The Futures(91)

“Actually,” she said. “That reminds me. I’m getting together with my new coworkers tomorrow night, so I won’t be able to do dinner after all.”

“No problem. I can come over afterward?”

“Sure, if you want.”

She leaned back against the stone steps and tilted her head up toward the sun. Already it was slipping away. The bar exam was in a few months. Her start date at work was soon after. Maria had carved out a life for herself in this city long before I arrived. I knew she liked me, liked what we shared, but the need was one-directional. Maria brought me back into the real world, but I was seeing that it stemmed from compassion rather than love. She asked nothing of me; there was nothing I could give her that she didn’t already possess. And maybe I didn’t need love right then. Being with Maria was the first time I felt remotely like a grown-up. Like a person capable of surviving on my own.

She stood up. “Do you want to walk home?” Her home, not mine: she never once set foot in my apartment. “It’s a beautiful day.”

There were several guys from the hockey team also living in the city, Sebi and Paul and a few others. Most of them worked in finance. When we got together for drinks a few days after my firing, they were envious of my situation.

“You are fucking lucky, man,” Sebi said. Late on a weeknight at a bar in Murray Hill, which was so similar to McGuigan’s that if you squinted you couldn’t tell them apart. “I would quit my job in a second if I got that kind of package.”

“What are you gonna do next?” Paul asked.

“Don’t really know. I thought about joining a league, just for fun.”

“You should,” Sebi said. “Actually, one of my buddies plays up in Westchester, in a midnight league. They’re always looking for players. I’ll give you his number.”

Which was how I found myself lacing up rental skates one night the following week. The other players were men mostly older than me, fathers going gray and potbellied, but I was rusty from so many months off, and we were evenly matched. The team I was on for the scrimmage lost, but it still felt good. After the game, just as I’d cracked a Coors in the locker room, one of the guys on the team came over to me.

“Evan Peck?” He extended his hand. “I’m Frank Donovan. Call me Donny. Sebi told me about you. I heard you might be looking for work.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. Well, yes, sort of.”

“I’ve got something to offer you for the next few months, if you’re interested in hearing about it.”

A few weeks later, I was back on a train to Westchester. I had to call my parents and get them to ship my hockey stuff back to New York. I was going to work as an assistant coach at a summer hockey camp for middle schoolers up in Westchester. Donny needed someone to help with his program, running drills and reffing games. I got to the rink early on the first day, before any of the campers arrived. After the first lap around the glassy ice, I felt dizzy and short of breath. I had to pause and lean against the boards. The sound of my blades against the ice, the smell of the cold air, the mustiness of the rink—it was almost too much to bear. Hockey had always been more than a sport to me. It had been the thing that rescued me from the suffocation of a small town, and when I escaped it, it was the thing that I clung to in a strange new world. But I realized—chest heaving, heart aching, my breath escaping in curls of white fog—that it wouldn’t work this time. I couldn’t hitch my dreams to it anymore. I couldn’t love it the way I used to.

Donny dropped me off at the train station at the end of the first day. We chatted during the drive about the kids and how the day had gone. I had to stifle a yawn when we said good-bye—I hadn’t worked so hard in months. Before I closed the car door, he asked, “You gonna be back tomorrow?”

I laughed. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

The week went fast. That Friday night, I called Maria.

“Hey, stranger.”

“Hey, I know. I’m sorry.” All week I’d been coming home, making dinner, and going straight to bed. My new routine was already digging grooves: apartment, Metro-North station at 125th Street, grocery store. McGuigan’s felt like another universe.

“Yeah, I know how it goes. First week on the job and all.”

“Can I see you tonight?”

“I’m off at midnight. Come over then?”

A few hours later we lay in her bed after having sex, the sounds of the street floating in through the open window. Maria had turned on the fan, which rotated toward us every few seconds. There was something different that night. The way she lay there with her eyes open, when normally by then she’d be drifting off, or back at her desk. Her silence had an alert quality. I could sense her thinking.

“Hey,” I said, running my hand along her arm. “Is everything okay?”

She turned to face me, resting her chin on my chest. A serious gaze.

“Evan, you know, we don’t need to keep pretending for no good reason.”

“Maria.” I swallowed. A lump formed in my throat.

“This has been fun. I’m going to miss you,” she said.

Something within me was finally falling. My fingers were being pried away when I wasn’t ready to let go.

“Can’t we just…” I said. “We don’t have to do this right now, do we?”