Page 11 of Gravity
“Younevergive up. That's what this game is about,non?”
“I’m just stubborn—”
“Stubborn wins.”
Bryce’s gaze excavates the layers inside of me. My toetap-tap-tapsaway, despite how I mangle my thumb into my quad.
The waitress returns, saving me from trying to respond. She asks for our order, but I haven’t even glanced at the menu.
“Everything here is good. You cannot go wrong,” Bryce says.
“What are you having?”
“Practically one of everything.”
“Make that two of everything.”
We tear into queso and guacamole and demolish stacks of homemade tortillas and bowls of chips. We eat our body weight in fajitas and then polish off taco salads and two plates of steak nachos. I want to eat everything again, but I also want to wave the white flag and never eat another calorie in my life.
There’s something about watching a guy chasing melted cheese down his wrist that forces away the awkwardness, too. By the time Bryce and I are scraping the bowl of queso and guac clean with the last of the chips, we’re laughing easily, our voices bouncing off each other, our conversational give-and-go as easy as being on the ice. I’ve relaxed in a way that has absolutely nothing at all to do with my beer and everything to do with the man sitting across from me.
While we eat, Bryce opens my mind and expands the limits of my hockey horizons. The way he speaks about the game is unlike anything I’ve ever heard. He’s a different player from everyone else, which is why he and the Great One are sharing space in the record books. He can see plays start and end in the single flick of another guy's wrist, or in the angle and push of someone’s skate rush. He can predict how the next three, ten, and thirty seconds are going to unfold on the ice. The rest of us play checkers, and he plays three-dimensional chess above our heads.
We order another round of beer. I ask him about playing against Seattle, a team infamous for their physically dominating and aggressive game. It’s a style that is totally opposite to the Montréal Étoiles' finesse, and the two teams met like titans earlier this season.
“You have to know your opponent,” he says. “You have to know them better than they know themselves. Use their own strategies against them. When you get them to play for you,alors,you’re in control of the game.”
I roll my beer against my napkin. “Get the other team to play for you?”
“Seattle are bullies,non? They like to shove in the corners, knock you down, crunch you against the boards.” He waves his hand in front of him as he talks, like he’s rattling off a list of Seattle’s greatest sins. “But if you are crunching, you are not fast. We can destroy theirstratégieby being too quick to catch.Et voilà. Now they are flying themselves into the boards, and if they try to pin us, we are already down the ice, half a rink away, and they are still getting to their knees.” His accent has thickened, from the late hour or the beer, I can’t tell. “Do not respect their crunch,” he says, pointing his bottle toward me. “Skate likele vent. The wind. Like we did. If you do, then they will spin themselves in circles.”
I nod.
“We ran Seattle ragged,” he continues. “Smothered them when they were exhausted. We would not let them pass, either. What do you do when you cannot pass?”
“You dump and chase, or you’re forced into playing keep-away.”
“Oui. So we took the dump and chase away from them, too. There was nothing left for them,non, rien d’autre. By the second period, they were so frustrated, they couldn’t see past their rage. They collapsed.”
“You make it sound easy, but you’re the best play-reader in the NHL. There’s serious talk about you being telepathic.”
“Calisse, I am not telepathic.”
“But youarethe best.”
His cheeks bloom with a magenta glow and his eyes slide down to his hands. His thumbs play with the wet edge of his Corona bottle. “I am just a man. Like you.”
“I’m honored you think I’m anything like you.”
A moment passes. His thumbs work along the side of his bottle. “I was hoping I’d get to talk to you this weekend. Like this.” He speaks like he’s confessing a secret.
“Oh yeah?”
“Oui. I wanted to meet you. It is a shame we haven’t played together before now.”
“It is.” My heart is beating so damn fast.
We’ve been so lost in our conversation that we missed the tables filling around us. We’ve shifted closer to talk, and now we’re almost forehead to forehead over the wobbly table. For the first time, I check my phone and realize the time. It’s after midnight and the restaurant is packed. This is a local joint, and the locals have descended en masse.
