The Arena Laughed at My Milk, So Four Hockey Men Kept Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Zamboni Girl
The video board catches Katja leaking at first intermission, her ex laughs on the PA, she finishes the ice, tells the crew four men have wanted her since October, and pulls the garage door down with all four of them inside.
The video board found my chest on my third lap.
Three thousand people saw two dark circles spreading on the front of my gray coverall.
I was driving the ice machine at first intermission, with the blade down and the water laying a clean sheet behind me.
It was thirty-four below outside the arena, and the cold had come through the walls all night.
I had worn two sports bras and a wool vest under the coverall, and none of it had held.
Someone in the front row pointed, and then the whole lower bowl turned toward center ice.
The board was forty feet across, and I was on it, twelve feet tall.
"Looks like our ice girl sprung a leak, folks," said a voice on the PA.
It was my ex.
I knew it before the second sentence, because I had listened to him do his game-night voice for three years.
"Somebody get her a bucket."
They laughed.
It was a big laugh, the kind a building makes all at once.
I did not stop the machine.
I took the corner, and I laid the water down along the boards, and I kept my eyes on the blade line.
My face was burning, and under my vest the milk kept coming, hot and steady, because my body had never once listened to me.
It had not listened since the ninth of September.
I finished the lap and flooded the whole sheet.
Then I drove the machine up the ramp and into the garage, and I shut it off.
The hat was in the cubby under the dash, where it had been for five months.
My hand hit it when I reached for the rag, and I left it there.
Brent was standing in the garage door with his phone in his hand.
His father owned the Bridgemen, and Brent wore the team quarter-zip every day of the season.
Behind him, two guys from the ice crew had found something to do with their boots.
"Dad says you're off the machine," Brent said.
"I changed the code at the apartment, too. It's my lease, Mar. You know that."
"You put me on the board," I said.
"It was funny."
"It was a woman's body, Brent."
"It was a woman's body doing the one thing you can't turn off." He smiled at me. "Go home."
I climbed down from the seat in the wet coverall, with the whole front of me soaked, and walked right up to him.
"I don't have a home," I said.
"That's not my problem."
I turned so the crew could hear me.
"There are four men in this building who have wanted their mouths on me since October," I said.
"Not one of them has ever laughed."
Brent's smile slipped.
One of the crew guys looked up, and then looked down again fast.
Brent went out the door and left it open behind him.
Down the hall, a door banged, and boots came up the tunnel at a walk.
The Bridgemen's first line was heading back out for the second period, and the four who skated the 1 a.m. ice on Tuesdays were all in it.
Abram Penner, the captain, was in front.
Taras Melnyk, the goalie, came behind him with his mask pushed up on his head.
Garnet Cardinal followed, with his right hand wrapped to the wrist in tape, and blood coming through at the knuckles.
Anders Halvorson, the kid, came last, and he was already crying.
Abram took off his team jacket and put it around my shoulders.
It was warm from his body, and it smelled of cedar and liniment.
His hands stayed where they landed, flat against my ribs through the wet.
"I tried the booth door," Garnet said, low and slow.
"It's steel. It didn't open."
"Fellas," Taras said, "she drives a Zamboni, not a mattress."
I laughed, the first time all night, and Abram let go.
"Wait for us," he said.
"After the third. Stay right here."
The horn went, and they went.
I waited in the garage for the whole second period and the whole third, with the building thumping through the wall every time someone scored.
I heard them win.
I did not text my mother, or my friend from the crew, or the landlord who had never liked me.
I took the hat out of the cubby and put it in my coverall pocket.
At ten-forty the garage door buzzed, and the four of them came in with their skates still on and their jerseys dark with sweat.
Abram looked at me, and Taras looked at me, and Anders looked at the floor and then at me.
Garnet just looked.
I took off the jacket and dropped it on the seat of the machine.
"I'm not hiding it again," I said.
"Not from anyone. If you stay, you stay for this."
I put my hand on the chain, and I pulled the garage door down with all four of them on my side of it.
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