Playing Hurt

Clint

goaltending





You want to know what heaven is?” Kenzie asks as she comes banging out the kitchen door. She pauses to dim the lights in the dining room. She’s starting up right where she left off last summer. Even though I’d hoped that nine months apart would have cooled the ridiculous crush she developed last Fourth of July.

Her big hiking boots clomp against the floor as she sashays across the dining room of the lodge, which is empty by now except for the two of us. Candlelight and her hope wash over the walls. When she approaches the table where I’m sitting, her hips start working overtime, swiveling like seesaws.

I’m afraid of her question, but I don’t want to hurt her feelings, either. So I decide to play along. “Heaven … a never-ending line of pine trees on the horizon.”

“No,” she says, her voice all singsong.

“What, then?” I ask, folding my hands behind my head.

“Fried morel mushrooms, of course.” She plops a plate down on the table. “Handpicked by yours truly this afternoon. The chilled bottle of Coke is compliments of Chef Charlie, who has just retired for the evening.”

I nod, staring into the candle that flickers in the center of the table. We really are alone, then. Me and Kenzie, whose wavy chestnut hair is going all crazy down her chest, making arrows that point directly at her breasts.

Okay, Kenzie. I get it. I notice. I just choose not to do anything about it.

She slips into the chair on the opposite side of my table, props her elbows on the tablecloth, leans forward.

I push the camera she’s loaned me across the table. “There you go,” I say. I tell myself to pretend not to notice her little seduction scene. “Wildflowers and sunsets galore—black silhouettes of pine trees.”

“Postcards galore,” Kenzie corrects me with a smile, an adoring twinkle springing into her eye. “You always take the best shots around here. I swear, you single-handedly keep the gift shop in the black. Don’t know what we’d do without you.”

“Yeah—you poor helpless techie,” I say. “Updating the resort’s website, keeping all the vacationers from blowing their tops by maintaining their Wi-Fi connection.” I cringe, just like I always do when I think about Earl’s great Wi-Fi-In-Every-Cabin idea. If you ask me, it kind of spoils things a bit. “You’d never be able to take a few pictures with a digital camera.”

Kenzie sticks her tongue out at me, clutching onto the fact that I’ve teased her, that I’m playing. I know she’s decided to take it as an indication that I’m interested, and I instantly regret it. “Takes an artistic eye,” she insists. “Techies aren’t born with one.”

Her adoring stare is giving me the willies. I pick up the soda and guzzle about half of it all at once, to keep from having to say anything.

“Go on,” she says, pushing the plate of morels closer to me. “You get the first bite.”

I stare at the triangle-shaped slices that’ve been fried a perfect golden brown. “Heaven,” I mumble. My mouth waters. But I know if I take one, I’ll just be egging her on. I stare at her, wondering what my excuse is going to be this year. Last summer, I’d thwarted her advances with a shrug and a thanks for asking, Kenz, but I’ve just got too much to get done before I head down to the U. This summer? She’ll never buy it.

But it’s late in the day—I’m too tired to fight her. So I finally put one of the morel slices on my tongue.

“Good?” Kenzie says, the first of a whole round of questions she already knows the answers to. “Way to a man’s heart, right? Through his stomach? One of those clichés that really does turn out to be true?” She pops a morel into her mouth, her smile curling up from the edges while she chews.

Her voice hangs in the air above us. I don’t want to hurt Kenzie. But at this point, it’s painfully obvious she’ll never get bored with my disinterest. I’m beginning to wonder if she’s got a thing for the unobtainable. Or maybe, I think, Little Miss Computer Science just sees me as some problem nagging at her, sees my heart as some complex equation she’s sure she can solve if she just keeps at it long enough.

But the whole thing’s starting to annoy me; she’s just as bad as that little twelve-year-old I met a couple days ago. Only Kenzie is no twelve-year-old. The girl’s a twenty-one-year-old Northwestern student who comes home to Minnesota every summer to put aside a little extra money for college by staying with her folks and working at the resort. Shouldn’t she be past this crush stuff by now? Shouldn’t she have learned that sometimes, a guy just really isn’t interested?

Problem is, I’ve known Kenzie since she was as young as that twelve-year-old. I hate that it’s getting harder to thwart her advances without showing irritation, and I know my annoyance would only stomp on her heart. I take another slug of my Coke, the bubbles sharp as they travel down my throat.

“There’s nobody in here.” Todd’s voice explodes out of the kitchen, into the dining room. “You said he’d be here.”

“That’s what he told me. He just had to drop a camera off,” Greg says. He flicks on the overhead lights that Kenzie’s dimmed. The room fills with a harsh glow, and Kenzie leans away from me.

They stand in the kitchen doorway, looking mortified.

“You want us to leave?” Greg asks.

“No,” I shout.

Kenzie slumps into her chair, making a face.

“Hey, Kenzie,” Todd says, flashing a goofy grin as he pulls a chair up to our table. He practically sits on top of Kenzie, he’s so close. Quite a different reaction to her than he used to have, when we were kids and Kenzie was a computer geek with thick glasses, the nerdy girl a couple of years ahead of us in school. Now that she looks like a contestant for Miss Minnesota, Todd slobbers all down the front of his T-shirt every time he sees her.

And the T-shirt he’s wearing right now is already pretty nasty. He’s got about six tons of fish guts all over it. Kenzie notices right off, wrinkling her nose.

“Come on, man, join us,” I tell Greg. I reach for the closest chair and pull it toward the table.

Greg plops himself down next to me, his shirt and shorts still smelling like fabric softener. He’s the exact opposite of Todd—a slim runner instead of a beefy weight lifter, a neat-freak instead of a slob, dark-headed instead of blond. And he’s far more in tune with what’s going on with other people than Todd could ever be.

Greg raises his eyebrow. I know he thinks maybe he’s interrupted something here. Or is starting to hope he’s interrupted something. How many girls did he try to introduce me to last year? “If you don’t want to go to Pike’s tonight—” he begins.

“None of us have to go to Pike’s,” Todd says, smiling at Kenzie.

“You two could go,” Kenzie suggests, pointing at Todd and Greg.

“No—I’m going,” I insist, not wanting to be alone with her all night.

“You could come with us,” Todd tells Kenzie.

She stares across the table, right at me. Her eyes dart back and forth across my face as she waits for me to invite her. To tell her to come with us.

Greg elbows my rib. He thinks I should ask her, too.

“Going to be—a—great summer, huh, Kenz?” Todd asks stupidly.

She glances at him, then turns back to me. “Like Independence Day last year,” she says softly. “Remember? You, me, a couple of beers? Sitting on a dock, listening to the Baudette fireworks? Sounded like some distant battlefield. And cheering when a firecracker got high enough over the pines for us to see? Remember?”

Do I. I hadn’t thought a thing about it at the time, the two of us hanging out on the Fourth. Kenzie, though—she took it as me telling her I was ready to date again. But it doesn’t happen twice. Not like it happened with Rosie. And any relationship I might ever have again will feel so empty by comparison—like some dumb old summer fling.

Empty’s the last thing I want.

Greg elbows my rib again—harder this time. Yeah, Kenzie’s beautiful. She’s smart. But she makes me nervous when she turns it on full blast. As soon as she tries to cross that friendship line, I get antsy. Weirded out. Why doesn’t she go after someone else? I wonder. She could have anybody.

“Clint!” Earl shouts, bursting into the dining room. He grabs a chair and drags it up to our increasingly crowded table. Todd takes this as an opportunity to scoot his own chair closer to Kenzie’s.

Earl gobbles up half the morels before Kenzie can let out a syllable of protest. Takes up my bottle of Coke and gulps the remainder of it, letting out a satisfied “Ahhhhh” and smoothing his gray beard.

“About that boot camp of yours,” Earl starts.

“People would be lining up in droves if they knew about your hockey experience,” Kenzie says innocently.

“No,” I shout. “No hockey.”

Greg and Todd both frown at me while Kenzie flinches, touches her chest. “I just thought—you were great,” she says. “And there are so many old pictures of you on the ice around here. Even hanging up in the back of Pike’s. I could scan one into the computer, paste it into your posters—”

“Were, was, woulda’,” I snap. “Nobody cares about something I used to do. I don’t do team sports, all right? None. Especially not hockey. You know that. Can’t believe you’d even bring it up.”

The silence stretches. My anger throbs. Kenzie’s eyes turn wet and she shrinks a little, but Earl just clears his throat and puts his hand on my shoulder. Smiles as though my outburst never happened.

“I’m not gonna get that free meal,” Earl says. Before I can ask him what he means by that, he explains. “Guy called the lodge this afternoon to confirm the reservation for his family vacation. One of his kid is off to college next year and he and his wife bought her the vacation as a graduation gift. He started talkin’ this kid up, askin’ ’bout activities here at the resort. And I thought, seems like a perfect fit, even though I guess you probably won’t be able to push the kid as hard as you really had in mind for the boot camp, but this guy’s willing to pay well, and—”

“I think you lost me,” I say.

“Special case,” Earl finally explains. “Former basketball player, broke her hip. Lost her chance at an athletic scholarship, big career, the whole enchilada, but she’s healed, and when this guy started askin’ which activities around here would be a good place to start her out, I mentioned the boot camp. He really got interested in you workin’ with her one-on-one.”

“She?” Kenzie asks. “The basketball player’s a she?”

Earl nods. Shrugs. “Sounds like a case a’ once bitten, twice shy. Like this guy’s mostly afraid his kid mighta lost some a’ her confidence. What do you say?” he asks me. “Gets here tomorrow.”

“Jeez, Earl,” I moan. “Way to give me the heads up.”

It’s stupid to get mad at him. I mean, I asked for this. But I was envisioning some out-of-shape vacationers. A former athlete’s a different story. Kind of kicks me in the gut, the idea of working with a ball player.

“Been lookin’ for you all afternoon,” Earl says. “Didn’t know about her situation till today. And I thought—”

“You already told her dad I would?” It sounds like some sort of accusation, the way I’ve put it. Like I’ve found out that Earl has just set me up for the fall of a lifetime—a tumble from a cliff. And I already get the feeling, for some reason, that he really has.

“Don’t bust his balls about it, Clint,” Kenzie says, which makes me cringe. Kenzie doesn’t usually talk so rough. I can tell Todd likes it, though, the way he gives her a half-nod.

“Maybe the ball player will even get you to have a little fun,” Kenzie says.

“I have fun,” I say defensively. “Loads of it.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Kenzie mumbles, crossing her arms over her chest. I can feel Greg staring at me, gearing up to weigh what I’m about to say. Like my answer’s going to mean something. I don’t need him trying to decode my every move. So I shrug, act like it’s no big deal.

“Sure, I’ll do it,” I say. “One reconditioned ball player, coming up.”

“Yeah,” Kenzie says, flashing a glare my way. “We all know how easy it is to get broken-down jocks back in the game.”

Which is my cue to leave.