Fire & Ice

by Rachel Spangler

  “Of course,” Callie said, before Layla had a chance to speak again. “We can talk again after you have a chance to settle in and rest up.”

  She shrugged, sure that would indeed have to happen, no matter how little she welcomed it.

  “Let me walk you out,” Callie offered.

  “Please don’t.” She waved her off and stepped back onto the carpeted platform surrounding the ice. Her relief at being back on solid ground nearly buckled her knees, but before she had a chance to make a break for it as fast as her quickly seizing muscles would allow, Layla called, “Hey, Pencil Pusher!”

  Steeling herself, she turned to see her tormentor’s wide smile and extended hand.

  She waited, unable to accept the gesture until her sluggish brain processed the hint of affection she’d heard in the nickname this time.

  “Anyone who can take hits like that and keep going”—Layla nodded appreciatively—“can’t be all bad.”

  Callie nodded, frustration radiating off her hard-set jaw and squared shoulders, but her eyes were kind. “She’s not wrong. Most people would have quit.”

  The sentiment warmed her more than the icy room should have allowed, as she shook their hands. The touch was the most intimate human contact she’d had in ages, and she tried not to think about how long it had been since someone had said anything appreciative to her as she headed to the car. Still, she could accept a compliment, and even feel a grudging respect for Callie and Layla, while also standing firm in her now confirmed belief that she fucking hated curling.

  Chapter Three

  “Callie!” A cheer went up from the table as soon as she swung open the door to her parents’ boxy ranch home. She smiled at the greeting. Her family always acted as if they hadn’t seen her for years, when it was hardly ever more than a couple of weeks.

  “Perfect timing,” her mother called. “The pierogies are just about out of the skillet.”

  “I do have a knack for showing up just as dinner’s ready.” She shed her light jacket and stamped her boots to make sure she hadn’t tracked in any wet leaves.

  “It’s a skill you’ve possessed since you were old enough to play outside by yourself.” Her dad rose from his seat to hug her tightly. “How’d your week go?”

  “Not too bad,” she said, skirting around the table to drop a kiss atop her grandfather’s bald head.

  “But not too good?” he asked, honing in on the non-answer she’d tried to slip by him.

  “It was fine.” She tried to dodge again, this time sidestepping her mother so she could wrap one arm around her waist without disturbing the platter of pierogies and polish sausages she carried toward the table. “What’s new here?”

  “Nothing new here.” Her mom slipped out of her grease-splattered apron and shook out her auburn hair before she took the seat opposite her husband. “You’re the one who’s supposed to come entertain us on the weekends.”

  Callie sat at the only remaining chair. “That can’t be true. I’m all work and no play.”

  “Not true,” her grandpa said. He stabbed a sausage and dragged it onto his plate with a shaky hand. “Your work is part play.”

  “Or all play,” her dad muttered.

  Callie bristled at the comment, but her mom responded with a little cluck. “Now, she also works at work, too.”

  “Yeah, that’s why I wasn’t here last weekend. I picked up more hours at the store.”

  “We know you get here when you can.”

  “I do, but things are only going to get busier until Christmas. Thanksgiving is the only time I have off between tournaments and the store and dog sitting and—”

  “Odd jobs and part-time hours.” Her dad grumbled. “Where’s the stability in that?”

  “She’s the most stable girl I’ve ever met,” Grandpa shot back at him. “Have you seen her on ice—stable and steady and upright when most people would slip or cave under the pressure?”

  The comment reminded her of Max. Every time she’d closed her eyes, for days, she’d had flashes of that poor woman hitting the ice. She’d crumpled into a heap so many times Callie couldn’t count them all, but she’d always hopped back up, rigid, stubborn, defiant. Even with time and space between them, she couldn’t decide whether she found the attitude admirable or foolish. Either way, things hadn’t needed to end that way. Heat flushed in her cheeks. She shouldn’t have let it end that way. She should have stayed in control of the situation. She usually did. Few people ever frustrated her on the ice the way Max had.

  “Dad, I’m not talking about curling, and you know it,” her father said to his father. “Curling’s a fine hobby. I just want my daughter to have a career she can count on, a steady income, health insurance, a pension.”

  “You want her to take over the window business,” Grandpa shot back.

  “And what’s wrong with that?” Her dad raised his voice, not quite to the level of yelling. “You started the business, and you got to hand it down to your kid; all I want to do is hand it to mine. I’m not going to live forever. I want to know my legacy and my only child are going to be cared for when I’m gone.”

  “Can we not have this conversation every season?” her mom asked, already sounding weary.

  “It’s fine.” Callie cut back in to keep the peace. “I know he only wants what he thinks is best for me. He found those things selling windows, and maybe someday I’ll get there, too. But, for now, I actually have a lead on some new curling opportunities that might bridge the stability gap.”

  Her dad started to grumble again, but her mom silenced him with a look and said, “Tell us, honey.”

  “Well, you know how we’ve been sponsored by the national team for the last couple of seasons?”

  Grandpa Mulligan puffed out his chest. “The national team pays my granddaughter to curl.”

  She grinned at him. “They don’t pay us enough, but this year they also sent a reporter to follow us. She’s going to do some web stuff and some promo videos, and she’ll cover us when our matches are on television later in the year, leading up to the Players’ Championship.”

  “And you said you didn’t have anything exciting to tell us.” Her mom chided her playfully as she scooped a few more pierogies onto Callie’s plate.

  “Nothing’s come of it yet, but there’s some hope that more coverage translates into invites to bigger tournaments, and possibly more sponsorships. I mean, every curler I know still has a day job, but a few of them are pretty comfortable. Maybe this is a step toward that for me, too.”

  She glanced at her dad, who nodded slightly instead of arguing.

  “I think it sounds wonderful,” Grandpa said, forgoing his knife and picking up the whole sausage on his fork to bite off the end.

  “And have you met the reporter?” her mom asked. “Do you know who he is?”

  “Actually, it’s a she.” Callie said, remembering Max’s blue eyes under dark lashes. She didn’t know why she’d found the trait so feminine despite her other, more androgynous features, but she didn’t want to ponder the question at her mother’s table. “Her name is Max Laurens.”

  Her dad coughed and reached for his water.

  “I’ve never heard of her. Does she usually cover curling?” her mom asked.

  “No, I’ve heard of her, though. I think she does more general sports coverage for the network, but I’m not really sure since I only follow curling. I think she’s got some catching up to do.”

  “Well, you can help her with that,” Grandpa said. “No one better to bring someone new to the sport.”

  Her smile twisted into a grimace. “I’m not so sure. Things didn’t exactly go well when she stopped by the club.”

  Her mom patted her hand. “I’m sure it was fine.”

  Callie suffered another flashbulb memory of the hardness in Max’s expression as scabs had begun to form across her scraped chin. “I’m pretty sure she’s not a fan of the game, or of me.”

  “Then you’ll just have to work a little hard
er. You know what I always say, ‘Kill ’em with kindness.’”

  “Just maybe not too kind.” Her dad cut back in, his brow furrowed once more. “Keep your guard up.”

  She raised her eyebrows at the comment that seemed a little more pointed than his usual grumbling, and yet still cryptic. “What do you mean?”

  He shook his head. “Probably nothing. I don’t mean to rain on any parades. I just think it wouldn’t hurt to do a little opposition research on this woman before you put too much faith in her.”

  “I don’t think Max is the opposition. I mean, she’s clearly not a big curling fan, but she seemed serious and driven. I’m sure when push comes to shove, she’s on our team.”

  “I’m not calling her friend or foe so much as saying that, with people like Max Laurens, it’s probably best to keep them at arm’s length.”

  “People like Max? I don’t understand.”

  He shifted in his seat. “Good.”

  “Pshaw.” Grandpa cut back in. “No need to frighten the girl. I’m with your mother. Even if this Max woman isn’t a believer yet, you’ll win her over. Everyone who meets you falls in love with you eventually.”

  She beamed at him, thankful for the confidence boost, even as her dad mumbled something that sounded like, “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “Hey, aren’t the Bills playing at one?” she asked, in a blatant redirect.

  He glanced at his watch and pushed back from the table. “Five minutes to kickoff. You coming, Dad?”

  Grandpa waved him on. “Yup, you go on. I’ll catch up.”

  Callie rose when he did and began collecting empty plates.

  “You don’t have to do that, dear,” her mom said.

  “I know, but I want to help.”

  “That’s a good girl.” Grandpa grabbed her hand and gave it a little shake as she came by. When he released her, she glanced down at the crisp new twenty-dollar bill in her palm.

  “Paw Paw.” She shook her head. “I don’t need this.”

  He lifted a shaky index finger to her lips. “Neither do I.”

  “You can use it to buy some of that candy Mom won’t let you keep in the house.”

  “No, she’s right. My teeth can’t handle the taffy anymore, but it’s good for my heart to see my favorite granddaughter do what she loves. Besides, I always wanted to be able to sponsor my favorite sports team. Turns out, that’s you.”

  “What about the Bills?”

  “Blah.” He made a sour face. “The Bills are terrible. If I had to pick them to go to the Super Bowl or you to get to the Olympics, I’d put on my money on you to do it first.”

  She laughed but didn’t argue with him. If that were an actual betting line, she’d put her money on her team, too.

  Max stared out her hotel room window at the expanse of Buffalo’s downtown. She would’ve preferred a view of Lake Erie, but her budget didn’t allow for the upgrade. Honestly, it wouldn’t allow for any hotel room much longer if she didn’t turn something in soon. She really needed to find an apartment, too, but both her mind and her body rebelled at the idea. Her brain told her that the moment she signed a three-month lease, she’d resigned herself to a stay in purgatory for at least that long. She didn’t want to admit she still held out hope for a pardon of some sort, though, so she contented herself with the excuse that she was still too sore to go exploring. Blaming her bruised tailbone and scraped-up face felt much better than facing the facts of her current situation.

  “Fucking curling,” she muttered for the fifteenth time as she stared out the window. Outside, the city hummed by. Traffic weaved in and out of impressive art deco buildings. Much of it seemed headed for the minor-league baseball stadium down the road where some sort of festival seemed to be occurring. She’d seen the crowds and heard the music when she’d ventured out for an extra-large tube of Icy Hot last night. The hipster crowd in the streets and hanging from the wrought-iron balcony of a microbrewery had caught her off guard. She’d sort of expected this city to be either empty on the weekends or perhaps filled with old steel-plant workers trying to drown the misery they never stanched after the last recession took their jobs.

  Wasn’t that what Buffalo was known for? Not festivals and craft beers and trendy young revelers. Or beautiful, young, fit curlers.

  The thought brought her up short, and she turned away from the window. She might be able to handle this city shattering the stereotypes, but she hadn’t been wrong about curling.

  She sighed in relief. When was the last time she’d had a judgment call affirmed? She didn’t want to try to remember. She chose instead to cling to this one instance in which her gut instinct had been spot-on.

  Curling sucked.

  Taking her seat as gently as possible at the desk, she flipped open her MacBook and started a new document. She didn’t even have a plan, but she had something to say, and when that happened, she wrote. She’d always been that way, ever since she was a kid, and Lord knows it wasn’t a learned behavior. She’d never seen anyone in her family write or type a single thing longer than their own names, and none of them had ever encouraged her, so she always thought the habit must have somehow been inborn. Even after she’d gotten into broadcasting and found she had a passion for working in front of the camera, she still preferred to write first when she got emotional about something.

  Curling is crazy, and not in the fun way. She didn’t know if she had a working title or an opening line. She’d worry about the audience and forum later. Right now, she had more important things to get off her chest, and once she started, she wouldn’t stop until she felt better.

  She typed at blurring speed about how the game, and it was a game, not a sport, seemed most well-suited to sloths or tortoises, both slow and with low centers of gravity. She led with the story of busting her ass because she’d learned early that the best defense was conceding the points she couldn’t win and saving energy to focus on the ones she could. She admitted that balance on ice wasn’t a skill most people generally possessed, but then again, why would they? Humans had evolved because their opposable thumbs and large brains gave them the dexterity and the skills to develop and use tools, like skates that would make them faster, or shoes with traction to make them more stable. Curling, on the other hand, rejected both and tried to make its competitors both slower and more prone to falling.

  The scoring, which she hadn’t even begun to grasp, she labeled as obtuse, and the heavy stones that clacked and swerved without much reason, she suggested, harked back to a more Neanderthal pastime of smashing rocks into other rocks. Perhaps that’s where curling had begun, and where it should have been left, in the caves of our Neolithic ancestors. Even in the off chance of a second ice age, she could’ve made much better arguments for the grace and acrobatic skills of figure skating, or the speed and strength of a bone-crushing hockey game.

  She couched all of her snide asides in the form of jokes. Humor was another survival skill she’d learned early, finding she generally won more people to her side of an argument if her witticism made them smile, rather than if she launched a full-frontal diatribe. And as her current piece came together, she figured she had a solid market for a sports magazine if she kept her complaints veiled under the cover of sport humor. Sports Illustrated and ESPN magazine both ran these types of essays, though they might not want one from her at the moment. Still, it was harder for people to stay angry at you when you made them laugh or made them money. She hoped to do a little bit of both while exacting her verbal revenge.

  She used the term “competitive sweeping” when laying doubts about whether the frantic approximation of housework actually did anything except legitimize cleaning skills your mother never quite managed to instill in you. Perhaps, she posited, that’s where the game had originated, as a Tom Sawyeresque attempt to teach men the technique needed to clean up after themselves. If that was the case, she’d gladly tip her hat to the woman responsible for duping thousands of people, all the way up to and including
the International Olympic Committee, and offer to fill out her paperwork for a MacArthur genius grant. In the meantime, she refused to elevate what she could only see as Canadian Ice Bocce Ball to the level of the other sports she covered.

  Then, since she was stuck covering this piddly winter adaptation of a garden party game, she ended with a hook designed purely to make her sound more sporting than the “sport” she was trying to cover. She copped to this article being born out of a first impression and promised to watch closely for the rest of the season (without saying she didn’t have much choice in the matter), but she defied anyone, at any point in that time, to actually change her mind.

  Sitting back, she clapped her hands together, and immediately regretted the gesture, as it sent pain shooting up through her wrist, her elbow, and her shoulders. Groaning, she took some solace in the hope that her words would long outlive the pain.

  Chapter Four

  “What the fuck?” Brooke dropped the magazine onto the ice.

  Callie sighed, but didn’t look up from her lunge long enough to even read the headline. She didn’t have to. She’d seen it at least forty times over the last twenty-four hours. Several copies had made their way around the club, but they’d also shown up at a couple of her other jobs, in her actual mailbox as well as her email in-box, and she’d been tagged in multiple social media posts.

  “It’s just satire.” She reissued her now-standard response.

  “Is this the reporter who’s supposed to cover our team?”

  She let her body weight, or perhaps the weight of her stress, press her deeper into the stretch despite the tightness in her back. “One and the same.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Nowhere near here if she knows what’s good for her,” Ella said, joining them from the other end of the ice.

  “I’m sure she’ll stop in eventually,” Callie said calmly.