Fire & Ice

by Rachel Spangler

  “Now, the slide is going to be a little complicated.” Callie started to explain.

  “You lunge and push,” Max said drolly, as she put her right foot against the rubber block Stan had called a hack. It wasn’t unlike a starting block for a runner, and she felt infinitely more stable against it than she had on flat ice. “Gimme the rock.”

  “Max,” Callie said in a warning tone.

  “You’re the sweeper, right? Go sweep.”

  Callie shook her head and bit the corner of her lip, but she did as instructed and walked a couple of yards ahead of her.

  “She’s supposed to call your shot.” Stan sounded a little embarrassed.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Callie grumbled.

  “Yeah, I’ll just put it on the middle.” Max pulled the rock close to her, then gripping the handle, straightened her legs as much as the weight would allow. Then she bent her right knee and pushed off as hard as she could. Her whole body wobbled, then pitched forward, and the rock shot out from under her. She landed with a dull thud, right on her shoulder.

  Layla’s laugh reverberated all the way from the other end of the ice. “Sporty enough for you, Pencil Pusher?”

  She righted herself on the ice and rubbed her cold hands on her jeans, then glancing around for the rock, noticed it only a couple feet away.

  “That one’s not in play anymore,” Stan said, pulling off his gloves. “It had to get past the line all the way at the other end to even be a guard.”

  “So it’s, like, out of bounds?”

  “Basically. Means you lost your throw and it’s my turn.” He held out his gloves to her.

  She rubbed her palm one more time and clenched her jaw.

  “Don’t be stubborn. You’re going to need them more than I do. You still have three more to throw.”

  She accepted the offering and edged away as he got into position. For someone who looked to be pushing seventy on the generous side of her estimate, he had none of the trouble she’d experienced getting into position and pushing off into a fluid lunge.

  As he released the rock, Layla walked calmly toward it and swept only a little bit before letting it stop a foot short of the big ring at the other end.

  “Did you miss?” Max asked, scooting back into the hack.

  “No, I threw a guard. You’re not allowed to knock it out until the fifth rock. If you want to go into the house, you’re going to have to go around it.”

  “Don’t bog her down in details,” Callie said from the other end. “She’s got to get a rock in play before she can worry about guards.”

  Max stiffened at the challenge, and this time as she pushed off, she locked her elbow and kept her arm straight even as her slider betrayed her again. At least now she was ready to hit the ice, and she rolled to lessen the impact. Staying down, she watched her rock spin and veer down the ice like a drunken dreidel until it bounced off the side barrier.

  “Let me guess,” she grumbled, momentarily grateful for the glove between her and the ice this time. “Out of bounds?”

  “Out of play,” Callie called, sliding the rock back to Stan, who moved it behind her and the hack. Then he proceeded to throw a perfect arcing shot right around his first stone and onto the center of the rings.

  She didn’t have time to wonder about the angles or spin that produced such movement before she was slipping and falling again. This time she managed to get her rock about halfway down the ice before it spun to a stop, only to be told that area was also out of play.

  The amusement in Stan’s expression mingled with something approaching embarrassment as he curled around his guard in the other direction this time and pressed his third rock right against the second.

  “Nice freeze,” Callie complimented.

  Or at least it sounded like a compliment to Max, who assumed that in a sport played on ice, a freeze was a good thing.

  She gripped her fourth rock tightly. She didn’t need anyone to tell her this was her last shot. She was proficient enough at math to know half of the eight rocks would mean four fell to her and four to Callie. She had to make this, even though she didn’t quite know what making it would look like in this context.

  By sheer force of will and in a superhuman feat of core strength, she managed to stay upright as she pushed off and slid down the ice. The rock stayed in front of her, and exhilaration mingled with panic as she realized she was actually sliding, but she had no idea what to do next. She didn’t have much time to figure it out, either, as her momentum slowed much more quickly than it had for Stan. He had slid much farther, where she was grinding to a stop after only a few feet. As she quickly processed this development, she gave the rock what little extra shove she could muster, and sat back on her butt with a plop.

  “Whoo-hoo,” Stan called excitedly. “Sweep, Callie, sweep!”

  The instruction was unwarranted as Callie took off, her long, lean body tilted forward as she worked her broom in short, rapid strokes just in front of the rock. She inched her way so fluidly down the ice she might have been on solid ground as she worked efficiently without so much as glancing up. The strokes of the broom were so fast they blurred in Max’s vision, but Callie’s body stayed fluid as she slid gracefully along. It was a study in contrasts, and Max held her breath.

  “Oh, it’s going to be close,” Stan mumbled behind her as she slowed to a crawl near the blue line. “Look at her go.”

  And go she did. Callie scrubbed the ice so hard, Max wasn’t sure why she didn’t see steam rising off from all the friction, but when Callie finally lifted her head, she flashed a half smile and a quick thumbs-up.

  “I did it?” Max asked Stan, her chest already puffing up with pride.

  “Well . . .” He shrugged.

  “What?”

  “I mean you did some of it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “She got it over the line for you.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “But I threw it over the line, so that gets to stay and be a, what did you call it, a guard?”

  “It does.” He did a poor job of smothering a grin.

  “Well, you got one over,” Callie said, as she slid smoothly to a stop next to her once more.

  “I threw a guard,” Max said emphatically.

  “You did,” Callie agreed, before adding, “a nice big one . . . to guard their stones.”

  “What?”

  Stan laughed as he got into the hack. “Thanks, Max. You made my job easier.”

  “What?” she asked again, turning to Callie for answers.

  “You put your rock right in front of the rock I needed to hit if I wanted to knock theirs out.”

  “Why did you sweep it so hard then?” she asked incredulously.

  Callie shrugged and smiled. “You just looked like it really mattered to you. I wanted to make you feel like you’d contributed.”

  She couldn’t believe it. Her face flamed now, not only from embarrassment, but from anger at how condescending her own teammate had been. She’d made an epic save of a play, not because it was helpful, but to bolster Max’s ego. Did she really come across as that pathetic?

  “It’s your turn to sweep.” Callie extended a broom toward her. “You need to—”

  Max snatched it from her hand with undue force and pushed off in a huff before she had a chance to finish. However, the moment she did so, her slider engaged and whipped out from under her, all the way up over her head. She had a split second to process her own helplessness, but not enough time to curl fully into a ball before she dropped like a sack of bricks. It almost felt like the ice rushed up to meet her as she landed flat on her back. She managed to tuck her chin enough that the back of her head didn’t crack open, but every other joint in her body seemed to compress and pop. A shot of pain seared through her right wrist, and a rush of gasps whooshed around her, or maybe it had only whooshed out of her.

  “Holy shit,” someone mumbled.

  “Don’t move,” Callie called. />
  Layla got to her first. Dark eyes, serious but not unkind, stared down at her. “You ready to call ‘uncle’?”

  She winced and used her abs to pull herself up to a seated position without putting pressure on her sore wrist. “Not a chance.”

  Turning her head, she felt her neck crackle in several different spots, but she held up a hand to Callie. “I’m fine. Go throw the damn rock.”

  Layla laughed. “You’re a glutton for punishment.”

  Max hauled herself up off the ice.

  “In curling, it’s considered good form to concede when you don’t have any legitimate path to win,” Stan said, his voice undercutting the bite of the comment.

  “That’s a dumb rule,” Max replied.

  “Finally, something we agree on,” Layla said, as she pushed off down toward Callie’s end of the ice.

  “You really need to—” Callie started, but Max cut her off.

  “Less talk, more throwing.”

  Callie sighed exasperatedly before turning to get back into position.

  Max rolled her head from side to side a few times, then readied her broom the same way Callie had. She didn’t have to inventory her aching body parts. Everything hurt, but nothing was broken. She would not allow herself to be broken. She’d taken a beating in her love life, her professional life, her reputation, and her finances. There was no part of her that hadn’t been kicked around over the last six months, but nothing had ever broken her. She’d be damned if she would let a game of Scandinavian Slip ’N Slide kill her.

  Still, she had to wonder why none of these people were wearing helmets.

  Callie released the rock, sliding so controlled and with the grace of a dancer. The tendons in Max’s knee creaked as she braced herself, preparing to sweep, but as the rock approached and she tightened her grip on the broom, another sharp pain shot through her wrist and she yelped. The rock slid right past her, and she pushed off, trying to chase after it, once again managing only two steps before she sprawled, this time across her stomach, arms and leg splayed like Bambi on ice.

  “Son of a bitch.” She flipped over, yanked off the slider, and sent it hurling back down the ice toward Callie.

  “You’re only supposed to wear those when you throw,” Layla said matter-of-factly.

  Max turned to Callie as if she’d betrayed her. “Seriously, you couldn’t have mentioned that?”

  She shrugged. “I tried, twice.”

  She ground her teeth, not sure if she was angrier at Callie for not trying a little harder or at herself for not giving her the chance.

  Layla’s rock went by in a rush with Stan sweeping like some happy little house elf. And then Callie was back up. This time when her rock went by, Max managed to stay on her feet. With a better grip on her shoes, she even managed to take a few steps, sweeping in front of the rock that came up on her more quickly than expected. She had to move faster, a lot faster than it had looked when Stan or Callie had done the same. It took everything she had to stay upright and a half-step ahead of the rock. She didn’t even try to sweep so much as just run her broom along in the path of the oncoming rock, only she didn’t do it fast enough, and her broom clicked against it.

  “Ticked it,” Stan called, as the rock slid only a fraction of an inch off its previous course. “Out of play.”

  Max fought back a whimper at the realization that she’d just cost them yet another stone. She didn’t care about this stupid game anymore. She’d never cared about curling. She had no desire to be good at something so absurd, but for the love of all things holy, she wanted to not feel like a total fuck-up for just, like, two minutes. Was that too much to ask?

  Apparently so, because Layla flicked another rock right into the rings as Stan scooted by effortlessly. How could these people be so good at something that Max failed at so miserably? She hadn’t expected to be amazing right out of the gate, but she couldn’t even stay upright and sweep at the same time. And it wasn’t like any of this took strength or speed. People of all ages and sizes and genders played alongside them on the other sheets. She’d yet to see a single one of them fall ass-over-teakettle. Really, “throw rock, sweep rock” were the only skills anyone appeared to need, and yet when Callie threw again, Max had to get a slip-sliding head start only to whiff, flail, and stumble again as the stone breezed by.

  This time she scraped her chin across the ice and threw up her hand to cover herself as a loud, sharp crack reverberated down the ice followed by a loud grinding, growling noise she didn’t recognize. She closed her eyes tightly and cowered, half expecting the whole rusted-out warehouse to come crashing down on top of her.

  “Had enough, Pencil Pusher?” Layla’s voice called.

  “Stop it,” Callie chided. “Cut her some slack.”

  “No,” she croaked, and pushed herself onto all fours. “No slack.”

  She stood and brushed little bits of ice from her chest as she did a quick count. There were only three rocks left on the other end, and two of them belonged to the other team. She could do this. Or at least she could keep from dying while the others did the work.

  “Great shot,” Stan called, as Callie stood over the remaining rocks in the ring.

  None of them were where Max had last seen them, and one of their blue ones sat almost exactly in the middle.

  “What just happened?” she mumbled to no one in particular. There had been guards, there had been multiple red rocks in her way, and there had been Max’s complete lack of sweeping. How had Callie overcome all of those things in the short time Max had been cowering in the duck-and-cover position at mid-ice?

  For the first time, genuine interest flared in her, but she didn’t have time to reflect or process as Layla’s next rock whizzed by and crushed Callie’s out of the center.

  “Damn,” she muttered, less upset about the loss of position than the realization it was her turn to sweep again. Still she lifted her broom and shuffled back toward the center line.

  “Don’t!” Callie shouted.

  She glanced up to meet the hypnotic hazel eyes and froze. There was a flash of something deep and damn near dangerous in them, but when Callie took a deep breath and blinked, it disappeared, and she continued in a calmer voice. “Please, just don’t sweep this one.”

  “Not at all?” Max asked, unsure if she felt more relieved or offended.

  “It’s not you. It’s me, okay?” Callie said, then flashed her a kind smile.

  Her chest tightened, but she didn’t have time to respond before Callie’s entire demeanor changed. She fit herself into the hack with military precision and pointed, laser-focus straight ahead. Then she coiled like a spring, but instead of jumping forward, her pent-up energy melded into a strong, steady release. Easing her hand off the stone with a tiny flick of her fingers, she sent it spinning clockwise and with less speed than might be needed for a clock’s second hand to make a full rotation.

  “Nope, nope, nope,” she said, though who she’d directed the comment to, Max couldn’t tell, since her eyes never left the rock. She didn’t even stand up, instead pulling both knees to her chest in a low squat. “Line’s good. Weight’s good.”

  Max would have to take her word for it. She couldn’t tell good from bad on this sheet of ice. Well, maybe that wasn’t completely true. Her whole body felt bad, but her presence didn’t appear to have any bearing on the game as the rock slid right past her in a steady arc toward the rings. She watched, a complete spectator on her own team, while Callie’s rock tapped Layla’s clean out of the rings and took up the space it had only a second earlier occupied.

  Callie grimaced, and pushed up off her own knees with a little grunt. “Didn’t get the double.”

  Layla smiled, wide and unrestrained, as she sent a rock right down the exact same path Callie’s had taken. Max watched what she could’ve convinced herself was an instant replay if the color of the handles hadn’t been different. She didn’t even try to make her brain process how the two women had managed to make the sam
e minuscule movement while controlling for every possible variable that might have affected their shots. And neither needed anyone to sweep for them. Then again, maybe the sweeping didn’t really matter within the context of a game that didn’t matter, played by people whose opinions of her didn’t even matter.

  The thought did little to fortify Max’s mood. She’d busted her ass, both literally and figuratively, all to not contribute in any meaningful way.

  “Good curling,” Stan said, slapping her on the shoulder.

  “Really?” she asked.

  He laughed and shook his head as he kept on walking. “No. It’s just a thing we say.”

  She followed, more scooting than actually stepping across the ice until she met Callie at the other end. She didn’t know what to say, so she repeated Stan’s empty phrase in a more sullen tone. “Good curling, I guess.”

  Layla snorted. “Still think we’re beneath you?”

  Max shook her head. She did actually, but she understood the optics of saying so after the drubbing she’d taken. Instead, she tried to think of some way to deflect without actually giving them or their game of choice any undue credit. Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she tried to lean on her broom for support, and in a turn of events that didn’t appear to surprise anyone, it went out from under her. She slipped with about as much grace as a cartoon character who’d stepped on a banana peel.

  She heard another series of “ooohs” and snickers as her tailbone hit the ice first this time.

  Several hands reached out to help her off, but she clenched her fists and pulled herself back up.

  “Are you okay?” Callie sounded genuinely concerned, and for some reason that upset her more than Layla’s smug smile.

  “Are we done here?”

  “I think you were done the moment you stepped onto the ice,” Layla said, and Callie shot her a stern look.

  “You’re not wrong,” Max admitted, her pride barely containing her urge to rub the spot on her backside where a bruise was no doubt spreading. “So, unless you have anything else you need me to endure today, I’d like to go check into my hotel.”