The Meaning of Hockey, Final Week!

The honeymoon suite at the Fifth Avenue in downtown Portland seemed the perfect blend of romance and good taste. Bobby had flown down the day before Christmas to personally inspect seven different hotels and had settled on this one because in it there was nothing garish or bold. Not only was the décor subtle, but so were the romantic touches.

The spacious rooms had been carved out of an early twentieth century department store and the entire neighborhood was being restored rather than bulldozed. Bobby felt certain Frida would be pleased.

On the suite’s walls were original works by local artists. Seen first, as one entered the room was a large canvas layered with a blue-white wash of acrylic, looking almost like ocean waves. In the top right and bottom left corners of the painting were lips. On the wall behind the bed was the companion painting. It was similar, but on this one the lips were closer together in the middle of the canvas, about to touch.

The plain, king-sized bed was covered with a quilt made from six-inch-square fragments of a Van Gogh painting of irises. A thin white border surrounded each fragment, giving the entire quilt the look of a magnified version of the complete canvas.

On an antique New England pine table near the window was a white vase bearing two yellow roses whose stems had been twisted together. Beside the vase was a basket-shaped wine bucket containing two consecutive vintages of Sumac Ridge sparkling Chardonnay that Bobby had purchased in Vancouver. Beside it were two crystal champagne glasses.

Bobby had also brought along the team’s dressing room ghetto blaster plus two Bessie Smith, two Louis Armstrong, two Glenn Gould and two Tracy Chapman CDs.

They had taken a cab from the Rose Garden across the Willamette river to downtown. They had gotten out of the cab two blocks away from the hotel, just to walk the rest of the way holding hands in the light evening mist.

Frida walked slowly around the room, looking at the paintings, rubbing her hand along the quilt, smelling the flowers, smiling at the labels on the wine, before returning to Bobby who remained standing by the door. She kissed him on the cheek.

He smiled, proud that she had noticed the touches he had felt she would appreciate.

She took off her gray woolen coat to reveal a starched white cotton blouse and simple blue skirt. He hung the coat in the closet and then removed his Totems’ team jacket and hung it as well.

Frida went back to the table to open the earlier vintage of her favorite wine while Bobby set up the ghetto blaster and loaded Bessie Smith’s Greatest Hits. She handed him a glass of wine and they touched glasses.

“I want us to toast ‘today and tomorrow’,” said Bobby.

“Today and tomorrow,” said Frida.

They tasted the wine and then Frida sat on the edge of the bed. Bobby sat beside her.

“What are we going to do?” said Frida.

“What do you want to do?” said Bobby.

She smiled. He smiled. The smiles disappeared into an awkward silence.

“I feel like we’re on our first date,” said Bobby.

A look of mock horror came over Frida’s face. “You want me to get a bucket?”

She giggled and he swallowed the remainder of the wine in his glass and placed it on the table. She handed him her glass and he placed it beside his. He returned to his spot on the bed beside her and picked up her left hand to hold between both of his.

“We should talk about this before we go too far,” said Frida.

“Too far?” said Bobby. “Finding you after all the years was going too far. Learning who you have been and who you are, was going too far. Having takeout Chinese at your house was going too far. Talking to you for hours on the phone from Spokane was going too far. Watching you cry when you went through your mother’s stuff on the island, that was going too far. Seeing you smile when Noam Chomsky showed up for dinner, that was going way too far.”

He pulled her hand to his lips and kissed it.

“This can never be far enough.”

They leaned towards each other and kissed. She pulled back.

“Would it be so hard just to wait until we find out the score from the game in Seattle,” she said.

“It would be absolutely, totally, most definitely, the hardest thing that I ever faced in my entire life,” said Bobby. “Even harder than that time when I was 14 and you dared me to take off all my clothes and make a naked angel in the snow in Crescent Park.”

Frida smiled. “I forgot about that.”

“You kept your clothes on.”

“We’ve waited all these years and you’re 49 and I’m 50 and sex just isn’t as big of a deal as when we were teenagers.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Bobby as he reached over to touch her chin and run his finger down her neck, onto her blouse and between her breasts.

She closed her eyes, but continued to speak. “We could go downstairs and have dinner and by the time we were finished you could phone Seattle and we’d know the score.”

“I know the score already,” said Bobby as his fingers climbed back to the collar of her blouse and he twisted open the top button. “Those lucky bounces that Portland got this afternoon on all of their goals — that was Mother Nature telling me I shouldn’t own a hockey team.”

“Maybe it was Mother Nature telling you that strange things happen and Seattle will win,” said Frida.

His index finger and thumb undid the second button. And the third.

“The point is I don’t care,” said Bobby. “I don’t care whether or not I own a hockey team.”

“That’s not true,” said Frida. “I see you with those young men and your son. They love you and you love them. This hockey team has been the best thing ever.”

“That can’t possibly be true, because you are the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

He undid the last button.

“The point is I want to make love with you more than anything,” Bobby said.

“Are you sure?” Frida said, then smiled as she checked out his equipment.

First he pulled at the right side of her blouse and then at the left, freeing the tails from under her skirt.

“I want to feel your skin,” he said as he rubbed the palm of his left hand across her belly, brushing underneath her breasts, “more than I want the money Anderson is going to steal from me.”

She lay back on the bed, her blouse open. His hand skipped over her breasts, the hairs on his forearm barely feeling the soft white silk of her brassiere and his fingers ran along her lips, her cheekbone and her forehead.

“I want to touch your face more than I want to own the hockey team.”

He leaned over to kiss her and press his chest on top of hers.

“I want to kiss you more than I want to make sure Brad never returns as coach of the Totems.”

He pulled back and kissed her chin and then her neck.

“You have shown me the way to contentment and I need to prove to you and to myself that this is an inner contentment that will last because of who I am, not because of what I own or what I do for a living.”

His left hand gently brushed across her left and then her right breast.

“I need to make love with you now, when for business-sake it makes sense not to, because business is not as important as us.”

His hand pressed harder against her breast.

“I need to feel your breasts through your brassiere like that first night outside your mother’s house.”

His fingers moved up to her neck and then quickly back down under the smoothness of her bra.

“I need to feel your nipples get hard to the touch of my finger. I need that, not a year from now or a day from now or an hour from now when it’s safe, but now. Now. Right now.”

Next Chapter: Friday

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