Chapter 2
Mason
48 Hours Before the Conference
I am drunk.
This is a common occurrence for me.
I am drunk.
I don’t know why I do this to myself. Drinking never feels good.
I mean it does, for the first dozen beers, then I keep drinking because the dumbass bitch part of my brain says drink more equals feel gooder!
The dumbass bitch part of my brain is wrong, and also evil. I am past the feels good part of drinking and I’m rapidly moving towards crying shirtless in the gutter with bruised knuckles.
I do not know what happened to my shirt.
To avoid that, I’m stumbling my six-foot-four ass down Saint-Catharines to find Randy’s townhouse. Randy is my friend. Just a friend, we slept together once but we didn’t really click, so now she’s just my buddy. She’s a good buddy, though, I can tell her anything and she’s always honest with me. She’s gonna be a therapist some day! Or a psychiatrist? I’m drunk, I can’t remember these things. But whenever the Sad Drunk starts creeping in, I go find her and she helps me out.
Also her couch is really comfy and her cat likes to sleep on my chest. I love Schmendrick the Three-Legged Wizard Cat, he is a good kitty…except when he’s not, which is most of the time.
I trip on a curb, but I do not eat shit, 2 points for Mashuechuk! The crowd roars, we win!
I knock on the front door of Randy’s townhouse, “Randy! Raaaaaandy! Lemme in I’m drunk!” I tap a beat out on her front door until she opens it but, “You look like shit, you okay?”
Her eyebrows shoot up, “Mace! I don’t have time for this, I’m sorry!”
My head must tilt because suddenly everything is at an angle, “Can I just pass out on your couch?” I’m leaning against her doorway because wow, this is a comfy door.
She squints, “Actually, you come with me. You’re still strong when you’re drunk, right?”
“Yeah I am! Big strong man.” I say, flexing my arms to prove it, “All guns at this show!”
She laughs and nods, grabs her keys, then she shoves me back and locks her house. She pushes me towards her little car. My shirt appears in my hand, though I don’t know how it got there. I put it on as I walk to the car.
“Randy, I’m drunk, I can’t drive.”
“I am driving, Mace. You are passengering.” She says.
“Oooooooh, okay! Where are we going? Shotgun!” I run around her car and slide in, very happy that I called shotgun before someone else could. I put on my seatbelt, “Roadtrip, baby!”
“Mason, how much have you had to drink?”
“Dozen beers, some tequila, a couple of margaritas, and then Jenko at La Montagne gave me something they called a Firecracker.”
Randy fires up her car and mumbles a soft, “Jesus Christ, Mason, how are you upright?”
I don’t know either.
We pull up at a house, “This looks like the house I grew up in.”
There’s garbage on the lawn, the windows are broken, some boarded up, some shattered but still in their frames, taped together. The storm door on the front is hanging from it’s hinges and slamming in the wind. Put me on a bike in the front yard at nine-years-old and you’ve got my house until we moved in with my Oma and Opa. This is a bad area of Laval, like…really bad. I, big ass man with a knife who fights on skates for a living, would not walk here alone. I feel myself starting to sober up a bit, or at least the adrenaline of being somewhere like this is kicking in.
“Come on, Mace.” Randy says, directing me to go into the house that might be a drug den.
Oh, I could get JJ some molly, he loves rolling. I’m neutral on it, I don’t like when I’m horny but my dick doesn’t work. Thankfully, I don’t get that horny when I’m drunk, there is a threshold that I always blow past because I have exactly zero self-control with alcohol.
I follow Randy in, and I find Julia, “Julia! Hey! You cool if I crash on your couch?”
Julia looks at me, her hair isn’t blue anymore and she’s been crying for sure, but she chuckles, “Hey, Mace. Glad to see you, man. Yeah, you can crash.”
I spot a bathroom, so I make a beeline because I am suddenly and intensely aware that I need to pee. I go, and then I fail to adequately wash my hands because there’s no soap. I emerge from the washroom and use the dish soap in the kitchen sink. Randy and Julia hand me a couple of boxes, and I start hauling things to the car.
“Are we robbing this drug dealer?” I ask Randy in a whisper, which must be far too loud because Julia laughs.
“No, Mace. I’m moving back in with Randy.” Julia says, handing me another box.
“Oh fuck yeah! Is the lil guy coming too?” Julia’s son is 6, he’s the coolest little dude. I’d been teaching him to skate whenever Julia could bring him to the rink, but since she moved out in March she hasn’t brought him around. I miss the little man, he was a natural!
“Yeah! I’ll have to start bringing him around the arena again, he started playing hockey, too.” Julia says as we bring a suitcase to the car.
“Yeah? That’s awesome, I bet he’s so good. Gonna be a little NHLer, I’m telling you. Why do you live with a drug dealer?” I ask her.
“David isn’t a drug dealer.” She says. Her hand comes to her ribs, and that’s when I realize how exhausted Julia looks, the faint, old bruises on her neck. I lift my hand to her neck, because I want to see how far the bruises go, and she flinches, “Mason, stop.”
I stumble back, not from the alcohol, but from the wave of understanding that washes over me like a physical force, “He hits you? Julia, I would have helped you. Cash, a place to stay? The season is on, the Boys wouldn’t mind if you and Ash stayed over. You can even have my room, I’ll live on the couch.”
A car pulls up, and Julia shrinks, “He wasn’t supposed to be back tonight.”
I know that look, the wilt, the way she makes herself small. It’s a fear reaction, the same one my mom had for years when my dad would come home work. We knew from his footsteps as he walked up the back steps how bad it would be. Sometimes he’d just scream, sometimes he’d beat my mom, or me, and he ignored Raven entirely unless he was using her as a personal waitress.
Usually he’d just get too drunk to walk straight and pass out. Those were the good nights. I’m just like him, same disease.
Except I don’t beat my women, I beat up assholes who deserve it, like David.
Not yet anyway.
I storm out of the house, Julia and Randy trying to hold me back, failing because I’m a pro hockey player and I’ve encountered two people ever who’ve been able to stop me when I’m about to fuck somebody up.
The guy, David, takes one look at me, “Who the fuck are you?”
“Bodyguard,” I spit, “Julia is moving out.”
“No she’s not.” He says, and then he tries to step around me.
Even drunk, I’m faster than most people, so stepping in front of him is easy. I feel the worm in my brain, though. It’s icy, crawling between my eyes, around my tattooed knuckles. People always say they get white-hot with rage, but for me it’s cold, it’s deliciously numbing, all the bad feelings inside my head go away when I’m angry.
I take a deep breath, trying to keep my focus on David, “Julia is leaving, and you will never speak to her again.”
He pushes me, “Back off buddy, this is between me and her.” He leans around me, “Isn’t that right baby? Let’s just get your stuff and talk about it!”
I put one big hand on his shoulder, gripping it hard, “Get back in your car and leave, man.”
I am able to recognize another drunk. Mostly because David absolutely reeks of whisky. I like whiskey, but not on someone else’s breath. Not to mention he fucking drove here. I try to do all the things the League anger management people tell me to do, count to ten, take a deep breath, go to my happy place.
My happy place is punching David in the face.
I would very much like to go there.
“Did you drive here drunk, bro? Not fucking cool. Come on, let Julia leave, she’s not your property. You’re not gonna hit her again.”
“What the fuck do you think you know, buddy! You don’t know shit!” He screams. Then he hits me.
I feel that familiar, beautiful numbness come over me as all the bad thoughts, all the hurt and the pain and the sadness I feel gets washed away. My vision tunnels, I can hear fuzz in my ears, the pitchy whine of an old TV set when you turn it on. I’m aware of punching David in the face, the first time, and the second, I’m fully conscious that I’m screaming in his face, that he’s on the ground and I’m on top of him. The pain in my wrist doesn’t register, the sirens from the ambulance and the cop cars don’t register.
All I can focus on is the relief in Julia’s eyes.
I know that face too, I was 15 when I finally snapped. When I shot up a foot in 18 months and ended up taller than my dad, stronger from Hockey and working physical jobs in the summer. It was over for him, for our family.
I made sure he wouldn’t touch me or my mom ever again, that the thought of hurting my sweet little Rayray never crossed his mind. He ended up in the hospital, we ended up living in the tiny house on Carl Ave with my Oma and Opa. We survived, though. My family are a bunch of stubborn fuckers, we outlived him, and when I was 21 and he finally dropped dead, Rayray and I changed our name. Lomond is dead, long live the Mashuechuks.
The cops let the EMS guys put a compression bandage on my wrist – it’s probably broken, or close to it – but then they arrest me. They get me in the cruiser, and I don’t resist. I’ve been here before, a half dozen times. I know from my dad how the system works. I call my agent/lawyer, who just sighs and hangs up after telling me all the things I already know.
They leave me in jail for a few days before I’m out. No charges, Julia and Randy both talked to the cops and said David hit me first, that he’d beaten Julia within an inch of her life before. Hospital records agree, with broken bones and concussions from ‘falling down the stairs’, just like my mom, just like me.
Andrej picks me up in his Bronco, and I finally get to sleep and take a shower. A long, hot shower that doesn’t chase away the shame and guilt. I can’t say I was drunk and out of control, because I wasn’t. I wasn’t out of my mind with rage, I wasn’t insane, I’m never so far gone I’m seeing red.
I was completely aware that I was sending David Saintreal to the hospital with a broken nose, broken orbital socket, a concussion, and two cracked ribs.
And I hate myself for that. I hate myself more than anyone could ever possibly hate me, trust me. I hate how easy it was to do what I did, even if he was an abusive piece of shit. How am I better? How am I anything but the exact same kind of asshole as him? As my father was? I hate that it felt good to do, too. That there’s a little fucked up part of me that loves the pain I caused.
I hate that my father ended up forging me in his image, just like he always wanted. I still remember the feeling of him hitting me on the ice, or burning me with a cigarette, and telling me all about how someday I’d be just like him. He was toughening me up. And he was right, I am just like him. Worthless, pathetic, only good as a goon, a cop on the ice just like my old man was a cop in Thunder Bay.
Andrej knocks on my door, “Mason, come on man, we gotta leave in like 20 minutes. Stop jerking off.”
“Fuck off!” I snap, and I feel like even bigger shit because he’s right. I turn the water off, “Sorry, Andrej.”
“All good man, just chop chop! I made breakfast for you, too!” He says, and I hear him walk out of my room.
I dry off, get dressed, go through the motions of making myself presentable. I only moisturize because Rayray demands I take care of my skin, so my aging doesn’t reflect poorly on her genetics. My little sister, ladies and gentlemen, sure knows how to make a guy feel good about himself. I’m gonna catch a workout at the rink after I finish with Coach Levesque, hopefully burn off the rest of these bad feelings, so I grab my gym bag. We eat in silence, Andrej and JJ know that, after what happened, it’s best to give me space.
“You coming to the rink with us, Jayje?” I ask.
He shakes his head and takes a long drink of his coffee, “Cannerman wanted to run some new play he has by me. He wants my opinion as a goalie.”
I laugh a little, though it’s very flat, grim because meeting with the coach is never good in these situations, “Have fun.”
We all like the Rookie, and he tries so hard to be part of the team. If I’d ever had a kid brother, I’d want them to be like Connor. He’s barely 20, but he’s a fantastic forward and very dedicated to the game. He’s always coming up with plays or crazy ideas, and he loves sharing them and getting feedback. He’s only four years younger than me and Andrej, three from JJ. He’s a great roommate too, clean as fuck. He’s also a great time, nobody better to drink with than a Texan.
My stomach feels like it’s full of hot lead.
