I’m gonna try to get Rod Brind’Amour’s autograph
tonight.”
As he picked up his books and scurried off to his
room, Dwight hooked me with the hockey stick and
drew me close. I’ve kissed my share of men in my time,
but his slow kisses are blue-ribbon-best-in-show. “Wish
you were coming with us,” he said, nuzzling my neck.
“No, you don’t,” I assured him. “I promised to
honor and love. There was nothing in the vows about
hockey.”
“You sure you read the fine print?”
“That’s the first thing an attorney does read, my
friend.”
I adore ACC basketball, I pull for the Atlanta Braves,
and I can follow a football game without asking too
many dumb questions, but ice hockey leaves me cold in
more ways than one. When you grow up in the south
on a dirt road, you don’t even learn to roller skate. Yes,
we have ponds and yes, they do occasionally freeze over,
but the ice is seldom thick enough to trust and the clos-
est I ever got to live ice-skating was once when the Ice
Capades came to Raleigh and Mother and Aunt Zell
took me and some of the younger boys to see them. We
all agreed the circus was a better show. My preadoles-
cent brothers preferred hot trapeze artists to cool ice
goddesses and I kept waiting for the elephants.
But Cal had played street hockey on skates up in
Shaysville and had become hooked on the Canes when
14
HARD ROW
he spent Christmas with us and watched four televised
games.
Four.
In one week.
He and Dwight didn’t miss a single one. I’d wanted
to bond (not to mention snuggle in next to my new hus-
band), so I joined them on the extra-long leather couch
Dwight had brought over from his bachelor apartment.
I honestly tried to follow along, but the terminology
was indecipherable and I never knew where the puck
was nor why someone had been sent to the penalty box
or why they would abruptly stop play for no discernible
reason to have a jump ball.
That made Cal laugh. “Not jump ball,” he had told
me kindly. “It’s a face-off.”
Two grown men fighting for possession of a small
round object, right? Same thing in my book.
But now that Cal was living with us permanently, it
had become their thing. I went off and puttered happily
by myself when they were watching a game, and I had
