The Key to Loss
It was after practice the next day when their muscles were already aching with a buildup of lactic acid that the team stood in their pads at the base of Lake Placid's steepest hill. Already developing a stitch in his chest, Mark listened as Herb explained, his breath turning to frost in the wintry air, that he expected them all to run up and down the hill twice in their equipment, just as they had done at the beginning of practice several hours ago.
"Get a move on!" Herb clapped his hands brusquely. "The sooner you start, the earlier you'll finish. The faster you go, the quicker you'll be done."
Clenching his jaw as he gazed up at the top of the hill that now appeared miles away, Mark told himself, When something you don't want to see is looming before you like Everest, two things can happen. Fear can cut through you like a sword, or it can become your backbone. Either you fall apart and sob, or you forge on ahead to do what you have to do. Guess which one is better and braver.
As the team broke into a run while Herb remained at the foot of the hill to caustically critique everyone's running technique, Mark fell into step beside Rob. Rob was a good running partner, because they had similar strides. That helped them be each other's pacemakers. The friendly competition of keeping up with one another meant neither of them wanted to slow down no matter how much their energy flagged, and if one of them started leaving the other in the dust, it was usually a warning that person was charging too quickly out of the gate and going to fade in the homestretch if a more moderate pace wasn't adopted. After all, this exercise wasn't about going as fast as you could; it was about going as fast as you could sustain, and there was a difference.
"The words hill and hell are spelled the same except for one letter," observed Rob over their pounding feet and hearts. When it came to running and talking, he was of the opinion that the distraction speaking afforded from sore muscles was fair compensation for any breath he wasted talking. If Rob was your running partner, Mark had rapidly discovered, you were going to be drawn into a conversation almost immediately. "I never used to think that was significant, but now I do."
"You think we've found the hill from hell?" Mark asked.
"I think all hills are from hell," muttered Rob, and before he could say anything else, he was drowned out by Herb's yelling.
"Rammer!" Herb belted out, and Mark wasn't exactly astonished that Mike Ramsey was the first target of their coach's ire. Nobody was ever immune to Herb's vicious performance analysis, and everybody was a potential outlet for Herb's infamous temper, but the fact remained that there were some players—like Neal Broten, Ken Morrow, and even Mark himself—who were statistically unlikely to be specifically attacked, and there were others like Rammer, Silky, Phil Verchota, and Bill Baker who seemed to forever walk around with kick me signs only Herb could read affixed to their backs. "Are you tiptoeing up the hill or running up it? Put some spring in your step and some bounce in your feet."
Without missing a beat, Herb lanced into his next victim. "Silky, you're being outstripped by snails! The point of running is to go fast."
Mark stifled an eye roll. Sometimes, it seemed like all Herb ever said to Silky was that he was going too slowly. If it grated on Mark's nerves, he could only imagine how crazy it drove Silky.
"Baker!" Herb rapped out, and Mark wished Rob would say something to spark their conversation, so he could focus on something besides Herb's wrath. "If you were going any slower, you'd be traveling backward. Move with purpose like you want to go somewhere in life."
Then Herb ripped into Phil, who was running alongside Bill, barking, "You run like a lamb, Verchota. Lengthen your stride, and put some distance between those feet."
Apparently, this latest criticism was too much for Rob, who scoffed, "Herb must have smoked way too much dope in the Sixties if he thinks that Phil runs like a lamb. Verchota played football in high school, you know, and I've never seen a football player run like a lamb. Like a ram maybe, but not like a lamb."
"I have no clue what you're on if you believe that Herb ever did drugs." Mark shook his head, even though he was grateful for the distraction of casual banter.
"I could see Herb harboring some delusion about it not being drugs if you don't inject." Rob shrugged, as they reached the peak of the hill and began their downward plunge. "I mean, he's the lunatic who is convinced that having four beers is just being sociable, but having just one sip of wine automatically qualifies you for a seat at the local A.A."
"That is comparable to claiming that a cappuccino doesn't have caffeine just because it isn't black coffee." Mark chuckled because everyone on the team had figured out that it was one of Herb's strong but incongruous beliefs that having a couple of beers to socialize wasn't drinking. Drinking, where beer was concerned, seemingly only set in when inebriation did.
"Exactly," agreed Rob, as they approached the bottom of the hill. "Alcoholism, like the power play, is one of those concepts that Herb thinks he understands when really he is as wrong as a giraffe at an opera. He thinks an alcoholic is someone who prefers wine and whiskey to beer when, actually an alcoholic is—get this—somebody who is addicted to alcohol and its effects. An alcoholic won't care if he is sipping the finest champagne or drinking rubbing alcohol out of the bottle as long as he gets his buzz. It is, in fact, a non-alcoholic who is going to be finicky about what he drinks."
"You should explain that to Herb," Mark whispered, as they arrived at the bottom of the hill and started their trek back up it. "Oh, and you should do so in the same condescending fashion you just did to me."
"No, thanks." Rob wrinkled his nose. "Herb, gracious as ever, would just accuse me of speaking from experience."
Mark opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted before he could begin by Herb, who perhaps thought they were too happy or sensed that they were having fun at his expense, snapping, "Johnson! McClanahan! The legs feed the wolf. You hear me?"
With an internal groan, Mark thought that if he never had to hear Herb's wolf analogy again in his life, he would go to his grave content. The legs feeding the wolf was one of Herb's favorite declarations, so every player heard it hundreds of times, but Mark and Rob got to hear it an average of once a day. It was Herb's way of telling them that, no matter how fast they believed they were going, they were still in danger of being overtaken by old ladies hobbling to the grocery store to procure prune juice.
Instinctively, Mark responded to the command to go faster, forcing his throbbing legs to hurry over the pavement just a little swifter, while, beside him, Rob, too, started to run quicker. Both of them, Mark supposed, would have found a way to run faster if their legs were tied together at the knees and ankles should Herb have made it plain that he expected them to do so.
It was hard to act like you couldn't move more quickly when an irascible coach at your heels was snapping that you could. Anyway, Mark would have been too terrified of Herb's reaction to indicate by word or deed that he couldn't do something his coach demanded of him. Mark knew that if he faltered, he would be the recipient of Herb's coldest glare—the one meant to assure whomever it was directed upon that Herb understood precisely how to crush their spirit and leave them cowering amid the remnants of their sanity. Herb was a master of motivating through fear as much because of what was left unsaid in his biting insults as because of what was said, and as much because of what players envisioned he could do to them if he chose as because of any actual punishment he had inflicted upon them. Whatever Herb Brooks said or did, it never failed to leave you with the distinct impression that it was merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of the abuse he could subject you to.
Mark was glad to be yanked out of his musings by Rob grumbling mutinously as soon as they were out of Herb's earshot, "Of course we can hear. In a couple of minutes, people in Albany will be phoning to complain about the disruption of peace."
"I do hate it when Herb shouts about the legs feeding the wolf," admitted Mark, flashing a rueful grin.
"Tell me about it." Rob snorted. "He always makes it sound like he expects us to be the legs, but I don't want to be the legs. I want to be the mouth. It's much easier to practice running the mouth than running the legs, and what is Herb's obsession with wolves, anyhow?"
"They're an apt metaphor for our team, since the strength of the wolf is in the pack, and the strength of the pack is in the wolf." Mark's eyes widened earnestly as they crossed the crest of the hill and began their descent. "Besides, all the best stories are about wolves."
"Obviously." Rob's lips quirked in an ironic twist. "Anything else is sentimental drivel."
"Think about it." Mark warmed to his theme. "There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, and taming the wolves."
"Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves, so the wolves eat them and not you," reeled off Rob, his grin edging toward the predatory.
"Running with the wolf pack." Mark was panting now, his skin hot and his breath coming in gasps, a punctuation of exhaustion that made his sentences as choppy as a telegram. "Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist."
Then, finally, they reached the bottom of the hill, Mark's legs feeling as though an elephant had just plopped down upon them.
"Humph." Herb frowned down at the stopwatch in his palm, as Mark and Rob jogged in place, since their legs might have wanted to end this torture, but their racing hearts let them know in no uncertain terms that would be a dumb decision. "A three second improvement over last practice. You can head back to the locker room to change."
As far as expressions of approval went, it was more a brisk statement of fact than a compliment, but Mark clung to it like an oyster to a pearl, embracing the pain that made the beauty possible. From Rob's satisfied smirk as they drifted down the sidewalk to the rink, he could tell that his line mate was doing the same.
"Do you think a three second improvement is statistically significant?" Rob cocked his head inquisitively at Mark, who wasn't as shocked to receive this question from Rob as he would have been to get it from just about anyone else. Rob loved to perform consistently well; he would cringe if anyone regarded his successes as anomalies.
"I think statistics can be manipulated to say anything." Mark shrugged as he nimbly evaded a puddle of black ice on the pavement. "You could probably even find a poll in some newspaper that indicates a solid approval rating of Carter's handling of the crisis in Iran."
"Statistics are as reliable as the person calculating them," corrected Rob. "I'm very honest and dependable. I could create a chart in my daily planner to monitor our progress. Then we'd know what gains are statistically significant and what ones aren't."
Mark didn't doubt for a second that Rob would do this. Already Rob spent fifteen minutes before they switched off their lights for the night frowning down at his planner, checking off the tasks he had accomplished that day and reviewing all the items on tomorrow's itinerary. Often, as he did this, he would provide some commentary on the things he felt he had done particularly well or areas where he believed he could improve. It was simple to figure out based on the number of corrections Rob included in his nightly overview of his performance how successful he judged that day to be.
As such, it didn't require too much mental strain to picture him drawing up a chart in his planner and filling it in every day to keep an eye on their progress and how statistically significant it was. After all, that wasn't much more elaborate than what he was doing already.
Sometimes, Rob's meticulous planning amused and even aggravated Mark, especially because this fastidiousness was offset by extreme, unexpected bouts of rashness, because Rob could do nothing by half measures. Either he was insanely conscientious or else he was madly impulsive. Either he was coldly logical or hotly passionate. Either he sweated the details or ignored them.
Determining which side of the personality spectrum Rob was going to fall on at any given moment felt like a full-time occupation, as far as Mark was concerned, but when he found himself irritated with Rob's meticulousness, he reminded himself of all the notebooks of scribbling his father wrote during games and practices. Rob's daily planner devotion wasn't so different from that, Mark told himself whenever he felt impatience with his roommate's nearly perpetual need for organization well within him, and intelligent people prepared for success instead of expecting to stumble upon it like banging into a table in the dark.
Still, there were times when, discussing the day's triumphs and defeats with Rob—evaluating what they had done well and what they could improve upon in the next practice or game—he would feel a certain distance from himself and discover himself wondering if he and his line mate would end up editing their lives instead of living them.
"Only if it doesn't take too much time for you to make that chart." Mark nudged Rob in the shoulder as they entered the rink and strode down the corridor toward the locker room. "We don't want your performance to suffer because you're too busy tracking it. I mean, it's painful enough to watch as it is. I'm practically considering wearing a blindfold to tomorrow's game just so I don't have to see you play."
"Wear the blindfold if you want," retorted Rob, elbowing him in the ribs as they walked into the locker room. "At least it will offer an excuse for none of your shots going into the net."
"Perhaps I should lend you the blindfold." Smirking, Mark pulled his towel out of his locker and crossed over to the showers to give his burning muscles the freezing shower they craved. "You're the one who needs the excuse for not scoring."
"I have such a supportive line mate and generous roommate," said Rob in a voice that positively sagged with sarcasm, as he, too, walked over to the showers with his towel. "No matter how good I am, I could never deserve such an excellent friend."
They showered as their teammates returned from the run in steady trickles of two or three, and, by the time Mark emerged with his towel knotted around his waist, it seemed like everyone except Silky and Rizzo were back.
Winging up to heaven a quick prayer that neither of these BU boys had suffered a heart attack, Mark changed into his street clothes. Then he packed his equipment into his duffel bag and tugged on his jacket, as always sticking his fingers into his pocket to ensure that his key and wallet were still safely tucked inside. He felt the smooth leather of his wallet instantly, but no matter where his fingers roved in his pocket, they did not brush up against the cool metal of his hotel key.
Reflexively reminding himself to remain calm because panicking had never helped anyone find anything, Mark rummaged through his duffel and the pockets in his jeans, seeing only his equipment in the former and a tattered, old bubblegum wrapper in the latter. Supposing that his key might have slipped to the floor while he was changing, he leaned over to search under the bench only to find wads of spat-out gum littering the bottom, and in the crack between his locker and the floor, where he only uncovered a face full of dust that made him sneeze.
"Are you looking for something, Magic?" asked Janny, glancing up from removing his equipment for a shower, his concern obviously generated by Mark's sneeze.
"No, Janny." Steve Christoff rolled his eyes. "He just enjoys looking under furniture for no reason. Everyone needs a hobby, even if it's a lousy one."
"Your name isn't Magic," pointed out Janny. "Don't speak for Mark."
"I can't find my hotel room key," Mark explained before Steve could snap back at Janny. Sliding into a crouch, he pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to think of where else to search for his key. It had, if he hadn't lost his mind as well as his key, been in his coat pocket at the start of practice. Keys could not walk, as they had no legs, so even if the key had somehow fallen out of his pocket, it should have been on the floor somewhere near his locker. For heaven's sake, it shouldn't have been this difficult to locate…
"Stay calm," Buzz ordered in his most tranquil, warm tone, and Mark squelched the snide mouth inside him that commented that this was simple for Buzz to suggest as it wasn't his key that had inexplicably vanished. "Just try to remember where you last saw it."
"If he could do that, it wouldn't be lost," put in Bah. "I reckon he's just going to have to look everywhere he can think of for it, but, if he searches long and hard enough for it, he should find it. I mean, it's not like the key was melted down or anything."
"I remember where I last saw my key." Mark's jaw clenched, because he was determined to prove that, while he was not a neat freak like his roommate, he wasn't an irresponsible slob who endangered both their possessions by leaving the key to their room just strewn around wherever it chanced to drop. "I put it in my jacket pocket along with my wallet before I left my room the way I always do. It was in my pocket when practice started, so I don't understand where it could have gone since."
"Maybe you accidentally left your key in our room," contributed Rob. "The peril of routines is that you aren't always thinking when you follow them, so you can easily leave something important out by mistake without noticing. We could go back to our room and look for your key there, since we aren't having much luck finding it here."
"All right." Mark threw his duffel bag over his shoulder and trailed Rob out of the locker room into the hallway. "I guess that I could have been a bit hungover from last night this morning and not recognized it, but I had only one beer, and it was served in a mug, not a bucket…"
Drifting off, he realized with a spurt of chagrin that he sounded like a drunkard refusing to accept the repercussions for his own inadequacies because surely the bottle was to blame for all of his personal shortcomings.
"Sorry, Mac." Mark gnawed guiltily on his lower lip. "I shouldn't use the fact that I was drinking as an excuse for whatever happened to my key, because that's the lamest excuse ever. It's all about wiggling out of responsibility for something you did wrong by calling attention to another moral failing of yours."
"You're my friend, Mark. I'm not going to be all judgmental because you had one mug of beer and you can't find your key." Rob's hand disappeared into his coat pocket for a moment and then emerged holding a licorice stick, which he thrust into Mark's fingers, adding, "Chew on this. Friends don't let friends resort to cannibalism when there is candy around."
Obediently biting into the licorice instead of his lip as they exited the rink, Mark thought that it wasn't a surprise that Rob had licorice to offer him. Licorice was one of Rob's major indulgences. On long bus rides, he bought a bag whenever the team stopped along the highway, and on planes, he chomped on sticks of licorice during takeoffs and landings as if they were gum. When he packed for trips, Rob's licorice even had a special spot on his checklist to guarantee that it would not be forgotten.
"Thanks." Mark smiled sheepishly as he nibbled on the licorice. "It seems like I still have an oral fixation when I'm embarrassed or nervous."
"What a shocker." Snickering, Rob devoured a piece of licorice. "All hockey players have oral fixations, Mark. Next time you're on the bench, look around the ice and I promise that you'll see at least one player doing something weird with his mouthguard."
Mark was spared the effort of devising a suitable response to this pronouncement by them coming face-to-face with Rizzo and Silky, who were walking down the sidewalk in the opposite direction, still wearing their hockey equipment.
"Where have you guys been?" Rob arched an eyebrow at Rizzo and Silky. "Everyone else got back to the locker room ages ago."
"Herb decided that Silky's time wasn't impressive enough and made him run up and down the hill two more times." Rizzo slapped Silky on the back as he provided this answer, and Mark winced, thinking that it might be very wise for Rob to draw up his chart, after all. Mark didn't want to have to perform the hill exercise any more than he had to, so he was going to do everything in his power to make Herb deem his progress satisfactory. "I ran with him out of solidarity."
"Ah." Sympathetically, Rob clicked his tongue. "Silky, I guess you've got a new reason to hate Herb, don't you?"
"What?" As if torn from a daze, Silky blinked in bafflement.
"Heaven preserve me from the witless." All impatience, Rob rolled his eyes. "Silky, I hope you won't shoot the messenger, but Herb is right: you are slow."
"I was thinking about something else, for your information," growled Silky defensively, his cheeks flaming. "But if we were talking about Herb, I hate him."
"Join the club." Rob tossed a stick of licorice at Silky. "We've got candy, but we haven't hammered out the logo or the motto yet."
"Best of luck with that. Let me know if you need a president." Guffawing, Rizzo clapped his hands. "Well, Silky and I had better get back to the locker room. We need to take a shower before we start to really stink."
"You two always stink," taunted Rob over his shoulder as he and Mark resumed their journey back to the hotel. As Rizzo and Silky faded behind them, he furrowed his forehead at Mark. "Magic, you didn't speak a word during that entire conversation."
"I didn't have anything to say." Mark shrugged. "I figured I wouldn't waste my breath and your time."
"In other words," stated Rob almost gingerly, "you're still fretting about your misplaced key, aren't you?"
"A little," Mark confessed, blushing. "It's just such a mystery what happened to it that it's driving me crazy wondering if I'm mad."
"You need a distraction," ruled Rob in his most intractable tone, and Mark braced himself for whatever impetuous idea—perhaps diving off a cliff—that his line mate would propose to drag him out of his slump, but he was still nonplussed when the other young man went on, "So, did you hear about the new ceiling?"
"Um, no." Completely bewildered, Mark shook his head. "Why?"
"Don't worry." Rob laughed. "It's probably over your head, anyway."
This pun was so painfully corny that Mark couldn't help but chuckle and counter with a bad joke of his own. "Why do nurses use red pens? Because they might have to draw blood."
They continued to exchange puns that got ever worse in quality as they arrived at their hotel, rode the elevator up from the lobby to their floor, and walked down the hallway to their room. However, as soon as they unlocked their door with Rob's key and entered their room, their laughter died on their lips. In the way that an absence—like the hole in your mouth where you had lost a tooth that your tongue inevitably caressed a thousand times a day—could sometimes be more glaring than a presence, they both immediately knew that something was missing from their room. A second later, Mark recognized what it was. The Christmas tree that should have been beaming a bright welcome with its hundreds of ornaments and lights was not on their desk, or, indeed, anywhere else in the room.
"Where the heck did our tree go?" demanded Rob, his voice a cross between the numb and the outraged.
"I don't know." Mark collapsed on his bed, wishing that this were all a nightmare and he would wake up to find that nothing was missing, after all. "Everything is vanishing, and it's all my fault because I lost my key, and somebody else obviously found it and helped himself to our tree. I'm so sorry, Robbie. I just hope nothing else of yours is taken."