There's a Shark in My Hockey Pool (24 page)

A mildewy voice answered the phone.

"Herculean ... may I help you?" asked the
receptionist.

"This is Derek Marcotte. I want to talk with
Erskine. Now."

The receptionist put him on hold. Forty-five
seconds passed before Erskine answered.

"Yes, Marcotte? What can I do for you?"

"Don't you mean, what have you already
done?"

"Oh, you mean Porkowsky and Feinstein," said
Erskine. Yes, that is a tough break. But in this day and age, most
men are surprisingly quick at pulling a number out of the air when
you put a blank check in front of them."

"So now you're just a blatant corporate
raider."

"Don't flatter yourself, Marcotte. You have
to be a corporation first. But I am surprised how well you're
taking all this."

"I'm just bubbling over -- and I've saved a
few for your blood stream."

"I think you mean bubbly ... for the
champagne we'll be drinking after Herculean disposes of your
ragamuffin outfit. Good-bye, Marcotte."

Derek hung up the phone and his eyes met
Artie's.

"Is that it?" Artie asked.

"What?"

"I thought you were going to smash the phone
into a million pieces or rip it out of the wall."

"Believe me, I would have," said Derek, "...
if we hadn't cancelled our maintenance policy to save a few
bucks."

Out of the Frying Pan

and Onto the Ice

... 1 ...

The Herculean Serpents practiced three-on-two
drills on the ice at the University of Toronto Arena. It was the
day before the game. The Serpent players looked impressive. They
executed precision passing plays in the neutral zone ... before
crossing the blue line and rifling shots at the goaltender. Erskine
stood with Slager at center ice, admiring their charges.

"A well-oiled machine," said Erskine.
"Running on all cylinders."

Porkowsky and Feinstein stood in their
streetclothes beside the gate. Porkowsky, 24, was wearing a 50%
tweed-50% lint, brown sport coat and tan slacks. The tight pants
looked to have been painted on his legs. He was a bear that had
wandered into a sheep shearing competition.

Feinstein, 23, was also a fashion plate gone
sour. His leather vest was inside-out. The denim jacket he wore
over the vest was covered with a slew of patches, advertising
everything from Urinoyal Motor Oil to the Buzzword 1982 Spelling
Bee Championship. Binky's mother had sewn them all on. She called
them "conversation patches". She thought they might help Binky to
overcome his acute shyness with women. He still shook nervously and
slurred his words during feminine hygiene commercials on TV.

His mother hadn't prescribed his "dillogator"
(armadillo-alligator) cowboy boots. He bought them two months ago
in an effort to look taller. But the nightly struggle he had
getting out of them had given him back problems. It was a case of
two steps forward and one step back. His resulting stooped posture
had wiped out the extra 15% of the female population with whom he'd
been hoping to see eye to eye.

The two newest players for the Herculean
Serpents looked down at their hockey equipment bags. Porkowsky
wondered if half of his equipment still fit. He hoped Feinstein
would lace up his skates for him.

Most of Feinstein's hockey gear had been
purchased at Army & Navy clearance sales. He'd boned up for the
match by reading a hockey book by Brad Park. Binky had skipped the
chapter on his pet peeve: skating backwards.

The closest Porkowsky had been to this
calibre of play since his Junior B days was public skating.
Feinstein had been on his pick-up hockey league's disabled list for
the past year because of recurring flashbacks of skating into the
corner after the puck. In these traumatic episodes, one of the
Hanson brothers was always in full flight after him.

Porkowsky and Feinstein looked at each other
and shrugged. However this sham turned out, they were rubbing
shoulders with talent. Maybe they could keep the jerseys. Erskine
spotted them and skated over.

"Hey. Let's go, guys. Practice started twenty
minutes ago."

"I'm afraid I, er ... overextended myself
during the team meal," said Porkowsky. "Doing windsprints right now
would be a serious mistake."

"You were at the team meal?" asked Erskine.
He didn't remember seeing either of them.

"Oh, yes," said Feinstein. "We had a team
meal. He ordered the club on rye and I had the spinach quiche and
liver pate. We then ... y'know, like ... shared it. Like we were a
team."

Feinstein clutched his stomach.

"Unfortunately the vitamin B complex I'm
taking didn't sit too well."

Erskine stood transfixed.

"Pate?" he finally asked.

The Herculean boss regained his senses and a
smile slowly spread across his face.

"So, a couple of jokers, eh? Heh-heh. Okay. I
know, I know. You want to see the bright lights, eh? Chase some
skirts, right? ..."

Erskine nudged Porkowsky with an elbow.
Porkowsky shared a puzzled look with Feinstein.

"All right, boys. Go get'em. Just be back by
midnight. We've got a big game tomorrow."

"Okay, coach." They turned and headed down
the tunnel out of the stands. Erskine looked after them, shaking
his head.

"Kids."

Nine-year-old Shamrock forwards Paddy
O'Callahan and Stuart Forsythe compared the tickets their hockey
coach, Ace Mulligan, had just given them.

"Are these teams juniors, pros ... or what?"
asked O'Callahan.

"It says exhibition," said Forsythe.

"Hmmph. Probably Junior B," said O'Callahan,
stuffing his ticket into his pocket.

Derek's dwindling finances had forced him to
contact Mulligan, a drinking buddy from Guelph. Ace obliged Derek's
request to trade a block of thirty tickets to the May-Ja-Look -
Herculean game, in exchange for the Shamrocks' practice ice
time.

Marcotte had been careful to explain his
problem to Mulligan while the players' parents were out of earshot.
All he needed was one hockey mom to catch wind of this, and he'd
have yet more women ready to raise him in effigy.

Mulligan had helped diffuse the situation by
explaining to his team and the children's parents that Derek's team
had lost their own ice time when the Zamboni had overheated, broke
down and melted a twenty-foot wide crater at the blue line. He
embellished it somewhat, explaining that Marcotte's team was a
group of touring players sponsored by the Give-Me-A-Break
Foundation. The foundation was a non-profit organization that
catered to middle-aged males who never recovered emotionally when
their dreams of making the NHL were shattered. Many of these men
lived their lives in relative obscurity ... specifically searching
out areas with low cable TV penetration.

Most of the parents nodded sadly in
agreement. A few of them, who had cousins or friends of neighbors
playing in NHL, cleared their throats with embarrassed coughs. They
bowed their heads and congratulated themselves at their good
fortune.

Thusly, the Leafs began their first practise
with thirty, snub-nosed kids and their nostrils pressed against the
plexiglass. Derek told his players in the locker room that they
were to give the kids autographs whether the kid wanted one or not.
Any player who refused would be off the team.

Derek stood by Artie at center ice against
the boards. They both wore blue and white sweat suits. Artie
wouldn't let go of the whistle dangling around his neck. He was
doing his best to look the part of an assistant coach.

"I don't feel so good about this," Artie
said.

"Well, damn it. It's the best we could do. We
were tapped out after paying for the players' transportation, your
crazy signing bonuses ... and Aunt Rita's grocery tab."

"Do we have any extra pucks or something we
could give to the kids?" asked Artie.

"I was just going to ask you which end of the
rink you wanted to watch."

"For what?"

"The pucks that go over the glass. The only
way those kids are going to get a puck today is if they beat us to
it."

Artie turned for one end, Derek for the
other.

... 2 ...

The May-Ja-Look Leaf players were gathered in
the Marvin Gardens Jiujitsu Training Center. The Maharishi Fishi
was holding court. The Leafs sat on the blue tumbling mats before
the great guru. On the wall behind the spoon-bender-extraordinaire,
was an unraveling portrait circa 1958 of Queen Elizabeth II. Beside
the picture, hung the guru's framed citizenship certificate.

The Maharishi and the players had begun their
class 45 minutes early, following an accident in the judo class
prior to their session. A 13-year-old boy had flipped another boy
into one of the mirrored walls and separated the kid's shoulder.
Both of the boys' fathers were present. As they escorted their boys
out the doors, the two men argued loudly about whose lawyer could
urinate the farthest.

With the extra time afforded them, the
Maharishi began the session by playing both the French and English
versions of the Canadian and Bangladesh national anthems. He passed
out the required reading for the course ... a brief pamphlet called
20-20 Hindsight -- Gift or Myth?. He also handed out a testimonial
from a Rhode Island man who had combined a 1-800 psychics line with
a phone sex line to create a phone service that would predict the
caller's next occasion for intercourse. Disappointed callers were
guaranteed their next two predictions for whoopee ... for free.

"In order so that you may defeat your enemy,"
the Maharishi said, "you must sincerely believe his greatest
strength cannot possibly touch your most noticeable weakness with a
120-inch pole. He is a measly grain of sand and you are the Sahara
Desert. He is a teeny-weeny drop of water and you are Niagara
Falls. He is --"

"We get the picture," said Hackett.

"The best way to achieve this wonderful way
of thinking is to make believe you have just finished fasting for
forty days and forty nights. On the forty-first day you wake up and
are as hungry as a pony's papa. You are too tired to cook, so you
go to a restaurant where the food is good and fast. You have a
coupon in your pocket that is starting your pants on fire. It is a
two-for-one coupon and you are very happy you didn't bring a
friend. When you are waiting for the cheerful voice in the talking
box, you notice a new item on the menu scoreboard. Below the Hash
Browns and on top of the Sausage Muffins, the sign says, "Dates ...
$3.99." But believe me you, these dates are not food. Beside the
three-ninety-nine price, there are pictures of Elle MacPherson,
Anna Nicole Smith and Demi Moore."

"Gentlemen," the Maharishi said to his
hordes, suddenly rapt with attention. "May I please take your
order? Do you listen to your talking tummies and take the hash
browns so you can live to do fisticuffs another day? Or do you use
your last one-sixteenth of a pound of energy doing the Punjab
fun-jab?"

A chant of "Punjab" starts up among the
players. The Maharishi, with an all-knowing smirk on his face,
extends his hand to quiet his audience.

"Students, please put your pupils back in
their eye sockets. Life is not all foreplay and no work. In our
dogwood dogma of self-preservation, sometimes the most difficult
thing is to walk away from a battle without dropping your
mitts."

"I will never forget, no matter how hard I
try ... the old Pakistani handyman's tale about the puppy dog and
the kitty cat. There was a dalmatian puppy dog who was turned down
by all the movie studios because he didn't have enough spots. He
wandered around the Hollywood movie lots all day and into the
night. He was very sleepy and wondered where there might be a hook
for his hat that night. He bumped into a kitty cat that was also
having a very bad day. The fussy pussy had come within two whiskers
of being the Cheshire Cat ... but Alice was allergic to his breed
and they had to change kitty cats."

"So," the Maharishi continued, "the two
animals began looking for a puppy doghouse and a kitty cathouse.
Soon the puppy dog and kitty cat bump into a cardboard box. They
argue about who should have it. The puppy dog tells the kitty cat
to let him have it or he is going to go and get his 101 spotted
puppy dog friends. The kitty cat tells him to go ahead and get the
puppy dogs ... because he knows the kitty cat that saved them in
the movie."

"No sooner does the puppy dog leave and the
kitty cat curls up in a ball in the box, than an elephant with big
ears flying overhead -- trying out for another movie -- falls out
of the sky and lands on the box, killing the kitty cat
instantly."

"What kind of parable is that?" asked
Coolidge.

"My friend," said the Maharishi, "You should
always let sleeping puppy dogs lie."

... 3 ...

The next day fans filed through the doors of
the Varsity arena on Sir John Avenue. It was a corporate crowd with
the white collars outnumbering the blue two to one. The one o'clock
face-off meant a businessman's special for the downtown sports fan.
It also brought out the hooky-playing regulars from area schools.
Early odds among the bettors had Herculean a prohibitive 1 to 10
favorite. With a win, $100 wagered on the advertising Goliath would
fetch back $110. Outside the building, above the mingling mops,
weaves and shoulder-length hair was an electronic marquee. The
message, "SERPENTS VS. LEAFS", ran across the foot-high screen
every 30 seconds ... taking turns with an ad for the Red Cross
blood bank.

In the Leafs dressing room, Derek checked the
battery pack on his belt, then his headset. A friend at CBC, Newton
"Oggie" Nash, had been laid off six weeks ago. Nash had swiped the
gear as part of a self-negotiated severance package.