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No fucking brainer to take up Dubes’ offer to take over their spare room, right. Dubes is a fucking beaut and his wife is like, smoking hot, plus she seems to spend most of her day mostly naked hanging by the pool plus she makes killer wings. They’re sweet and sticky and the sauce gets all over Cliff’s hands and face whenever she makes them and she just laughs and gives him a napkin and Dubes starts lecturing him about proper table etiket or however you spell that, because he’s a grown man who knows things and Cliff is not. Cliff is eighteen and it’s okay if he’s still learning, which is what his mom tells him when she calls pretty much every night. And Mom agrees about the rest: Dubes is great, the house is gorgeous, and it’s just a few minutes from the practice rink in Brighton so Dubes doesn’t mind driving them in every morning, which makes it, all in all, a good deal.
Boston also is fun. Cliff’s never lived anywhere near an ocean before, and being in the US in general is still kind of a trip, because every other commercial is for health insurance and lawyers which is jarring, and they still use old-timey dollar bills, for fuck’s sake, not to mention the credit card situation in restaurants where you have to do math before the servers actually take your card away, but damn, there are just so many new and different kinds of Oreos at the grocery store. Whatever the sick fucks at Nabisco are snorting to come up with all these insane variations of cookies and cream all the time, Cliff would like some too, please and thank you. Rozy too is amazed by this, and Pop-tarts, and whatever weird energy drink he can find at the 7/11 that he always forces Cliff to finish after he’s had two sips and declared it gross, so they like to go to the grocery store together and just walk down the aisles, throwing whatever weird shit they find into their cart to try later.
The one downside, actually, to living with Dubes and Joanna is that Dubes is kind of, like, strict about too much junk food, really good wings aside, and drinking, and partying. So Cliff spends honestly a lot of his free time with Rozy, who, while also underage in this backwards country, at least lives alone in a nice apartment closer to the Garden and the Common. Connors always gets them booze ‘cause he’s freshly 21 and even tries to get them into bars once in a while, to varying degrees of success. When they’re out with the team it’s way easier but when it’s just the three of them it’s hit and miss, honestly. Nice fucking guy, that Connie. Didn’t even say anything to Coach or Dubes when Cliff got caught making out with a total smokeshow at a club by her very big, very mad boyfriend, who was not impressed with Cliff offering him a pair of really nice tickets to their next game as an apology. He even threw in a signed jersey to sweeten the deal, but no dice. Big Patriots guy, he said. Hockey’s a sport for pussies.
Well. Pussies or not, Cliff and Rozy are fucking doing the thing, aren’t they, absolutely killing it on the ice and off the ice. Clifford Marleau, Gravelbourg Saskatchewan’s native son, made it to the show, something he dreamed about his whole life and still sometimes can’t believe is real.
“Sometimes I can’t believe this is real,” he says to Rozy, out loud. They’re in their hotel room somewhere in Edmonton icing various body parts and debating what to wear before they go out — thank you, Albertan drinking age laws — and Cliff is feeling sentimental about it. Probably because his Mom and little brothers Leo and Ray came to the game and got to meet all the guys in person and it was so fucking cool, actually, to see them talking and joking around together. Dubes called Mom Mrs. Marleau and invited them to visit over Christmas. Cliff cried a little when it happened. He was just so fucking happy.
Anyway. Rozy is really crazy smart about a lot of things even if his English isn’t so hot, like women and restaurant math and how to be rich, but for things like this Cliff thinks he’s sometimes a little dumb.
“Mm, yes, we beat Forslund in own barn, now we go drink,” Rozy says. “Hard to not believe this. Forslund sucks.” He rummages in his bag and pulls out cologne, which he spritzes on his chest a couple times. The kind of guy who travels with cologne, that’s Rozy. Back in juniors most guys Cliff played with usually just smelled like Axe and their own farts, so this is novel. He holds the bottle out to Cliff with a raised eyebrow.
“I just mean like, we’re here, you know,” Cliff says. He takes the bottle and must look at it a beat too long deciding how to go about it, because Rozy just grunts, takes it back, and sprays it for him.
“The Edmonton Hilton.”
“The fucking Chel, bro!” Cliffs sniffs at himself. Woodsy, kind of smokey, it’s nice. He lifts up his left arm and smells his pit. All good. “My buds from home are so friggen jealous.”
“I know, Marly,” Rozy says. “They are texting you all the time about it.”
Aw man, they really do text him all the time. Smithy and Jonesy and Browny and Millsy, his best guys. From daycare to high school together, man, until Cliff got sent up to juniors to play in Manitoba, and they had a goodbye rager that lasted until four in the morning in the field behind Browny’s dad’s barn.
“Stop crying again,” says Rozy, “and put this on.” He holds out a silky deep purple button-up shirt which Cliff takes with no complaint. For himself Rozy picks out some kind of complicated-looking tank top with a swoop of fabric hanging on the side, though it still of course shows off his arms.
Once dressed, they stand side to side in front of the mirror, looking at their reflections and assessing the situation. Cliff a head taller than Rozy but leaner. He’s left three buttons open on the shirt and tucked it in so it sits a little loose — he likes the way it catches the light when he shifts and thinks it will be fun on the dance floor. Rozy, of course, is built like a fucking wall, all wide shoulders and huge biceps, and knows it.
“Wait,” Cliff says. “What happens if we pick up?”
“Not if,” Rozy says, “when.”
“Okay, well, what, we rock-paper-scissors it for the room?”
For what it’s worth, Rozy does look like he’s thinking about it seriously. “Hm. Maybe we are taking turns?”
“A-1,” Cliff says, and holds out his fist for Rozy to bump. Fucking genius. “Let’s go.”
—
The club is kind of shitty, honestly. Forslund and some of the other Edmonton guys are there, and Rozy does buy everyone a round of drinks like the nice boy he is, but it’s a Tuesday night and the dance floor is only half full. There are a few hotties, though, and Cliff is dragged to dance by Connors when they spot a group of girls giggling and looking over at them over their drinks. Quickly he pairs off with this total fucking cutie, chubby dimpled cheeks and a thick waist like the kind he likes to grab, and they make out a little. Her lip gloss tastes like cotton candy and she makes such a nice sound into his chest when he slides his hand up her shirt, but pretty soon one of her friends is crying about some guy not texting her back and all of them head to the bathroom at once like a herd of fucking penguins, heads bent together to comfort the girl now bawling.
From where he’s dancing with an older, dark-haired woman in a tight skirt and not much more than a bra, Rozy catches Cliff’s eye as the gaggle of women go. He scrunches his nose in sympathy but it doesn’t last long — the woman winds her arms around his neck and starts macking on it. Still though, Rozy’s eyes don’t leave Cliff’s. His hands are squeezing the woman’s butt, kneading it, and he pushes a thigh between her legs as they sway in time. She throws her head back and grinds on him a little, and he smirks, right at Cliff, as if to say, haha, look what I can do. It’s kind of sexy, honestly, the way she’s just going for it and how her skirt is riding up until you almost see her right ass cheek, right where Rozy is gripping it. The lights are flashing green and pink, the music is loud, and really, there aren’t enough people on the dancefloor to hide what they’re doing in a throng of pulsing bodies, so Cliff can see pretty clearly when Rozy’s other hand has slipped into the front of her skirt and travelled lower. Right there, where anyone could see. Jesus. It’s hot in here, and Cliff’s drink is empty, and he needs to breathe.
“I’m going to piss,” Cliff says to Connors, who is fading into his beer, oblivious. Rozy is no longer staring and has his face tucked into the woman’s neck. The look on her face when Cliff brushes past them to get to the bathroom suggests she’s having a grand old time. Rozy’s a fucking beaut.
He stands in front of the dirty bathroom mirrors way too long, splashing water onto his face. Probably the cutie he was dancing with earlier is back out there and he could go find her, but then what? Obviously Rozy’s gonna get the room first because he is who he is and Cliff’s just a kid from nowhere, Saskatchewan, not even a first liner or anything, still just hoping he doesn’t get sent down to Providence or traded God knows where if he fucks up. This is what he doesn’t really tell the guys from home. It’s incredible, playing in the show, and he wouldn’t change it for anything, but he kind of sometimes feels like a Make-A-Wish kid waiting for the other shoe to drop. Okay. That’s awful. He’s not gonna die or anything. But he’s well aware he’s a different caliber of player than fucking Ilya Rozanov, on and off the ice.
Where did Rozy learn to do all that, anyway? If he was anything like Cliff in high school, and he probably had to be given how fucking talented he was to go first overall for an Original Six team, then it was all hockey all the time, with barely any free moments for socializing or fucking. Not to say that Cliff was a virgin or anything when he got to Boston, God no. He was a big hockey-playing fish in a small Canadian pond and hasn’t had his nose broken yet, so like, definitely in high demand by the local hotties. But Rozy knows so much about this stuff — women and how to dress for them and what to say to them. And they just love him, everywhere he goes. Cliff too loves him but for different reasons, probably. It’s crazy that Cliff has heard the guy fart and shit and hawk a loogie like any other nineteen-year-old professional athlete but still the shine has not come off that particular red Russian apple yet.
Eventually he has to leave the bathroom, and when he does, most of the team has gone. To his surprise, Rozy is leaning against the bar looking bored, the light of his phone illuminating his face as he texts someone.
“Hey,” Cliff says, approaching. “Your, uh, your girl gone?”
Rozy waves a hand. “Eh. Went home. We go to hotel?”
He’s definitely not drunk enough to excuse the words that come out of his mouth later when they’re undressing in their room and getting ready for bed, but they spill out of him anyway.
“You just, uh, fingerbanged her right there on the dancefloor, huh.”
Rozy smiles. He’s folding the clothes he wore and putting them back in his bag, something he always does which Cliff thinks is probably another sign that Rozy is like, an evolved being.
“You were watching,” he says. Not a question but a fact. “She liked that.”
“Me watching?” Cliff is frozen, half unbuttoned, staring.
Rozy nods. “Yes.”
He takes a couple steps toward Cliff and raises his hand until his fingers are right under Cliff’s nose.
“What the fuck!” Cliff exclaims. But he knows what the fuck. Rozy’s fingers smell like — well, like pussy. Musky and feminine and strong. He wants to lick them clean and keep that taste on his tongue as he falls asleep.
“Jesus Christ.”
“Just Ilya,” Rozy says. Somehow he doesn’t make it awkward. Instead he just smiles almost giddily, like he’s genuinely happy to be sharing this with Cliff, and they start giggling. Soon it’s the kind of laughter that can’t be stopped, one setting off the other into a fresh peal of snorts and giggles, and they’re falling over each other as Cliff tries to finish getting undressed. Just Ilya, Cliff thinks. Later in the darkness when Rozy’s breath has gone slow and even and there is just the hum of the hotel air conditioner left to accompany his thoughts, he thinks, or maybe he whispers it into the dark, well, I kind of liked watching too.
—
There’s something weird about Gravelbourg now, Cliff thinks, and it’s pissing him off. He’s a prairie boy through and through, obviously, Rider fucking Nation, but when he looks at the immense flat expanse of land at the edge of Somerset Street it’s like the world just drops off. The sky is endless. Saskatchewan like always is mostly awash in bright yellow canola swaying in the breeze and other tallish grassy things: wheat, lentils, soy. Looking out at the ocean when they go to Florida or he and Roz drive up the coast in the night to find a beach somewhere near Salem feels kind of like this, but at least then there is unpredictable movement, a rush of waves and sound, seagulls dipping around close to the water and up again in lazy circles.
Everyone is psyched to see him, is the thing. He’s home for like three weeks before he gets shipped up to Calgary where’s he’s booked his summer training, and he’s trying to see everyone he wants to see in that short span of time, but it’s like, well Jonesy doesn’t want to hang out with Millsy anymore because they had a stupid falling out about Eva Michaud, Browny’s second cousin who works at the daycare, so Browny’s awkward about it too and Smithy’s deep into the busy season on the farm so he doesn’t really want to get involved. Cliff is split between them all, which means separate fucking hang outs, and somewhere in there he has to see his family, and his Mom wants him to take his brothers out to Regina to get some school shopping done even if it’s only June, but she works all the time too so it would really be doing her a favour, and how can he say no to that. It just feels like so much responsibility, suddenly. He’s like, in charge of everyone’s happiness or something. Monsieur Dulac wants him to go give a speech at the school, about hard work and being in the NHL, but Cliff hasn’t really spoken much French in years beyond press scrums where he knows exactly what to say and how to say it, so it’s like, okay he’ll do it, but it’ll probably suck. Then he does an interview for the local radio station, CFRG-quatre-vingt-treize-virgule-un-F-M-la-voix-des-prairies, more French. When he goes to the store everyone wants to talk to him, too, and the post office, and the Subway, and the Petro-Can. They want to take pictures with him and have him sign his Young Guns hockey cards. Which of course he will do. But it’s not really a vacation, he thinks. At least his mom finally lets him buy her a dishwasher so he isn’t stuck doing a million dishes every night like he was growing up.
He spends a lot of the time texting the guys, honestly. The new guys. Not the Gravelbourg guys, whose BBM group kind of fell silent somewhere in April and Cliff was just too fucking busy to notice. Rozy texts him separately, too, but he’s in Moscow for the summer and the time zone thing still fucks Cliff up. Usually he wakes up to a few messages from Rozy, drunken or otherwise, and they reply to each other hours apart whenever they can, and it’s not really a conversation, more like some jokes here and there that don’t require active participation.
One in the morning Moscow time is four in the afternoon in Gravelbourg. Kind of fucked up, honestly, and Cliff doesn’t like to think of it too hard. Time. Space. That stuff is enough to give him a headache. But this is usually when the real weird shit from Rozy comes in, blurry pictures of club lights and bottles, selfies where Roz is obviously fucked up a little, dart dangling from his lips and cheeks red.
pick up any good tail over there, Cliff texts him. He’s laying on the grass on his mom’s back lawn under the shade of a tree and he’s just received a photo of Roz doing the duck lips thing at the camera. What a fucking weirdo, Cliff thinks. It’s honestly kind of funny that the media makes him out to be this big bad Russian bear man. He’s a genius, obviously, and way cooler than Cliff will ever be, but he’s a little bit of a dork too.
u wouldnt beleiveeeeeeeee Rozy answers, almost immediately.
And the thing is, Gravelbourg is weird, and Cliff misses his guys, all of them, and everything makes him feel itchy, like a sweater that’s grown too small or rather like he has grown too big, and he’s fucking bored. His one night out at the local dive bar with Browny was a disaster and he hasn’t gotten laid in like two months, and Roz is somewhere so far across the world he might as well be on a different planet, so it doesn’t even feel real when Cliff responds. It feels like a game, just make-believe. It’s easy to imagine none of it is real at all.
tell me
He drops his phone onto his face when it starts vibrating.
“Marly,” Rozy says somewhere in Russia. His voice is kind of quiet and rough, and there’s no sign of club music or anything in the background.
“Jesus, what are you doing? This is so long distance,” Cliff says.
“You can afford,” Rozy says. “Listen.”
Instead of saying something insightful like Cliff expects, there’s just silence, and this is when he realizes he’s actually supposed to listen. So he does. It’s quiet, almost imperceptible, but then when he catches it it’s all he can focus on: a steady thwack-thwack-thwack and a creak-creak-creak, something like —
“Are you fucking right now?”
Rozy laughs and says something in Russian to — someone. Her answering giggle is muffled and high-pitched.
“Say hello, Sonya,” Rozy says. There’s a beat and some crackly noises over the phone like it’s being shoved somewhere, then sound comes into focus again. Soft breathy sighs, Rozy’s grunts, the bed creaking, a wet rhythmic pounding over and over.
“Jesus fucking — I’m — oh my God.”
Cliff is just in his backyard, totally exposed to anyone who could come out and see what he’s up to. His brothers are inside playing Xbox and his mom is due home like, any fucking minute, and there are neighbours all around. And Cliff is fucking hard. Why is Roz doing this? Do other bros do this? Probably not, right, but Cliff doesn’t really care. It’s completely insane and also the hottest thing he’s ever heard.
“Ma-a-a-rly,” Rozy sings, dragging it out. “You should see her. Big bouncy tits just like you like.”
Cliff just whines. He’s not gonna fucking pull his dick out in broad daylight at four in the afternoon but it’s almost painful, how hard he is. Somewhere nearby he can smell someone firing up their barbecue. This is, like, a community.
“So round,” Roz continues, almost slurring. “Huge nipples.”
The woman says something Cliff doesn’t understand and Rozy laughs. It’s not a mean sound, not like he’s making fun of Cliff, but more of a happy one, as if she’s said something funny. Most of the sex Cliff has had is not the giggling-together kind, and he’s not sure if this means that Roz is so comfortable with this woman that they’ve reached that level of easy intimacy or if it’s the opposite, all just for fun, nothing serious about it at all. Maybe it’s just Roz. He has a way of pulling you in on the joke in any situation, a startling kind of charisma that makes Cliff want to follow him to any ledge.
The noises reach a frantic pitch and Rozy gasps and swears, then a few seconds or maybe minutes later, the woman is crying out. Not long after Roz ends the phone call, no more words said, and somewhere in Russia Cliff imagines him lighting a cigarette and stretching out his limbs.
Cliff takes a deep breath and tries to calm down just as he hears his mom’s SUV pull into the driveway in front of the house. Jesus fucking Christ, dude. Whatever bridge Roz is jumping off, Cliff will be going right behind him.
—
Year three and Dubes offers up his place again to Cliff. Really, he was gonna take it, and even unpacked all his shit and everything, but apparently Dubes and Joanna are trying for a kid and totally going at it like, all the time, whenever they have a spare moment. The house is big but the ceilings are tall and every little noise just bounces around in the air, and Cliff thinks, hm, better get gone. Listening to them fuck at one pee-em on a Tuesday is like listening to his older brother and his super hot girlfriend fuck, if Cliff had an older brother. Awkward and not as sexy as — well, as he thought it would be. It’s a little dumb if you ask him because who wants to potentially have a newborn just before playoffs, but of course nobody asks him and anyway, even thinking they’re going to make it to playoffs feels a little like jinxing it, nevermind the would-be baby. His mom is disappointed about his decision because she really likes Dubes and thinks he’s a nice sensible man, whatever that means, but she is excited when he buys her a ticket to Boston in September so they can look at apartments and buy furniture and shit for his new place.
First stop is a corner apartment in Rozy’s building and it’s like, yeah, they’re going to look at other places, but he and his mom both know a bit of a formality. She likes Roz — who doesn’t, once they get over whatever they heard about him on TSN — and he seems to like her too, pointing out features of the place and asking her opinion as if he’s the one moving in, not Cliff. Afterwards he invites them over to his place where they order takeout and Roz listens delightedly to Mom share the latest gossip from home, even if it’s all about people he’s never met and never will. Listening to it makes Cliff’s stomach hurt, a little. He used to care about it, and still does he supposes, but it’s more like listening to the comings and goings of the cast of a reality TV show rather than people he used to go to school with or play hockey with or whatever. People whose hands he’s high-fived or who he’s shared a beer with behind a shed somewhere at a party. He touched them once, and they’re real people, but it’s all — like the time zones shit. Hard to wrap his mind around how they all exist at the same time as him, sitting here in Boston having sushi with his mom and the guy who is now his best friend. Sushi because Mom says that whenever she’s in a city she wants to have food she can’t have in Gravelbourg, like dim sum and good seafood and wood-fired pizza and pad thai. Somewhere in nowhere Saskatchewan his mom’s friends or coworkers or neighbours are probably trying to decide between like, the four restaurants in town for supper later, not including the Subway. It’s as different a world to Boston as it is to Moscow.
“How’s the maintenance situation in this place?” Mom asks Roz. She’s bad with chopsticks and has opted instead to stuffing the little sushi rolls in her mouth with her fingers directly, something neither Cliff nor Roz have chosen to comment on.
“Eh, I don’t bother,” Rozy says. “If something is needing fixing I just hire someone myself. Gets cold in the winter though. All the windows.”
“God,” Mom says. “Wish I had the money to throw at issues around my house.”
“Jesus, Mom,” says Cliff. “Like I haven’t offered—”
She puts a hand up. “I told you, not while you’re still on a rookie contract.”
Dubes made him hire a financial advisor last year when Cliff let slip he just had all his money going into the one chequing account, and the advisor said the same thing, even if the amount of money he makes is more than anyone in his family has ever conceived of. First few years are precarious for a hockey player. Well, all the years, really, on account of the possible injuries, but when you’re young and haven’t yet made your name, it’s doubly so. Not for Roz, obviously, whose name has already been made and then some, but Clifford Marleau is still more or less a nobody.
“Do not worry so much, Mrs. Marleau,” Rozy says. “I do not think Cliff is going anywhere yet.”
His English is getting better and it sounds almost formal, sometimes, like he’s trying so hard to get all the words out correctly. Also, he’s never ever called Cliff by his actual name or given him a compliment like that, and it’s really friggen weird coming out of his mouth.
“Oh goodness. Call me Laurette.” She is blushing, a little.
Mom did let Cliff book her a nice hotel room with a spa package, at least, so they send her off in a taxi for the night while Cliff texts Dubes to let him know he’s staying over at Rozy’s. Being downtown instead of in the suburbs is nice, actually, and they walk down to the corner store at the end of the block to get snacks and beer. It’s pre-season so whatever. Doritos, the Nerds gummy ropes Roz likes, some Mike and Ikes, a few different chocolate bars. He throws a couple bags of beef jerky in his basket for the sake of protein and calls it good.
“Fun night planned?” the guy at the counter says. He’s short, or at least much shorter than Cliff, with dark skin and a turban and has crazy long black lashes that must get annoying when he blinks.
Cliff shrugs. “Just staying in. Might watch a movie.” In Gravelbourg it’s normal for shop staff to talk to him, usually because he already knows them or is related to them in some way. Here he’s not used to it so much, and his small talk skills are out of practice. Still, that’s no excuse for the way he says, stupidly, “what about you?”
The guy winks and starts ringing in his stuff. “You’re looking at it. I’m here all night.”
“Damn,” Cliff says, thinking of the nights he and the guys spent hanging around the Subway in town when Millsy worked there in high school, shooting the shit and stealing bites of ham and pocketing leftover cookies. Smithy had a little speaker for his iPod and they would bring it in and turn it up so loud any customer that came in would give them dirty looks. “Too bad you don’t have anyone to keep you company.”
“Well,” the guy says, “feel free to come back and visit me if you get bored.”
Roz comes up behind him with a six-pack and dumps it onto the counter. Both Cliff and the guy behind the cash jump.
“Hey, are you the dude on the billboard on I-90?” asks the cashier.
“Maybe,” Rozy says. “Is he hot?”
“Well, yeah.”
Huge smile from Roz, the fucking charmer. “Then yes. Is me.”
Cliff just rolls his eyes and grabs his bag of stuff before heading outside, leaving Rozy to sputter after him about owing him twenty bucks, and the guy laughing. It’s a nice night. Late summer, still warm but not so stifling anymore. Moths fly frantically at the flickering shop sign and a few people walk by, heads bowed together talking. Tomorrow he’s going to take his mom out for a walk along the waterfront and will try to calm her anxiety about him setting down even the weakest of roots in Boston when he knows he could get traded anyfuckingwhere anyfuckingtime, before they go view some more places.
“Sveta’s coming over,” Rozy says when he comes out onto the sidewalk and they start walking back down the block. “I found the new Insidious movie online, she wants to watch it.”
“You were flirting with that guy,” Cliff says. Not accusing, but he is a little curious, cause like, Rozy obviously loves attention from most people, even haters, but he’s never outright laid a line on a dude before. Is he that starved for compliments? Damn, Cliff could be a bit freer with handing some out if that’s the case, but a low self-esteem is not something people usually associate with Boston’s youngest captain in a century.
“So were you,” Rozy says.
Cliff stops walking. “What? No I wasn’t. I was just being nice.”
“Well he thought you were very nice.”
“Jesus Christ.” He thinks. Was he flirting? Well, definitely not on purpose, not the way Rozy was with the deliberate sleaze of his grin, the same Cliff has seen a hundred times at bars and in coffee shops and once in line at the pharmacy, the woman in front of him so taken by it she didn’t even notice he was holding nothing but body oil, strawberry-flavoured lube and a 5-Hour Energy. Was the guy even cute? What makes a guy cute, anyway? Cliff can honestly say he’s never thought about it before. Kind of hard to nail down what with the lack of — well, boobs for one, and curvy waist, and pretty pouty lips, and soft skin, and round ass, and everything else he likes in women he doesn’t really notice in men. He did clock the nice eyelashes, if that counts for anything, but eyelashes probably don't matter vee-za-vee any flirting that may or may not have occurred, with intention or without.
“What? Is no big deal. He has a good story to tell now.”
Cliff shrugs. If Roz doesn’t care, then he doesn’t care either. “So, Insidious?”
Later that night, after they’ve finished the movie and dutifully washed off all orange Dorito dust from their fingers, he lays in bed listening to Svetlana and Ilya fuck. It’s not the first time he’s heard them in the past two years, but this time it feels louder, like they’re putting on a show. They usually talk a lot while they do this, low murmurs in Russian that don’t sound particularly sexy, more like they’re just chatting and catching up while Rozy, presumably, blows Sveta’s back out. Tonight is different. Not so much talking, mostly grunts and high, girlish whines, moans that don’t get muffled or shushed. Cliff isn’t even pretending he’s not turned on, anymore. He pulls his dick out of his underwear immediately and scrambles for the nice fancy lube he knows Roz keeps in the bedside table drawer of the guest room. There’s condoms in there too, and Gatorade, of course. What a good fucking host.
He listens to them as he roughly jerks himself off, not willing to slow down and savour it, too high on it to make it last. He feels it in his teeth, his want, and their want, and them making him feel the force of it through the too-thin walls of the luxury high-rise apartment, like they want him in on it too. Well, they must, given — there’s the sound of a hand slapping something. Svetlana’s ass, he imagines. She’s so small, so dainty, all elegant angles and round eyes. She comes around often when she’s in town, drinking them all under the table and making fun of the rookies’ attempts at facial hair, and when she talks even Rozy shuts the fuck up and listens. God. His big hands, her tiny plump ass. The hit will probably leave a mark.
He comes before they do and can’t bring himself to feel embarrassed about it, because no one’s going to ask him. While his breath is still heavy he listens to the rising pitch of their moans until there is silence.
“Fuck,” he hears Rozy say, then something in Russian. Svetlana just laughs, a golden trill trickling through the gyprock.
Cliff fumbles blindly in the dark for the Kleenex box he knows is on the side table, arm sluggish with the exhaustion that hit him as soon as things got quiet. In the ringing night he thinks he almost imagines it: three rapid knocks against the wall. Well. He knocks back, just in case, and then promptly falls asleep.
–
Four years in and sometimes it still feels like a dream. Everything is coming up Clifford, or whatever. His new contract pays for his mom to retire, finally, and his brothers to go to whatever university they want which means UBC for Leo and USask for Ray, and a new house in Gravelbourg, a new car, the whole shebang. He doesn’t see any of it because he hasn’t been back to Saskatchewan in a year and feels so guilty he makes huge donations to the school and the local 4H Club and flies his whole family, brothers and Mom and Aunt Tammy and her weird biker boyfriend Steve to Cuba for two weeks in July instead. He sleeps with a woman from Québec City he meets on the beach six times over the course of the trip – dark eyes, long nose, A-fucking-1 ass in a little string bikini – and promises to hit her up next time they play an exhibition game there but he probably won’t. The sex is fine. It’s something to do. Increasingly he feels the ways in which his body and his mind struggle to keep up with each other, and this is one way in which he tries to force them to coexist again. After playoffs he’s too thin, lanky in a way he hasn’t been since he was fifteen, but she doesn’t seem to mind while he’s banging her in her hotel room, balcony door open because she likes to hear the waves when she comes. Probably piña coladas aren’t the approved way to bulk but he drinks a lot of them anyway, and in the photos his mom makes them take on the beach Leo and Ray are as tall as him, and he thinks, when the fuck did that happen?
He decides to train in New York the rest of the summer, because if there’s one place that’s definitely fucking real it’s New York City, realer than anywhere, probably. More people here than in any city in Canada, more people in his apartment building than in all of Gravelbourg, yet still somehow small compared to Moscow. Hard to imagine. It smells like piss and garbage and all the food in the world. He sends his mom pictures of bibimbap, arancini, borscht, juicy lamb souvlaki, pizza, every kind of dumpling on the planet. She sends back pictures of the new house, gleaming, and the room she has reserved for him. She asks him what colour she should paint it. He doesn’t know how to say he doesn’t care so he tells her Raiders black.
Rozy calls him more than ever but sometimes he doesn’t say much, just breathing on the other side, making supper or working out or whatever, and he can’t figure out the guy’s sleep schedule. Sometimes he’s fucking, and then Cliff finds a quiet place and jacks off about it. Only once does the fucking sounds distinctly – well, masculine, if Cliff were to define it, absent of girly squeals and the giggles Cliff’s become used to during these times.
“A blowjob’s a blowjob,” Roz says when Cliff mentions it, so Cliff decides not to again. It didn’t just sound like a blowjob, but what does he know. Whatever floats Rozy’s boat. The man hasn’t led him wrong yet.
He turns twenty-two in August and he and Connors, who is training and living with him for the summer, go out on a bar crawl. The thing that being drunk and playing sex and having hockey – sorry, playing hockey and having sex – have in common is that for the duration of it he feels true, present, here. His mind isn’t drifting halfway to familiar grasslands while his body tries to complete a task in Massachusetts. Another thing they have in common is that the next day everything fucking hurts, which also feels real, but isn’t as fun. The chopped cheeses definitely fucking help though. Twenty two isn’t old for normal people but in hockey years, he’s no longer a young buck. It’s all ice baths and cortisone injections and deep tissue massages from here on out.
He goes on a couple dates with a woman he meets in a pottery studio, of all stupid places, when he really needed to piss while out on a run once and that was the first place he found whose bathroom wasn’t for paying customers only. She takes him to MoMA, and like, mark art down as having absolutely nothing in common with hockey, because for the whole two hours he feels like he’s floating in some weird dream world and thinking about his place on the planet and shit, so much so that he startles when he accidentally runs into a bench, stumbling over it and catching himself just in time. His date — Carla, long thick braids and bright green glasses — stops laughing when he pushes her into a family bathroom and gets on his knees and eats her out for ten blissfully real minutes until she pulls him off her with a gasp.
“Oh my God, I can’t, it’s, I’m on antidepressants,” she says.
He wipes his face on his shirt and looks up at her.
“What do they have to do with anything?” he says.
“Sometimes it’s hard to come,” Carla says. She readjusts her underwear and skirt and holds out a hand for him to get up.
“That fucking sucks,” he says. The water is sharply cold when he splashes it on his face.
She shrugs. “Better than the alternative.”
“What, like, actually having an orgasm?”
She laughs but it’s got a hard edge to it. Kind of mean, he thinks. Afterwards they get ice cream that drips in the hot sun faster than they can eat it and he doesn’t see her again once drops her off at her subway stop.
Back in Boston, the city drowning under constant rain, everywhere wet and slippery when he tries to take something of it for himself. It feels like nothing ever stays the same out here. Roz buys a house in the fucking suburbs then gets a tattoo artist to come to his housewarming party and give everyone drunk enough to say yes one of the pieces of art he’s chosen pierced into their skin: a stylized Raiders logo, a little number 81 in a heart with an arrow poking through it, a pin-up girl in a skates and not much else, a seagull with a puck in its beak, a flower in a bottle of vodka like a vase. Hammersmith was traded to Edmonton in exchange for an aging Forslund and a first-round pick sometime before the deadline in the spring, and there the old guy is on the first day of training camp, in the stall next to Cliff. Dubes’ baby has started walking, tottering around the practice facility and their locker room on unsteady feet. The corner store he went to with Roz that one time has been replaced by a vape shop, of all things, and there’s a new building going up across the street from Cliff’s that totally ruins the fucking view. Maybe if he stuck around Massachusetts all year it wouldn’t all seem so sudden. In Gravelbourg growing up it felt like nothing ever changed, year after year of the same crops, the same people, the same buildings. If he keeps it like this in his memory that means it is safe.
–
They play the Winter Classic in fucking Fenway Park, which is insane for a million reasons, chief of all for how fucking cold it is. There’s talk about hosting it in one of the hotter states, like Texas or Florida, but there is always talk, and the league hasn’t bit the bullet yet even if players complain every year. One thing he didn’t expect about the NHL is how gossipy it is, all these grown men trading stories around the continent about who’s fucking whose wife, who’s rumoured to have a coke problem, which captain is struggling to keep his room, who has a micropenis, who’s requesting a trade where, who has a secret gambling problem and offshore accounts, et-set-urrah et-set-urrah. You tell your guys one thing and within a week it’s reached every locker room in the league.
No surprise then that Rozy is a frequent flyer when it comes to being the subject of such stories, and Cliff thinks he likes it that way. His stats speak for themselves of course, but then there’s everything else about him that makes him kind of – larger than life, in some ways. Unreal, in others. Well. Cliff knows he’s real, obviously, they have matching engraved vintage Omega Speedmasters for the love of god, plus he once watched the man shower sitting down when he was too hungover to stand after a particularly wild night out following a win against Washington. Those parts of Roz are just hard to reconcile sometimes with the things he hears about the man, even when he knows the truth. Slept with the North Carolina's captain’s wife: true. Spent ten thousand dollars on caviar and champagne at a bar in Cambridge on a random free Tuesday in February last year and made them stay open two hours past closing: true. Taylor Swift once slid into his DMs and asked him out on a date: true. Tried to break into the New England Aquarium after hours because he ‘really wanted to see a big octopus’: true. All true, but only Cliff and probably Svetlana know the other parts of the truth, like that the wife said their marriage was open when it really wasn’t, that he tipped the servers that night as much as his bill, and that he never ended up actually going on a date with Taylor Swift, which was probably in everyone’s best interest. And the Aquarium thing was actually Cliff’s idea.
Also, on the subject of micropenises. Is it fair to judge a man’s dick size when you’ve never seen it hard? Certainly Cliff has seen his fair share of hogs of various sizes in showers and locker rooms over the years, some very impressive, some not so much. Whatever joke there is to be made about dicks, he’s heard them all and then some, but not usually directed at his own penis. Except he knows about growers and showers, himself being a bit of the former, though when erect he thinks it’s a decent size. He’s a big, tall guy, so like, it’s proportional, probably. Not his fault it’s just so-so when soft. He’s never heard any complaints from the women he’s slept with before, that’s for sure. What do guys with really small flaccid cocks say when they hear those roasts? Like, oh, just wait til you see it when it really gets going? Do they even defend themselves or is it just risking opening yourself up for more ridicule? It’s like Schrodinger’s dick, both large and small at the same time, right. So like, what is real, and what isn’t, and who cares, because it’s not the gossiping old women he plays with and against, that’s for fucking sure.
Anyway. Winter Classic. Minus fifteen celsius, give or take. Snow falling onto the ice, very beautiful but very liable to fuck him up if he doesn’t pay attention. Mom is in the crowd watching under layers of fleece blankets. Roz always gets weird and intense before they play Montreal because he takes his weirdo rivalry thing with Shane Hollander way too seriously and this is no exception, and the only goal from the Raiders camp is his, but Drapeau stands on his head the whole fucking game and their own goalie Carmichael maybe forgets what pucks look like, seeing as he lets five in. Cliff is too cold and sore to care much about what it means for his numbers and their standing.
Traffic is fucking crazy as always after games, even with the vast majority of fans gone by the time press and everything is done, but eventually the car he’s requested from Player Services winds its way through streets lined with dirty, slushy snow and discarded beer cans. Mom is still shivering by the time they make it to his building and nod hello to Jerry the doorman, so he rushes her into his apartment, which is always colder than it should be, and starts the fireplace. The logs are artificial and he needs a remote to get it going, which he still thinks is a mindfuck. He imagines trying to explain this to his great-great-grandfather or someone: no, the fire is real, the heat is real, but the wood is fake, I don’t know how it works either, trust me, I know I sound insane.
It’s dark even though it’s still early, but that’s late December for you. Cliff’s hungry – he’s always fucking hungry. He eats a protein bar while Mom scrolls through Doordash and she says she can’t decide between Indian and Greek, so fuck it, they get both. She’s gotten a lot better about spending his money even though she grumbles a bit about it as always. He really doesn’t care. What else is his money for, anyway?
Hours later and his mom is fast asleep in the guest bedroom. It’s late, and Cliff should be sleeping too, but instead he keeps staring at his phone, updates from another world. Browny is engaged. Jonesy’s dad has skin cancer. Millsy is moving to Saskatoon. Leo and Ray are partying together in Vancouver. Aunt Tammy and her weird biker boyfriend got a dog. He thinks, how can you even know for sure all of this is true? If you’re not there watching them type it out and post it? If he could gather everyone he loves in one big room and just watch them, forever, maybe nothing would ever change. Maybe no one would ever die or move on. Even if he is the one who moved away. People probably talk about him in line at the bank, now. Did you hear about Laurette’s boy? The one who plays in the NHL? I heard he’s doing well for himself. I heard sometimes he stays in his jacuzzi tub for two hours after he works out because it’s the only time he doesn’t have to think or feel his body or be anywhere at all.
Instead of turning his phone off he donates five thousand bucks Jonesy’s dad’s Gofundme, which calms him down a little. He doesn’t even hear the front door open, but he does hear the creak of footsteps outside his bedroom and a light knock, just as he’s pressing submit on the Anonymous post.
“Mom?” he says, startled. “You okay?”
He puts his phone aside, turns on the lamp by his bed and gets up.
“Ah, not your mother.” Rozy opens the door and slips inside.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Cliff hisses. Obviously Roz has the door code to his place, and Jerry would have let him up no problem, so it’s not like he broke in, but shouldn’t he be at his house or something?
“I was in town,” Rozy says, splaying out his hands as if asking forgiveness. There is none of his brash bravado from earlier at the game, showboating in front of fans, pumping his arms to get them to cheer louder for him even in the face of a loss to the Metros. “Weather turned bad and I didn’t want to drive home. I was going to sneak into your other room but forgot about Laurette.”
“Laurette, Jesus Christ,” Cliff says. “Alright, what the fuck, get in.”
Rozy lifts his eyebrows. “Well, the couch.”
“It’s fucking freezing! You complained about how cold this place gets for three years.”
“Okay, okay, calm.” He strips efficiently down to his briefs and slides in the left side of the bed where the sheets are still unwarmed.
“Thought you went home after the game,” Cliff whispers once he’s turned the light off.
“Mm, no, had a hookup.”
“Really? In this weather?”
“You think a bit of snow can stop me?”
“You fucking dog,” Cliff says. Somewhere below them an ambulance passes by but all other signs of life are dampened by the storm outside — there is only wind and the hum of his baseboards heating the room and across the hall his mother snoring. So he asks, maybe lulled by the intimacy of the moment or maybe rather craving it, or creating it, “any good?”
Roz lets out a rush of air and laughs quietly like he’s been holding it in. “The best, maybe.”
“Seriously,” Cliff says. Kind of incredible but if anybody could find the best it would be Roz.
“Marly, it’s insane,” Roz says.
“What do you mean?”
Without any input from his brain at all Cliff’s dick stirs in his briefs, and he tries to angle his body away from Roz without making it seem too obvious. He probably doesn’t succeed, because Rozy always — he always seems to know. This is what’s fucked up, actually. Cliff is sharing a bed with his best friend, captain, fucking coworker, and he’s — whatever this is. And encouraging it. Wanting it.
“She takes it so well,” Roz breathes, “like she was made for it.”
“Yeah?” He can’t help it.
“She is like, hungry for it.”
“Yeah.” Yeah. Cliff whines, so hard now he can barely think. “What’s she look like?” he asks.
“Perfect ass, I can’t even tell you. I fuck her from behind so I can look at it. Black hair, brown eyes. She cries when she comes. She wants it so bad. She can’t help it. I’ve never—“
“Oh my God. I need—”
“Okay,” Rozy says.
Cliff finally pulls out his dick and starts tugging at it under the covers. His eyes are shut so tight he has no idea if Roz is even looking at him or just staring up at the ceiling, his voice taking on an odd dreamlike quality as he continues. Like he isn’t bragging but rather sharing his wonder.
“Her mouth — Marly, her mouth. So pink. So soft. I walked into the room and she was already on her knees for me, like we hadn’t just — and her hands, she’s so strong, and I told her to put them behind her back so I can fuck her face and she did.”
“Fuck.”
“She thanked me after, Marly. Who does that?”
“Uh.” It’s a little dry, a little too rough, but God, he is so close just picturing it. The sheets are silky on his skin, and he smells something citrussy and fresh on Roz even though they’re a careful foot’s distance apart. He is real. This is — whatever this is is real.
“Her tits,” Roz says, “little handfuls, dark brown nipples, so perfect. Sensitive too. I play with them so much sometimes I think she can come from just that.”
“Oh fuck, oh fuck,” and Cliff spills into his hand without warning and keeps going a few times, wringing out the last few drops before extracting his hand and reaching for a Kleenex. Roz makes a pleased noise and then Cliff is laughing quietly and they lie there steadying their heartbeat together for a minute.
“Where’d you find this girl?” Cliff asks eventually.
“Ah,” Roz says. “Can’t give away all my tricks.”
In the dark Cliff rolls his eyes. “Well, are you gonna see her again?”
It takes so long for Roz to answer that Cliff is more than halfway gone, drifting off into a hazy satisfied place like he hasn’t in a long time.
Eventually, though, Roz does say something.
“I hope not,” he says. That doesn’t really make sense to Cliff but he just chalks it up to being too tired to understand Rozy’s accent. So for once he lets his body follow his brain and falls into deep, blissful sleep, and in the morning he doesn’t remember the words at all.