And all the guys have stood up at this point, and they should be heading out onto the ice but they’re waiting to see what I’ll do. But I don’t say anything, because I’m waiting for that ultimatum again. Because we both know, if he restates the ultimatum, what’ll happen. I’m positive he knows. And he doesn’t have to do it — he could just say something like, Okay, get out there Rank, and I probably would’ve gone back out and played. So I’m leaving it in his court, right? I’m just not saying anything — I’m waiting. And I can see him thinking about it for just a split second — realizing that if he decides not to be an asshole, I’ll go back out there and play and not crack skulls, and he’ll be pissed off and we’ll lose, but we’re going to lose anyway, so big deal in the grand scheme of things right? But no — his pride gets the better of him and he decides to play the asshole card.
“And there it is: there’s the ultimatum. Because, he says, drawing it out, Anyone who’s afraid to get their knuckles bloody this evening can leave right now. And I have never been more serious in my life, gentlemen. There’s the door.”
“And what’d you do?”
“Stood up. Opened my locker. Grabbed my shit. Out the door,” says Rank. “Didn’t even take off my skates. Of course I had to skulk in the hallway for a while until everybody was back on the ice, because I couldn’t go anywhere in my gear. Kinda anticlimactic. Then I went back in and showered and came home.”
“That’s fantastic,” says Adam, holding open the door of the liquor store.
And Rank smiles as he crosses the threshold, contrasting Adam’s reaction to the sick groans of his disbelieving teammates. To them it had been an experience like watching that space shuttle explosion on TV a couple years back — seeing it combust before it even left the atmosphere, fall to earth in blazing chunks.
“What did the coach say then?” Adam wants to know.
“He was sort of beyond speech at that point.”
“You left him speechless,” says Adam. “That’s great.”
Of course, none of it is great — it is catastrophic, which is why Rank is now in the process of gathering a potpourri of liquors into his arms, upon which he will spend an allotment of money that was meant to last him well into the next month. But Rank is throwing caution to the wind on this day, in celebration and acknowledgement of his newfound status of Completely Screwed.
But — it’s hilarious. He doesn’t feel so bad. It’s clear now why his first instinct was to dig up Adam and tell the whole story to him before anybody else. He must’ve known that only Adam would react this way — only Adam would applaud. As Rank rings up his bottles, it occurs to him that this is the first time in their acquaintance Adam has given any indication of being impressed with Rank. Everyone else is impressed with Rank more or less immediately. But this is what it took to get Adam’s approval. Upending the contents of his life into a toilet and flushing two or three times for good measure.
“You know, I’m proud of you,” says Adam, once they are back outside and making their way toward the Temple. They both live in residence, but Kyle and Wade’s has by this time become their default destination after visiting the liquor store.
Rank is pleased to notice they are passing an enormous snowbank when Adam says this, ploughed to towering proportions along the edges of the drugstore parking lot. He takes the opportunity to shove his friend directly into it.
“You monster — you could’ve killed me!” complains Adam, emerging from the nerd-shaped hole created in the bank. “I could have cracked my skull and died!” he jokes, shaking snow off his glasses.
15
08/01/09, 9:59 p.m.
SYLVIE USED TO HATE IT when Gord and I would sit around Sunday afternoons watching the televangelists on the American stations, but now that she is dead and I am stuck here and we have no other means of entertainment in common, we can do this as much as we want. Unfortunately, the heyday of the televangelist is long over. No more does Jimmy Swaggart perform his loony goose step across the stage to the ecstatic howls of his arena-sized congregation. No more Jim and Tammy Bakker swapping earnest platitudes, directing bald-faced cries for