There's a Shark in My Hockey Pool (14 page)

"Bastard!"

They all laughed.

Marcotte's bandaged finger dialed Sylvie's
telephone number. He looked forward to hearing her voice -- even if
she'd been pushing him to decide between her and Helen. No woman
liked being a number in a little black book ... especially if that
number wasn't "1". Once the woman attained the pole position, the
black book was the first thing out the window ... after the bucket
seat was restored to its upright position.

Sylvie's subliminal nudges weren't too hard
-- yet. They'd spent one night together and had seen each other at
least every other day until he'd left. He liked being with her. The
White Angel of Guilt however, had set up shop on his shoulder the
last few days before the trip. He had to tell Helen. He'd been
living too many lies. Blaming a blown hockey career and his
business' weak performance on Erskine was one thing. But Sylvie
turning back the clock on his libido meant someone was in for a
rude awakening. How long could he keep pressing Helen's snooze
button?

Any women's self-help book, a.k.a. "Why Your
Guy's A Goof", brought up the question of men needing their "space"
by the second or third chapter. Women loved to carve this space up,
much like designing the living room floor plan. Anything was
negotiable and up for discussion, from selecting an afghan rug ...
to determining where, when, why and how the angst turned to
aggression. Distance made the heart grow fonder. Unfortunately, it
did little to tone down any of the harsh questions he'd been
chewing on lately.

He stared out the phone booth at Artie and
Short Hand on the dock. Their canoe was grounded on the shore.
Short Hand was catching fish at will. As he pulled each one out of
the water, Artie whooped it up with a little fish dance. Short Hand
showed Hammond how to take the hook out of the fish's mouth with a
quick flick of the wrist. Short Hand tossed the brown trout atop an
ever growing pile of fish.

The click at the other end of the line
snapped Derek awake.

"Hello ... Sylvie?"

"Derek? Where are you?"

"Flin Flon."

"Come again?"

"I'm in Manitoba," said Derek. "I've signed
two more players so far."

"What?!? You've been running all over the
north for two weeks and all you have to show for it is two
players?"

"Yes, but they're two good players."

"Like who?" she asked.

"If I tell you, I'd have to kill you," he
said in his best gangster voice.

"Very funny," she said.

There followed a pregnant pause. That
pregnant pause. The fluttering heartfelt silence that grows in
emotion with each passing second. All too quickly it becomes
uncomfortable. Both callers want the extra few seconds to absorb
the other's sweet syllables ... but feel pressured to speak, to
justify Ma Bell's pennies ticking by. It was a hefty price for
silence. Derek wished all telephones had sensors that simply made
the line go dead when emotions got this high. It did the hanging up
for you. No pangs of guilt. Totally conscious-free. If it wasn't
your fault, you even got your money back.

Answering machines already had this feature.
If you shut up for three seconds they clicked off. But they were
just an assembly line of quick cries for help. You were assigned a
number. Say your piece and get off the line ... others were
waiting.

Derek took a deep breath and turned to watch
the fishing clinic that Short Hand was putting on down at the
dock.

A quick learner, Artie expertly removed the
hook from the fish's mouth. Short Hand nodded with a smile and
continued reeling them in.

"I'm sorry," said Sylvie. "I miss you." After
another 12-cent pause, "Have you talked ... with Helen?"

"I was just going to call her ..."

"I'll let you go then."

"You're too kind," he said.

"Good luck. Bye."

Derek quickly dialed home, not wanting to
stop and think, not wanting to plan it out. Better these things go
unrehearsed. If he was going to scam Helen, he'd force the White
Angel of Guilt's arch-rival, the Black Devil of Sin -- aboard his
other shoulder -- to think on its feet ... in the heat of the
moment. Derek forgot that devils think in the heat all the time.
The Black Devil of Sin. A fishing lure for the wayward walleye.
Derek had been splashing around in the water too long.

The phone rang. Helen answered it on the
first ring.

"Hello? Derek?" Her voice was shaky. "My god,
it is you! It's so good to hear your voice. You left in such a
hurry. Are you alright? You sound so far away."

"Hey, take it easy. I'm in Flin Flon."

"We must have a bad connection. What did you
say?"

"I'm 500 miles north of Winnipeg. I wanted to
talk to you about something."

"Oh, my. Are you wearing your toque?"

Short Hand's rod bent like a rainbow as he
reeled in another fish. The rod snapped. Short Hand quickly reached
into the boat and pulled out a rifle. He took a bead on the reel
and followed it as it skittered along the surface. The trout broke
the surface and arched into the air with a how-do-you-do flick of
the fin. A gunshot rang out and the fish fell unceremoniously back
into the water with a fat splat. Short Hand expelled the shell onto
the dock.

Artie stood transfixed, his childhood years
flashing before his eyes. He remembered all the games of Cowboys'n
Indians when he'd been relegated to playing the latter. Now it made
perfect sense. Bows and arrows kept it sporting. If the Indians had
had guns, Custer's Last Stand would have been a weekly
re-enactment.

"Not at the moment," Derek said. "But ...
there's something you should know. I don't know how to say this
..."

"Oh, no. Wait. Wait right there," she
said.

"Helen, no. Don't go, Helen. No, Helen ...
Helen!"

But she was gone. Derek dropped the phone
from his ear and sighed.

He knew what she was doing. At this very
moment she was ransacking the place as if the Red Cross, Salvation
Army, Unicef and the girl guides had all simultaneously arrived on
her doorstep. She was grabbing fruit cake and oranges from the
fridge and wool socks and long underwear from dresser drawers.
Everything that wasn't nailed down ... would soon be winging its
way to him in a care package more worthy of a middle-sized
Somaliland village.

Helen picked up the phone.

"Hello, Derek? I'll be sending three boxes by
courier."

"But you don't even know where I am."

"I'm paying extra for the Bloodhound Tracking
Service."

Derek groaned.

"Yes, dear."

Who's on Left,

What's on Right ...

... 1 ...

Cars and pedestrians jostled for position in
their respective rush-hour lanes outside the Herculean building. In
the reception area on the sixteenth floor, executive types sat in
the six available chairs, briefcases at the ready. Erskine's
receptionist controlled the on-ramp to his door. She was a chic
traffic cop who could type 80 words per minute and stop a yammering
solicitor on a dime.

Inside his office, Erskine backed away from
the window overlooking Yonge Street and turned to his desk. The
player agent wore a corporate blue suit and sat across the desk
from Erskine. The agent stared at the mounted head of a shocked
gazelle on the wall. Erskine had gunned it down on an African
safari three years before. The final blow had actually come from
the guide's gun, as Erskine only managed to clip it once out of
four shots. His one scoring shot had creased the nose -- not an
ideal kill location for those hoping for trophy-mounted material.
Dr. Buck Schott, the famous taxidermist from White Sulphur Springs,
West Virginia, had managed to repair Erskine's slipshod
shooting.

Out of the corner of his eye, Erskine
wondered if the agent could tell that the gazelle had a nose job.
For this reason, Erskine often made visitors wait outside his
office for up to thirty minutes. It forced the visitor to get to
the heart of his business with Erskine right away, eliminating any
small talk of interior decorating and Erskine's errant aim. Erskine
would while away this time by practising his putting stroke on the
Hack Shankless Porta-Putter.

The putting apparatus was laid out on the
carpet beside his desk. The three-by-fifteen-foot strip of
artificially-crushed Kentucky Blue Grass sparkled under the
fluorescent lights. The Porta-Putter promised green conditions
similar to those on the back nine at Pebble Beach. Its undulations
were adjustable by remote control. A vibrating mechanism simulated
the rougher terrain found while playing winter rules. Erskine's
last secretary, a buxom brunette from Oakville, was introduced to
this ground-breaking concept first hand late one night after the
rest of the workers had gone home. Ever since that bump-and-run
night, the machinery hadn't performed up to par.

"So your boy has been turning heads in the
Western League, eh ... Mr. Sloane?" Erskine asked, slowly pacing
the room.

"Yessiree. A solid thirty-goal man. He put
the speed in Speedy Creek."

Speedy Creek. Swift Current. Erskine detested
how the westerners seemed to find a nickname for everything. Did
they all sit around campfires, armed with branding irons, waiting
to label the first beast -- animal or human -- that ran by?

"I've looked at everything that straps on
shin pads in the junior leagues ... twice," said Erskine. He
stopped beside Sloane. Sloane averted his attention back to the
shocked gazelle. There was a portrait of Nixon beside it. In the
picture, Nixon had both arms thrust high in the air, performing his
obligatory two finger "peace-victory-four hot dogs, please" salute.
Nixon's suit looked two sizes too small. There was an open area on
the wall to the right of the gazelle, however. The agent mentally
calculated the possibility of his own head showing up in this
space. Erskine loomed over him.

"What's your bottom line ... Speedy Creek?"
Erskine asked.

"Uh ... ten thousand ... plus a percentage of
the gate."

Erskine strolled over to the telephone
intercom on his desk and pressed a button.

"Next!"

Thirty seconds later, player agent #2 sat
across from Erskine. Number two was wearing a turtleneck with a
sports jacket. Erskine reclined in the large, black leather chair
behind his desk. Small talk had quickly gone from the brisk winds
outside ... to the second base situation with the Blue Jays. Agent
#2 had completely ignored Erskine's grazed gazelle. The agent stole
a glance at the Herculean president.

It was not time to seque to the Blue Jay's
pitching rotation.

Erskine's eyes were already on him. They
impatiently scorched a hole the size of a dime in agent #2's
forehead. The room became warmer with the help of Victor's flaring
nostrils. Time was money, and Erskine banked it by the
nanosecond.

It was bottom line time and agent #2's mind
was mush on low boil. He almost forgot why he was there. He was
about to blurt out Duane Ward, then stopped.

"Seventy-five hundred ... and a grand for
each goal," he finally stammered.

Agent #2's heart palpitations and acute
noodlehead nausea didn't disappear until an hour later while
standing outside on Yonge Street. He cured himself by winking at
passing female pedestrians for 15 minutes. The resulting shock
treatment of high-pitched profanity and open-handed slaps worked
wonders.

Agent #2's seat in Erskine's office was still
warm, but the plaid-clad buns of agent #3 had barely basked in the
heat before Erskine looked down his nose at him and rolled his
index finger in forward, circular motions. Get on with it.

It had been awhile since Agent #3 had been
forced to make a sales pitch on the fly. Not since a pot-welding
housewife had chased him and his encyclopedia prospectus down the
street one hot, Killing Fields-like evening in Kingston. The
steely-eyed stare from Erskine did little to dispel Agent #3's
flashbacks. It was now or never. The man in plaid abruptly leaned
forward in his seat. He coughed and prayed his voice would
immediately sound laid back and at ease ... like they'd been
chatting about which player had the best backhand in the game, and
had simply lost all track of the time.

"Five thousand ... and an appearance
fee."

Disheveled Agent #4 sat across from
Erskine.

"My client is simply looking for a little
exposure ..."

Erskine motioned to the door.

"Out! Let's go. Move it!"

He hustled Agent #4 out of his office. They
marched around the corner and into the reception area, still at
cheek-to-jowl seating capacity. Erskine looked over the upturned
faces of the expectant executives. He was Noah, checking to see if
a third member of any species had tried to embark the ark.

"Hah! You're too late. Thank you all for
coming. But the players you represent simply aren't good enough ...
to fly the Herculean colors."

... 2 ...

The flags of several Soviet republics flapped
vigorously in the wind outside the concrete building that had been
constructed with an eye for the Byzantine. The May-Ja-Look scouting
trip had landed at the Russian Embassy.

Derek eyed the Soviet concierge
suspiciously.

The concierge, Vyacheslav Triblinkov, stared
straight ahead. His feet hurt. Triblinkov had just immigrated to
Canada two months before. He hadn't had to move more than twenty
feet from when he signed his landed immigrant papers to landing his
first job. He longed to move up in ranks for a door posting where
he'd be outside in the sun. There ... he could play "eyeball
tennis". This was the favorite pastime of the concierges ... so
named for ogling the girls walking by -- without breaking the
embassy's policy of turning your head while on duty.