Seven

I returned to my room, shaking a little bit with the cold. Marian was still there, the same way he had been when I left. He was leafing through a book, probably trying to get his mind off of me and my hysterics.

But when I walked in the door, he couldn’t ignore me. I was a mess. That’s all I was. A mess. A puddle of mud. A big fat screw-up on the face of society. All those thoughts bombarded me, and once more I was damn close to breaking into tears. Trying to calm myself down, I took more of those deep, shuddery breaths that almost hurt.

Marian noticed that.

“Come here,” he said, opening his arms. It was that one glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel that kept me from breaking down completely. I couldn’t help it—rushed into his arms and buried my head in his shoulder like a little kid, sobbing. After a few minutes of reckless crying, I’d calmed down sufficiently to talk.

“Shh…shh. You’ll be ok…you’ll be ok,” Marian said. He said quiet things in Slovakian, little things I could hardly hear but were comforting anyway.

“I hate him!” I mouthed. My voice still wasn’t cooperating, it was jumping up and down and hiccupping.

“I know. I’m sorry.” A few more minutes passed, time ticking slowly away. Time I lost because I was sobbing like a girl about a man who would never, ever love me.

“Are you ready to talk now?” Marian asked. I nodded. I was never so grateful to anyone who ever said that as to Marian just then. “When did this obsession start?”

I took a deep breath.

“It was the summer after the ’98 season. We hadn’t made the playoffs that year, and it had just been a long, kind of lazy summer so far. I was sitting at home, I had the flu. I was watching the NHL Awards on TV, and Ziggy was there.” I took another deep breath. “And I looked at him, and I thought, O my God. He should love me.

“I watched it until it was all over. I was transfixed, just staring at the television. I mean, I had noticed him before and played him before, but when I saw him at the awards, I was shell-shocked. I don’t know why, it just was. When the awards ended, it was something like eleven o’clock at night. I went online and started looking up stuff about him.

“The more I learned about him, the more transfixed I became. He consumed me. Every single day I thought about him. Every day for the rest of the summer. Every single day that season.

“Before every game, you’re nervous to a point. But when we would play the Kings, I’d get so nervous I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Or eat. Hardly even talk. I’d get on the ice, skating beside him, and completely freak out. Whiff shots. Miss passes. Turnovers. Losing the puck. Getting caught with my head down. I was so consumed with staring at him that I never got a single chance to concentrate on the game.” Marian interrupted me here.

“That’s pretty bad.”

“It gets worse. In 1999 Ziggy was traded, and I had a few nervous days. I wondered if he would show up in Buffalo. I wouldn’t have been able to control myself, I’d have completely spazzed out. As it was my nerves were shot.

“The season passed, summer came. The one-year mark since I had really found out about him. Another season. Another summer. The two-year mark. Another season. Another summer. The third-year mark. And then this season…then they called me about the Olympics.

“They called me up to talk about the Olympics. I said yes, yes, yes, of course! Then I made the mistake of asking who else would be on the team. They said they were going to ask you, Bondra, Demitra, and Ziggy.

“I flipped out. I almost hung up on them I was so freaked out. My head was spinning and I didn’t know what to expect. Would it be a good thing that I would finally get to meet him? Would it be shattered illusions or the realization of a perfect dream? I had no idea, I was scared to death. Weeks passed. Weeks upon weeks upon weeks. Some days I would spend six or seven solid hours on the computer, not even looking up, trying to find out all I could about him. I was late to a few practices because I wasn’t able to tear myself away from the computer and my link to him.

“Salt Lake City approached. I was shaking in my shoes during the whole plane ride. It was awful. I landed and got in, calmed myself down, then I found out we were roommates.

“You know the rest of the story, Hoss,” I said. I got a cup of water and continued.

“Throughout all of this, I couldn’t tell anybody I was gay. Not my teammates. Not my friends. Not my relatives. Not one single person on the face of the earth. Sometimes I would want to tell someone so badly that I almost would—I’d get so close, so very, very close, then chicken out at the last minute. You and Ziggy are still the only people that know. I think. But God—now that I know him, I hate him. It hurts, it hurts me so bad.” I bit my lip and lowered my head into his shoulder again. His dress shirt’s shoulder was all wet and gross. “I wanted him to love me! More than anything else on the earth! More than a goddamn Stanley Cup! So…so…bad. I wished it! It made my heart ache like hell.” I shut my eyes, talking about the hurt made it come back.

“Miro, Miro, Miro. I’m so sorry. I had no idea. The first time you told me anything I thought you were joking. I’m sorry. What are you going to do?” Hoss asked. I shrugged.

“What can I do? The only thing that I could do was just sit. And wait.