—and held them gently. And behind the pillar, to the whir and flash of cameras, her face began to lighten with relief as he reached down and kissed her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “I’m sorry,” she said as soon as the door to Adam’s apartment closed behind them.

  “You know, I was never really sure you were Canadian. You don’t like hockey, and you don’t generally apologize. But the way you say I’m sore-y, now I’m positive.”