Chapter 5: Comments

The first comment said, "Why is the captain feeding the fat cook? Is this his new type?"

The second said a lot worse.

I read forty of them on the edge of the hotel bed in Boston.

It was one in the morning, and Doran's hand lay heavy on my back.

"Give me the phone," he said.

"No."

"Corinna."

"I've heard it all before," I said.

"I'm a size 20, and strangers have decided what that means my whole life."

"I'd like to read it and go to sleep."

I didn't sleep.

On Monday, Pavel walked into the kitchen with his phone held out in both hands.

"Chef," he said. "I have done something."

He had posted a photo of himself in full goalie gear, holding my ladle like a sword.

The caption said, "She feeds me. Whoever says another word about her can try to score on me."

It had two hundred thousand likes.

By noon, half the roster had posted a plate of my food.

A defenseman I'd never spoken to put a photo of my cornbread with a single word, "Corinna."

I stood in the kitchen with my arms crossed, trying not to cry into the cornbread.

Hank Doyle came in with his hands in his pockets and ate a roll over the sink.

"Boys," he said to the empty room. "Good boys."

That should have been the end of it.

At three o'clock, Doran Beaulieu walked into the press room for the afternoon session.

He sat at the table with the microphones and answered a question nobody had asked him.

I watched it on the TV in my kitchen.

"The woman in that photo is our chef," he said into the mic, in that deep, level voice.

"Her name is Corinna Prendergast. She is the best thing to happen to this building."

"She is the reason I eat. Anyone with something to say about her body can say it to my face."

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