Enforcer (13 page)

As the linesmen led both players back to the benches, forcing them into the locker rooms, the crowd was wild with cheers and whistles. The Cannon had made yet another enemy pay the price. His teammates shouted his name with compliments, banging their sticks on the boards as he passed by and entered the door to the benches. The linesman watched to make sure he headed down the hallway to the locker rooms. Connor glanced back one time to see if he could spot Dana in the crowd, but his vision was still a little blurry. He wasn’t sure if he might be suffering a concussion, or if it was the amount of towel waving and clapping from the cheering fans.

*****

“I didn’t realize you were such a badass,” Dana joked as they walked downtown after the game.

“Nah, I’m not,” Connor said, embarrassed.

She reached down and grabbed his hand, causing him to wince slightly at the pain from his fight at the end of the second period. She didn’t notice, but he didn’t mind, especially after she laid her head on his shoulder.

“I thought you were done for when you went down the first time,” she said. “He was hitting you pretty hard.” She pulled her head back and looked at him. “Does it hurt? While you are fighting, I mean.”

“Sometimes,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ve been floored by a good punch to the jaw or the nose before. But usually you don’t notice unless they get a good shot in, or until after the fight, when you are sitting in the penalty box.”

“What about your hands?” she asked.

“Yeah, hitting hard face bones is pretty rough on them.”

She grabbed his hand with her other, holding his with both of hers. She looked like she was about to ask another question, but they’d stopped in front of Nemaro’s Bistro, a place that Connor had never heard of before.

“This place is really good, if you like Italian-French combos. My treat.”

“It’s okay,” he said, “I have money. I’ll pay.”

“No way,” she said with a frown that turned into a smile. “We modern women don’t need your chauvinistic bullshit. You gave me tickets, I’ll give you food.”

“Those tickets were free,” he said, opening the door to the restaurant.

“Then this meal is going to be free.”

*****

“So,” she said after swallowing a mouthful of appetizer, “why do you guys fight anyway?”

Connor took a drink of his dark beer before he answered. “Lots of reasons really. Sometimes they run our guys, you know, hit them when they shouldn’t, or hit them while they’re in vulnerable positions. Sometimes guys just run their mouths too much and need to be shut up. Sometimes they do something dirty, like use the butt-end of their stick in the ribs, or the blade of the stick in the groin.”

“Really?” she asked. “And fighting is allowed? Why don’t the refs just call penalties on them for that stuff?”

“If you’re good, sneaky, then you do it when the ref can’t see it. It’s kind of an art,” Connor laughed.

“Some art,” she said.

“It is, in a way. But they let us fight because it’s like a steam valve, it releases pressure. If dirty shit is going on all game between the teams, and they don’t let us fight, it gets really ugly. Like ‘swinging sticks’ ugly, or driving someone into the boards from behind at full speed. Shit like that can injure a guy really bad. We tolerate it to a certain point, but then it gets to be too much and we drop the gloves.”

“So you and the other guy just drop your gloves and then you fight?”

“Sometimes it happens in an instant like that. But a lot of guys aren’t fighters. They won’t drop ’em. So each team will send out their enforcer, a guy like me, and we’ll have at it.”

“Do you fight right off the bat?”

“No, you have to wait until the puck is in play. If you do it before that, it’s big trouble, instant ejection, and a lot of times a suspension. Normally I’ll see their tough guy, and we’ll talk it out.”

“You talk it out?”

“Well, I mean, I’ll skate by him and ask, ‘hey, you want to go?’ and he’ll be like, ‘yeah, let’s do it,’ and then we’ll drop the gloves and go at it.”

“This sounds really weird,” she said with a laugh.

“It is, in a way. But it’s just a part of the game. I don’t go looking for a fight. Usually the coach will tell me, ‘go after number twelve’ or ‘if they put number eighty-five in, you got to go in and get him’ or such. It’s all coordinated, but not like pro wrestling where it’s all fake.”

Yeah,” she said, reaching across the table to grab his hand, looking at the old scars and a new scab around his knuckles. “It didn’t look fake.”

He laughed. “It is definitely real, and it hurts a lot, but you get used to it.”

“So… you like to fight?” she asked, letting go of his hand.

“Sometimes. Sometimes it’s good to get the aggression out. Hockey is a pretty aggressive sport. There’s something about it that makes you mean, full of anger, especially if your team is getting beat pretty good. But I’d rather be skating up on the first or second line, even the third line, playing against their top line as a defensive forward.”

“Why aren’t you?” she asked.

“I’m not good enough anymore,” he said, looking down at his beer.

“What do you mean you aren’t good enough? You look like you skate just fine, and you definitely look like you know how to fight.”

“Fighting doesn’t score goals and win games though,” he said, not looking at her. “I used to be better, but… when I was eighteen, I had an accident, and I can’t skate like I used to.”

“What kind of accident?” she asked. “Like a car accident or something?”

“No,” he said, “I was playing in Finland at a tournament, and I got my leg cut open. I guess I almost died from all the blood I lost. I healed up, but I was never the same. I don’t have the speed or the agility that I used to have.”

“I’m sorry, Connor,” Dana said, her face dropping to look at her plate. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories or anything.”

“No, it’s fine,” he said. “It was eight years ago. I’m just happy I can still play. Hockey was, is still, my life.”

“You never wanted to do anything else?”

“No. According to the entire nation of Canada, I was going to be as good as Gretzky. I was supposed to be the number one draft pick. Instead, I’m playing hockey in Boise, Idaho.” Dana looked upset, sad at his words, so he added, “Not that I don’t like it here. It’s a great city, and the fans seem to like me. I’m really glad I get to keep playing. I never thought about doing anything else, even after the accident. All I could think of was finishing rehab and getting back on the ice. I was sure I would be just as good as before, maybe even better than before because of how driven I was. It’s all I could think of for two years.”

“But you weren’t,” she said, and looked sad again.

“I’m good enough to beat the piss out of some asshole who messes with my boys,” he said with a smile.

“Well, I’d never been to a hockey game before, but I’m glad you asked me. I thought it was really fun. Everything moved so fast. I had a hard time paying attention to it all. I didn’t understand what was going on for the most part, why they blew the whistles and all that. But when you guys scored a goal, I stood up and screamed at the top of my lungs like everyone else. It was a blast.”

“I’m glad you had a good time,” he said, happy to see her beautiful smile again.

“I especially liked watching you, but you didn’t play that much. But the fight was the most exciting thing that happened all night.”

“Not more exciting than us winning, was it?”

“Actually? Yeah, it was. I don’t like violence, but watching you almost get beat up, then turning it around and making that guy give up... that was pretty awesome.”

She reached across the table again and grabbed his hand as he was reaching for his beer. He looked into her eyes, and held her gaze until the server arrived with their meal.

*****

“I’ve never had sex with a celebrity,” Dana said, as they lay in his bed, both of them sweaty and tangled in the sheets.

“I’m not a celebrity,” he said, looking over at her.

“Sure you are. You beat up people and thousands of fans cheer your name. I’ve even seen you on television before, and once or twice in the newspaper hawking cars or pizza. Ordinary people don’t have their names announced while a crowd goes wild, and ordinary people don’t get asked to do television commercials.”

“A lot of the other guys get to do that too,” he protested.

“That might be true, but I’m not in their bed, am I?” she asked, rolling over and climbing on top of him.

He put his hands on her hips and gave them a squeeze. She was everything her tight slacks had hinted she might be. He’d bedded a lot of girls since he was fifteen, a by-product of being a hockey player who was talked about in national newspapers and magazines. He’d even had a steady girlfriend when he was seventeen, but the never-ending travel and the inescapable attention from girls everywhere he went had ended it after two months. He’d spent the rest of his career moving from one girl to another.

Some of them wanted to be exclusive with him, but most just wanted to add him as a notch in their belt, to be able to claim they’d slept with someone famous. At least the majority of them were honest about it, which was the only reason he didn’t feel like an asshole when it happened. A few of them had been hurt by him, by his refusal to carry on an exclusive relationship, and he’d always felt bad, but he’d never lied to any of them about his intentions. Most of the time the conversations, if they ever went beyond “your hotel room or my apartment?” never went that far.

He liked Dana. He didn’t know if he wanted to date her like normal people dated, but he definitely liked her enough to want to see her again. She’d made his brain forget about Jera for a while. She wasn’t a
puck bunny
like most of the other girls who tried to attach themselves to him. She was down-to-earth, had a job, was putting herself through college at Boise State, and had only talked hockey over dinner enough to understand the game before moving on to real life interests.

They discovered new pleasures with each other again, and a third time a few hours later. When she finally told him she had to go home to get some sleep before her early shift in three hours, he didn’t want her to go. Connor couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted one of his
companions
to stay. He usually only wanted the sexual release and then to be alone. He’d spent so much time alone in the last four years that he had a hard time staying in a conversation with anyone, about anything.

“I wish you didn’t have to go,” he blurted out as she dressed.

“I wish I didn’t either,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed and caressing his face. “A girl has to work to eat though.”

Connor wanted to say a number of things to her. He wanted to tell her that he would help her, that she wouldn’t have to work if she stayed with him. He wanted to tell her how much he liked her, to confess that she was the first girl since Amy Dobbs that he wanted to be with for more than just a night, for more than just sex. It was foolish, he knew it, and so he kept his mouth shut.

She put her coat on and walked back to the bed, leaned over and gave him a long kiss on the mouth before leaving. He watched her go, matching her little wave to him as she walked out of his apartment. After the door closed, he jumped in the shower to wash away the sweat and the lingering aroma of sex. He hoped when he closed his eyes, he’d dream of Dana Foster and her tight black slacks wrapped in a green apron, instead of Niklas and Travis.

CHAPTER 12

Connor knocked on the door to Mr. Ojacarcu’s office. He wasn’t sure why he’d been called to the office to see the boss. Ojacarcu hadn’t said a word to him since the night he gave Connor the list of clients to visit with Dracul.

“Intra,” the voice said through the intercom speaker.

Connor opened the door and entered the cozy office. Ojacarcu sat at his polished desk, laptop open in front of him. When Connor stood in front of the desk, Ojacarcu waved a hand for him to sit. He sat in the chair and waited for his boss to finish whatever he was doing on the computer. After a minute, Ojacarcu closed the lid of the laptop and looked at him.

“Connor, good to see you. I have some good news, and some better news,” he said. “The good news is that the UPHL wants us to do a promotional piece for them, you being a fan favorite and all, and me, well, I’m a good businessman who puts a lot of money back into the community. You are okay with this, yes?”

“Sure,” Connor said. He’d done promotions of all kinds before, even for the league two years ago when the Bombers had played for the Thompson Cup.

“The better news,” Ojacarcu continued, “is that after such a fine job you did for me with that… business that needed to be taken care of, I have decided that you deserve a raise.”

Ojacarcu’s smile looked to Connor like a shark’s grin, or maybe a badger’s, right before it tore into flesh with its sharp teeth. Connor remained silent, waiting to see what his boss would say.

“I’m sure that it was not an easy job, Connor,” Ojacarcu said, folding his hands on the desk, “but you did well, according to Dracul. You know,” the older man chuckled, “he does not like you much. However, he says you did not panic, and did everything you were told. I am proud of you. So proud in fact, that I have a present for you.”