He just likes the attention, David thinks, not charitable, knowing he’s not charitable, wondering if Jake made the kind of noises with Benson that he made with David. He bites the inside of the cheek until he stops thinking about it.
Even so, he’s grateful, takes the chance to duck into the bathroom while Kurmazov’s attention is on Benson, carefully avoids Kurmazov the rest of the night. Kurmazov offers to help him with passes after practice the next day, which David takes him up on, and he doesn’t try to talk to David about pointless things again.
*
His phone is silent.
*
The first hat trick of David’s NHL career doesn’t make the highlight reel.
David doesn’t usually watch the packaged sports highlights, the showy saves and goals. He finds the whole flow of a game is a more important gauge of performance, and it’s not like the Islanders are featured often anyway, no matter what they do. The networks keep their attention firmly fixed on the big markets, the teams that have an actual chance at the playoffs, the games that ‘matter’, as if the Islanders are just wasting everyone’s time. But tonight he’s glowing with pride, and he wants to see it, the three goals he only felt, wants to actually savour the moment now that he’s outside of it.
The team took him out after the game, or at least some of them, Kurmazov shaking him by the back of the neck, grip firm and warm, Eisler ordering David a shot for every goal, Benson taking them with unusual equanimity when David nudged them in his direction as soon as Eisler stopped looking. David had a couple beers, though, felt he deserved it, and he’s a little loose, warm from the beer, the hats on the ice, the stupefied goalie, the crowd lit up for him, chanting his name, when he turns on the TV to find the recaps.
They don’t show his hat trick, just slide right into a horrorshow, the worst kind of spectacle. The Penguins versus the Flyers, always good for a brawl and some bad blood, though this was just bad luck, the worst kind of luck, a hard one-timer and a body at the exact wrong angle to take it.
The remainder of the show is replays in increasingly slow motion, at every single possible angle, talking heads discussing the potential fall-out, but all David needed to see was the full-speed replay to know right in his gut: that career was over.
They keep lingering over the details like they enjoy them: the full volume replay where you can hear Petersen scream, the distraught Penguins bench, the white-faced Flyers, some unaffiliated doctor guessing what the damage is, the Penguins captain shaky and pale in front of the outstretched hands of reporters, recorders running.
It makes David sick, the way they suck every moment dry, but he can’t stop watching, frozen with the remote still by his hand, the whole thing a waking nightmare.