Page 76 of Home Ice Advantage

Eric went up the stairs, where he was greeted at the front desk by the administrative assistant, who then took him to the elevator. The interview room was about what he had been expecting, the kind of featureless conference room decorated in Railers gear that could be easily reconfigured into any position needed. Clifton was there. The owner, Bennett Norris, an older, grumpier businessman who’d made his millions in the beer distribution business, wasn’t. That was either a good sign or a bad one: that he’d made up his mind already or was leaving the entirety of the decision to Clifton.

“Good afternoon,” Eric said, extending his hand for the shake. He remembered belatedly that he should’ve saidCliftonorPaul, but there was nothing for it now.

“Good afternoon, Aronson,” Clifton said, with another one of the warm chuckles that had characterized their conversation on the phone. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Why don’t you sit down, and we can get started talking about what I expect out of the next head coach of the Long Island Railers, and you can tell me how you envision your own coaching position.”

As they sat down at the table, Eric couldn’t help raising his eyebrows. “Do you want to see my résumé?” He had it, still, tucked in the black folder in his briefcase.

Clifton laughed again. “I don’t need to see your résumé, Aronson. You can leave it with me if you like, but the reason I reached out to you is specifically because I liked what you had to offer. From your experience as a player, to your time coaching in Boston.”

“Uh-huh,” Eric said, a little suspiciously, becausethatsounded almost too good to be true.

It turned out that what Clifton was looking for was typical: the sort of modern coach who could both relate to the players on a very basic level of past experience, but who was willing to look forward to the future of the game, to work with an analytics staff to identify areas for improvement and to try to bring a more unpredictable element to their tactics. They wanted someone to work with the younger players at a developmental level, but also ensure that the older players weren’t getting bored or left behind.

“And what would you be looking for, if you accepted a job with this organization?” Clifton was asking.

Eric thought about it for a moment, but he was talking before he could fully organize his thoughts, fully articulate it. “I want a coaching staff that I could work with collaboratively. Staff with no deadweight, everyone offering their opinion. I want to be able to have free rein with the practices to do some unorthodox things. Small-area drills, experimental game simulations, that sort of thing. I want to be able to hire a skills coach and someone to work with the boys with mental strength training as well. I want—” For a second, Eric swallowed, hard. What he was describing was basically the situation he had in Boston with Ryan. And it was the kind of situation that he had no idea whether he’d be able to recreate somewhere else. He wouldn’t have Petey’s aggressive chill or Heidi’s keen insight into details. And most of all, Ryan’s...everything.

He realized, belatedly, that he had stopped talking. “It’s a lot to ask, I know.”

“Not really,” Clifton said, steepling his fingers. “We have the budget to get you extra coaching staff, if you aren’t happy with the skills coaches we have already. You’d have input into the hiring, as well. I’d want to make sure you could get along with and trust your staff.”

“Of course,” Eric said. His stomach felt uneasy, nauseous. “Being able to trust your staff is paramount.”

The interview went on for quite some time. Clifton asked him about the on-ice incidents he had had as a player and Eric answered honestly: he didn’t put up with bullshit from anyone, let alone someone using slurs. “But one of the things I’m most proud of is that in my old age, I don’t need to fight anymore, at least not as a first resort. I’ve reined in my temper. And I think that has served me well in this position.” He thought, briefly, about blowing up at Ryan in the office. The first argument that had led to pushing him against a whiteboard and everything that had come from it.

Get it together, he told himself.

“And what about the whole Player A lawsuit?” Eric asked, as the interview was winding down. “How is the team planning to handle this?”

Clifton’s face grew solemn. “We’re handling it. We’re fully cooperating with the investigation, and as you’re aware from the interview, everyone who was involved in the decisions that led to the cover-up has been released from their employment with the organization. We are fully committed to building up a new and transparent front office and management style, one that is devoted to ensuring the safety and security of our players as well as all of our employees.”

“What are your concrete plans about this?” Eric asked. “If this were to happen again. If a player were to, say, report to me that he had been assaulted, and I reported to you.”

“We would have procedures in place to handle such things,” Clifton said smoothly. “The lawyers are working on all of that right now.”

Eric could feel himself frowning, and tried to rein it in. “What about ‘going to the police to report a crime’?”

“Obviously, that is the end goal,” Clifton said, smiling again. “But you know how front offices are. It’s a lot of red tape and following the appropriate channels of communication.”

The thing was that Eric wanted this job so fucking much. In theory. He had wanted this job for years; he had been furious when Ryan had stolen it right from under his fingers. But this was not what he’d wanted to hear. This was more of the same, this was corporate speak forwe’re not going to do the right thing until we can be sure that we’re covering our asses.

Eric had never been in a situation like Player A had been, and he didn’t know how he would have reacted, if he’d been trying to crack a major league roster at the time. He knew the desperation, the fear, the knowledge that you had to doanything, including playing through injuries, so you wouldn’t lose your spot. And now that he was a coach, he knew that it was his job to help protect those specific guys, the guys like him. The hungry, desperate ones. The ones who were vulnerable.

“But you’d take it to the police?” he pressed.

“Of course,” Clifton said.

While Eric wasn’t entirely sure if he believed it, it was the sort of thing that he couldn’t argue too much in a job interview. They ran through the last pleasantries, the last few questions, the jovial reminiscing about their playing days and what it used to be like in the league and how fast things had been changing recently.

Finally, Clifton said, “I’ll be blunt with you, Aronson. This is basically your job to lose. I just need you to give me an answer in the next two weeks whether you’ll accept or not.”

“Thank you, sir,” Eric said, swallowing hard around the lump in his throat. “I will have to talk to Ry—Coach Sullivan and the rest of the staff, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

They ended on a handshake, and then the assistant came back in to escort Eric to the door. He had a lot to think about on the train ride home.

Ryan wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that Eric was gone all of Friday. It wasn’t that they missed him at practice, exactly—Heidi was more than capable of stepping in to work with the forwards in his absence. But Ryan felt it, like a hole in his chest, if he was going to be melodramatic. The whole practice felt off-balance to him; he caught himself constantly turning like he was expecting Eric to be there, for the stupidest things. To ask him what he thought about Cook’s board battle or Williams’s edge work or any of it. To needle him about the way he’d get grumpy when one of the boys showered him in snow. To tease him about where they’d go for dinner after.

It wasone practice; there was no need to act like some ridiculous teenaged boy, mooning after the girl of his dreams. But there was the nagging little fear in the back of his head. It was unusual that Eric would miss practice or a game for any reason. So that basically meant it would probably have been a job offer. And if he didn’t want to tell Ryan about it yet, that meant it was probably something serious, something he was considering accepting.

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