The Last Season (25 page)

Gently, considerately, I steady his head with my gloved hands, then lean down toward him and spit mightily into his face.

Flash!

I look up a young, long-haired kid in a blue pea jacket is standing over us with an expensive camera and flash.

“Fuck off!” I yell.

Flash!
He jumps back a step, adjusts.

Flash!

“Perkele!”
I shout at him. He laughs and tips his head in acknowledgement. I jump up from the whimpering spitter and scrape toward the photographer, slipping. He dodges easily.

“Give me that film, you little fag!” I order him.

He shakes his head, no. I grab for him, miss and slip headfirst down into the muck. He slips away and up the path, laughing I struggle momentarily after him, slip back again and know I cannot go on. I am exhausted, breathing as heavily as the spitter, who has yet to get off his back.

There is a hand on my shoulder. I turn, prepared to swing, but it is a cop. He is young, with a stern look, and tells me in Swedish to stay put while he helps up the spitter. The cop is like oxygen to the Swede, who rises, pointing at me and turkey-gobbling some lie. The cop listens and then starts talking back to the man, and it seems to me that they are arguing, the cop as angry as the spitter. A crowd begins to gather, growing rapidly. Finally the cop grabs him angrily by the arm and pulls him toward me. The cop speaks in English using a voice the crowd strains to catch.

“He says he will not press charges on you.”

If only the referee had the sense of the cop. I come back into the arena, mud covered, my blades as rounded and dull as the spitter's face, and in mid-action, the referee blows down the play. Leaning over the boards, he assesses me a game misconduct.

I can only laugh and walk by the awed leeches on the way to the dressing room, enter and close the door as if a baby sleeps within. One does, but within me. I undress alone, happily, savouring the silence of the crowd and the knowledge that I have led the outcasts in revenge. I pretended this is Renfrew and I am not stripping off expensive, freely supplied Joffa equipment, but the pants Poppa paid a quarter for at the St. Martin's bazaar and sewed together with twelve-pound-test monofilament fishing line, replacing the missing thigh pad with a cedar shingle. I look around at the empty seats, then at the hole Matti has left, and I fill it with Danny. Danny sits, legs spread wide, skates unlaced but not kicked free, braces hanging down off the shoulders like the outlines of wings at rest, his chest heaving with victory.

“Danny,” I say. I am not crazy. I know he is not there but I say it anyway. I just want to feel his name in my mouth again and to see him the way he was.

To see me the way I was.

To feel it coming again. Not sure what to expect but success. Why, tell me why — why is success so much sweeter in the future, where it may not exist at all, than in the past, where there is no argument?

“Ugga-bugga, pal,” I say softly and close my eyes, pulling thuds and cracks and whistles and cheers and moans of the godforsaken area about me like a comforter.

When the team comes in with a 6–5 victory, I am asleep.

Later, in the banquet hall bar of a squat hotel, I sit nursing a beer, my mood peculiar. A band is on stage, identical straw-haired pipe cleaners in thin black ties, white shirts and slacks so desperately tapered their toes couldn't tap for choking. And no wonder: a cross between ABBA and a polka band, they manage to make “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” even worse than the original.

But I am quiet, alone. Pekka, drunk first on his hat trick, is now drunk on
koskenkorva
, thrown back neat and then cooled with a beer chaser. Several of the others are staying with him. Never have I seen Tapiola Hauki so — sorry, Bobby — “gelled.” We feel completely comfortable together, a unit.

Timo begins strength exhibitions, taking a bite out of a glass and happily chewing it while everyone, me excluded, applauds in astonishment. Timo looks at me and I nod in approval, then stand as the table goes silent. I reach over toward Pekka and pick an empty beer glass. Then I take up Pekka's nearly empty
koskenkorva
bottle and pour out a short ounce, causing Pekka to hoot with derision. I hold up my hand, silently calling for patience. My mood is strange and I am not quite sure what it is that's making me do this, but instead of going for more alcohol to prove the point, I suddenly find myself pulling at my fly as I stand there. In front of the entire table, I whip it out and slowly pee several more shots into the glass. Then, zipping back up, I raise this yellowed, sparkling liquid toward the chandeliers, cut off my breath and quickly drain the glass to the bottom.

“Hakkaa p
ää
lle!”
Timo shouts.

“Hakkaa p
ää
lle!!!”
The table, Pekka included, erupts.

I say nothing. Delicately, I place the glass down. Arrogantly, I walk away, leaving their continued cheering and applause. No can believe what I have done, but there is a rationale to such apparent insanity. There has to be. To them, it looks as if Batterinski has gone out of control, but appearances are deceiving. I have simply taken shock and manipulated it. Those who witnessed the act will be saying that, come morning, I had better not remember it; if I do, I will be aghast. But they are so wrong. I will not only remember it; I will be proud of it.

A rep is not something you acquire and take with you. It is something you must be forever creating. As it suits you.

And this act is not done to serve me in the bar, but on the ice.

Erkki is already aboard the plane when Pekka and Timo and I make it up the ramp, one of us on each side of Pekka, who has thrown up twice on the bus ride out to the tiny airport. I leave Pekka's fate to Timo and the airplane's thin waxed bags, halting in front of Erkki and his empty seat of scattered newspapers. He moves them and I can see by his fingernails how badly he is disturbed by what he has read. As I sit, he drops the best shot in my lap, nearly a quarter page on the front of the first section, of me paying the spitter back in kind.

“Did they get the score right?” I ask.

“It is not so funny to me,” Erkki says.

“It wasn't so funny to me, either. That's why I did it back to him.”

“The board will not be pleased.”

I imitate him “‘The board will not be pleased.' Now what the fuck is that supposed to mean, Erkki? We won, didn't we?”

“That's not the point.”

“Tell me then, Erkki — just what is the point?”

Erkki flees to a thumbnail, ripping a thin tortured ribbon free so two small flecks of blood can rise in the whitened crease. Erkki sucks on it, gaining nourishment from his own fears, gathering himself before he dares.

“This was an exhibition match.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning it does not count.”

“It seemed to count for them — as long as they were winning, anyway.”

“But not so much as to justify your attacking a fan, surely.”

“
Me
attack? I say indignantly. “Who spit first?”

Erkki taps the paper. A blood bud falls from his finger, spreading. “Hauki dos not appreciate bad publicity.”

The flight is rocky. We seem to be boring straight into turbulence as we head out over the water. We do not crash, but only because when I walked back from Erkki I checked the seatbelts. Pekka does not laugh this time. He lies alone in a double seat, blind drawn, pillows under and over his head, moaning. Matti sits alone as well, near the back of the plane, and untouchable. He is unshaven and scramble-eyed, staring at me like a hungry dog on a short chain. I ignore him.

The flight smoothes, a new sky rising clear and bright over a thick mattress of flattened cloud. I set my seat back and closed my eyes, imagining what it will be like to be back with Kristiina tonight, whether she will have heard, what she will think.

Something bumps my chair, a sharp jolt that cracks my head against the window.

“Sorry.”

I look up. It is Matti, his comment and expression contradicting.

“Fuck off,” I say, closing my eyes again.

He bumps again.

“Sorry.”

I sit up and turn as he leans over. I can smell the booze. Matti reaches and slaps with an open palm, hand open, and the sting floods my eyes though it does not hurt much. I am startled. I have been hit by a man, kicked by a man, choked, bit-speared, tripped and nearly knifed by a man. But slapped? I can do nothing but laugh.

“You think it is funny, Batterinski?” Matti asks.

“Not really,” I say. “That's about what I would expect of your type — a woman's slap.”

Timo rises behind Matti, waiting. He puts a hand on Matti's shoulder, gently, suggesting, but Matti shakes free more than is necessary and leans again toward me.

“You fucking Canadian!”

“Forget it, Matti,” I say, trying to remain reasonable. “You're off the team. Let him be, Timo. Matti, go on back and lie down. Get some sleep. You need it.”

Matti lunges, a nail catching under my eye and stinging off my cheekbone. He is both too weak and too drunk to fight. I grab his hands together like he's a child throwing a tantrum and stand up, throwing him into the empty seat while I still hold on to him.

I look straight into his tortured eyes. “Are you going to settle down now?”

He twists angrily, grunting. I slap his face back.

“Lars,” I shout back at the trainer. “A roll of tape — quick!”

Lars has his jacket pocket full of them and tosses a roll immediately. I catch the tape, bit the loose end up and, holding it in my mouth, yank a long squawk of tape free. Letting it drop from my mouth, I work it loose with one hand until it catches and then wrap it tight, around and around and around Matti's arms as Timo pins him. He barely bothers to struggle but begins to curse me in Finnish.

“Kovanaama!”

“Perkele!”

“Vittu paska!”

“Bully, bastard, fucking shit.”
He has exhausted my own Finnish comprehension by the time I decide to finish off the roll of tape by doing Matti's mouth as well.

“There,” I say gently into Matti's burning ear. “That should hold you until we get home.”

Timo carts him off to the applause of the team and by the time we land I have forgotten Matti. There are far too many other concerns. Erkki is waiting smugly by the luggage carousel, lightly slapping the afternoon
Helsinki Sanomat
against his palm as if waiting for a fly to light. The front page belongs to Batterinski.

He hands me the paper and turns away, waiting for me to read. As he rocks on his feet, hands rip nails behind his back. For comfort he stares into the deep hole of the carousel, closing his condemning eyes only when they settle on the arrival of the first luggage: Matti, taped, twisted and terrified as he rises on the rubber treadmill and rolls down the steel plates, circling twice before Erkki, alone, hauls him off like a flopping, massive muskie. No one moves to help as we gather up our equipment and depart, for the first time a true team.

Kristiina was not home. I called fourteen times from five o'clock on but no answer. Finally I showered, shaved and dressed anyway and walked from the hotel over to the Viisi Pennia for a few brew and compliments, but the evening did not sit well with me. I talked while silent inside, laughed while sulking beneath, drank but was dry to the pit of my gut. Three times more I called, but still no answer. No Kristiina.

Midnight and I think I see her through the smoke. She stands at the front door, swaying as she winces through the bad air for me. She is not alone. Her hand uses a man's arm like a pole to swing from as she searches, the other hand pressed to her silken bangs, scouting. I want to shout but I cannot; I cannot even look at her properly because of him — who is he?
what
is he? He stands tall beside her, nearly my height and it is difficult to make out his build for all the bulk, lamb jacket, scarf, black Russian hat. He grins the smile of the horribly uncomfortable, teeth like a champ on a pipe so curled and whittled that I wait for a soap bubble to drift across the bar and burst on my table: this late-night, late-drink, late-thought nightmare finished.

But it does not burst. She sees me seated with the usual leeches, waves frantically and heads through a crowd, tugging her uneasy giant behind. It is clear he is not used to bars. He smiles a welcome the way frightened dogs expose their bellies, unaware that others turn not to greet but to leer. On other nights, with Kristiina on this same walk, picking up imaginations the way Poppa's magnet pulls nails from the laneway, I have been proud, knowing they all see Batterinski between the hard thought and the soft comfort of her body. But not this night. I stare as well. But not at her. At him
Who is he?

“Hi,” she says, the tone tentative, hopeful.

I am glad she spoke first. Sensing defence, I am free to lag the puck, letting her commit herself first. I pick up my glass and raise it in a toast which says, and is supposed to say, nothing. The leeches clear out, knowing Kristiina; from their hands on my shoulders and back I know they are wishing me well and content just to touch. I am to them what Paavo Nurmi is to me: a charm. And I am as aware of them as the statue is of me. Kristiina, though, is another matter.

She smiles enthusiastically. “Felix. I would want you to meet a friend of mine from where I work. This is Jorma. Jorma, I would like you to meet Felix Batterinski, please.”

I rise not out of good manners but to show him my size. Yet it does not work. He is not as tall, he is taller, and when his hand comes down off the pipe — white clay, the bowl like a full-breasted woman with vents for nipples — and reaches for mine, it is as if I am putting on a hockey glove. His grasp is huge, the fingers long and strong, and if the flesh seems soft it is only a false covering over hydraulic bones. We both grip hard and shake once, up and down. An egg held between would have splattered to the ceiling.