Point Shot 01 - Two Man Advantage

T
WO
M
AN
A
DVANTAGE

V.L. Locey

Prologue

“Victor, are you impressed by the outstanding shots from point that Darren Wilson executed during tonight’s game?”

I looked up from my sock-covered feet to the obese reporter. His brow was speckled with perspiration, there was mustard dried on his pornstache and his breath reeked of garlic. Thirty men stood around me, eyes wide with expectation. The buzz of after-game interviews filled the dressing room. Sweat ran down the crack of my ass. I hated talking to the press still soaked in game-sweat. Fuckers were like miserable old vultures, sitting on the sidelines of pro games, stuffing fried sausage sandwiches into their mouths while dreaming up asinine questions. The fat shits couldn’t play chess without hyperventilating, so they lived vicariously through the professional athletes they harangued. Was it asking too much to be able to wash my balls
before
the flock of buzzards descended?

“Wilson is a good player but it was me feeding the puck to him that got that hat trick. Jim, you really need to find a container of fucking breath mints,” I moaned, shoving the fat bastard back a few steps. I mean, this is
my
cubicle with
my
clothes hanging in it. Who the double-shit wants to smell like fat, garlic-laced reporter when they’re dressed?

A subtle wave of disbelief mixed with lust went through the press crowded around me. Yeah, they were stunned that someone had told them the truth. They were also creaming their pants over their next sound bite for the eleven o’clock news. I’d only said what everyone knew. Wilson wouldn’t have made half the goals he had if not for me shoving pucks at him all night.

“Kalinski!” someone shouted from the back of the pack. I wiggled around on the hard plastic bench, trying to see which gossip-whore had called my name. The dressing room was mobbed, as it always was after a Boston Barracudas game. We were odds-on favorites to win the Cup this year, and my skills as center on the first line were a large part of those high odds. “Kalinski, can you substantiate the rumor that you were seen with Roxanne Mikkola last night?”

Shit.
I turned my head slightly, just enough to see if Edvard Mikkola, our backup goalie, had heard the question. Seeing the big Finn sizing me for a pine box, I had to assume that he had.

“You heard wrong,” I stated loudly, “I was with Pete Dubroski’s daughter last night. Why would I pass up cherry for something that has fruit flies?” I chuckled, because it was a joke, folks.

The D-man came through the mob like a juiced-up rhino, which was a pretty good description of the guy to be honest. The press cleared a path, or was knocked aside, take your pick. I got to my feet and met the charging defenseman with a clinch around his middle. It didn’t stop him but it slowed him down. Then we both got tackled by an irate Finn.

Just for the record, I want it stated that I can handle myself. I’m a six-foot-three-inch, one-hundred-and-ninety-pound redheaded Pole who was raised in Englewood, Chicago by a single mother who spent her nights with Jack Daniels. For the unenlightened, Englewood has the distinction of being consistently rated one of the worst neighborhoods of the Windy City. I grew up learning how to fight, win face-offs and lead breakouts. Being blindsided by a goalie who was still in pads while wrestling with an angry dad wasn’t a fair fight. Just so everyone knows the situation. It was, however, the fight that left me with a black eye and a new team to play with. Some fucking people just can’t take a joke.

Chapter One

Four days later I was throwing my packed bags into my Escalade. An hour after that I was saying goodbye to Boston. My latest whatever-he-was had insisted I sublet my condo. What do you call a dude you fuck when the itch to fuck a dude gets too strong to ignore? He’s not my lover. Lover means there are emotions involved. The last emotional thing I had was two years ago, right before I came up from Cayuga. Gina had been a good girl, and I’d really cared about her, but there had been something lacking. What had been lacking was that her pussy hadn’t been a cock. I still grabbed tang when it was offered, and that was quite often, but there is something about whiskers abrading the insides of your thighs…

Hold on. Wait. Let me clear something up. I misrepresented about Gina. She
had
been carrying around a pussy instead of a prick, true, but that hadn’t been what was missing. What had been missing from our relationship was my giving a shit about it. Hard to make it work when one half does not give two flying fucks. Can I get an
amen
?

So yeah, back to Jerry. Jerry is my latest man-fuck. That term will work. My latest man-fuck had insisted I sublet my condo to him. There was no way I was going to let Jerry live there rent free, toss his used condoms into my toilet and bang strange guys while I was gone. He could do that in his own place.

Besides, I’d be back in a week. As soon as the asshats in Boston realized how vital I was to the team, the GM would be calling me in Cayuga with a “Let me kiss your nuts” apology. The ride from Boston to Cayuga would take about five hours, I recalled from when I had been called up two years before. Being sent back was a shitty stain on my career.

“Disciplinary action”, this little trip had been called. I had been defending myself. You didn’t see the other two overreactionary assholes being busted down to fucking Cayuga. I pulled into a roadside rest to walk off the anger and humiliation. The cold November air would help. The trees were bare, or just about. A few curled, brown leaves rattled in the wind. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jeans. My breath lingered in front of me for a second. I did
not
want to go back to New York State. How the shit was it
my
fault that certain guys can’t take some lighthearted ribbing? I walked to a scenic overlook. The wind threw wild strands of ginger over my eyes. Thumbing them back, I stared down at the vineyards that made this part of New York State so famous. This was what I was coming back to? Fallow fields, sour grapes and a team what wouldn’t know what to do with a player of my caliber.

“Fuck this minor-league time-out in the corner,” I told the touch of winter blowing across the Finger Lakes. I leaned my hip against the rustic wooden railing. Snow would soon be flying. The tang of it was on the air. I turned from the panoramic view of rolling hills. No need to admire the landscape. I’d be back in Bean Town before the first flake fell.

After a pit stop to grab some food and gas, I sailed into the amazingly boring town of Cayuga, New York, population who-gives-a-tinker’s-touchhole. The streets and shops were just as quaint as I recalled. People should choke on quaint. Since it was early November, the tourists were long gone, and only a few brave souls were out and about. Not wishing to hear the sound of that angel on my right shoulder gabbing about quaintness any longer, I reached over to turn up the metal on my stereo.

I know what you’re thinking. That an asshole as famous as Victor L. Kalinski doesn’t have a conscience. Hell, he barely has a soul. Well, you’re wrong. I do have a conscience. You can ask my mother, Sally. I mean, it was she who passed her morals on to me. Just a warning, though—if you want to ask Mom about my principles, make sure you ask when she’s sober. She packs one hell of a left when she’s shitfaced.

Anyway, I was beyond caring what the asshole in white robes on my shoulder was ragging about, so up went the rock and roll. It’s amazing how much shit you can find to drown out an unhappy set of scruples. Pulling up to a red light, I spied the winter sun kissing the mirrored sides of the Rader Arena, named after the only idiot who wanted to have a suck-ass team playing in Cayuga, Ronald D. Rader, the owner of Rader Wineries.

Ron Rader was a grape-loving sot on par with Dionysus, who decided that he wasn’t happy owning a winery and half the land in the state of New York—he also wanted a hockey team. Why, you may ask? Who the fuck knows? RDR, as he’s known in the pages of the
Cayuga Courier,
doesn’t know a grape from a puck. He was left his fortune by his father, who at least had enough sense to stay out of hockey. Somehow he managed to convince the city council to let him build the Rader Arena and plunk a team into it. When he approached the NHL owners, they laughed in his face when he asked for a pro team to fill his new arena. Well, not right in his face, but behind his moronic back.

RDR was mad. The powers that be decided to toss Rader a bone, and offered him the minor-league team for the Boston Barracudas. So that was how the Cayuga Cougars came into being. A more horrendous bunch of losers you will never see. They do have a nice stadium, though. Nothing like the Bilko Center in downtown Big B, but for a nowhere town, the Rader is pretty tight.

I wheeled the Escalade around to the players’ entrance, turned off the engine and sat staring at my playpen for the next week. Even though I was sitting there gaping at it, I couldn’t believe it was really happening to me. I slammed from the Caddy, kicking the door shut. A gust strong enough to blow a man off his feet railroaded across the empty parking lot, chugging over and around me like an icy locomotive. Fuck, but it got cold early here. I drew my shoulders up then headed inside. You can walk into any hockey venue in the world and the smell will be the same—leather, ice, sweat, excitement, blood and determination. That smell is almost as good as the smell of hot bodies sliding against one another on damp sheets. I felt a tingle in my balls just breathing in the zesty air.

I walked past the dressing and weight rooms, my feet familiar with the path to the ice from the locker room area. Just follow the paw-print carpet. It was a silent walk over the blue and gold kitty-cat Berber. One that led me to the ice far too quickly.

I glanced around at the stadium, not at all amazed that it looked the same. It holds perhaps half of what the Bilko in Boston holds, which is roughly nineteen thousand, give or take. The Rader seats about nine thousand or so. They do have an electronic scoreboard to rival the one in Boston, or any other pro stadium. Pity the players here don’t measure up like their arena scoreboard does. The team was on the ice doing offensive drills. By the looks of their recent game highlights, they
needed
offensive drills. And defensive drills. And a tendie who could actually cover his crease against midget-league shots. Leaning against the glass by the rink gate, I watched my former teammates take a simple offensive 2-1-2 drill and royally fuck it up the ass. No, let me rephrase, because a good fuck in the ass is enjoyable. This was a fisting by Andre the Giant, bless his big heart. My eyes rolled to the rafters.

“No! For the sake of my mother’s fucking frizzled muff, no!” shouted Martin Lambert, head coach of this glorified bunch of monkey-humpers. All the baboons behind the goal stopped whatever the hell it was they were doing. Lambert skated over to them, the veins in his forehead bulging. Coach was an ex D-man who’d never crawled out of the minors. He was big, bold, bald, brash and knew his stuff. Someday a pro team would give him a call. Maybe.

I chuckled at the show. Christ, but this brought back memories. Watching whatever line was out there being ripped a new anus, I tried to pick out players I knew from my time there. Most were familiar to me and would be lifetime Cayuga Cougars.

One short little shit got my attention when Lambert told them to try again. He was a dark-haired little scrapper with a light-sienna complexion, who got into the corners, putting elbow to nose and lumber to teeth with no remorse until he got the puck free. I liked his grit. And the way his dark hair hung out from under his lid, flipping up at the ends. The man had some good flow going on.

His style was good, his eyes sharp, his stick handling above par and his ankles strong. He was the only one who had a grasp of what he was supposed to be doing, if you asked me. When he skated past in pursuit of the puck, I got a glimpse of a round, cute face with a button nose and lapis lazuli eyes. He executed a perfect side-stop, his plump mouth drawing up as he looked at me.

“Holy shit, it’s the big bad boy of Beantown,” he yelled to be heard over the shouts of his teammates. There was a noticeable Canadian accent when he spoke. He was probably no older than my twenty-four, if that. He wore the big A on his shoulder, so I knew he was an alternate captain. Shit, but he had a sexy Elvis Presley mouth. “What’s your expert opinion on how we’re looking, Kalinski?”

“To quote Reggie Dunlop as played by Paul Newman in
Slapshot
, ‘Jesus Christ, what a fucking nightmare.’”

He chuckled, then skated down ice. His jersey said his last name was spelled A-R-O-U.

Coach Lambert skated into my line of sight. I smiled pleasantly.

“What kind of fresh holy fucking hell is this?” Coach asked, coming through the gate and stalking past me.