There's a Shark in My Hockey Pool (9 page)

"Angela?"

No answer.

"Maybe she's asleep," said Derek.

"Not likely. Sleep and Friday nights don't
mix with her."

"Hangovers and Saturday mornings are the
winning combination?"

She elbowed him in the ribs and stepped
through the doorway.

"Come on in."

She turned for the kitchen. Derek paused to
take in the spotless surroundings. Stucco walls, dark drapes, Ming
vases and throw pillows. Lots of throw pillows. Teddy bears without
their limbs. Definitely a woman thing. Derek pictured her lounging
in one of them, lost in a Marbelline ad in the latest issue of
Elle-Bound Women. She was wearing white. White frills. No socks.
Dainty feet. He wasn't a foot man per se. He just knew good ones
from bad. If the shoe fit, she didn't have to be Cinderella.
Sylvie's voice from the kitchen brought him back before his mind
could divulge and divest any more.

"Can I get you something to drink?" she
called from the kitchen.

"Whiskey. Pack o' Spaniels ... if ya got
it."

Marcotte sat down on a dark blue sofa with a
floral print that hadn't run too rampant. The end tables were light
brown with a parquet pattern. Did people who like parquet fantasize
about basketball courts? Derek remembered as a kid how he was awed
by the checkerboard pattern of the outfield grass at Oakland's
Alameda County Coliseum. Try as he might to recreate it with the
lawn mower in his backyard, he only wound up wasting gas.

Sylvie entered the room with their drinks and
sat down beside him. He took a long quaff. She watched him
carefully as his Adam's apple bobbed once, then twice.

"So ..." she began.

The buzz from the whiskey lifted and took off
for Tennessee. Heads up. A pitch was coming in, high and tight.
When a woman started off a conversation like that, it meant one
thing -- chin music.

"So ... what?" Derek said sheepishly.

"Tell me about Helen."

He was about to set his drink down, when he
spotted a stack of coasters out of the corner of his eye. Women
appreciated it when a man picked up on nuances like this. He
reached for one and set himself up, looking as sophisticated as a
.120 breathalizer reading made possible. Some people's coasters
were camouflaged. These were intentional "embarrass the guest"
devices. Other coasters were testaments to wooden mazes. Success
was only guaranteed to those who possessed a double major ... in
architecture and archeology. If they weren't cardboard, they should
simply have "COASTER" stamped right on them. It was one of those
questions Marcotte was saving for the "Stump the Lord" booth on the
St. Peter midway. How many times had he missed using a coaster when
one was staring him in the face?

Sylvie was definitely an out-in-the-open
coaster girl.

"Uh ... yeah. Do you want the demographics or
background info?"

"Whichever is more user-friendly."

Derek smiled at how close Sylvie was without
knowing it. When it came right down to it, Helen was a computer
that needed upgrading. She processed information that was given her
... and she was handy to have around. But a week would sometimes
pass before she'd tell him something he didn't know.

"She's 34, a good cook and does
needlepoint."

"So why are you here with me tonight?"

"She's 34, a good cook and does ..." He
turned serious. "We've been living together for eight years now.
For the past two I've been comfortably numb. Before that was a year
of anemia. But that was a step up from being just plain
unconscious."

That was good enough for the boys in the bar.
It got a laugh and they went back to the game on the big screen.
With Sylvie however, he knew he'd already said too much and she was
lining up follow-up questions like a news-ed sophomore who's just
bumped into Salmon Rushdie.

They looked at each other. She could almost
sense the crushed carpet beneath their feet vibrating, ever so
slightly. The carpet's dirt settled in deeper as she prepared to
examine the dirt on Derek. This was heavy shit. She had one foot
inside his emotional closet. The quickness and ease wasn't too
surprising however, given Derek's penchant for hitting problem
areas head on. He wasn't pulling any punches. Men were barbarians
when it came to emotions.

"Comfortably numb? Unconscious? Are we
talking about an overdose or a car wreck here?

"A little of both actually, " Derek said.
"Helen was there when I needed her. She had the kind of bedside
manner that made it too easy to get used to her. I think she liked
me better when I was sick. We just don't seem to connect. Once my
knee healed, our relationship -- hell, my life -- reads like the
Mudville nine. Nothin' but strikeouts and storm clouds."

"Storm clouds?"

"When I was a kid I had this picture book of
Casey at the Bat. At the end -- after he strikes out -- it starts
to rain with big dark clouds and everyone in the stadium goes home.
I always wondered if the storm clouds were meant to provide more
pity for Casey ... or just to save the artist from having to draw
the bleachers full of fans again."

"Lazy artist," Sylvie said, hoping her remark
would spark a silver lining in one of those clouds. For them.

"So I'm taking one last stab at stardom to
exorcise my devil once and for all."

"You shouldn't talk about Helen that
way."

"I'm not. I was referring to Victor
Erskine."

Sylvie stopped in her tracks.

"You're gambling your company because of
Victor Erskine?

Derek told her of the game where Erskine had
chopped his knee in half, felling his NHL dream. How Helen had been
a pseudo-Red Cross envoy, caring for him as if he'd had
gangrene-ravaged trench foot. And how his recovery, their
relationship and his seething revenge traded spots daily on his
mental marquee.

When he was done, Derek lowered his head and
looked at the crushed carpet. He rolled his glass between his
hands. Getting this out in the open was good therapy, he supposed.
He felt a huge weight being lifted off his shoulders ... or perhaps
it was the buzz from the hickory-soaked bark of the Pack o'
Spaniels.

Sylvie had peeked long enough between his
ears. She took a sip from her drink and placed it on the table.

"Come over here," she said.

"Are we going to do what I think we're going
to do?" Derek asked.

"And what's that?"

"Share a non-stop ride on the tunnel of
love?"

She looked at him coyly. Such coyness came
from knowing poutine was better than french fries.

"I've got my ticket," she said. "Have you got
yours?"

"It's here somewhere," he said, leaning over
to unbutton her blouse. "Oops. Wrong shirt." He sheepishly withdrew
and began unbuttoning his own.

Derek's mind was racing like a furnace that's
just figured out it's February. Loverboy's quick, up-tempo song
"Get Lucky" danced through his head as he watched Sylvie pick up
where he'd left off. Without missing a beat, she continued
unbuttoning her blouse. Derek hit the pause button on Loverboy when
he realized he was getting ahead of her in the unbuttoning
stage.

Shirts aside, they reached for each other,
closing in a warm embrace. Sylvie's skin was soft, smooth, and
Holstein white. Derek wanted to nestle in it for a few weeks. But
his heart was running on all ventricles. He snapped to. Bra. Bra
strap. Must remove. He was from a long line of tit men.

He was about to go to work on it when Sylvie
pulled away. He groaned.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Well ... yeah. I mean ... I think so." He
gave her a strange look.

"I thought you might be having a heart
attack. You're shaking."

"I, uh ... I ... always shake when I take off
my shirt. It's a rapid, uh ... flexing of the muscles. It keeps me
limber." Derek flexed his pectorals for good measure.

"Well, stop it. You're scaring me."

Derek looked at her Wonderbra-encased breasts
staring back at him. He reached for his drink. It was a Catch-22
situation. Another belt and he'd incur serious downtime in the
mission at hand. But if he didn't take a drink, his goose bumps
would restart their jackhammers and the nearby treasure chest would
be buried deep ... hidden away for the night. He swallowed quickly
and congratulated himself for remembering to offer her a drink as
well.

Sylvie sipped slowly, not taking her eyes off
him. She was on the verge of a nervous giggle but didn't want to
sink the good ship Passion.

Derek set his drink down.

"Now then, where were we?"

"I think it's still referred to as foreplay,"
Sylvie said.

"Only if your roommate arrives with a
friend."

She smiled and moved closer to him. They
kissed. As Derek locked lips with her, he closed his eyes while his
hands quickly embarked on a double flank maneuver against her bra
strap. The bra. Brassiere. Titty bag.
Over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder. The final bastion of femininity.
It was one of those every day devices that few cultures studied
closely. The French had mastered the double-hook clasp. The
Italians fathered the famous "push & pull" mechanism. North
Americans however, had entered the game late. As teenagers they
wore blindfolds and practised the delicate art by removing their
mothers' pilfered bras from her mannequin's bust. Once mastered,
they spent the remainder of their lives in search of women who
compared favorably with the mannequin.

Marcotte was well versed in the various signs
to watch for when attempting "the removal". A girl was playing hard
to get when she had to wheel her own bra around her body to get it
off. If she couldn't get it undone from behind, what chance did any
horny, red-blooded male have? Most men questioned the scruples of a
girl who wore a bra with the hook in the front. Too easy. Like
shooting fish in a barrel.

Derek desperately needed one of those front
and center howitzer-hitches at this point. The Pack o' Spaniels
reminded him he couldn't master this particular bra strap. Derek
longed for Marcy ... his mother's mannequin. Marcy didn't mind when
his knuckles dug into her back when he was in the middle of an
"attempt." Marcy didn't yelp when the strap snapped back.

Derek had been going at it for a War and
Peace-like twenty seconds. Sylvie's shoulders shifted, signaling
her hands would soon arrive as allies.

"No, no. I can do it," he said mentally.

Now the whole world was watching. He bit his
lip, wondering if neurosurgeons had off days like this. Perhaps ...
if they were suffering from third degree frostbite. It was a single
hook. It had to be. No, wait. Was that another hook or merely a
metal wire thrown into this tricky maze? The theme song from Final
Jeopardy had long since ended and Derek knew Sylvie would sound the
buzzer of humiliation any second. There had been a couple of
teenage dates with his mother's mannequin worthy of the Gong
Show.

As a last resort he tried his famous
up-down-all-around, in-out-don't you-pout maneuver. It was tricky,
but dangerous. There was a fifty-fifty chance the bra would never
see the light of another cotton blouse. He wondered if it was
possible to accidentally crack a rib. Just as Sylvie uttered a sigh
... the clasp unhooked.

Derek backed away so she could slip out of
it. He smiled at her triumphantly.

She lowered her eyes graciously.

"Gotta admit ... it put up one helluva
fight," he said.

He took it from her and inspected it closely,
stopping short of taking a whiff.

"Wow. Triple hook. I thought these went out
in the last referendum."

They hugged and rolled off the sofa onto the
floor.

It was 2:00 a.m. Derek lay awake, staring at
the flickers the fake fireplace cast off the ceiling. Sylvie slept
beside him, facing away. Her horizontal figure cut an
innocent-enough looking terrain. Only an hour before it had been
peaking at seven on the Richter erotic scale. It was his first
affair since he started playing house with Helen. It's not that he
didn't look at other women. If he was going to burn any bridges
however, it would be with the hottest thing around. The torch he
carried for Helen couldn't turn a marshmallow brown. The second he
buried himself in Sylvie's pair of opulent orbs, Helen became about
as significant as Jupiter's ninth moon.

The difference between a one-night stand and
the one-to-take-home-to-Mom was that you had to get out of bed
sometime. Helen preferred him in bed -- but for all the wrong
reasons. In soda shoppe parlance, Sylvie was a double scoop of
bodacious beauty smothered in chic-intellect sauce and sprinkled
with nutty humor. Helen was the root beer float that often went
begging for a tall, dark, second straw.

Derek struggled with it. Helen had indeed
nursed him back. But now he was fit as a fiddle with a Stradivarius
lying beside him. It was the best Beethoven's Ninth he'd played in
ages. Derek's eyes strained deeper into the flames dancing on the
ceiling, half-expecting Nero to appear.

The next morning Sylvie rolled over in bed,
reaching for him. But there was no one there. Derek was gone.

... 4 ...

Derek sat on the edge of his bed, punching
numbers on his cellular phone. Helen was still asleep. She laid on
the bed with her back to him. It was 9:00 a.m.

"Aunt Rita. It's me, Derek."

Aunt Rita was his mother's 54-year-old
sister. She was a jolly sort, brightening up a large Victorian
house on Kennedy Road. Aunt Rita sang in the local Presbyterian
choir, digested Agatha Christie novels like after-school cookies,
and was a fund raising fanatic. From the United Wage-Cut to
diseases yet to be named, Rita pounded the pavement and burned up
the phone lines to pick a person's conscience clean. If she banged
doors for Jehovah's Witness, their watchtower would be a Swiss
timepiece museum. She flogged philanthropists and floozies alike.
Aunt Rita had a way of doing it that, once the person made the
donation, they felt like they owed her a favor. Thirty-odd years of
glad handing had left her with enough contacts to fill the Gardens.
All Derek needed was enough to stock one player's bench. He quickly
filled her in on the hockey pool.