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After the game I had a talk with Billy. I told him it's OK to try to block a shot from beyond the face-off circle. If he misses, then I still have time and space to see the shot and react. “But when a shooter is in close either check him or drive him off the angle but don't try to block the shot,” I said. Billy nodded.

We limped back to Boston 1–5 on the trip, 3–6 for the season, and grateful the Red Sox and Patriots were keeping us buried on page 3 of the sports section. In a quirk of scheduling we had to play Toronto again at our place. Rinky Higgins got the start and we won 2–1. When a coach changes goalies and wins he usually comes right back with the same goalie. Rinky started again versus the Rangers but we lost 4–1. So Packy switched back to me and we closed out October with a 3–2 win in Chicago and a 4–3 loss to New Jersey.

We lost the New Jersey game on a power-play goal in the last minute. Their right point guy faked a slapper, then dished the puck to the left face-off dot, where their winger one-timed it into the net.
Thunk.
Goalies don't see goals. We hear them. We either hear the puck clank in off the pipes, crossbar, or metal centerpiece or we hear a muffled thud like someone hitting a bass drum when the puck strikes the padded base plate of the goal. If the puck hits the netting then we hear the roar—or collective groan—of the fans. It used to be worse. In high school the steel base plate wasn't padded and a low shot that beat you would slam into the net with the sharp
clank
that meant instant humiliation. I hate the sound of a goal.

One of the few good things to happen in October was my lunch with Faith McNeil. Because the team had a Sunday-morning practice, Faith and I planned to have a leisurely brunch at Sonsie. But Faith checked out of that. When I pulled Boss Scags into her driveway I found her dressed more for the NCAA Women's Basketball Final Four than for brunch. She wore baggy string-tied gray shorts, a sweat-soaked gray T-shirt, and a pair of beat-up Reeboks. She was shooting a basketball at a hoop suspended over her garage. Her hair was in a ponytail the way she wore it in college.

“Leave it to you to buy the only house in Chestnut Hill with a backboard and basket,” I said.

“The house didn't come with those. I bought them,” Faith said, launching a twenty-five-foot jumper that was nothing but string music.

“Three-pointer,” I said. I passed the ball back to her and made what I hoped looked like a token effort at playing defense (actually I was trying but I didn't want it to look that way). Faith drove by me and laid the ball in left-handed.

“Why don't we have lunch here and watch the Pats game,” she said. It wasn't a question.

Faith went upstairs to shower and I flipped through the Sunday papers. Lynne Abbott wrote her Sunday column on how the Bruins weren't going anywhere if we didn't get more scoring.

*   *   *

Faith made Cajun crabcakes—heavy on the crab and cayenne, light on the bread crumbs—and lobster salad sandwiches. We ate sitting on her couch watching the Pats-Jets game. She had a half bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne on ice. I rarely drink at lunch so I took a pass and had a Coke. Faith poured a few ounces of the champagne into a fluted glass. Strange. I'd never known her to be much of a drinker. It was even stranger when she poured herself a second glass just before halftime.

Halftime was a smile. The TV people did a feature on none other than Patriots Dance Team Coordinator and my ex-girlfriend, Missy Taylor. Missy said the Pats dancers were “an integral part of the total entertainment philosophy of Patriots ownership and a vital channel for the expression of fan enthusiasm and support.”

“Silly me,” said Faith. “I thought they were a T and A show.”

Midway through the third quarter with the Pats up by seven and driving, Faith laid her empty glass on the coffee table on top of a stack of
Robb Report
magazines, tucked her feet onto the couch, and laid her head on my right shoulder. I figured it was the champagne, the lunch, and the basketball workout combining to make her sleepy. I thought that for four more plays when, with the Pats first-and-goal from the five, Faith slid her left arm around my neck and said, “Rehab's over.” I was about to say “Mine or yours?” but I couldn't because at that moment I had a mouthful of Faith McNeil's tongue. Out of the corner of my left eye I saw the Pats score on a quick-out to the tight end just before Faith hit the Off switch on the remote and pulled me down on top of her. Why do women get to decide everything?

We missed the fourth quarter. We also missed Oakland versus Seattle at 4:15 and Giants versus Cowboys at 8:30, and we would have missed the 'Skins-versus-Colts Monday-night game if I hadn't had to get out of bed for a morning practice. On the continuum that has sex at one end and lovemaking at the other, Faith and I gave each other both.

At midnight we were at the kitchen table eating scrambled eggs and English muffins. She said it was so late I might as well stay at her house.

“You like living alone?” she asked.

“I don't find myself bad company,” I said. “I spend so much time with the guys, it's nice having a little time for myself. You?”

“I don't like Sundays,” she said.

“That explain tonight?”

“No,” she said. “What explains tonight is that I've known you since we were freshmen in college. You were the only guy I could talk to without thinking you were going to hit on me.”

“I didn't try out because I didn't think I could make the team,” I said in one of the hundreds of sports metaphors that had passed between us. We used the language of sport not as affectation but as a way of making ourselves clearer. I reminded her of the day when our history professor was almost finished taking attendance and Faith came rushing into the classroom. “You beat the throw,” said the prof, a baseball fan.

“Nope. I slid in under the tag,” Faith said, a better metaphor.

We cleaned up the kitchen and went back to bed.

I wouldn't have expected Faith McNeil to be a cuddler or a babbler but she was both. She had her left arm around me and for most of an hour walked me through her childhood and adolescence. She grew up in Cambridge, a suburb of Boston, and went to a Catholic grammar school and Cambridge Catholic High School, where she earned twelve varsity letters, four each in soccer, basketball, and softball. She sounded like one of those lost-in-the-glory-days guys we all know as she described almost every game of her high school career. I fell asleep with Cambridge Catholic trailing Wakefield by five in the Eastern Mass quarterfinals with two minutes to play and Faith on the line for the front end of a one and one.

When I woke up it was 8:30, which really pissed me off because it meant I wouldn't have time to go home and change before practice. Faith had asked me if I'd wanted to set an alarm and I'd said no because I'm a light sleeper and I've always had an internal alarm clock I can set for whatever time I want to wake up. On the road I leave a wake-up call if we have an early flight but that's just for backup. I'm always awake when they call. But I must have been so relaxed from my night with Faith that I slept an hour more than I'd planned to. I took a fast shower. Faith was half asleep when I kissed her good-bye. She said something that sounded like “Mmmmaahhbye…”

I felt happier, more buoyant, than I had in years as I drove Boss Scags through the back streets of Boston toward the Garden. But if there's one thing I've learned about Happiness it's that when Happiness is up and dancing it's only because Trouble is taking a nap or making a run to the convenience store for cigarettes and lottery tickets. Trouble doesn't stay gone long.

We had a ten o'clock practice and it was 9:30 when I came scrambling into the dressing room, the last guy to arrive. I'm usually the first. It didn't go unnoticed that I was wearing the same chinos and golf shirt I'd worn the day before.

“Even in college you had two sets of clothes,” Cam said.

“
GQ
called. They want you for the cover,” Jean-Baptiste said.

“Jean Pierre Savard, one of the eight hundred and twelve best-dressed players in the NHL,” Kevin Quigley said.

There were other remarks but I stopped listening when Cam, who has the locker to my left, said, “Gotta talk to you.”

I suited up and headed for the ice with Cam behind me. We skated to the visitors' bench, where we always stretch before practice. No one else was within earshot when Cam asked, “You spend the night with Faith?”

“And a fine night it was.”

“Good. Should've happened a long time ago. Guys she's been going out with are lighter than the women you've been going out with. But that's not the problem.”

Cam and I each put a leg up on the dasher board in front of the bench and began stretching when he said: “Sorry to screw up the afterglow, JP, but I've got bad news. The Mad Hatter's trying to trade me.”

Trouble was back from the convenience store.

Four

The vampire bats attacked me the moment I opened the door.

“Trick or treat, Mr. Savard,” said the first vampire bat, who was Lindsey Carter decked out in a bat costume the wings of which Tamara had made out of the remnants of an umbrella. “Trick or treat,” echoed the smaller bat, Caitlin Carter. Tamara and Cam stepped in behind the bats. I'd almost forgotten it was Halloween until Faith came over to watch
Monday Night Football,
bringing with her a few packages of miniature candy bars and two pumpkins. She'd also brought a scalpel with which to turn the pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns. Lindsey and Caitlin went to the kitchen to watch Faith perform some tricky maxilofacial surgery on the pumpkins. Meanwhile Cam updated me on our GM's move to trade him.

It was Lynne Abbott, Knower of All Things, who told Cam that the Hatter was offering him around the league, trying to swap Cam, a proven defenseman (and the one guy Hattigan can't control with money) for the forty-goal scorer we needed. Lynne said she'd heard it from her front-office sources in Vancouver and L.A. Lynne told Cam she planned to break the news later in the day on the
Boston Post
's Web site. Cam said if she waited two days she'd have a better story but that he wouldn't elaborate. Lynne said she'd give Cam only one day because of her fear of being scooped. Cam acted fast.

While Cam could have killed a trade by retiring on the spot, he was troubled and angry about three things: the public embarrassment of being traded as if he were a used Zamboni; the fact that if he refused the trade he'd probably have to retire—or be suspended—immediately, thus forfeiting his last chance at winning the Cup; and his awareness that somewhere in another city a fellow player would be hung out to dry, knowing his team tried to trade him but he was stuck with that team because Cam torpedoed the deal. Cam went for the preemptive strike. He met with Madison Hattigan Monday after practice.

“No matter what the goddamn question is, the answer is always power or money,” Cam's father likes to say. Cam learned the lesson. The Mad Hatter has authority but authority isn't power. Security guards have authority. Rich guys have power.

Cam didn't let on that he knew Hattigan was trying to trade him. Cam said he'd been thinking it over and he was going to retire at the end of the season. He wanted to give the club the “courtesy”—how the Hatter must have winced at that patronizing touch—of letting it know a day before he told the media. That bit of news and the certainty it would be made public the next day effectively canceled Hattigan's ability to trade Cam. No one is going to give up a scorer for a guy who's announced he's going to retire in eight months and can well afford to do so.

At first Hattigan, apparently forgetting whom he was dealing with, took the news as Cam's way of renegotiating. “Look, Cameron, if it's your contract … we can rework that. Have Denny Moran call me.” Moran is a lawyer and senior partner at Carter & Peabody. He's doubled as Cam's and my agent since we came into the league.

“It's got nothing to do with money,” Cam said. “I could make more money in the family business.” Cam wasn't bragging. “This is about going out on my own terms while I can still play. I'd rather leave two seasons too early than two shifts too late.” Then Cam pressed his advantage. “You'll be saving almost five million on my salary over the next two seasons,” he reminded Hattigan. “I know how you can spend a fraction of that and solve our scoring problems.”

“MIT won't clone Gretzky,” Hattigan said, trying to sound dismissive.

“Gabe Vogel wouldn't pay Gretzky,” Cam said. “And every GM in the league knows we can't score; they're not going to help us by dishing us a big gun.” Then Cam became what he described as “conspiratorially friendly.” “Madison,” Cam said. “There's a guy with the Rangers you can get for a torn puck bag. They've buried him on the fourth line. Paying him $475,000. The minimum. He gets maybe four shifts a game and when he's on the ice they use him as a checker. I'm sure you know Gaston Deveau, but no one in this league has any idea how good he is. Or could be if someone gave him a chance.”

“He's too small for the NHL,” Hattigan said.

“Henri Richard was small and he's got his name on the Stanley Cup eleven times. A record. I'd like my name on the Cup
once,
” Cam said. “JP and I played with Deveau in college. He should have won the Hobey Baker his last two seasons.” The Hobey Baker is the trophy that's supposed to go to the best player in college hockey but usually goes to a good player whose college has the best sports information director. “Gaston's thirty but he can still fly. You see what he did in Europe?”

“Look what Hitler did in Europe until the Allies sent in the varsity. Europe isn't the Show,” the Mad Hatter said, showing the typical NHL old-timer's prejudice against the European leagues. And against small players. But Hattigan—probably to end the conversation—said he'd think it over. He also said he thought the club should set up a formal press conference to announce Cam's retirement. “Let's you, Packy, and me take all the questions at once,” Hattigan said.