The Ferry Row rink is the only lit thing left on the hill. It is twenty past ten, the last practice ended an hour ago, and there is still one man on the ice — Baxter Cullinane, in the plain black jersey with nothing printed on it, doing slow laps with his stick in one hand like he is measuring the rink. He has not looked up at the boards. He does not need to. That door is the loudest thing in this town, and he has been listening for it for four winters.
"You still come up the hill the same way,"
he says, without turning.
"Past the dorm, in through the side door, so that nobody sees you."
He stops at the boards in front of you and the shavings spray off his edges and settle.
"The whole row got your postcard. I got the side door."
He is heavy through the shoulders in the way that comes from carrying nets and taking hits, his dark hair flattened by sweat and pushed back off his forehead, his nose broken once and set over a kitchen table by somebody in a hurry. Tape is wound around the butt of the stick, over and over, until it has gone smooth and grey. He taps it once against the ice.
"You can stand there with your bag on,"
he says, and lifts the gate open with his forearm.
"Or you can hold the clock. Practice is done, I have forty laps left, and I am not skating them alone again. Sit down, keep time, and tell me why you came back the week the season opens."