Point Shot 01 - Two Man Advantage (13 page)

Chapter Thirteen

Booze is great stuff. It is the ultimate eraser of bad things. It enhances good things. It also gets you into hilarious predicaments that, years in the future perhaps, you’ll be able to talk about with your therapist. I woke up the morning after that great win against the Carolina Copperheads with a mouth that tasted like dried blood, a head that housed an entire marching band percussion unit and a warm body sprawled across me. The body had tits—big ones from the feel of the heavy orb resting on my arm. I murmured a weak prayer to whoever was listening thanking them for this chick being a chick and not Mario McGarrity. The vodka wanted to reappear. I tumbled from the bed. My head detonated. The chick said something garbled as I pounded to the bathroom. I threw up then I took a long shower. Mentally flipping off the razor and mirror, I brushed my teeth for about ten minutes. Then I went out to face the naked bimbo in my bed.

“Hey,” I called. I didn’t know her name. She flopped onto her back. I eyed her massive breasts. So Ms. Goodyear had finally gotten that hunk of kielbasa she had been after. Damn pity I didn’t recall one fucking thing we had done. She opened her eyes and then smiled. I tensed instantly. It was that look. The one they always get when you don’t make them leave after the slap-and-tickle. I stepped into a pair of jeans as she rolled around on the bed trying to be enticing.

“Morning, Vic,” she purred. “Got anything for breakfast?”

“Yeah,” I said. I tugged out a hundred and flipped it at her. Oh man, did her eyes go all dinner plate when she saw the Benjamin. “Grab a dozen doughnuts on the corner then get a cab home.”

The way she came off my bed you would have thought her fine ass had been infiltrated by a demon. The bitch flew off the mattress, all sex-kitten behavior gone. She got right into my face, all her pouty beauty now gone as she raged at me. Nostrils flared, eyes narrowed and as bloodshot as mine must be, she was a harridan with Botox lips flapping in the wind.

“What the fuck is that supposed to…”

The rest trailed off into the droning
wah-wah-wah
that some women have perfected. This is why I hate bringing chicks into things. The bitch knew it was a fast fuck but now she was all in my shit, shaking her tits and ass all over my room while being a general sea-hag. Who the fuck needs that shit? That, and a few other important reasons, is why I get into men ninety-nine out of a hundred times.

I turned from her, stalked to the door and flung it open. She gawked at the open doorway.

“Get dressed and get out.” I folded my arms over my chest.

“You are the biggest shithead in the AHL, Victor Kalinski!” she shrieked as she gathered her dress from the floor. I made my hand talk. She whipped the lamp at my head. I ducked. Some poor dude in a suit chose that moment to walk down the hall. The light clipped him soundly in the face. Down to the floor he went. Out Ms. Goodyear went in her bare feet with her dress barely covering her bouncing ass. She stepped over Suit Dude, cursing wildly as she pounded down the corridor.

“I’ll call the desk and get a doctor sent up,” I told the man lying in the hall with blood trickling into his eyes.

“Much appreciated,” he croaked. I shut the door, made the call, then threw myself back into my bed. My head was still tender and I needed coffee in mass quantities. Rolling to find my phone amid the shit on the nightstand, I pawed through change, condoms, a comb and four chips to some Seneca Indian casino. I lay back down, a blue chip held up in a slim stream of early December sunlight. Had I gone to this casino last night? How much had I lost? Had I fucked Ms. Goodyear well? I hoped so. The hand holding the chip dropped to my bare chest. My eyes drifted shut. I had successfully drunk Dan Arou out of my head and heart last night. What the shit was I supposed to do to get through the next twenty-four hours, though?

My cell going off roused me from the nap I had taken. I let it go to voicemail. I didn’t even recall dropping off, but I still held the blue chip and the sun had moved a good foot. Huh. Go figure. I brought the phone to my ear. My eyes were too tender to open them at the moment. I said hello and heard his voice. I was done.

“Hey,” Dan said in replay. I squeezed my eyes shut tightly. “Vic, listen, I know what this is you’re doing, and if you’ve got to, well then I guess you’ve got to, but I need you to do me a big. Can you go to my place and pack up my CD’s and shit? Mail them to the ‘cudas’ main office. I’m kind of living in a hotel at the moment.” He laughed derisively. “I don’t know how you can stand it. Anyway, just grab my tunes and ship them to me. I’ll send you my address. The landlady will let you in. Vic, you know that I love you, right? You ignoring it isn’t going to make my feelings any—”

I didn’t listen to the rest of the message. I couldn’t. My ears were full of tears that had tracked down my cheeks.

* * * * *

Dan lived in a nice little apartment that was actually some old lady’s second floor. She informed me that she and the husband had renovated the second floor for extra income. I nodded, box under my arm. Snowflakes flew around the side of the house to hit me in the face. She liked Dan, she said as we climbed the outside stairs to his place. The street was quiet. Nice. Lower-to-middle-class but nice.

“He always pays his rent on time. And he carries my trash to the curb every Tuesday night. I was so happy to hear he got called up. We watched the game! Did you?” She looked over her frail shoulder.

“Yeah, I watched.”

She smiled. Her gums showed bright pink. Snowflakes stuck to her leathery cheeks.

“You’re a nice friend to send Dan his music,” she clucked as the door opened. We went inside. The place was neat and tidy. Dan Arou was all over the small apartment. From his days in midget hockey and the trophies he had won, through high school and then college. Pictures and trinkets covered the walls and filled shelves. It was homey. It was definitely
not
impersonal. I could smell him on the air.

“That’s me, a nice friend.”
Not.
I smiled down at her.

“Well, make sure you lock up after you leave. Dan said that he trusted you, so we do as well.”

She patted my arm then left, the door closing behind her. I turned from the cloud of mentholated rub that Mrs. Rupert left behind. I wanted more Dan in my nostrils. I walked into the living room, taking my time and visually inhaling all I could. I breathed deep. My eyes caressed. My fingers touched. I studied the pictures that were everywhere, it seemed—Ma and Pa Arou, old teams, fishing with buddies, the Cougars, him and Kurt paddling across a lake somewhere in a paddleboat.

“Fuck, I miss you, Arou,” I whispered to his space. The stereo was positioned under a big window that looked down on the backyard. A huge oak waved at me. In the summer this place would be super with all the windows open. I could almost hear the sounds of Middle America drifting in, along with the smells of cookouts and gas-powered lawn mowers. Yeah. That would be nice. Just me and Arou soaking up the American dream, all intertwined on his sofa.

I started grabbing CD’s from the tower. Man, the dude had some good taste in tunes. Falling in Reverse, Black Veil Brides, I See Stars, Silverstein. They were all bands that I enjoyed. I’d been kind of hoping he was into country or something so I could be all, “Well, he likes fucking Blake Shelton and so, you know, I had to dump his uncool ass!” But no, Arou couldn’t even do me that favor. I think I loved him even more when I found his Rammstein CD. I placed the box on the plush green couch. My feet kind of made my body follow. I snuck into his bedroom. Why had I never come here to see him? Was it because I was scared of getting to know him better? Ah-yup, that would be the reason. Keep-it-casual-Kalinski they call me.

The room was spacious and filled with guy shit like clothes, magazines, an empty soda can, a couple of pucks and a stick that must have been Dan’s when he was peewee-leaguing it. Signs of his hasty departure were evident. I closed all the open dresser drawers.

The bed was huge. It took every granule of determination I possessed not to lie down and bury my face into his sheets. My cell vibrated in my front pocket. I pulled it out from amid the bills, keys and change, my gaze gently touching Dan’s space.

“Mr. Victor Kalinski?” The caller sounded ethnic. Middle Eastern or Indian, perhaps? “This is Dr. Vivek Dada from St. Bernard Hospital in Chicago.”

My vision sort of shrank until all I could see was the burnished doorknob on Dan’s closet.

“Yeah, this is Victor.” Someone downstairs laughed. My feet were suddenly growing cold.

“Victor, your name was listed as the next of kin for Doris Kalinski?”

“Yeah,” I croaked. I cleared my throat. “Yeah, she’s my mother. Is she dead?” I hadn’t meant that question to be so callous, honest to Christ I hadn’t. It had just fallen off my tongue.

“No, not yet, but the end is near. She’s in the final stages of cirrhosis of the liver and has asked for you to be notified. We’re sending her to a local hospice and…”

I didn’t hear anything after the bit about final stages. So now what? Was I supposed to leap up, run out to Chicago to sit by her side in some last-ditch attempt to make her feel better? I ran my tongue over my teeth. The missing tooth felt bizarre. The sound of my smack filled the silent room. I wished Arou were there to bitch at me for being an annoying dick. Wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up the fastest. Isn’t that some old folk saying? I knew what my hands were full of.

“What’s the name of the hospice?”

Chapter Fourteen

Yellow-and-green walls with fucking frog wallpaper strips running along the middle? Really? Was that supposed to be some sort of joke? I mean, who the
hell
would choose those colors for a death room? And let’s be frank, every room in this hospice was a death room. It didn’t matter if they painted the walls pink and purple, or pasted unicorns and fuzzy puppies on the ceiling, each room here was a funeral just waiting to occur. It wouldn’t have shocked me to find a coffin in the closet, just to speed things up. And that was just the ocular shit that assaulted your corneas before you put your dried-out eyes on the soon-to-be-dearly-departed. I haven’t touched on the sounds or smells in Gentle Hands Hospice.

You could smell death as soon as you stepped in from the cold. You could hear the Reaper in each wheezing inhalation and rattling exhalation. No amount of cover-up in the form of New Age music or deodorizing push-and-sniff contraptions on the fucking green-and-yellow walls could hide the stink of a slow demise.

My mother didn’t know I was there. Slouched over a chair that faced her and a window, I couldn’t decide if that was good or bad. When I had arrived four hours ago, dragging ass from the hangover combined with the ten-hour drive, I’d been told by the head social worker, Becky something, that my mother would be unresponsive or delusional. It was probably for the best that she wasn’t saying anything. Having to listen to some of the old conversations we shared would have had me doing swan dives from hospice windows. It was hard enough sitting there looking at her. It had been close to ten years. Ten years of steady drinking will fuck you up. Her skin was yellow, her nose crusted with blood, her stomach distended to the point that she looked as if she were seven months along with twins. I barely recognized her.

There was a nice legal paper saying no resuscitation, intubation or dialysis. The hospice lady, Becky, had whispered that we were looking at less than thirty-six hours. So I guessed there would be no big dramatic speeches or revelations being shared. Again, I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. What could she have said that would have made a difference? She was sorry? Yeah well, I was sorry too. I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. The whirrs and whispers and puffs of machinery were no longer a problem. Soon as I’d arrived, the life-prolonging shit had been removed. Now it was just me, the darkness outside and the clock. Mom’s breathing was weak already. A nurse came in every thirty minutes to dab and fiddle with the patient or ask me if I wanted anything. There was nothing she could do for either of us unless she had Death on speed-dial.

I stretched out my legs. The chair hissed at me. My head rolled backward. The ceiling was the typical institutional white drop-ceiling flock. Why not paint the tiles yellow-and-green as well? I mean, if I’m lying here dying, wouldn’t the ceiling be the place to slap up some feel-good? A nurse walked past, her shoes squeaking. I folded my arms over my chest and let my eyes drift shut.

A hand coming to rest on my shoulder startled me sharply. I jerked upright, the blanket someone had draped over me flying onto my lap.

“I got here as soon as I heard,” Dan whispered. My world went spinning off into the Milky Way. I shot to my old, battered sneakers. The blanket slithered down to cover my feet. I wrapped my arms around Dan. He did likewise, cinching me tight to him.

“You— I— Jesus, Arou,” I whimpered, rubbing my cheek against his dark hair. His hands roamed over my back. He smelled like salvation and succor. “I am so… I love you.”

“I know you do. That feeling is real mutual, Vic.”

“How the hell did you know?” I asked while keeping him plastered to me as tightly as I could.

“I called Mrs. Rupert, my landlady, to check to see if you’d been there. She said you left the shit there with her because you had to go home due to your mother dying,” he explained, his head tucked perfectly under my chin. “I called around, found her here and told Coach I had to take a personal day or two.”

I kissed the top of his head. “So you were checking up on me?”

“Yeah,” he confessed, his words making perfect little hot puffs on my Adam’s apple. “I mean, I had to find out about my tunes.”

“There is no way I can’t do what you ask me—you got to know that, Dan.”

“I was hoping that was the case. I’m so sorry about this,” he said, squeezing me tightly but quickly.

“I’m sorry about a lot of shit, this being just one of thousands,” I told him. He was loose in my arms, relaxed, soaking me up as I was soaking him up. “You feel great.”