"People don't get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter, you don't stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it."-Carrie, Stephen King
Wings off Flies
Every inch of Rob's body was bound, as though in a funeral shroud, in the thick, sticky strands that clung to the skin when he walked through a cobweb on a hike in the woods. Only this time, he hadn't stepped through the web; he was trapped in it and would never escape. Frantically, he thrashed about but his desperate throes only served to knot him more deeply in the horrible silken tapestry of the spider web. He wanted to scream but his mouth was too dry to move and his brain was too stunned to form any coherent noise.
He tried to raise his hands to tear off some of the stifling threads only to discover he could not even move them an inch. He could feel his mind beginning to go black as his circulation was cut off by the tight embrace of the cobweb, and he gazed blankly around him, grasping at his surroundings as a shipwrecked sailor might reach out for driftwood, and knowing all the while that he was going to lose his fight to remain conscious.
A gigantic spider, larger than Rob by at least a foot, scuttled down the threads of the cobweb, mouth open and ready to take a bite out of his flesh. He wouldn't die quickly. He would perish slowly and painfully as the spider gobbled him up over the course of days…
With a gasp, Rob opened his eyes to find them pierced by the strawberry and tangerine dawn rays streaming through the slits of the Venetian blinds covering the window of the bedroom he shared with Steve Christoff. His hands were balled around his blankets, which were wrapped around him like a sweaty cloak.
I'm way too big for nightmares, damn it, Rob chided himself, fumbling for the glass of water on his nightstand. His fingers trembling as if he were stricken with palsy, he brought the cup to his dry lips and took a sip of stale water. What am I, a six-year-old? Will I be begging for Steve to check under my bed for monsters before I go to sleep next, or will I just insist we sleep with the closet light on so a homicidal clown doesn't burst out of it without warning and slay us both? Yeah, if I do either of those things, I wouldn't be able to blame Steve if he started hunting for a new roommate faster than a politician would drop a friend caught by the press in a hotel bed with a sheep that wasn't their spouse…
Reassured that his fear had been battled into sufficient submission by his dose of mental sarcasm, Rob sat up in bed and banged his head against something large, black, and hairy. It was a spider the size of a tarantella suspended from the ceiling by a clear line.
He almost screamed before he realized that the spider didn't feel alive and was hanging too limply to be real. It was just a stupid Halloween prank probably brought to him free of charge by Eric. Steve was too serious to be a practical joker, and Janny hated conflict too much to trick anybody. Besides, Janny had never been one to celebrate Halloween with gusto. Janny's parents were the brand of evangelical Christians who subscribed to the ardent belief that Halloween was practically a Satanic holiday. Janny would munch on a handful of candy corns at a Halloween party, but he would do so with a guilty expression that suggested he was expecting the Devil to materialize at any second to drag him straight to Hell. Eric, however, would most likely figure that a spider prank was very creative and clever.
Maybe one day Electric will decide that it's a very creative and clever idea to play pick-up-sticks in the middle of a four-lane highway, and I won't say anything to dissuade him of that brilliant notion, Rob thought as he clambered out of bed and crossed over to his desk.
Grabbing a pair of scissors from the tiny clay bowl that served as a depository for an assortment of office supplies, he returned to his bed, stood on it, and stretched up to the ceiling where the wire holding the spider was taped. He snipped down the wire and pulled the tape off the ceiling. Then he dumped the wire, tape, and spider into the trash can next to his nightstand.
All evidence of Eric's malicious prank cleared away, he went over to his dresser. Trying to be as silent as possible so as to not awaken Steve (although Steve was the sort of sound sleeper who could probably sleep through a full scale riot in the apartment without a jolt), Rob slid open the drawers, removed a set of clothes to wear while taking care not to disturb any of his other perfectly folded garments. If anyone rummaged through his drawers without permission, he didn't want that person believing he was a slob, and, anyway, if he didn't keep his clothes neatly folded in his dresser, they would get all wrinkly and someone on the street might confuse him for a hobo begging for a quarter.
Zipping up his jeans, Rob knew that if Eric could hear his thoughts the blond right-winger would shatter a rib laughing, because Eric didn't understand the importance of a tidy appearance the same way he obviously didn't comprehend that spiders were too terrifying to be a joking matter. Spiders were evil. That was etched into their jagged, multi-legged walk. That was why they ate their victims slowly over long periods of time. That was why female spiders devoured their partners in their sleep. Only unfathomably cruel creatures ate their mates instead of loving them. All female spiders were cannibalistic murderers. If that wasn't enough to make you shiver, you were, in Rob's studied opinion, a serial killer or a moron.
Ever since Rob was little, he had despised spiders. While he had always been the type to release into the wild insects he uncovered in his house, spiders had been the exception to this humane rule for as long as he could remember, he reflected as he finished tugging his cashmere sweater over his head and settling it around his chest. Whenever he saw a spider, he stamped on it whether he was inside or outside, and, when he saw them in showers in the locker room, he made sure they drowned and were washed down the drain.
Staring at his reflection in the mirror as he brushed his hair, he supposed that his hatred of spiders had begun when he was four. His brother Glenn, two years his senior, had been obsessed with reading picture books about them and sharing disgusting trivia gleaned from these literary gems with Rob. Amused by Rob's revulsion to his spider facts, Glenn had dumped a bucket full of them over Rob's head one spring day while they were exploring the groves around Pleasant Lake, which was only two hundred yards from their house.
He would never forget how it felt to have them crawling all over his body, climbing through his hair and biting into his arms and legs with more fervor than bloodthirsty mosquitoes in July. He had managed to pry some of the squiggling spiders off his skin with shaking fingers, and others had fallen from him as he dashed through the trees that cast long shadows you could interpret any way you wished like trying to figure out what a cloud resembled.
Tears were flowing in salty rivulets down his cheeks by the time he had darted through the French doors separating the kitchen from the stone patio. His mom, who had been busy sprinkling confectioner sugar over the tiramisu she had baked for the Ladies' Garden Club meeting she would be hosting that afternoon on the patio, had swung around to scold him for trailing dirt all over the granite tiles she had just mopped in honor of the imminent arrival of their guests.
Her reprimand had trailed off into a shriek as she saw all the spiders clinging to him. Her face pinched as if she had just swallowed an exceptionally sour lemon, she had dragged him down the Persian carpet of the hallway, up the hard wood of the stair, and into the bathroom he shared with his brothers. There she had shoved him, fully clothed, under a jet of freezing water in the shower. The spiders had slipped from his body in waves and had drowned before they disappeared down the drain. Then the memory faded into cold water, goose bumps, and the outstretched legs of dead spiders…
Shaking his head to extract himself from the cobweb of memory that had ensnared him, Rob decided that he needed some breakfast and stepped out of his bedroom into the apartment's kitchen, shutting the door softly behind him to avoid disturbing Steve. An empty stomach could create all kinds of wild fantasies that a slice of toast or a bowl of cereal would cure. He rifled through the cabinets and refrigerator, scowling when he discovered that the former contained non-perishable in the form of canned soups and the latter held not a crumb of food or a drop of juice or milk.
"Is there any fucking food in this damn apartment?" he muttered, not sure if he was cursing because he was starving now that he had begun his quest for breakfast or because he was ticked off at himself for still being petrified of dream spiders. "Anything that even remotely resembles food?"
Of course there isn't, he inwardly answered his own question with considerable bitterness as he slammed the refrigerator door closed with a satisfying thud. You threw out any food that could spoil before we went to Europe so that we wouldn't come home to a welcoming committee of a more diverse collection of spores than exists in the Amazon. It's just as well you did, because none of the people you're residing with would have possessed the foresight to make sure our food didn't become petri dishes in an impromptu experiment on mold. After all, these are the people who haven't figured out how to run a Hoover over the carpets and who would gladly let the dust bunnies copulate under our furniture until this apartment wouldn't look out of place in a sketchy neighborhood where a toxic waste dump could be classified as urban renewal.
Reminding himself sternly that Steve, Janny, and Eric all regarded his zeal for keeping the floors of their apartment spotless enough to be eaten off with varying degrees of horror and amusement in much the same way their casual contempt for cleanliness both appalled and aggravated him, Rob told himself that if they tolerated his eccentricities in the name of friendship, he would have to return the favor with only mild grumbling. That wouldn't stop him from hoping that one day Steve or Janny would figure out how to plug a vacuum into an outlet, though. Eric, obviously, was a lost soul doomed to spend eternity as a slob in the messes he manufactured for himself.
His stomach growled, demanding instant attention. That settled it. He was going to head down to the bakery on the corner to buy himself some coffee and pastries. He slid his fingers into his jean pockets to check that he had his keys and wallet. Then he left the apartment and proceeded down the corridor to the elevator.
He pressed the down button, hummed a strain of Mozart's Symphony Number Thirteen in F major to himself as he waited for the elevator to arrive, boarded it when it did, and shook his head as the doors clanged shut, trapping him with the canned music that was never anything decent or classical like Bach or Beethoven. It was never even country like Neil Young or the Eagles, nor was it ever pop like Queen or the Kinks. It was always just unadulterated torment to the eardrums.
Years ago, when Rob had asked his father why there was music in elevators, Dad had explained that it was intended to calm people down so they didn't get claustrophobic locked in a moving metal box. Well, the canned music in the elevator was having anything but a soothing effect on him…All he wanted to do was claw at his ears and bash his forehead against the elevator walls like the resident of some padded room at a Funny Farm. It just showed how far the arts had fallen since the Enlightenment…
The elevator finally reached the lobby, and he could leave behind its atrocious idea of music. As he stepped out of the apartment complex's revolving glass doors onto a boulevard bustling with pedestrians bearing briefcases and dour morning countenances, Rob joined the crowd headed down the sidewalk. At the next intersection, he swerved over to the Holy Cannoli Bakery with its blue-and-white striped awning and flashing neon sign blaring it was open for business.
He arrived at the door at the same time as an elderly couple with faces crinkly as rolled newspapers and clothes musky with the stench of moth balls. Deciding that he had to show respect for old people who walked instead of driving their car at a constant rate of fifteen miles per hour everywhere—including down highways, through stop signs, and into buildings (although Rob was willing to concede that the latter two incidents were not the fault of the senior citizens in so far as they could no longer see the signs or buildings)—Rob pulled open the door and gestured for them to enter the shop first.
He joined the end of the line behind the odiferous elderly couple, looking at the pastries in the glass case and the coffee options written in orange chalk on the blackboard over the cash register. He had just determined that the October special pumpkin spice latte sounded delicious enough that he would order four large ones to share with Steve, Janny, and Eric when a gust of wind heralded the appearance of another customer.
Figuring that he could entertain himself by making small talk to a stranger about sports or the news while he decided what type of scones and turnovers he wished to purchase for himself and the teammates who shared his apartment, Rob spun around to face the newcomer as he put on his bland, mingling grin.
His grin broadened into a genuine, friendly smile when he found himself facing Bah. "Hey, man," he said, punching Bah's elbow lightly. "Top of the morning."
"Good morning." Bah nodded a greeting. "Getting breakfast?"
"Yeah," confirmed Rob. "There's no food left in our apartment, because I had to toss anything that might have spoiled into the garbage before we left for Europe. One of us will have to go to the grocery store to stock up on the staples some time after practice. Oh, who am I kidding? It will probably be me who goes, since I'm the only one in my apartment who ever does anything responsible."
"Tell me about it," Bah muttered. "I'm the only one who ever vacuums in my apartment. It's like our apartment is a wildlife refuge for endangered species of dust bunnies."
"You're preaching to the choir." Rob sighed, grateful for the opportunity to air this ancient grievance. "Nobody seems to have taught Eric, Janny, or Steve how to switch on a Hoover and run it over a floor. Maybe they don't even know what the mysterious monster I haul out to gobble up the dust bunnies is."
"Perhaps." Bah's tone took on an absent quality as he removed a folded list from his jacket pocket and examined it with a furrowed brow. "Hazelnut coffee with cream and sugar for Pav and me. Wellsy will have the same minus the cream. That's easy enough to remember. Pav wants an éclair, and I'm in the mood for a cannoli, but what should I get for Wellsy?"
"He didn't tell you what he wanted before you left?" asked Rob, deciding that four peach turnovers would be delectable for him and his roommates. Now it was time to choose between the white chocolate-cranberry scones and the apple cinnamon ones.
"Nope." Bah shook his head as the line moved up a few steps as a beleaguered mother exited balancing a large cake box with two young children in tow. "He left to meet Herb at the rink before I was awake. Herb asked to skate with him this morning, and Wellsy was too afraid to refuse. Making this team is hard enough without him causing Herb to doubt his ability to tough an injury out, you know."
"I know." Rob swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat. Logically, he supposed that he should feel relieved and grateful every time it became more likely that somebody who wasn't him would be axed since the roster had to be trimmed from twenty-six names down to twenty. However, such reasoning didn't take into account the fact that anyone who was cut would be a teammate whom he had played with, practiced with, ate with, competed with, and laughed with for weeks or months. He was fiercely competitive and he understood that in order to win he had to defeat others, but there were limits to his ruthlessness. He would rather support a teammate than destroy one. Unlike Herb, he possessed some semblance of compassion for humanity, while Herb had probably been the type of player who had turned into a statue when a line mate hugged him after he scored a goal because he did not understand camaraderie except as an illness he was fortuitously immune to. "Hopefully Herb doesn't wear him out too much before practice. That ankle can only take so much abuse."
"That's what worries me." Bah gnawed on his lower lip as the line crawled forward again. "I want to get him something to restore his energy when he returns from his session with Herb. What would you want after a workout like that?"
"A shot of euthanasia," Rob replied dryly, deciding that the apple cinnamon scones would be more appropriate to autumn than the white chocolate-cranberry ones.
"Very funny." Bah wrinkled his nose. "Assuming assisted suicide wasn't on the menu, what would you like?"
"A Napoleon." Rob's eyes gleamed. When his parents had taken him and his brothers to a local bakery every Sunday after church as a reward for not being total distractions to their fellow worshippers, Rob had always ordered a Napoleon. The first time he had asked for one at the age of five, Dad had warned him that he probably wouldn't care for it and maybe he should try an éclair like Scott or a cream puff like Glenn. Rob had clenched his jaw and repeated that he wanted the Napoleon, not the éclair or the cream puff. Even when he was knee-high to a grasshopper, he could spot something that was quality, know he wanted it, and refuse to give up until he had attained it. He had gotten his Napoleon, loved every bite of it, and ordered one every time his family went to the bakery. "Napoleons are positively decadent. They've got powdered sugar and cinnamon, three layers of pastry, and cream. When you bite into one, you can hear a heavenly host sing hallelujah."
"That's quite a recommendation." Bah scribbled something on his list. "I suppose I could buy Wellsy one and if he doesn't like it, I can blame you, so he'll slip arsenic into your water bottle at practice, not mine."
"Charming." Rob rolled his eyes. "No wonder I don't room with you guys. You make Steve seem as polite and dainty as Queen Elizabeth."
Before Bah could respond, the line moved upward again, and Rob was at the counter, facing a plump and cherry-cheeked woman, who beamed at him as she inquired cheerily, "Hello, and how may I help you?"
"Hi." Rob gave the grin that meant he was delighted to finally be able to get some food since the sweet aromas in the establishment had been making his stomach rumble intermittently for the past five minutes. Perhaps if he failed as a hockey player he could have a career as an instrument in an orchestra. "I'd like four of your pumpkin spice lattes please."
As the woman mixed the lattes, Rob calculated the cost of everything he planned to order and pulled a ten and a five out of his wallet.
"Anything else?" asked the woman as she returned bearing a cardboard carton filled with four paper cups.
"I'll have four of your apple cinnamon scones and four of your peach turnovers," Rob replied, and the woman reached a latex gloved hand into the glass case to transfer the pastries he had requested into a box. As she placed the box on the counter beside the lattes and rang up his order, he added, remembering his manners, "Thank you."
"Fourteen dollars and twenty-seven cents, please," She glanced up from her register and held out her hand for payment.
Rob gave her the fifteen dollars, dumped the change she gave him in a tin labeled "Tips for Tuition" (since somebody should go to school off his money if he wasn't), picked up his purchases, and strode out the door, nodding a farewell to Bah before he left.
When he returned to his apartment, he found Janny, Steve, and Eric sprawled on the sofas in the common room, hair mussed from sleep, debating the merit of dispatching someone to the supermarket down the avenue for some milk and cereal.
"I can put an end to the argument, boys." With a smug smirk, Rob deposited the lattes and pastry box on the coffee table. Gesturing at the indulgences he had procured to titillate their taste buds, he finished in a grand voice, "Bon appétit. You may eat."
"Smells delicious." Janny took one of the lattes from the carton and sipped. "Tastes good, too. Sweet with a touch of spice."
"It's pumpkin spice latte." Rob grinned as he drank from his own cup. The coffee was an excellent, rich brew with just the right amount of spice and cream. He really did have wonderful taste. He could spot quality from a mile away in the dark without a flashlight. "Glad you like it."
"Pumpkin spice latte." Steve gulped from the coffee cup he had taken from the cardboard carton. "You're such a food snob, Robbie. You can't even go to a coffee shop without getting something gourmet."
"I didn't go to a coffee shop." Rob stuck up his nose. He wasn't about to apologize for knowing what was quality in life and getting it for himself and his friends. "I went to a bakery, and I got some apple cinnamon scones and peach turnovers there, too. The pastries are in the box if you'd care for them."
"Apple cinnamon scones." Steve snorted into his coffee as Eric leaned forward, tore open the pastry box, and seized a peach turnover he chomped into at once, sugar frosting forming an ivory mustache on his lips. "What is this—high tea in Buckingham Palace?"
"No." Rob's eyebrows lifted condescendingly as he scooped up a scone and nibbled on it. "If this were high tea, it would take place in the late afternoon, and tea rather than coffee would be served, as tea, believe it or not, is the traditional beverage offered at high tea. You're so uncultured, Stevie."
"At least I'm not a cake eater." Steve rolled his eyes. "Pity you can't say the same, Mac."
"I'm not a cake eater." Rob shook his head, thinking that he hated being called a gutless, lazy, and pampered snot. Before he had come to the U, he had never been referred to, even in a joking context, as a cake eater. Through high school, everyone he had played hockey with had been from the same affluent community that he had been raised in. Only in college had he come to a locker room comprised mostly of players from working class backgrounds, and that pattern was continuing on the Olympic team. Mostly he was used to that class gulf by now, but there were still times when the chasm made him feel alone. He knew what his parents would say if he complained to them about how much it stung like a slap on the face to be called a cake eater.
Dad would shrug and declare that it was better to be a cake eater in a gated community than an uneducated slob leaving in a dump. Mom would lower her voice to a delicate whisper, check that all the windows in the room were closed (even though the properties in North Oaks were so large that no neighbor stood a chance of successfully eavesdropping through an open window), and assure him that cake eater was just a term white trash had invented because they were jealous of people smarter and more successful than them. Then she would launch into a complaint about how Mrs. Lars of two doors down the street was lowering the real estate value of the whole community (and Mr. Lars, a CFO in St. Paul, should explain that to his bimbo wife) with her abysmal failure to color coordinate her flowers, and how maybe she would do the charitable thing by inviting Mrs. Lars to the next Ladies' Garden Club meeting to learn how to organize plants better. Rob was pretty sure he would end up nursing a black eye for the next week if he tried either of these lines of reasoning with Steve, so he went with a more playful approach.
"I don't even like cake that much," Rob continued, earnest as a puppy. "It's practically the worst dessert ever. Most of the time there is too much icky, overly sweet frosting to distract from the flavors and texture of the cake itself. If I must have cake, I'd prefer it with a sprinkling of confectioner's sugar instead of frosting, but pastries are fifty times superior to cake."
"So, basically, your argument for not being a cake eater is that you're too much of a snob to eat cake." Steve emitted a noise that hovered somewhere on the spectrum between a chortle and a snort.
"That's it in a nutshell, yeah." Rob scraped at his cuticles and hoped for divine intervention or a subject change.
Even if God was not disposed to offer him mercy, Janny apparently was, because he commented, "I'm going to the grocery store to stock up on some food after practice. Let me know if you want me to buy anything in particular. I want to get some carrots to make carrot soup for Wellsy. He's been looking down lately, and I'm worried about him."
"He's going to really appreciate your soup after what Herb is reportedly putting him through this morning," Rob remarked, feeling a surge of affection for Janny, who always made a Tupperware full of thick, creamy carrot soup for any teammate who seemed under-the-weather. Janny had such a warm, generous heart that it absolutely ripped Rob's apart whenever Herb tore into Janny. Janny was a reliable goaltender who got along well with all his teammates and didn't need Herb chipping away at his self-esteem all the time to keep him humble. He already had basically no ego to speak of. "I met Bah at the bakery, and he told me that Herb asked to meet with Wellsy alone at the rink this morning. I bet he's putting Wellsy through his paces as we speak."
"Herbies galore." Eric wrinkled his nose. "On a recovering fractured ankle, too. That's just indescribably cruel, isn't?"
"Yep." Steve chewed on a peach turnover. "This proves what I've always suspected about Herb: that as a kid he was the one who ripped the wings off flies but when he got older he refined his sadistic tendencies and started yanking the legs off college hockey players instead. People like Herb don't get better. They just get meaner and cleverer about their torture techniques. Don't believe for a moment Herb majored in psychology to help people. He did it to drive them to bedlam."
"Perhaps Herb is a monster, not a human." Rob sipped pensively at his latte. "He might be a sort of Frankenstein. Lord knows he's ugly enough. He studied humanity to get his psychology degree, and, in the process, he realized that he wasn't human. When he had that epiphany, he understood that he would be forever alone. That made him envious of actual people who could successfully engage in human contact. Consumed by jealousy and rage, he has sought vengeance upon innocent college hockey players ever since."
"Playing for Herb can be nothing short of traumatic." The shutters in Janny's eyes slammed shut, and, not for the first time, Rob thought that Herb had about as comprehensive a grasp on how to treat a goaltender like Janny as a toddler did of the dirty jokes in the Porter scene of Macbeth. "You never have a chance to build up the foundation of your confidence before he knocks it over with a bulldozer again."
"We have one another." Eric offered his most cherubic smile. "We can build one another up faster than he can knock us down, so one of us will always be standing, and, if one of us is standing, we all are, because we're all one."
Rob thought that was true—in the least mushy way possible—of him, Eric and Steve at least. All of them had been recruited to the U hockey team the same year, and they had together tried not to buckle under the weight of being labeled the best hockey class in the school's history. Everyone had expected greatness from them, but there were just kids—far from the biggest kids on the ice, too—and maybe only they understood that. They had their differences in personality and playing style, but they were united by the common cause that had brought them to the same team: the goal of winning championships. They had their spats and friendly rivalries in scoring, but they protected, supported, and inspired each other as well. When one of them was having a rough game or practice, that player could always look at the other two for a reminder to see beyond the current struggle to the shining promise of why they had come to the team in the first place. They didn't always like each other, but they were always there for one another, and, in the final analysis, that was more important.
"If Herb messes with one man, then he is messing with us all." Steve cracked his knuckles with a sound like cashews breaking in a nutcracker. "That's how it's always been. I see no reason to change that now."
"We're friends." Rob nodded, face resolute. "Even with all his mind games, Herb can't take that away from us."
An hour later, upon entering the locker room to change into their equipment, the four of them discovered what exactly Herb was taking away from Mark Wells that morning.
"Wellsy came back from his skate with Herb all angry and determined," related Bah to the stunned and silent locker room. "He told Pav and me that Herb was sending him down to the IHL, because Herb doubted that he was the right fit for this team, but he promised Pav and me that he'd be back. He swore he was going to play well enough in the minors to make Herb change his mind and bring him back here. He has to pack and arrange transportation, so if any of you want to stop by our apartment to say anything to him before he leaves, you can."
"Herb is a real son of a bitch." OC hurled his sweatshirt and jeans onto the top shelf of his locker. "Throwing a guy who busts his ass in practices and games off the team because he gets injured months before the Olympics is fucked up."
Privately, Rob doubted that Mark Wells' injury was the only reason he was being tossed off the team. Wellsy was a center on a team that had a surplus of talent in that position, especially when the number of wingers like Rob, Eric, and Steve who could be plugged into center for a couple of shifts if necessary was factored into the equation.
Worse still, Wellsy had demonstrated himself to be a stubborn center who refused to even attempt to play wing. During a game on their European circuit, Rob had overheard Herb instructing Wellsy to play right wing on the next shift. That command hadn't astonished Rob, who had heard Herb order plenty of centers to experiment with the wing position over the years. What had shocked him was Wellsy's defiant declaration that he was a center, not a winger.
Nobody ever told Herb that they could not play any position he ordered them to attempt to fill. If you were a center and he commanded you to take a stint in goal, you put on some new equipment stat and got between the pipes to do your best not to let in a hundred soft goals. When you were on Herb's team, you were whatever he told you to be. Plenty of star centers—Rob, Eric, and Steve among them—had been made to play as wingers, and Wellsy was not better than them.
In fact, Wellsy's obstinate refusal to take a stab at playing wing probably hurt his value in Herb's eyes. Herb loved options as much as a cold bastard like him could anything, so he was more likely to have a spot on his roster for a player who was volatile and creative enough to potentially be deployed in multiple positions.
Rob knew that his own space on the team would be in considerably more jeopardy, since he would be just another center scrabbling for the fourth center position not claimed by Mark, Pav, and Neal, if he hadn't taken the risk of looking like a chicken skating around with its head cut off and hopped over the boards to play left winger in the middle of a game freshman year when Herb ordered him to do so. Being left winger to Mark was rather like stumbling on a cornucopia of points, and Mark always found a way to merge with Rob's strengths while compensating for his weaknesses…No, Rob couldn't have dreamed of a better position to be in on this team.
"Herb is a bastard." Silky spat on the floor as if he were imagining their coach's face in the tiles. "I hate him. The world would be a better place if he was trampled by a rampaging rhino."
"Come on, Silky, Coach Parker can be a bit of a bastard, too," pointed out Rizzo fairly, referring to BU's hockey coach, whom, Rob gathered, embraced a traditional tough love approach as opposed to Herb's innovative tough hatred philosophy. "I know you don't want to see him trampled by a rampaging rhino."
"Don't compare Herb to Jack Parker." Folding his arms across his chest like a mummy in a cheesy horror film, Silky shot Rizzo a scathing glare as if Rizzo had just insulted Silky's father, though perhaps, in a sense, that was exactly what had happened. Silky had lost his father when he was eight—and Rob didn't enjoy thinking about the gaping hole that must have left in Silky's heart and life-so Coach Parker seemed to become surrogate father to fill that void over Silky's college years. Rob had always regarded it as an affront to his dad—to the man who had raised him, disciplined him, and provided for him since his birth—to say any coach, even one such as his high school hockey and soccer Coach Wegleitner whom he had known since childhood (because everyone in North Oaks knew one another and that was how it would always be), a father as it implied there was something his own dad wasn't doing for him. With Silky, though, it was obviously just the ultimate compliment to describe a coach as like a father. "Herb Brooks will never be a thousandth of the man or the coach Jack Parker is. Anyone who feels otherwise can go skydiving without a parachute. If I had a big problem, Coach Parker is one of the first people I'd call for help because he gives a damn about his players, but Herb is the prototypical jackass who would make his own mother sign a requisition form for water if she were dying of thirst."
"Maybe Herb's problem is unresolved Mommy issues." OC gave a roguish snicker. "Perhaps she beat him as a kid, and now he takes that shame and fury out on us."
"What an off-color joke." Rob wagged a finger in admonishment. "Child abuse wisecracks should be as automatically not funny as ones about rape."
"Clearly, you did not grow up in Charlestown." OC shrugged. "The only jokes in Charlestown are off-color ones."
"Thanks for the tourist guide." Rob's mouth twitched wryly. "If I ever am crazy enough to get the urge to visit there, please bind me in a straitjacket and place me in a nuthouse so that I can enjoy the relative safety and sanity of my new neighborhood as compared to Charlestown."