Point Shot 02 - Game Misconduct (3 page)

I walked away from the hotel, my goal the marina. It was a nice little marina, filled with well-maintained boats. Most had their lights on inside. I walked slowly up and down the piers, hands in shorts pockets, admiring the bobbing crafts and gnawing on my sore lip. For a small guy Arou packed one hell of a wallop. I paused to inhale, my breathing getting shaky again. I had fucked things up royally. I dropped into a crouch in front of a docked boat named
Crystal’s Blue Persuasion
.

Dan. Fuck.
My knees buckled and I sat down on the damp boards. Shaky coughs tore at my diaphragm. I sure hoped Crystal didn’t peek out her porthole. I scrubbed at my face with my hands. Knowing I couldn’t sit there like a sack of trash, I made myself stand. All I wanted was a bed, a bottle and the loving arms of Lady Forgetfulness.

“I swear I am done with chicks who aren’t on the label of a beer bottle,” I murmured as I made my way to the hotel, purposely keeping my sight averted from that damn cruise boat with the diners filing on for a romantic sail in the moonlight. I could almost hear the champagne glasses clinking. Fuck them and their bubbly. May the ship sink like a concrete turd.

The clerk wasn’t too keen on renting me a room. I probably looked like some sort of crackhead with my swollen eyes, mismatched clothes, wet sneakers and the odor of booze clinging to me. Soon as I flashed the plastic and the credit card approval came through, he eased off on the disgusted looks. My room had walls, a window, a double bed and a door with a sturdy lock. I secured the door, kicked off my shoes and crawled onto the firm bed. I lay on my back, staring at the circlet of light the lone lamp beside the bed made on the ceiling.

The room smelled clean, which was more than I could say for myself. Maybe I would shower. Maybe not. I rolled to my side, inhaled the cold air blowing out of the air conditioner and marveled at how easy it had been to screw up the best thing in my life. Even chewing on the gash in my bottom lip didn’t hurt as much as knowing Dan was alone and hurting because of me. I possessed not one clue as to how to fix things. I had never fixed things before. I just walked when it went sour. Less groveling was required if you just threw up your hands and moseyed. Love ‘em and leave ‘em Kalinski, that was me. When had that changed? Oh yeah, I remembered. The first time I’d fallen asleep with Dan Arou tucked into my side. I reached for the phone and ordered dinner for the night—a new bottle of Yukon Jack with a side of ice cubes.

The following morning I was sitting in a diner with the word “Keuka” in it somewhere, wishing for Death to take me while having a stare-off with two sunny-side-up eggs. I had forced the hash browns, toast and coffee down, but those eggs were beyond gross. For some reason they weren’t like the eggs that Dan fried in the morning. His were firmer. These had some sort of funky film on them that made the Jack puddle in my gut heave. I shoved the plate with the cold eggs away. I leaned back into the bench of my booth and raised the steaming coffee mug to my mouth. The coffee here was good and the mug bottomless. The diner was a tourist trap, stuffed with all sorts of mementos, mugs and motifs to reflect how grand this area of New York was. I begged to differ. I could see nothing grand about Cayuga, the Finger Lakes, this state or those fucking eggs.

Someone walked past. I glanced up to see the cook. He had made several passes under the guise of bussing tables. The hangover was toying with my usual sunny disposition. I knew he wanted something. Everyone does. I slid out of the booth, tossed a twenty onto the table and left the diner. Cook would be disappointed that he hadn’t got my autograph or a picture with the famed “Venomous Pole”, as I’d been called. Little did he know that I’d done him a good. If I’d spoken to him, it would have been as ugly as Buttonwood’s wife. No, hey, don’t groan. You haven’t met the woman. She made my mother sound like Sister Mary Sweetness. It was no wonder our captain sank his dick into anything with a pussy.

I paused in front of my car. Granted, my mind was sloppy and sickly, but something inside my membrane made a soft sort of clicking noise. I’d just mentally given Buttonwood a pat on the back for being unfaithful to his wife. I hurried to get into my Escalade. There I sat, my thoughts agitated and spinning like the old wringer washer we had when I was a kid. If I had a fucking dime for every time I pinched my fingers in that miserable contraption, I could buy the Cayuga Cougars. Shaking away the warm fuzzies of doing the laundry when I was eight so Mom could sleep it off, I tried to get my mind back on track. Buttonwood and his wife, yeah—that was where I’d been.

The idea of infidelity being okay if your sig other had flaws seemed off to me today. I tried to dredge up where I’d come by it. Of course, I couldn’t recall shit. I was lucky I knew my name this morning. But yeah, so fucking around on someone was okay if the person you were cheating on was a not-so-nice person. What about if they were fat or ugly or dumb or liked stupid music?

I stared through my windshield at the quaint little diner with the disgusting not-Dan fried eggs. What if the person you ran around on was pretty close to perfect—for you, I mean. Why
had
I crawled into the sack with Heather…Hillary…Hannah…whatever her name was? Booze had played a part. A sour belch escaped. Grease and whiskey on the rebound, yum. Guessed I needed to get the chick’s name seared into my memory banks if she was carrying my kid. And I had suspicions as big as the Empire State that the kid was mine. I burped again and mulled about this woman who set her sights on hockey stars and their wallets. I’d ask around. See who among the straights on the team had done her. I knew I could omit Dan. Dan didn’t do puck bunnies. He liked the hot Polish meat…or had.

It was obvious what I had to do. And being me, I went into it with my usual tact and decorum. When I got back to our apartment, I walked into the space I shared with Dan to find two fat suitcases sitting in the living room. Upon seeing those bags, the hash browns and toast threatened to make a reappearance. I swallowed several times. Dan walked out of the bedroom, his small toiletry bag on his shoulder. He looked exhausted and so damaged.

“Hey,” I said. Verbal skills suffer with heavy drinking and heart-breaking. “So this is how it goes down?” I asked, motioning with a shaky hand to the bags. “You throw me out without even giving me a chance to explain? That’s pretty small even for a Hobbit.”

“Those are
my
clothes.” He hurled the words at me like shuriken stars. Mental cogs slipped a bit. I stared at my lover as if I were a stunned steer outside a butcher shop.

“Dude, your name is on the lease.” Fuck, but those seven words cost me dearly. It hurt to say them, knowing that this was the beginning of the end. No way could I live here when it was Dan’s place.

“I’m not moving out. I’m going home.” His tone was bitterly cold. If we’d shut the windows, we could have skipped the AC units we’d discussed. Not knowing what to do with my hands, I began jangling my keys against my thigh.

“This is your home. I’ll get my shit and go.”

“No, I’m going home. To Manitoba. It’s my mom’s birthday.” He bent down to pick up his suitcases.

I felt a sting of panic race through me. My keys rattled with more speed. “We were supposed to do that together.” Wow, I was all sorts of skilled with the dialog.

Dan glared at me as he straightened. His bangs dangled in his eyes. “Yeah, well, that was before you fucked us over. I don’t want you anywhere near me or my family right now. I need to think.”

“Will you at least take the gift I got her?” Dear Baby Buddha, was that Victor Kalinski begging? My fingers tightened around my keys. That needy voice had to stop. VK did not beg or wheedle. Whining got you beat with whatever was at hand. Same as getting your fingers caught in the wringers.

“No.” He walked around me and out the door. I watched him go, his dark head slowly disappearing as he went down the stairs.

“But I picked it out myself.”

The roar of his Jeep leaving the driveway was his reply.
Okay. Good. This is okay.
I gently closed the door to my new bachelor pad. Then I dropped my keys onto the carpet, stepped over them and went into the bedroom.

On the lone shelf in the bedroom closet, above our winter coats, was the small present for Mrs. Arou. I plucked it from the shelf, glad to see that Dan’s parka was still here. That meant he would come back. Maybe, when he got over being hurt, we could talk and try to work this mess out. I strolled out to the living room, the small box that carefully held a handcrafted stained glass window hanger resting in my palm. She would have really liked it. It had taken me an hour in the damn card shop by the Rader to pick it out. I pulled off the pretty purple bow that the perky chick in the card shop had tied the gift box shut with. Using the tips of my fingers, I pulled the delicate window decoration out from the folds of lilac-colored tissue paper. I held it up into the bright morning sun that filled our place.

You Raised a Wonderful Son.

I spun the hanger so that it reflected diamonds of different-colored light around the apartment. It was like a rainbow disco-ball effect. Mrs. Arou really
had
raised a wonderful son.

There were two warring factions inside me. One cried out to break the fucking stupid pussy-assed gift and go take a shower. The other whispered that it was time to stop destroying good things. My throat felt thick and raw. I lowered the gift for Mrs. Arou back into the tissue paper nest and closed the lid. Placing the box on the table that no longer held Dan’s keys, I stood staring at the thing for so long my eyes dried out.

A stiff wind blew in through the window, lifting the vertical blind then dropping it. Mansfield was in the backyard, whining at the Ruperts’ door for entry. The breeze threw some coupons for a local pizza place from the coffee table. It also wafted the paternity summons to me. The legal papers fluttered over to rest beside my sneaker. If I were smart, I’d tromp on those fucking papers and leave the state until training camp opened in six weeks. As we all know, no one has ever called Vic Kalinski smart. I reached down for the paper, unrolled it, read it again, then removed my cell to make the call to the Cougars’ main office. Might as well inform the team about what was on the horizon for their star player. Maybe they’d shit-can me and I could move back to Chi-Town, start over with a new team and a new man. I snorted so loudly my sinuses vibrated.
New man, yeah. Good one, Vic.

“Hey, this is Victor Kalinski. I need to talk to someone in legal,” I told the chipper female who had answered the Cougars’ main office phone. Time to heap the shit a little deeper on the redheads. “What am I calling about? Well, I got this paternity test summons served on me yesterday from some puck bunny. So I suggest you pass my call along so I can talk to a lawyer before the media gets their scraggly teeth into the story. Why yes, I will be most pleased to wait while you forward the call.”

Nice to know my sarcasm hadn’t left me during this time of strife and upheaval. A man needed something to cleave to, after all.

* * * * *

The following day I sat in a conference room facing two lawyers and a woman who, it seemed, had no liking for the proceedings. Heather Pavlick looked completely different from how she had when I’d last seen her. Face drawn with worry, the bouncy blonde bimbo routine gone, Heather sat beside her attorney, her thick golden hair drawn into a timid bun. She wore a dress that Dan’s mother would have worn to church, all dark, somber modesty. Her makeup was subtle. In other words, she was the new star of
Flip This Slut
on the “Rake an Innocent Guy over the Coals” channel.

Her lawyer and my lawyer—or I should say the team lawyer—were deep in discussions. I rolled my eyes from Heather to scan the room. It was your typical legal-meeting-room décor with dark walls, seascapes, plush burgundy carpet and drapes, and the smell of money on the cooled air. My lawyer was saying something to Heather.

“I am positive it’s his,” she announced with conviction. “He was the only man I was intimate with for several months.”

I threw back my head and laughed. All three in the room startled at the sharp barking that bounced off the cherry walls.

“I think she may have meant that I was the only man she’d been intimate with for several minutes.” I met her dark look with a cocked eyebrow. I had made calls the night before. What else had I had to do, right? Shower, shave, sip some Jack and ring-a-ling the teammates. “According to the guys on the team, she bounces from one jock to another like Tigger.”

Her eyes narrowed. The lawyers, both windbags in five-thousand-dollar suits in my humble, began blustering. I folded my arms over my chest and sat back in the padded chair.

“That, Mr. Kalinski, is hearsay and slander,” said Heather’s lawyer, a thin man with no hair and tiny wire glasses that sat on the end of a massive honker of a nose. “It’s also not relevant.”

“Like fuck it isn’t,” I commented as my gaze moved from Heather to my team-appointed attorney. I had offered to hire my own, but the Cougars thought they should provide one for me. Methinks they didn’t trust me not to hire someone who looked and sounded like Joe Pesci litigating in
My Cousin Vinny
. I fucking love Pesci. “From what I’ve heard, Ms. Pavlick is so loose Foursquare made her pussy a place to ‘check in’.”

“Why are you being so rotten about this?” Heather asked. My lawyer began talking legal. I was bored with it all, so I began fidgeting with my tie. “I asked you a question, Vic.”

I looked up from the silky blue tie that Dan had given me for anniversary month…four, I think it was. Good tie. I missed him so much that breathing hurt. I got up and walked over to the window to stare at the dark bark on the perfectly tended flowerbeds.

“I don’t trust you.” The revelation fell from me as I studied a fat bumblebee leaving one lily to pollinate another.

“Me, or women in general?” Heather inquired. I shrugged. “I didn’t do this on purpose, Vic. You think having a baby at twenty-one was part of my life plan? Now I have to make up my senior year.”

I turned from the bumbling bee, rhododendrons and yellow lilies.

Heather was looking at me, as were the legal eagles.

“You’re in college?”

She nodded. The room was too quiet. I could hear her lawyer breathing in and out. He had a whistling nostril. “Nursing,” she replied as she nervously clicked a pen from the collection of many on the table.

“Why didn’t you get an abortion? If you really didn’t want to have a kid, then why not get rid of it?”

“I thought about it,” she confessed.

Who
was
this woman? She was nothing at all like I remembered her. A nursing student who looked like someone’s baby sister who just happened to screw any hockey player she met? Maybe my head was messed up. Okay, yeah, no maybe about it. My head was messed up, but either Heather suffered from split personality disorder, or she had some majorly fucked-up ideas about what men want. Except that we who possessed dicks kind of
did
like what she offered at the games, so her selling what we wanted to buy made sense, didn’t it? If what the Cougars had said was true, the whole team had slapped that. Must be that the men liked it.

“And why didn’t you terminate, then? You knew where to find me. Why have a kid that you don’t want? That isn’t going to be good for him, trust me.”

Her slim eyebrows knitted. “I made the decision to have the baby.”

She placed a tiny hand on the bump under her conservative dress. My guts tied into a knot. Seeing her touch the kid—maybe my kid—in such a tender way undid me. The room grew close.

“It’s not his fault that we didn’t use protection.”

“Mr. Kalinski’s paternity has not yet been determined,” my lawyer chimed in.

I stared at her. Ms. Goodyear. She of the incredible tits and juicy ass was twisting my reality up. I should hate her. This bitch had ruined my good thing with Dan. Her accusation about me being the baby daddy had made me lose the one thing I valued the most.

I sat down next to her. Her soft blue eyes widened. “What do you want from me?” I asked her, hoping my voice wasn’t as measly as it sounded inside my cranium. “If you’re looking for a husband, look somewhere else. I don’t do emotional shit.”

“I don’t want to marry you. I just want you to help support the baby and help me pay for my last year of college.”

My legal rep began flapping his gums. I held up a hand. He clamped his mouth shut. I looked from him to Heather.

“Just so we’re following the same game plan here. You get money from me every month until the kid turns eighteen, plus a year’s tuition. You do not try to foist the kid off on me, make me play daddy at birthday parties or force me to spend time with it. All you want is cash.”