Heroes Read online

  19

  BAYLE WATCHED the entire five to three Warrior loss from the broadcast booth but still managed to find himself between every period on the periphery of the press box checking up on Davidson. The old man didn’t look any worse than he did before the game began‚ but certainly hadn’t improved any over the course of the contest, either. Davidson’s cloudy, confused eyes were as much on Bayle’s mind as the game.

  Has probably looked a lot worse, though, Bayle persuaded himself at last. As soon as the final buzzer sounded, he thanked Able (acknowledged) and Munson (not) for the chance to see the game from up high and made his way down towards press box row to get a copy of an official game summary sheet.

  The counter was deserted but for a young female intern emptying off a game’s worth of accumulated debris into a green garbage bag — half-finished coffee cups, knocked-over boxes of yellow popcorn, ripped up, scribbled-on game programs — and Davidson printing out a copy of his game report. Bayle wondered how he could have already visited the locker room and gotten quotes from the players for his piece. Between the tips of his forefinger and thumb Bayle lifted a cold, coffee-soaked game report off of the table and stood considering whether to ask the chin-on-hand, hunched-over Davidson at the other end of the counter if he knew where he could find a clean copy. The older man sat motionless watching his story slowly emerge out of the printer.

  Forget it, Bayle thought, letting the sopping piece of paper fall back where it came from, he probably doesn’t even know where he parked his truck. Also: Remember this, he thought; let this be a lesson. (Upon consideration, Bayle sure that the drooping-over Davidson was simply too alcohol-ill to go downstairs to do any interviews, Bayle himself feeling suddenly thankful at the prospect of the enforced equilibrium and general state of well-being that being Professor Peter Bayle was surely going to restore to his life.) He picked his laptop and notepad up off the counter and started off down the cement steps.

  “Do you drive?” Davidson croaked. Bayle turned around. Davidson hadn’t moved, still stared at the still-printing printer.

  “What, you mean like a car?”

  “A car, a truck. Are you licensed to operate a motor vehicle?” Davidson’s voice was coarse but intelligible.

  “I guess so, yeah. Why?”

  “You sure do a hell of a lot of guessing, you know that?”

  Bayle knit his brow. “To tell you the truth, I’ve really never thought about it.” He scratched his pimple-inflamed nose. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I need you to drive me to Larry’s,” Davidson said. “I get a little lightheaded from time to time. It’s all the damn smoke in here. Do you realize that this is the only building in the entire league that still allows smoking in the stands? It’s like a Goddamn refrigerated pool hall. I wouldn’t put it past Samson to be stocking gas masks at the concession stands before long.”

  The final page of Davidson’s story fell out of the printer. He shuffled and evened up the pages on the countertop before standing up, putting on his suit jacket as he did so.

  “Let’s get a move on,” he said.

  “Look, don’t take this the wrong way,” Bayle said, “but I really should make it an early night tonight. I’ve still got a ton of articles left to look at.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to suffer through the horror of having to share a drink with me. I only need you to give me a lift. It’s a ten-minute walk to your place from Larry’s. Think of the bus fare you’ll save.”

  “It’s not that, it’s just —”

  “Just what?” Davidson demanded. Like Bayle standing on the arena steps facing him, each of Davidson’s hands hung occupied at his sides with computer and notebook.

  “Why doesn’t Gloria give you a lift?” Bayle asked.

  “She doesn’t get off work until about one. Part of her job this year is helping Lefty wash the players’ jerseys and socks after every game and getting the dressing room clean for the next day’s practice. She’ll meet me at Larry’s when she’s done. Like I said, you don’t have to hang around.”

  “I thought she was just the team mascot.”

  “The fancy word for it is downsizing, son. More work, same pay. Coming to your town soon.”

  Staring straight ahead as usual, Davidson stood absolutely motionless, both hands still dangling and full. Apart from the false body odour of bourbon he gave off and the chalky facial complexion, Davidson could have been anybody’s slightly irascible father waiting for a tardy son to pick him up at the bus station.

  “Where are you parked?” Bayle said.

  “The team lot, south side of the building. At least they haven’t taken that away from me yet.”

  “Taken what away?”

  “Nothing, forget it,” Davidson answered. “Let’s get going.” He held up the pages of his story. “I’ve got to fax this thing over to the Eagle first. They’ve got a machine downstairs, only take a couple minutes.”

  “All right,” Bayle said, “but try to make it quick, okay?”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll be snug as a bug in your little bed in no time.”

  The stands were almost empty of spectators by now, five black men and one Hispanic in workman’s clothes and glowing orange Probationer at Work vests beginning to sweep up aisle after aisle of concession-stand garbage. Fifteen downward rows later Davidson and Bayle were at ice level travelling the bureaucratic corridors of the Bunton Center. They stopped before the closed door of Samson’s office, loud voices and laughing audible within.

  Davidson knocked on the door. The office went quiet.

  “Who is it?” a voice, Samson’s, said.

  “Davidson.”

  “Oh, Mr. Davidson, come right in.”

  Samson, Duceeder, Able, and Munson sat silently about the room, shit-eating grins on all of them.

  “I just need to fax my article over to the newspaper,” Davidson said. He walked to Samson’s desk and slipped the pages of his story into the machine. Duceeder and Munson sat with crossed arms on the edge of the desk on either side of the fax, continuing to beam from ear to ear. The machine sucked the paper down and in. But just before Davidson could push the flashing green START/SEND button, “The fax isn’t working tonight,” Munson said.

  Davidson looked at the machine, then back at Munson. “It took the pages,” he said. “It says it’s ready to send.”

  “Maybe that’s what it says, but it’s still not working tonight.”

  Davidson again surveyed the machine in earnest, an old man’s confusion spreading over his face. “It says it’s ready,” he repeated.

  “It’s broken,” Munson said. “Ask Duceeder.”

  Davidson looked from Munson to Duceeder, stared into the eyes of the smirking-strong latter. In on the joke now, “I think I’ll risk it,” he said. But before he could put finger to button Duceeder slid off the desk and stood between him and the machine.

  “That probably isn’t such a good idea,” Munson said, still sitting. “You and your story just might mess up Mr. Samson’s machine even more. And you wouldn’t want to do something like that to Mr. Samson, would you?”

  Davidson looked to Samson behind his desk. Samson offered back only upturned palms and a frowning shrug of not-very-well-feigned compassion. Able with swelling cheeks in a chair by the wall looked as if he would either explode or begin giggling uncontrollably at any moment. The other two carried on with their tag-team tough guy act. Bayle, not having moved from his spot in the doorway since entering, heard himself say, “Let’s go, Harry. We’ll drop off your story at the newspaper on the way to Larry’s.”

  Davidson jammed the pages of his article into a folder under his arm and broke from the room quicker than he’d managed to move all evening, a non-stop flow of under-his-breath expletives trailing right behind him. The others kept on as they were, grinning triumphant at the fax-foiled newspaperman. Bayle shook his head a few disappointed times at the human contents of the room — if only with eyes on the floor in front
of him — and turned to go.

  “Mr. Bayle? Please relay to Mr. Davidson my regrets regarding the players’ boycott, will you?” Samson said. “I’m afraid that I’ve spoken with several of them on an individual basis and they seem quite adamant about their new no-quote policy. And as far as league regulations go, there’s really nothing I can do to change their minds. Let’s just hope this doesn’t come to affect Mr. Davidson’s status as the Eagle’s correspondent for the hockey team in any way.”

  “The players’ new what?” Bayle said.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Bayle, but I’m afraid that I’ve been keeping these gentlemen waiting long enough,” Samson said, open palm taking in Duceeder, Able, and Munson. “We have a whole slate of hockey-related issues that simply must be attended to this evening and here it is almost 11:30 already. You must excuse us.”

  “Okay, but what’s this —”

  “Good evening, Mr. Bayle.”

  Bayle briefly considered responding but didn’t; left the room without saying a word, someone shutting the door after him. Halfway down the hallway he could still hear the laughter.

  20

  MAYBE BECAUSE he needed and appreciated Bayle’s help in getting him to the bar, Davidson answered each of his puzzled driver’s questions as best he could. Yes, the players had stopped talking to him, Robinson, the team captain, informing him before practice on Friday that for reasons he refused to go into none of the Warriors would be available to Davidson from that day forward. Of course not, Davidson said. There was nothing he could possibly imagine that might have brought about such a rift between himself and the team. A few times he had lashed out in his column at the placement on the Warriors’ roster of Dipper, the squad’s acknowledged enforcer, as an out and out “goon” move, but it was hard to imagine the entire team giving him the cold shoulder for that and that alone. Besides, he said, he’d been railing against violence in hockey for as long as he’d been writing sports for the Eagle.

  Flipping on the turn signal and pulling Davidson’s truck into Larry’s parking lot, “And how long has that been,” Bayle said.

  “Twenty years this month,” Davidson answered. Each undid his seat belt and locked and shut the truck doors. “Twenty Goddamn years to the month that I was stupid enough to ever leave Alberta and come back down here.”

  Bayle handed over the keys to the truck. “Wait a minute. You’re from Alberta? You’re Canadian?”

  Davidson took a few seconds before answering. “I spent a few years up that way.” Saying nothing more, sensing Bayle’s confusion, “I came back down here in 76,” he said.

  “That’s funny,” Bayle said. “Did you know that Duceeder is from Alberta? I think he even said he moved down here about the same time as you did.”

  “Huh. What a coincidence.”

  Each man stared at the opening and closing door of the bar. The air-conditioning unit sticking out of the side of the building droned out the possibility of any other noise. “Let me buy you a drink for driving me down here,” Davidson said.

  “I should get going.”

  “Just one.”

  “No, thanks, I’ve really got to go.

  ” A pause. “Okay,” Davidson said.

  His tie taken off and stuffed into one of his coat pockets, the old man stood with his hands in his wrinkled jacket. Beads of sweat were visible on his brow and upper lip. Poor old bastard, Bayle thought. How can he write a game report without any quotes from the players? Poor old bastard. Okay. Just one.

  “Okay. Just one,” Bayle said.

  “Sure,” Davidson answered, his hand almost immediately on the bar door. “Just one.”

  Six Wild Turkeys and four beers on Davidson’s tab later it was decided that they’d leave the truck at Larry’s for Davidson to pick up tomorrow and that Gloria, who’d finally arrived from work, would drive the three of them in her own car back to Davidson’s house for a nightcap.

  There, the bourbon was poured out and the Bach was put on and the kettle was set on the stove boiling. Fifteen minutes later Davidson was leaning back in his chair at the kitchen table, eyes closed and snoring. Deciding that this was for her probably not an entirely uncommon experience, Bayle worked at his drink and waited for Gloria to make the first move, to acknowledge her open-mouthed boyfriend, to at least say something about what should be done. No such luck.

  Bayle tried to empty his glass of liquor as quickly as he could, but the three fingers of bourbon Davidson had given him before nodding off were taking a steady number of sips. Gloria sat at the table and sipped her cup of tea as if Bayle and the dozing Davidson were back at the bar and she was in the music-filled kitchen by herself.

  “Should we put him to bed or something?” Bayle said.

  “He’s all right,” Gloria said. “Gonna feel bad in the morning one way or another anyway, sleeping in that chair there for awhile won’t make it that much worse than it already is. Never has yet.”

  Bayle tried to appear assured; slowly nodded.

  Gloria lifted her tea cup and gave the defenceless Davidson extended clinical consideration. “Still, I can’t say I’ve seen him lap it up like this in a long time,” she said. She didn’t finish the thought.

  Bayle nodded again, took another drink. Three more extended pulls, he figured, and the glass would be empty enough that he could tactfully be on his way. And then what? he suddenly thought. How the hell am I supposed to get back to The Range? He took an earnest swallow and considered the equally painful prospects of a long walk home through strange streets and having to ask his drinking buddy’s companion for a two-thirty in the morning lift. Needless to say, being Professor Bayle was going to mean never being the sort to end up shitfaced in the economy kitchens of alcoholic journalists while begging for rides home from their mascot girlfriends.

  “You want another, the bottle’s in the cupboard,” Gloria said. “Help yourself.”

  “Thanks, no, I’m just going to finish this up and I’ll be on my way,” Bayle said, holding up his glass and the inch and a half of bourbon that remained in it as some sort of evidence that he really was almost done with his drink and really would soon be going.

  Gloria took a sip of tea and turned her attention to the the room-permeating Bach. Bayle attempted to fill in the time it took him to finish up his drink by similarly disappearing inside the music, but was not nearly as successful. Classical or classic rock, song had never been that undefinable something capable of soothing Bayle’s occasionally savage breast.

  It was one of the first disinterests Jane and he had discovered they shared in common. Over drinks on their phone-arranged first date — at the top of the T.D. Tower, Jane’s choice, dry martinis and a fifty-fourth-floor view — somehow over the course of the evening Bayle had come to disclose how at the pitch of his sister’s brief fling with bebop jazz she’d taped to the front of her bedroom door a quote she’d found in one of his German philosophy textbooks, “Life without music would be a mistake.” Jane immediately replied that since she and Bayle did not care for music and, at the same time, she found it hard to see at least her own life as a mistake, the statement was obviously false. Bayle attempted to gently defend Patty by saying that he thought she’d meant it not so much as an unqualified truth claim but more as an overall attitude toward life. Jane said that in that case it sounded like his sister had a lot to learn about life.

  In the few seconds it took for a passing jet to move out of their shared sightline Bayle quickly considered just what the fuck he was doing drinking a fucking martini and who the fuck this pretentious yuppie germalist was to say his sister had a lot to learn about life.

  But by the time all that remained of the departed airplane was the exhausted trailing phantom of its plane self, Bayle had willed a return to his outwardly amicable first-date manner. In time, several more drinks, a shared taxi ride back to Jane’s place, and mutually satisfying intercourse — orgasms effectively achieved on both sides — were all accomplished without incident.

&nbs
p; Bayle thumb-tapped a simple, repetitive beat on Davidson’s tabletop altogether antithetical to the twisting melodies of Gould’s rendering of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Spying the room for some kind of distraction, he was slightly startled to be reminded of Davidson’s drowsing presence. A thin string of bubbling saliva had begun to spider down the right side of the journalist’s mouth.

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t do something for him?” Bayle said.

  “What do you suggest we do?” Gloria answered. Leaning against the kitchen counter, she held her cup of tea in both hands in front of her face, softly blowing away the rising steam. An almost smile crept over the lip of the cup.

  “I don’t know, but ....”

  A raised eyebrow; a sip of tea.

  “But something. Are you telling me that this” — Bayle gestured toward the drooling Davidson — “doesn’t bother you?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Well, then?”

  “Well, then, what?”

  “If it bothers you so much, why don’t you do something about it?”

  “Now we’re back where we started. What exactly do you suggest we do?”

  Bayle picked up his glass, took a long, final drink, and emptied it. He looked at Davidson then back at Gloria. Since they’d arrived at Davidson’s place she’d changed into an oversized man’s black sweater and a pair of loose grey track shorts, no socks. Standing there in front of him with legs crossed, naked foot over naked foot, Bayle couldn’t help but notice the sharp lines of muscle through her skater’s thighs and calves, the here and there shoots of pulsing blue veins.

  “I’ve got to go,” he said. “I’m doing an interview with Duceeder at 1:30 tomorrow and I’ll be lucky to get six hours sleep as it is.” He stood up from the table and looked at Davidson again. “Tell Harry thanks for the drink. I’ll see myself out.”

  “You’re giving up that easy?” Gloria said.

  “What?”

  “It’s just that it seems like, what with you so concerned about Harry and all, you might want to stick around and, you know, try to do something.”