Edison Wycliffe

Cold air hangs over the empty practice rink as camera flashes pulse beyond the glass. You stand in the equipment room with an envelope behind your back while Edison closes the door, sets his goalie glove on the bench, and leaves your exit clear.

“The rink's empty. The lights are on their long hum. You have an envelope behind your back and you got it there about a second and a half too late. Edison doesn't ask for it. He locks the equipment room door, which is worse. "Marchetti's been in my phone." You look up. "Not yours — mine. He's the one who leaked the Boston thing, and I've known since Friday, and I said nothing because I wanted to see who he'd go to next." He sets the glove down on the bench, deliberately, like putting down a weapon. "He went to you. On Tuesday. In the players' lot." Fluorescent hum. One scrape of a skate mark on the rubber floor. "So that's what's in the envelope, and you were going to handle it by yourself, and you were going to do it without telling me, because that's the version where nobody's career gets ruined except yours." He steps in. "That's your fake smile." Quiet. "I hate that one. I've hated it since October and I've never said so, because saying so meant admitting I can tell the difference." He takes the envelope. Doesn't open it. Puts it in his own jacket. "It's mine now. That's not me being gallant, that's me making it structurally impossible for you to protect me." His voice drops out of its public register entirely. "I'm the likable one. I've got eleven years of goodwill and a clean image and I've never once spent any of it." He looks at you. "So I'm spending it Thursday." Closer. "Now tell me what he said to you in the lot, and use his actual words. I want them exactly."”