Driving a rental makes stalking less stressful—not that Ken is accustomed to stalking. He dips in the driver's seat and occasionally glances up at the pale glow of Kendra's bay window. Several minutes pass by without the slightest sign of life, and Ken considers leaving.
Then Kendra appears at the kitchen table with her laptop. Ken imagines she's tallying her weekly figures in that complex spreadsheet she built from scratch. Soon enough, this gets incredibly boring, and Ken considers leaving, again.
Then a shirtless man saunters into the kitchen and pulls the refrigerator door open. Ken's breathing halts in his chest.
He reverses out of the parking lot and speeds home where he'll lie in bed and obsess over the following information:
• Kendra doesn't allow clients to spend the night at her place;
• but Kendra doesn't have any brothers or male family members who might help themselves into her fridge, shirtless;
• also, Ivan left two envelopes taped to the television screen, and that's peculiar;
• but Kendra doesn't see clients on Sunday nights;
• but it's not like she has any bodyguards;
• also, Ivan must really want his rent;
• but maybe she does have a bodyguard…it makes sense, given her line of work.
He concludes that, in the event the man actually is her boyfriend, it's not the end of the world because he's not particularly attractive, or muscular, or young. In fact, the shirtless man looked a lot like Ken, and for this reason, he decides there's still hope, and he's able to sleep the night through.
At work, Ken is reprimanded for returning rentals that smell bad. His boss, a sharp-looking twenty-something, lifts the trunk of the Mustang and gags. “Jesus, Ken,” he says, waving his long arm through the air. “What is that stench? It smells like death and cheese.”
Ken knows that the smell of his hockey bag (his sweat and body odor) has seeped into the car's fabric—probably permanently—but he can't bring himself to admit it, and his pay is docked the vacuuming and shampooing expenses.
“I don't know what or who you killed in there,” his boss says, “but don't do it again.”
At home, Ken gets three, four, five digits through Kendra's phone number and hangs up. He drafts an e-mail and deletes it. He writes a hand-written note and rips it up.
He locks his door and pretends to sleep when Ivan knocks, rings the bell twenty-seven times, and hollers Russian or Slovak swearwords at him.
He cleans himself up and visits the Stockbridge Tavern and orders a soda from the handsome bartender. He hopes Kendra will show up as the bar becomes more and more crowded with Bruins fans who gather in the standing room behind him and bump into him as if he's in the front row of a concert. He searches the crowd for Kendra, glancing over his shoulder more times than at the television.
The bartender suggests he visit Bengy's if he's going to drink soda all night. “They might even throw a scoop ? of ice cream in it for ya,” he says. A few drunken patrons chuckle at that. The bartender fills another glass from the tap and says, “But you'll have to order off the kids' menu.”
Ken can't think of a decent comeback, so he leaves without tipping.
Ten o'clock rolls around on Sunday night, and Ken considers calling Kirk and lying about an injury or a death in the family as an excuse to skip hockey and stay in for the night. But Ivan pounds at the door and threatens to barge in, regardless if Ken's “busy whacking it.” So Ken sneaks out the sliding door, past the stray cat's bowl, down the hill, around the building and into his rental, a pickup truck, which is perfect for carting his hockey bag around, sans stench.
He is late for hockey. Most of the Wildcats and Lawyers (sponsored by the Law Offices of Everett and Worth) are already skating their pregame drills. The only guys still in the locker room (Dom and two wings) are dressed already. They discuss the opposing goalie's weak glove and strong blocker.
“Go fivehole or gloveside shelf,” Dom says. He makes a concerned expression, tosses his helmet on the floor and admits to having had chimichangas for lunch. He waddles in his skates around the tiled half-wall and into the bathroom.
The wingers chuckle as the bathroom stall slams shut. They go on talking about winning offensive face-offs and screening the goalie for Dom's shot from the point, but Dom cannot hear them.
“Is there anyone out there?” he calls from the bathroom. “There's no toilet paper in here.”
Ken and the wingers exchange troubled glances.
“Guys? You there?” Dom says. His pleading echoes off the tiles like that of a child stuck in a well. The wingers chuckle silently and sneak out of the locker room, closing the door softly behind them.
“Hello? Anyone?”
Ken closes his eyes and breathes for a moment. The stench radiating from the stall is suffocating, and knowing the beany and deep-fried burritoey source makes it worse. Without announcement, Ken goes to the opposite stall, unhinges the toilet paper and hands it under the partition, safely into Dom's ? waiting palm.
Ken wants to be dressed and out of the locker room before Dom returns from the bathroom, but Dom shows just as Ken secures his helmet on his head. He waddles to the locker room exit without saying anything to Ken, and Ken is fine with that. Kendra would tell him it's “man code” not to acknowledge moments of compassion or, as she would put it, “lapses in male detachment.” But Dom surprises him. He looks over his bulky shoulder pad and, in a voice deeper than his normal speaking tone, he says, “This never happened.” He swings the locker room door open and waddles out.
Ken decides he can't win at anything. Out on the ice, he trips the first Lawyer who calls him Dwyer, and lands himself in the penalty box.
He hangs his head and studies the mess of spit and gum and Gatorade stains on the penalty box floor. He listens to the scuff and scrape of skates, the click of the puck ricocheting off the glass, the rumble of the boards as wooden and composite sticks chop at the puck in the corners, and he wonders who the hell chews gum while playing hockey. Don't these guys believe in mouth guards? Then it occurs to him that—oh God—he's the only one wearing a mouth guard.
He unsnaps his helmet and whips it off his head. He sets it on the floor and unclasps the rubber strip that attaches his mouth guard to his cage like a yellow ribbon strung to a child's binky. He takes the mouth guard by the strip and ? flings it to the corner of the penalty box. He returns his helmet to his head and prays that no one saw that.
In the scorekeeper box beside him, Franka tries to get his attention, but he can't hear her until she taps on the glass. She smiles wide at him and points to the stands. “Is that your girlfriend?” she asks, shouting through the glass.
Ken's eyes dart to the bleachers, but the lone spectator is not Kendra. A woman with dark hair fidgets with her cell phone and takes very little interest in her boyfriend or husband's hockey game.
Ken shakes his head at Franka. “She has red hair.”
Franka laughs and says something that sounds like “ginger beave,” but Ken doesn't take her for the kind of person ? who would freely inquire about the color of a woman's pubes. But when he asks her to repeat herself, he hears the same syllables. He tries to sort it out. Not gin, but juice? Something juice, juice? Then he remembers the documentary he watched on redheads and it all makes sense.
“No,” he says. “I'm pretty sure she's Catholic.”
Franka's eyebrows raise, then they buckle in a concerned expression just as Ken's two minutes expire.
He steps back to the ice and closes the door of the penalty box behind him. Before he can turn to the bench, a Lawyer shouts out an obscenity meant for Dwyer.
Ken stiffens when he hears the name, and sure enough, he is crosschecked from behind. He smacks into the boards right in front of Franka's scorekeeper box. His facemask collides with the hard shelf of the boards, and he hits the ice like a dropped marionette, crumpled in a heap of twisted limbs.
When he opens his eyes he thinks he sees the Power Rangers standing over him. Franka snaps her fingers just above the cage of his facemask and he finds her kneeling on the ice. His teammates hover over him in a half-circle.
“What the hell is stuck to his helmet?” one of the Wildcats asks. “Is that gum?
“I think it's a ju-ju-bee,” Franka says. “Someone had a feast of them on the visitor's bench and in the penalty box, and ^ in the locker room.”
Ju-ju-bee, Ken thinks, not “ginger beave.” Then it occurs to him, because his mind is still mushy, that he's said this last part out loud.
His teammates laugh. But behind the row of teammates hovering over him, a scuffle starts. Dom shouts and drops his gloves and goads a Lawyer to come at him. He shoves him in the shoulder, but the refs intervene and escort Dom and the Lawyer to their respective benches before any roughing penalties can be dished out.
Ken insists that he's fine. He gets to his feet with little assistance and takes a seat on the bench. His ribcage aches. It hurts to breathe, to expand his chest and draw in new air.
Down the row, Dom berates a teammate for not retaliating for Ken, for not taking care of his own. He keeps a careful eye on the Lawyers' bench and times his line change just right. When the offending Lawyer switches up, Dom hops over the boards and levels him at center ice. He stands over the Lawyer and shouts, “Stop calling him Dwyer.”
On the bench, the Wildcats stand and clank their sticks against the boards as Dom is escorted off the ice and kicked out of the game. Captain Kirk skates to the bench, uncaps a water bottle and tells Ken, “We gotta get you a new jersey.”