There's a Shark in My Hockey Pool (15 page)

Triblinkov had just finished unscrambling his
fourteenth word from "TOLSTOY" and began mentally calculating the
area of the Red Square. It was at this point he realized he was
being watched by a gawking Derek. In the background, Artie poured
over a pile of ledger books at an information desk. Marcotte leaned
into Triblinkov's face.

"1972. Remember?"

The guard remained motionless. His inner
security system pressed the mute button. He would pretend he didn't
understand English.

"Of course you do," Derek said. "Does the
name ... Paul ... Hen-der-son ... ring a bell?" Derek annunciated
Paul Henderson as if he were giving the Russian a Spooked on
Spelling refresher course.

The guard knew damn well who Paul Henderson
was. When the Canadian capitalist scored that fateful goal with 34
seconds to go in the eighth and final game of the series,
Triblinkov had kicked his dog, drank two bottles of vodka and broke
up with his girlfriend. The order in which it all happened was
still a bit muddy. The apple juice he drank at lunch now raced
through his blood stream like Spinoffs vodka. Eight games worth of
life-defining moments flooded back.

It was the image of his dog, Sascha, however
... looking up at him dolefully ... that caused Triblinkov to
flinch slightly. Derek saw the chink in the guard's armour.

"Sure it does," Derek said. "He's the one who
blew it by Tretiak. Perhaps this will jog your memory."

Marcotte cupped his hands over his mouth and
impersonated Foster Hewitt via a muffled, crackling radio
broadcast, "Esposito takes a whack at it. The puck is loose in
front. Henderson ... He shoots! He scores! Paul Henderson!"

Derek punched the sky and twirled around.

"He took three shots!" Triblinkov
exploded.

An elderly woman stood in line close by.
After 23 years, she was mere seconds away from receiving final
approval for renouncing her Soviet citizenship. She promptly put
her papers back in her purse and headed for the exit. Maybe it
wasn't so bad to wait three hours in line for a loaf of bread.

"We won, we won," said Derek, nagging.

"Hey, Derek! C'mere."

It was Artie. He'd found something.

Marcotte welcomed the distraction. Triblinkov
glared at him. The guard remained rooted to the spot, albeit
shaking with anger.

"Relax, Boris. The cold war is over."

Derek joined Artie at the information desk.
Artie pointed to the ledger.

"Bingo. A pair of Red Army all-stars from
'89. A Latvian by the name of Alexei Starsikov. And Helmut Hutchny
... an Armenian."

Marcotte looked over Hammond's shoulder at
Triblinkov. It would be two weeks before the mad Russian would get
back to calculating the area of the Red Square.

"Just make sure their stalls are at opposite
ends of the dressing room."

Halfway across the country in Winnipeg,
Erskine and one of his henchmen, Billy Slager, stood outside the
Swedish national hockey team's dressing room. The game had ended
half an hour earlier and players were exiting the room. A tall
dazzling blonde stood near the door. She wore tight jeans and an
angora sweater that was suddenly back in style. Slager had mentally
separated her from both, half a dozen times in the past twenty
minutes. Some strange form of telekinesis alerted her to this
ignominious indecency ... and she glowered at Slager before turning
away. She was not upset for long however, as the object of her
desire strode out of the dressing room.

Erskine's eyes lit up as well.

"There he is. Christian Sandersson. The best
thing to come out of Sweden since ABBA."

The statuesque blonde and Sandersson locked
arms and walked past Erskine and Slager. Erskine nodded hello at
Christian. The Swede acknowledged Erskine with a quick flip of the
hand before diving back into his post-game dessert with a helpless
shrug.

Erskine smirked, then turned to Slager.

"What do you think of that prize-winning
catch?"

Slager's eyes followed the blonde's well-worn
wiggle as the couple waltzed away. For Slager, it was like looking
down a stretch of asphalt highway in 120-degree heat, such was the
heat radiating from her shimmering, shimmying thighs. The lower lip
of his gaping mouth was crested by an outgoing tide of spittle.

"Forty-two ... twenty-eight ..." Slager
said.

"Eh? I'm sure he had more goals and assists
than that."

... 3 ...

Derek entered his apartment and closed the
door behind him with a slam. He dropped his keys on the floor. As
he reached down to pick them up he spotted the rubber-tipped,
metal-coiled door stop. He bent it sideways and let go. The
resulting thw-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ng reverberated down the hallway,
startling even him. He headed for the kitchen.

Marcotte retrieved a bottle of beer from the
fridge and slammed the door shut. It was a four-magnet slam. That's
how many of the kitchen curios fell to the floor. He took a half
step forward with his left and followed through with his right leg,
mimicking a straight-on field goal kicker. He connected on three of
the magnets, sending them skittering across the linoleum for parts
unknown.

Following a long swig, Marcotte nestled the
bottle cap onto the ball of his right thumb and pressed the edge of
it tightly with his ring finger against the meat of his thumb.
Derek was ready to snap his cap. He took aim at the waste can in
the corner.

Snapping caps at garbage cans has long been a
male bastion, a cause celebre for bachelorhood. A comparable
scenario would be a gymnasium with basketballs lying loose on the
floor. If one were to pick up a basketball, the urge to shoot one
more basket outweighs the desire to put the ball away. Thus, the
balls remain on the floor until the consequence for not putting
them away outweighs the pleasure of "hitting nothing but net" from
three-point range.

It was the same for bottle caps and waste
baskets. The cap shooter will wait until the caps pile up like
losing peel-and-win lottery tickets in a Winnipeg hotel lobby -- if
it takes that long to hit the can from a distance worth bragging to
his buddies about.

Marcotte snapped the cap. It clanged off the
side of the metal waste bin. Mission accomplished. He smirked and
took another swig. He hadn't wanted to sink it. He wanted to make
some racket. Marcotte followed up his waste bin ricochet with a
Henry VIIIth fourth course-like belch.

He sauntered into the living room and found
Helen in her night robe on the couch, reading a book.

"Oh. Uh ... you're up."

"I couldn't sleep," she said. "Did you eat?"
She was about to get up but he motioned for her to stay seated.

"What?" Derek said. "You mean you're not
going to ask me where I've been?"

Helen looked at him. She wasn't sure if he
was joking or not. She felt uncomfortable when he did this to her.
It's not like she didn't have a sense of humour. But most of the
jokes she brought home from the second floor ward at Our Lady of
Pitiful Mercy Hospital ... only brought forth an obligatory smile
from Derek. They were "safe" jokes. They may have started out in
the gutter, but they were quickly wrapped in gauze, quarantined and
pronounced fit ... so as not to embarrass. Pecker and balls became
penis and testicles. Either way, she wasn't in the mood to laugh.
She was too busy worrying ... again.

Derek had only been back for a week and she
could sense something was different. This hockey game he was
chasing after, had changed him. He was charged up. She hadn't seen
him like this in a long time. She was happy for him -- but she
wasn't included in the happiness. She felt stranded in a life raft
on the Oceanus Procellarum, a vast sea about one hundred kilometres
northwest of Grimaldi. On the moon.

Derek waited, watching her closely. Uh-oh.
She was thinking again.

She recalled how rocky the last few years had
been. There were times she felt she was hitting menopause ... while
he was busy parallel parking Konk-Ya Toys. Life was a tough road
with her civil servitude on a wildcat strike. The questions nagged
at her like gouging potholes. Did he love her? When was the last
time he'd told her that? Most likely while celebrating a Leafs'
goal.

She had poured her heart into their
relationship ... much like her job. She treated people in a
hospital bed with respect and dignity. Was she bringing her work
home with her and driving Derek away in the process? Maybe she was
smothering him with the wrong kind of attention. Had her passion
for professionalism pushed her passion for romance down some heart
string-snagging escalator? Her head hurt. She bit her lip for
having forgotten to pick up more extra-strength anything at the
corner drugstore.

Their eyes met. He waited for her to speak.
He'd do this when he was determined to make a point. He'd load up a
series of biting repartee to fire away at her next response. His
face was set. There was a hint of a grimace that reminded her of
... the accident. Chills did the conga line up her spine as she
recalled the incident like it was yesterday.

As Derek crumpled to the ice, she'd sprung
into action. A little voice in her scolded her for being a nurse
grandstanding at hockey games. Who was she? Florence Nightengale
taking up a foxhole position on the front line? She reminded that
little voice that they only have one ambulance stationed at most
hockey games. Her response time had been commendable.

In the weeks that followed, she'd nursed
Derek back to health. For all the attention, warmth and love she'd
poured out ... her ring finger was still naked. There had been the
plastic decoder ring he'd dug out of a bag of especially greasy
caramel corn, one summer night back in 1989. They'd been sitting
high atop the Ex in the Ferris wheel when his hungry hand collided
with it. The whole scene was almost romantic, if she could have
gotten over the nausea brought on by her fear of heights.

She looked down at her left ring finger sans
ring ... and back to him.

Did she need a ring? She racked her brain for
all the statistical surveys and data found in the women's intuition
magazine, Osmo (short for osmosis). She had to base her existence
upon something. She needed some sort of foundation, however
fashionable. Hold the rouge.

Derek grew tired of watching her blank
expression while the projector behind her eyes whirred away. He'd
heard that women used eight times as much of their brain to worry
as men do, and all eight cylinders of Helen's were humming right
along.

The extent of his feelings for her over the
years could neatly fit on the back of a postcard.

Hi. Wish you were here.

So why did she stay? The accident had been
over eight years ago. She supposed they'd developed a kind of
comfort zone. They shared a bed, all-fluff-no-substance pillow talk
and a song by Boston, Foreplay ... Longtime. It was one of Derek's
favorite shower songs. The chorus rang in her ears, "It's been such
a long time, I feel I should be leaving." Did he really mean it
when he sang it? After all, he was still here.

She wasn't going anywhere. She loved him. Or
did she? Derek wasn't a bad human being. She supposed she could do
worse. The last guy she'd dated only knew ten months of the year.
She was ahead of the game with Derek. How far ahead?

Their sex life was adequate. But having an
"okay" sex life was like observing the speed limit when you're
driving an Italian sports car. She'd never participated in sex
while standing on her head ... and with good reason. She'd
administered to too many patients who had done so, lost their
balance and fallen against furniture, into beer bottles, etc.

Her worrying meter was close to expiring ...
or tilting -- like the large, red flashing fluorescent signs on the
old pinball machines. She was well versed in Derek's various moods.
He hated it when she asked him, "What's wrong?" ten times a day.
She'd been working on halving it to five. At first she'd blamed his
hostility on the hard times that had hit his company. Then she'd
blamed it on the Leafs, which caused him no end of grief in the
late 80s. She didn't think it was her. Not until lately.

Now she was so preoccupied with it, she
couldn't go shopping for groceries without changing her mind,
aisle-by-aisle, that he did or didn't love her.

She calmed herself by pretending she was back
in the grocery store, walking through the dry goods section. This
had been a good aisle, promising her she could have her cake and
eat it too ... that Derek was a good husband and they'd grow old
together, plastic decoder upgrade or not. She fantasized about the
moustached man with the feather in his cap on the 10-pound bag of
flour.

Derek cleared his throat.

"I said, aren't you going to ask me where I
was tonight?"

"I'm just happy to have you home." She
resigned herself to suffer minimal attrition in this minor skirmish
that suddenly had great potential for escalating. She smiled her
best "white flag" smile and went back to her book.

"Of course." Derek wasn't about to let this
one go. It was now or never. The hollow click of Sylvie hanging up
after the Flin Flon phone call echoed in his head.

"Go ahead, ask me where I was tonight."

"What for?"

"I said ..."

Helen put down her book.

"Where were you tonight?" She fairly mouthed
the words.

"Every stinking, sleazy, straight-to-hell
dive you can name downtown."

He was lying of course. Unfazed, Helen
returned to her book.

"Well?" Derek said. This wasn't going to work
if he had to argue both sides.

Helen looked back up at him.

"Did you lose something?"

"Geez, Helen. I've been bouncing off the
walls of this apartment for years. Any other woman would have cut
their losses and moved on. But you play interior
decorator-psychologist ... and keep padding the walls for me.
Another guy might appreciate you more. Let's face it. You're too
good for me. I really don't deserve you."