ALL THE RAGE (writer: T.M. Frazier)(37)

When the bathroom door opened I released Pinto who immediately stepped back behind the counter. Nolan came out, wiping his hands with paper towel. He crunched it up into a little ball and tossed it into the trash as if he were shooting hoops. “Good, right?” Nolan asked, pointing to my plate.

“The best,” I said, looking over to Pinto, who scowled before disappearing into the kitchen. He didn’t come out again.

He didn’t even respond when Nolan called out his good-bye.

*.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN




Rage


The occasional streetlight did little to break through the darkness, but we didn’t need them to help guide our way because Nolan seemed to know exactly where he was going as he lead me through the night. We walked down the sidewalk in front of the darkened windows of the closed shops and café’s.

Nolan tugged on my hand, and I followed him through a narrow alleyway between what looked like two abandoned beach cottages, which were in a lot worse shape than Nolan’s place. Bright red notices with some sort of warning were stapled over each of the windows, which were boarded up. Nolan released me and turned sideways in order to fit through the small opening, grabbing my hand again when he emerged on the other side and pulling me through onto the beach.

“Where are we?” I asked. What lay before me was not just another place, but another world. In the hundred-foot span between where we just popped out of and the water was a roped off area, a makeshift arena, where two huge lifted trucks with humungous tires were lined up, tailgate to tailgate. A few dozen spectators sat scattered on the connecting dilapidated decks of the two cottages, which I realized was more like a duplex rather than two separate buildings. The spectators talked and refilled their red plastic cups, courtesy of the keg sitting on top of a tire in the sand below, as they waited for whatever was about to happen between the ropes to start.

Several other vehicles were positioned outside the ropes with on-lookers sitting on the tailgates while others were faced forward, shining their headlights into the little arena. “You just wait. This was one of my favorite things when I was in high school. When I wasn’t playing hockey, I was out here.” He brought me right up to the ropes.

“The way you’re built, you could have played any sport. Baseball. Football. Yet you chose hockey?” I asked.

“What’s wrong with hockey?”

“Nothing, but you don’t see how that’s funny? You live in Southwest Florida. A place where it never snows or barely ever gets below seventy degrees, yet you chose to play ice hockey?”

Nolan laughed. “You have a point. I guess I never thought of it that way, though. My grandfather was originally from Michigan and grew up playing on the pond behind his house. He’s the one who drove me around from arena to arena to play. It wasn’t exactly ponds, but it did the trick.”

“Goon!” Someone called out from the crowd. Nolan waved.

“What kind of hockey name is goon?” I asked.

“I was the enforcer.”

I waited for him to elaborate. “Oh,” he said, “I guess you don’t know much about hockey.”

“Guys with sticks. Missing teeth. Canada,” I stated, informing him of the extent of my hockey knowledge.

“An enforcer is someone who the coach sends out to rough things up. Let the other team know when they f*ck up and that we aren’t going to take any shit. It’s not an official position. It’s more like something you’re not supposed to do, but we all do anyway. It’s part of the fun. A goon is just another name for it. Never thought I’d get a scholarship, but they recognized that I could skate better than most so they called me up. I was all prepared to work for my uncle one day and the next I was off to college.”

“Basically, you were a fighter on skates.”

“I guess you can say that,” Nolan agreed, seemingly amused at my assessment.

I bit my bottom lip. It suddenly felt a lot warmer than the eighty-four degrees the bank sign on the street had indicated. It made sense that Nolan was a fighter. He turned toward the ropes, giving me a glimpse of his expansive back and thick thighs.

“Scotty!” Nolan shouted. A guy around Nolan’s age with a sunburnt face and a white sunglass tan lines around his eyes hopped down from one of the trucks and jogged over to us.

“Nolan f*cking Archer! Rumor had it that your ugly-ass face was around again. You come to see the ‘Yota tear shit up? She’s better than ever,” Scotty said, his bottom lip full of dip. He spit onto the ground then flashed us a lopsided smile, adjusting his blue baseball cap, which had the words SALT LIFE in white splashed across the brim.

“You still got that piece of shit?” Nolan asked, jerking his chin to the truck Scotty had just come from.

“Fuck yeah, man. Keeping her forever. First loves only come around once, you know.”

“Scotty, this is Rage,” Nolan said, introducing me.

“Rage?” Scotty asked, spitting again into the sand.

“It’s short for Regina,” Nolan explained, telling Scotty my usual lie for me. Nolan shot me a sly wink and squeezed my hand.

“Well Rage, you guys wanna sit on the deck for this, or you wanna come on up in the cab with me?” Scotty asked.

Nolan’s answer was immediate. “Fuck yeah, we’re riding in the cab.”