Chapter Six

 

 

 

“I’m at a tournament called the Canadian Beef Masters,” Max said aloud, to no one in particular. No one else seemed to find it odd anyway. Maybe it wasn’t odd in this strange world of curling, but for all the middle-of-nowhere, low-budget sporting events she’d covered on her way up the reporting ladder, she’d never been to one named for a generalized dead animal product. And she’d thought the Tostitos Bowl had been a silly name when she’d covered it last year. What she wouldn’t give to be back in Phoenix instead of freezing her ass off in Nova Scotia. Seriously, she’d had to look at Nova Scotia on a map just to make sure she actually knew where it was, and the geography wasn’t the only thing she’d been unsure of during this tournament. In fact, it had been the least of them.

“Whoa, Max Laurens,” a man said in a thick Minnesota accent, or maybe the accent was Canadian. She didn’t know the difference. “Didn’t expect to see you all the way up here.”

“Me either,” Max said, stepping up onto a platform only about a foot higher than the ice.

“You’re not covering Team Mulligan, are you?”

“I am.” She searched the man’s features, from his rosy cheeks to his full red beard. Nothing about him sparked recognition, and he must have seen it.

“I’m Tim Mathis. We both covered the World Junior Championship tournament in Reykjavik a few years back.”

“Oh.” She still didn’t remember him, and if she’d been covering junior sports, it had to have been more than a few years ago.

“Yeah.” He laughed easily. “You ran circles around all of us even back then. You could pronounce the names of even the third-string players on the Slavic teams. Shoulda known you’d climb the ladder.”

“And yet, here we both are at the Canadian”—she cleared her throat—“Beef Masters.”

“Oh yeah, well, Grand Slam curling isn’t the NFL, but it’s got its charms.”

“If you say so.” She took the seat next to him and slid her mic a little closer.

Tim shifted over a little bit, almost nervously. “I’m sure you’ve got lots of great stuff prepared. I could do play-by-play if you want to do commentary.”

“You know,” she said, “I’m still a bit new to the sport. Why don’t I just follow your lead today?”

He puffed up his chest a bit. “Sure thing. It’d be an honor.”

She should’ve been relieved. Most other reporters treated her like she had cooties these days. Still, she couldn’t manage to summon any of her social charms as she watched Callie and her team take turns sliding out of the hack and down the ice.

“Your gals have had a stellar tournament,” Tim cut back in.

“Have they?” She supposed it never hurt to be a semifinalist, but she didn’t know enough yet to tell if they’d played well or if the competition had been subpar. Most of Callie’s team still wasn’t speaking to her, and even Callie had been distracted over the last forty-eight hours. Or maybe distracted wasn’t the right word, as she’d been focused on the tournament, playing two matches a day since arriving, but all her focus on her job had meant she didn’t have time to focus on answering questions. Max had been forced to watch from the stands, trying to make sense of a game that often seemed to defy logic. She’d even resorted to watching YouTube videos to pick up some terms. She pulled out some papers on which she’d scribbled the terms and definitions.

“Yeah, when I heard they’d even made this event, I was a little surprised. Looks good for American curling, though, to have our second-place team eke their way into the top fifteen.”

She stopped shuffling her papers. “Second place?”

“Yeah, they’re team two of the American cohort,” Tim said, then furrowed his brow. “But, you knew that, right?”

“Yeah,” she said quickly. “I mean, they were seeded fifteen in this tournament.”

“That’d be their world ranking then, wouldn’t it?”

“Right,” she said, even as she wondered why she hadn’t thought of that. Fifteenth in the world wouldn’t be the top American team. That’s why they were playing another American team today. Why had she assumed her team was the only national team? Oh yeah, because that’s how national teams generally worked. America didn’t have three national hockey teams or three national soccer teams, and those were real sports. Why the hell would there be three national curling teams, and perhaps more embarrassing, why wasn’t she covering the top one?

Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply and slowly through her nose and blew it out her month.

“They really have overachieved so far,” Tim said cheerily. “Who knows where they’ll end up the season?”

“And your team? Team . . .?” She glanced at her notes. “Team Dawes?”

“First-place American team,” he supplied.

“No, I knew that.” She lied. “I meant, how are they playing this year?”

His smile widened. “Rocking the house.”

“Of course they are.” She’d tried to sound congenial, but it only came off as tired. Tired of being out of the loop, tired of not knowing, tired of getting scooped by two-bit local reporters like Tim Mathis. How had this guy been picked to cover the top team when she got relegated to the second tier of a cut-rate game?

Sadly, by the third end she thought she had her answer as he corrected her for the twelfth time. “Actually, that’s not a takeout. That’s called a tick shot.”

“Right, right.” She tried to cover, though anyone with half a brain and a working set of ears had clearly seen through that charade two ends ago. “And can you explain the difference between a tick and a takeout for the casual viewer at home?”

“Certainly,” Tim obliged, ever the professional, and made to look even more so by her gross ineptitude, “since you can’t move a guard.”

“A guard being a stone in front of the rings.” She cut in with the only part of this she understood.

“Yes, and you can’t move them out of play until the fifth stone of any end,” he continued, stating a rule she hadn’t known. “Sometimes the lead player has to play what’s called a tick, and Layla Abrams just did so beautifully there, because she managed to move her opponent’s guard over enough that it’s not in her way without taking it completely out of play, or leaving her own rock in its place.”

“And now the other team can’t knock Layla’s guard out of play, either.”

“No, but seeing as how her guard isn’t really guarding anything, I think they are probably going to put another one right where they put their first one.”

“Indeed,” she said with more gusto than the comment warranted, and then quickly added, “let’s watch and see.”

She wanted to put her forehead down on the desk, but she didn’t dare. Even assuming the whole two cameras on this match were both pointed at the ice most of the time, she didn’t want to run the risk of appearing as though she’d actually fallen asleep on the job. She might sound like she was completely out of it, but she didn’t have to look the part as well.

The player she’d come to think of as Tim’s lead played exactly the shot he’d predicted.

“Well, she is consistent,” Max said.

“That’s a bread and butter shot for a lead,” Tim said. “If your first player can’t throw a center guard, you don’t stand much chance of making the top fifteen in the world or staying there for long.”

She quickly scribbled a note to that effect in the margins of the vocabulary notes she’d brought with her. “And what would you say are the bread and butter shots for the other players? You know, in case we have any aspiring curlers at home who want to know what to practice.”

He raised an eyebrow as she kept her pencil at the ready, but his tone never wavered. “I’d say every curler worth his or her salt should be able to throw a rock that sits in any open spot in the house at any time. Also, a simple draw around a single guard right to the button.”

She wrote even while asking, “And a draw means just a rock that sits in the house.”

“Exactly.”

She grinned. That was one of the terms on her list.

“And the last shot any good curler should be able to play is a clean takeout, where they hit any open stone in the house, and knock it out without hitting something else.”

“And we have seen all of those shots today,” she said almost excitedly.

“I think you’d expect to see most of those shots in most ends at the professional level.”

“Indeed,” she said again, and shook her head. Who the hell had she become? Reduced to asking apparently dumb questions and uttering inane asides or exclamations, she said nothing else until Callie delivered her last rock, but then the excitement of actually knowing how to keep score overtook her and she proudly declared, “That’s one point to Team Mulligan.”

“And I know she’s disappointed with that,” Tim said, with a shake of his head.

“Is she now?” Max’s voice cracked a little higher. “I mean obviously she is, but in a game when only one team scores, I think many people would see it as a good thing to be the team doing the scoring, but not in curling.”

Tim laughed, and she forced herself to laugh along, even though she wasn’t sure if he was laughing with her or at her.

“You’re not wrong,” he finally said, “but Callie holds herself to higher standards. All the women out here today do, and when a team has the hammer, they’re expected to take at least one.”

“And remember,” Max said in an almost Pavlovian response to hearing one of her vocab words, “the hammer is what we call the last stone of the end.”

“Right, and when you get to throw a stone no one had a chance to take out, you expect to sit it pretty close to the button, but the goal is always to make a play where you score two or more points with the hammer. Otherwise, the other team considers it a sort of win, or a tie at least, because they get the hammer the next time. A lot of teams would rather take a zero for an end and hold onto the hammer for the next one in the hopes they can do better that time around.”

“Well, Tim, that’s not confusing at all.”

He laughed again as the guy working the camera motioned that they were fading to commercial break.

Silence fell between them, and Max tried, as discreetly as possible, to check whether the sweat from her armpits had soaked through her shirt. Thankfully, she appeared to be faring better on the outside than the roiling mess of emotions inside her might suggest. Her stomach hurt, her head pounded, her heartbeat echoed through her own ears, and she was so hot. How was she so hot in a room filled with ice?

“You okay?” Tim finally asked.

No. I might be having a stroke. She held the words in and rubbed her clammy palms over her face. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this out of sorts during a broadcast, probably because she never had. Sports were her solid ground, the place where she had the answers, the topic she could always use to hold her own. And she’d covered plenty of sports, not just ones she herself had played. She’d always managed to come through, though. Grit, research, charisma, and an innate understanding of what drove people to strive for excellence always mattered more than an intimate knowledge of game plans, or at least it always had until now.

“We’ll pick up this end in progress. We’re running one of your personal interest pieces, Tim,” the cameraman said.

“Do you know which one?” Tim asked.

“The one on your lead’s ties to Scotland.”

“Ah, yeah, the motherland of the game,” Tim mused and shuffled some papers.

Max glanced down at her notes, which said nothing about curling being invented in Scotland. It hadn’t even occurred to her to delve into the history of the game. She’d been content with understanding the scoring and a basic glossary of terms.

“Ready to dive back in?” Tim asked, concern evident in his voice as he added, “You look a little nauseated.”

“Yeah, I might be coming down with something.”

“I don’t mind picking up the slack,” he offered. “We all have tough days.”

“Thanks,” she mumbled. She might’ve found that thought more comforting if she hadn’t brought this one on herself. Instead, she lifted her chin, and looked the camera dead on, bracing herself for another hour’s worth of mental and emotional drubbing.

 

 

Callie dropped her curling bag next to a bench before flopping onto it with about the same form as the duffel. “Ugh.”

“Yeah,” Layla agreed.

“Fourth place,” Callie said for about the seventieth time.

“Could’ve been worse.”

“If you say, ‘we could have been fifth place or sixth place,’ I will choke you.”

Layla’s grin suggested that might’ve been exactly what she’d intended to say, but then, glancing around, changed course. “You could have been that dude.”

Callie followed her gaze to see Max slouched against a wall in the other corner of the arena. She had her hands jammed in the pockets of her slacks, her shoulders slouched forward, and the set of her jaw sent a scowl radiating across the room. She looked so isolated and angry, Callie had to stifle the urge to go to her.

“I heard she shit the bed on TV.”

“What?”

“Not literally, but everyone is joking about how terrible her coverage was. They had to bring in a different broadcaster to bail her out. The Canadian team started a drinking game for every time she asked a stupid question, and they all got hammered.”

“No.”

“Yeah. If you had a contest to see who had the shittiest weekend, I think she’d win. At least we managed to do our job, and then some.”

Callie frowned at the reminder of their own failures. “Did we?”

“Come on, Cal, don’t start that again,” Layla said. “We finished fourth out of fifteen teams. We exceeded every expectation.”

“Not mine.”

Layla snorted. “Yours are a little crazy. You expect us to win every match.”

“We’re capable.”

“Maybe in that anything’s-possible-on-any-given-day sort of mentality.”

“No,” she snapped, then caught herself. “I’m sorry. It’s just frustrating to see so much potential in us, and not be able to put it all together at the right time.”

“Yeah, but we did actually put it together most of the time.” Layla picked up her pep talk. “We ran through the first half of the tournament. We played out of our minds. Literally every team we beat was ranked higher than us, and we only lost to two teams in the top five of the world.”

“But if we keep losing to teams in the top five in the world, we’re never going to break into that group, and if we keep losing to other Americans, we’ll never make it—”

“Don’t say it.”

“To the Olympics,” she finished.

Layla hung her head so a few small braids that had come untucked from her stocking cap fell down over her eyebrows. “It’s two years away. Can we not do that to ourselves this season?”

“I’ve been doing this to myself every season since I was ten.”

Layla sighed. “I know. I’ve been there through every one of them, but can we try something different now? Can we just practice hard and play our best in the moment and let the results be what they’ll be?”

Callie shook her head. It wasn’t that the idea didn’t appeal to her. She’d love to be the kind of person who didn’t always push for more, the kind of person who could rest on her laurels, or even the kind of person who could rest, period, but she wasn’t. “I wouldn’t be me without the weight of this goal on my back. I’m not sure I’d want to be me without it.”

Layla kicked her foot lightly. “Then don’t change, because I wouldn’t want you to be anyone else, but come get a beer at the Patch, at least.”

Callie rolled her eyes. “That’s the last thing I need, and the last place I want to be.”

“Too damn bad.” Layla picked up her own bag and slung it over her shoulder. “If you’re going to be morose and obsessive, the least you can do is buy me a drink. That’s friend code 101, also basic curling etiquette.”

“Actually, it’s curling etiquette for the winning team to buy us beers.”

“Yeah, Team Dawes totally owes us the first round, but the second one’s on you, or I’m going to crank our hotel room heater up to ninety-seven degrees tonight.”

Callie laughed lightly. “Okay, okay. You drive a hard bargain, but if I get to keep my Olympic dreams and the thermostat at sixty-two, I’ll meet you at the Patch and buy a round for the whole team.”

“Sixty-nine,” Layla said with a snicker, “for the thermostat, not the beer . . . or anything else.”

“Deal.”

Layla pumped a fist triumphantly. “See you in there.”

Callie rolled her head from side to side as her lead went to join their teammates and competitors at the area tournament organizers set aside at every stop on the tour for players, officials, and their more hard-core fans to hang out after matches. There’d be live music, drinks, probably some dancing, and tons of people eager to catch up or rehash the event. In other words, it’d be everything she didn’t want right now. Still, she felt a little better after talking to Layla. Maybe she needed to be pulled out against her will every now and then. It wasn’t like she could do anything about their results right now. If she went back to the hotel room, she’d only spend her evening staring at the ceiling and trying to do the math on what it would take for them to improve their world ranking next time out. Those equations rarely gave her anything more than a headache.

Placing her hands on her knees, she pushed herself up, ignoring the way her thigh muscles had stiffened even in the few minutes she’d been sitting. Maybe moving around a bit would help that, too. Grabbing her bag, she headed out of the arena and down a long, low hallway.

“Please, please don’t cut me loose,” came a voice from an offshoot hallway. The voice was familiar, but the pleading tone was what really drew her up short.

“I know. I understand I was already on probation, but I need one more shot.”

Callie peeked around the corner, and there behind the stack of brooms and refrigeration equipment huddled the shrinking form of Max Laurens. She seemed smaller than ever, and not just because she’d crouched down with her back against the wall and her knees to her chest. She pressed a phone to one ear and her finger to the other.

“Can’t you put me on, like, double probation?” she asked. “Can’t you make it a thing?”

Callie couldn’t hear the answer, but she suspected it wasn’t good, because Max only continued to fold in on herself. “Please don’t fire me over this. I’m a good reporter.”

The rawness of that statement made Callie suspect Max had said it as much for herself as for the person on the other end of the conversation.

“Okay, fine, I used to be a good reporter, and I can be again. I have to be. I’ve lost everything. This job is all I have left. Please don’t take it away. I know I can do better. I can be better.”

Callie’s heart twisted in her chest. She knew that desperation and that desire. She also knew how it felt to watch something you love slipping away. She held her breath, waiting for some cue that Max’s pleas hadn’t fallen on a heart of stone.

“Okay,” she finally said, her voice raspy. “No. I promise. I’ll have everything to you far in advance of the next tournament. I’ll prove it, Flip. I’m all in now. You can run the job advertisement, but don’t replace me until I have a chance to file a couple more pieces.”

That didn’t sound promising, but at least it didn’t sound like she’d quite gotten fired, either. Callie started breathing again and rested her shoulder against the wall just around the corner. Max would at least have the chance to keep her job, or maybe reapply for it; she wasn’t sure. She also wasn’t sure why she cared enough to lose a single breath over Max’s problems. If she’d been as bad as Layla’d said, Max probably deserved to be fired. She certainly hadn’t applied herself, not the way Callie and her teammates had. They’d killed themselves to get the little bit of progress they’d achieved while Max had wasted weeks sulking and making snide remarks, and then had spent the past few days trying to make them all do the work of bringing her up to speed.

Callie pushed off the wall and walked quickly away before the desire to go to Max could overtake her. She had nothing to feel guilty about, but she knew the haunting echo of Max’s pleading would likely mingle with her own grasping and bargaining as she lay awake in bed tonight.