Sheets had been a popular watering hole when I was in high school, due in no small part to the bartender’s lackadaisical approach to checking IDs and the five-dollar buckets of beers.
Sadly for the under-twenty-ones of La Crosse, I was much stricter. No way was I getting shut down for serving kids. Was it too early to have a beer of my own, though? Probably. I’d grab one on the way out.
In my office, two of the walls were floor-to-ceiling windows, giving me a view of both rinks and the lobby. Sighing deeply at the contrast between my actual present and my imaginary future, I walked over to the window that overlooked the smaller rink.
Both rinks were open. One was open for a public skate session that seemed popular with the too-young-to-drive crowd. There were swirling colored lights and an eclectic music playlist that switched between country, classic rock, and what I assumed were the pop hits of the day.
A portion of the ice was marked off with orange safety cones. Judging from the balloons tied to the glass and the hand-drawn poster board signs taped along the boards, it was a thirteenth birthday party for the alliteratively named Mattie Mae.
Some poor schlub in a polar bear costume was trying to run some kind of red rover game on the ice. It had to be my imagination, but I thought I could smell the stench of the inside of the costume from my view twelve feet above the ice.
The second rink was much less crowded. Reserved for freestyle skating, it held a handful of figure skaters and their coaches. Paying for ice time in fifteen-minute increments, they practiced their footwork and drilled the technical aspects of their sport over and over.
A handful of young girls and one boy practiced with their coaches. These were my bread and butter. Kids with serious goals, the Olympics or Worlds. Homeschooled, these kids spent most of the time at the rink.
Later in the day, after school, the hockey kids would show up. From the peewees trying to find their feet to the sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds on the travel team. I liked watching them. For the most part, they had realistic ambitions. By the time a player hit that age, they knew if they had any chance of going pro or not. They were smarter than I had been back then.
Smarter than I was now, probably.
I’d bought the old ice rink against my father’s advice. It was the rink I’d grown up skating on, and it felt like home. It had seen its glory days around the same time I had, but I thought it had potential. I could save it. Make it better than it had been. Make a place kids wanted to hang out and teens wanted to bring their dates. Maybe even one day attract a minor league club. The league kept expanding and every new top tier team needed a couple of development clubs underneath them to nurture talent. Why not La Crosse?
My desk phone rang. “Hey, Boss,” said a voice rough with decades of cigarette smoke and cold indoor air. Vinny, my Zamboni driver and all-around handyman. He’d come with the rink.
“Vincenzo, what’s up? Good news, right? You found a winning lottery ticket in the locker room?”
He chuckled more sincerely than my lame humor deserved. “Close. I think the refrigerator unit is going on The Pond.” The Pond was our half-sized rink, used for small groups and individual lessons.
“You think?” I asked, hoping against hope. If Vinny said it was going, it was going.
“I know,” he said. “It’s been holding on for a couple years now but even I can’t repair the pump anymore.”
“Great.” The pump was responsible for forcing the thousands of gallons of brinewater through the pipes embedded in the concrete slab that kept the ice frozen. No pump, no water. No water, no ice. No ice, no business. “Okay, I assume you know the people to call.”
“Ayup. You want me to get some quotes?” Vinny asked.
That would probably be the smart thing to do, but it also sounded like work, and truthfully, how many different companies were there that could fix that kind of refrigerator unit? Besides, Vinny probably knew a guy. “No. I trust you. If you trust the firm, that’s good enough for me.” And good enough was what we aimed for here at Casa Smallman.
The alien-face stress ball my mother had given me in high school fit perfectly