Page 104 of Bar Down, Baby

He tucks me under the blankets again, curling back around me. He doesn’t say anything, and neither do I. He said we’d talk about what happened, but I’m afraid. I’m afraid of what he’s not telling me, of what he wants to tell me. And I’m afraid that I’ve let myself open up far too much. That in letting him back in like this, if he tells me he’s done, or if he tells me it’s all over, I’ll never be able to get myself back together, that I won’t be able to put myself back together.

So instead, I close my eyes, and I let him hold me and stroke my hair and my back and my belly until I fall asleep.

But when I wake up, he’s gone.

CHAPTER38

DEREK

No one callsat five a.m. with good news. Especially not the athletic director.

“Derek Carroll,” I mumble into the dark.

“It’s Michael. We’ve been named.”

I’m still not fully awake and so it doesn’t occur to me for another two deep breaths that his voice is unnaturally shaky. Angry.

“Who?”

“Nationals,” he says.

I let out a shallow sigh. It’s a small mercy that it’s not the feds.

“What are they saying?” I ask.

“Lack of institutional control.”

“What?” I’m awake now. It’s the most serious charge they can levy against the school, but usually that goes far higher up than just one team. That’s the kind of sanction that brings down powerhouse programs.

“You should check the Oregonian.”

“Yeah, okay. Hang on.”

I stay on the phone because he hasn’t hung up yet, as I cross my cold, empty loft and open my laptop. As I wait for it to boot up, I pop a pod in my coffee maker and wait for it to produce. It just starts to hiss out its coffee when the screen pops up and I type in the URL.

What I see has me frozen.

“Michael… fuck.”

“You want to start talking?”

It’s all over the website.NCAA Investigates Lack of Institutional Control in Portland University Hockey. But it’s not the headline that catches my eye. It’s the smattering of photos.

Karlie.

There are pictures of Karlie, including her driver’s license photo, a picture of her with what looks like Sam Hirschfeld from several years back, and another one, from a couple days ago, outside the Starbucks where I ran into her. But she’s standing next to Michael, smiling up at him in a friendly way, his hand holding hers. It’s obvious to me that they’re shaking hands after having met inside. But in the context of the other photos, it looks bad. Really bad.

“How much do you want to know?” I ask.

“I think you’d better tell me everything. My wife and family aren’t up yet, and I don’t want to leave anything to the imagination.”

“Yeah, of course,” I say, pinching the bridge of my nose.

So I tell him everything. I start at the beginning, with Deanna. I tell him about how Sam was there during all of it as well as the fallout. I tell him about the phone calls from Sam earlier this season, how I adamantly refused to engage and it seemed to piss him off. I explain how I haven’t called the service since March, and I’ve never used the service to entertain prospects or players. I apologize for how these photos must look and offer to go on the record.

By the time I’m done talking, he doesn’t sound nearly as angry, just tired.

My alarm clock goes off in the other room and I realize it’s time to get ready for the day.

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