There's a Shark in My Hockey Pool (27 page)

"Dixon takes the shot," said Able. "OOOOH! PA
DECHANCE! Pa DeChance with a miraculous save! That puck was
redirected not once ... not twice ... but three times! DeChance
regrouped and reached out with the kick save and a spectacular one!
The original shot was taken by Dixon from 72 feet away. It then
deflected off the skate of Short Hand, 50 feet away ... then off
the shaft of Monchumme's stick from 20 feet out, before reaching
Girardelli just outside the crease, where his waist-high stick
almost tipped the puck in."

"DeChance was there to eat up that puck like
a doggone cop in a donut shop. Harv will provide you with more
details during the next stoppage in play."

"Sorry, it would take two weeks to analyze
that one."

Down at ice level, the high-pitched screaming
of Erskine could be heard above the slashing skates and crunching
body checks. He'd given up hollering for someone to freeze the puck
or get an icing call. Erskine was now threatening the lives and
loved ones of the five Serpents who were on the ice.

"Don't come back!", he hollered. "I'm not
opening the gate! DO YOU HEAR ME!?! After this period -- your
clothes will be in the hallway!"

"Monchummes with another shot," Able said.
"DeChance makes the pad save. Short Hand gets the rebound and sends
it back out to Monchummes. Jean-Guy-Claude fires the puck. DeChance
kicks it back out. Short Hand is there, johnny-on-the-spot. Another
pass to Monchummes. The Leaf winger blasts it, one more time. It's
three for a quarter and Monchummes needs fifty cents. He is
positively snake-bit."

"Now Short Hand works the puck back out of
the corner. He hits the top of the face-off circle, wheels and
fires! Oooh! Pa DeChance took that one off the left shoulder.
Monchummes grabs the rebound and passes back to Short Hand. Another
one-timer! DECHANCE WITH THE SAVE! I can't take this any more! Will
somebody please get a whistle?!? That one hit him in the right
shoulder. Left shoulder, pad save, you name it ... DeChance is
kicking out more rubber than Canadian Snow Tire."

"Monchummes pushes Hicks aside and shovels
the puck back once more to Short Hand. Another blast! Oooh!
Goodness gracious, DeChance is spacious! That one hit him as he was
going the other way. DeChance never saw it! When you're this good
you don't even have to try. DeChance is stopping everything. The
Leafs have taken 18 shots on goal in the past two minutes."

"Another four have hit the posts and two off
the crossbar," said Kane.

"As play continues ..." said Able,
"Girardelli is motioning to Short Hand and Monchummes. He's letting
them know he wants to take a crack at it. I can't remember seeing
such one-sided play going unrewarded. The Leafs still trail by two
goals. They've fired everything but the jaccuzzi plug at
DeChance."

"In my pre-game interview with locker room
security," said Kane, "... they told me those plugs ain't goin'
nowhere."

"Still ..." said Able. "With twelve seconds
left in the second period, the Leafs are taking turns among
themselves, setting up whatever shooting and passing combinations
they like. Girardelli steps into one from the right face-off dot.
DeChance gloves that one, one of the few howitzers he's handled
cleanly from the Leafs tonight. DeChance drops the puck to Riddick
behind the net. That's the first time the Serpents have had control
of the puck in several minutes."

"Riddick slaps the puck off the glass up the
boards and down the ice. They finally relieve the pressure. Arrette
leaves his net to get the puck. Wait! The puck hit a crack in the
boards! Arrette tries to get back to the net! He dives for the
puck! He can't reach it! They score! Well, color my colon and call
it cologne!"

Derek looked off into the upper reaches of
the rink, wanting to take a bite out of the puck. The scoreboard
changed to read SERPENTS 5, LEAFS 2. Three seconds remained in the
second period.

... 4 ...

The horn sounded, signalling the second
intermission. Sylvie leaned against the wall outside the Serpents
dressing room. She was wearing a knee-length mink-chinchilla coat.
Sylvie wasn't a fur fanatic, but if the animal rights activists
were going to chase her down, she wasn't going to be caught wearing
a scrawny fox stole. The corridor was clear of animal lovers
however. A recent Anguish Freed poll reported that 72% of Canadians
felt that the intellectual dichotomy between hockey fans and animal
rights activists was most similar to that shared between Rwandan
warlords and Electrosux salesmen. Or Sylvie and the balding,
middle-aged security guard standing nearby. She winked at him
demurely.

"Excuse me?" said the guard.

"Oh, you don't have to excuse yourself, big
boy. At least not yet," she said huskily.

"Uh, I'm not sure I understand."

"You will in a minute," she said. "I've been
standing here for the past little while."

Sylvie drilled his retinas with a sensuous
leer that would melt Stonehenge.

"... Watching you," she said, purring.
"There's something about a man in a uniform. It makes my knees go
weak. I think it's the spit-polished look. So squeaky clean ...
kind of like when I've just stepped out of the shower."

The guard stood there with a queer look on
his face. Harold Ravenitch had been working for Brink of Dawn
Security for 14 years. This was the first woman who had spoken to
him who wasn't looking for the rest room. He racked his brain for a
line from one of the many dime store detective novels he'd waded
through on many more nights. Harold couldn't figure out how to work
"private dick walking his dogs" into the conversation, so he stood
there with his mouth open. Sylvie would have to add more bait to
her hook.

"Or maybe it's the special decorations on a
man's uniform. What's this one for?" She pointed to a green and
brown rectangle on his medal-marquee. She pressed her finger just
below it and half-drew, half-massaged a small circle on his chest
for effect.

"Uh, that one there would be for the
successful Operation Cliffhanger in northern B.C. We spent the
summer of '91 saving lemmings from certain death." Harold stuck his
chest out proudly.

His reply didn't phase Sylvie.

"In fact," Sylvie said, husky voice intact.
"It's what's under the uniform that turns me on. Any man that
appreciates the strict dress code of authority shouldn't have any
problem with mine."

"And ... what would that be?" Ravenitch said
with a gulp.

"I love the feel of an extra large, long
sleeve, cotton shirt against my skin," Sylvie said. "To lounge
around the house in. Or wear to bed."

Harold cocked an eye.

"That is," she said, "when I'm not sleeping
in the raw."

Harold's pulse quickened. He looked around.
He'd been married for eleven years. An extra-marital affair for him
had always seemed so out of reach, so impossible, so available to
everyone else but him, that his own wife may as well be selling
tickets to it.

That certainly wasn't going to happen.
Ravenitch's wife had already been divorced twice. She told him that
if she ever caught him with another woman she had a John Wayne
Bobbitt signature slicer that was ready and willing.

"Uh, this is hardly the time or place,"
Harold said.

"Oh, I have the time, sweetheart ... and I
believe you have the place."

Sylvie nodded with an alluring smile to a
maintenance closet a few yards down the hallway. Ravenitch looked
around. In two nanoseconds he weighed his job from hell ... and a
marriage that was nearing the bottom of that same elevator.

Harold steeled himself and followed after
her. They arrived at the door. He took a key out of his pocket.

"Please, allow me," Sylvie said. "It's the
nineties. Must a man open every door for a woman?"

Ravenitch handed her the key. She unlocked
and opened the door. There was an awkward moment as they stood
side-by-side, staring in at the cleaning equipment.

"After you," Sylvie said sweetly. "I insist.
It's the nineties, remember?"

"Oh yeah, the nineties."

Harold stepped forward with confidence into
the closet. What his wife didn't know wouldn't hurt her. He stared
at the corroded skull and bones warning label on a gallon container
of industrial bleach.

Sylvie quickly closed the door, locking him
inside.

She slid through the Serpents dressing room
door, almost bumping into Erskine from behind. He was in conference
with Slager and MacIlroy, who were busy comparing notes. They
didn't see her.

"We've got to blanket Coolidge," said
Erskine. "He's getting too many chances. I want two guys all over
him like road kill. If Coolidge so much as starts a game of pocket
pool, I want our guys fighting over who gets to break.
Understand?"

Slager and MacIlroy shared a confused
look.

Sylvie entered the main area of the dressing
room. Most players were sitting at their stalls. Many had untied
their skates. Some had shed their jerseys. Players relaxed and
recharged their batteries for the final stage of battle. Three
strides into the locker room, Sylvie knocked energy conservation to
the bottom rung of their priority list.

Stapleman spotted her first.

"Erskine really knows how to take care of his
players, eh?" he said, nudging Corcoran beside him.

"Is this what it's like in the NHL?" asked
Corcoran.

Sylvie picked out LaBonneglace in his stall
and approached him, strutting her stuff. The chinchilla-fox
combination rolled off her smooth, bunny slope shoulders and hit
the floor. Beneath it she was wearing a black lace teddy, black
nylons and a hot pink garter belt. Fred Wicks Hollywood Lingerie
Spring Issue's cover page was alive and well, five-foot-nine and
turning heads.

Desjardins continued her slow, stripper strut
toward LaBonneglace. Tony Treadwell, whose video collection was
stocked with more stag than Steven Spielberg, began humming the
stripper's theme. Woodley, then Henrickson joined in and soon the
whole team was singing back-up.

In the entrance of the dressing room,
Erskine, Slager and MacIlroy paused for a moment, taken aback by
the commotion.

"Christ," said Erskine. "I hope they're not
celebrating a victory already."

Sylvie stopped in front of LaBonneglace. She
planted her hands firmly on her hips and gyrated one last time for
good measure. She gave him a look that said she would do it with
him in a car ... in a bucket seat ... with a parakeet. She licked
her lips.

"Bonjour, monsieur," she said.

"What'd she say?" Stapleman asked
DeChance.

"She wants to have his children."

"Ma cheri ..." said LaBonneglace.

Stapleman again looked to DeChance for
clarification.

"He wants her to be gentle. It's his first
time," said DeChance.

"I'm glad to see you 'ere," said
LaBonneglace. "I t'ought I'd seen de last of you."

"Baby, when you've seen the last of me,
you'll still have wet dreams."

"I t'ink I'm dreaming already. Don't anyone
pinch me, eh?"

Sylvie sat down beside him. Beneath hockey
pants, socks, long underwear, garter belt and a jock strap, his
loins awoke. There was a new game in town.

"What's a little pinch between friends?" She
extended her long, tapered, crimson-colored fingernails for all to
admire.

"See? I've done my nails just for you."
Sylvie picked up a nearby tube of deep heating liniment and rolled
it back and forth in the palms of her hands.

"C'mon, sweetie," she said. "Off with the
sweater. These intermissions are only fifteen minutes long."

LaBonneglace quickly shrugged off his jersey.
Sylvie spun the cap off the tube and squeezed a healthy dollop of
ointment into her palm.

"My, what broad shoulders you have."

"De better for you to sit up dere."

"Easy, Trigger. I'll make the ride a little
easier with a massage first. Just relax now and let Madame
Montreal's fingers work their magic."

He smiled and leaned back, dreamily closing
his eyes. She reached down his hockey pants and squeezed the
liniment into his groin. LaBonneglace exploded out of his seat.

"AAAAAAAYE-Y I I I I I I I !! CALLL-EEEEES!!
EEE-YOWCH!! TABERNACLE!!"

He fell to the floor and for a brief moment
impersonated AC DC guitarist, Angus Young, and his signature solo
-- where Angus lies on his side with his legs running at top speed.
LaBonneglace was a human pinwheel in motion. Whereas Angus would be
wildly strumming his guitar however, Gaston had both hands in his
pants, clutching his crotch. His jockstrap was a microwave on
high.

Sylvie grabbed her coat and beat a hasty
retreat for the dressing room door.

In the Leafs locker room, the players sat
dejectedly in their stalls. Derek slowly walked to the center of
the room. He scanned the sullen faces. In the last half of the
period they'd done everything but put the puck in the net. An
invisible force field protected the Serpent net. That was it. Derek
wondered if vulcanized rubber carried a positive or negative
charge. He'd ask Artie later.

Marcotte searched his mind for the stop
button on this downward sliding elevator he'd been on for so long.
Soon it would come to a stop and open out onto the foyer called
failure. But desperate times called for words from Winston. Derek
had great respect for a man who could sleep until noon and still
run the country.

Derek cleared his throat.

"Yes, this is no time for ease and comfort,"
he began. "It is the time to dare and endure. I know we have a lot
of anxieties, and one cancels out another very often. But the
farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to
see. The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of
defeat, but they are no less difficult. Responsibility is the price
of greatness. Because no one can guarantee success in war ... only
deserve it."