Page 66 of Sure Shot
Twenty-Two
Bad Juju
Tank
On the road,we have a morning off in Anaheim, so Coach puts an “optional” morning skate on the schedule.
If you’re me, that shit isn’t optional. The new guy who isn’t setting the world on fire yet can’t take the morning off. So I show up, skate hard, and then hit the weight room at the hotel where we’re staying.
Hotel workout rooms are a pretty mixed bag. Sometimes you find four pitiful stationary bikes and a handful of dumbbells. But this is California, where people care about fitness, and the place is equipped with two solid benches and two squat racks, both with a perfectly adequate number of plates.
I claim a squat rack and fish out my phone to put on some tunes. When you’re the first guy into the weight room, you get to pick the music. It’s one of those unwritten rules of the gym, along with wiping your sweat off the bench and replacing the weights on the rack when you’re done.
Moving my body feels good. I don’t think I could have made it through the last five months without skates, weights, and sweat. Today I’ve got “Aint No Man” by the Avett Brothers on the Bluetooth speakers, because that song always reminds me to keep my chin up.
So it doesn’t sit well with me when Anton—the young defenseman—starts trash-talking my music while we’re taking turns on the squat rack. “What is this…Texas music? I’m not sure we can have Texas music in the gym. It’s bad juju. We got that Dallas game coming up in January. We gotta stay sharp.”
I let out a beastly grunt as I rise out of my last squat, and then let the barbell drop onto the supports with a clang. “Fuck.” That set almost killed me, and it makes me feel old. “Pretty sure the Avett Brothers are from North Carolina. Which is nowhere near Texas.”
Anton towels off his hands and then shakes his head. “I hear a Texas twang. It’s a fact.”
“Uh-huh.” I roll my eyes.
“Say—you don’t have those little green underwear anymore, right?”
“Sorry?” I lean over to stretch out my quads.
“Those tiny green underwear from that ad you shot? I think you gotta burn them. It’s the only way to get the Texas out of you.”
“Burn them? You’re insane.” I’m ninety percent sure I don’t have any of the underwear from that old photo shoot anymore. But I don’t want to give these idiots the satisfaction.
“We’re very superstitious,” Castro says from the bench press. “An underwear bonfire exorcism wouldn’t be crazy at all around here. It’s just, like, Tuesday, you know?”
“I hear the Texas twang,” Anton insists. “It’s giving me the heebie-jeebies.”
“Don’ttouchthat speaker,” I grumble.
My playlist moves on to a different song, and thankfully Anton shuts up. The room is getting a little crowded, and I’m grateful to be almost done with my workout. The music shifts to “I and Love and You.” It’s another great Avett Brothers song, and it’s about moving to Brooklyn, oddly enough.
The funny thing is that I always liked this song, even before the chorus became my reality. Life is weird.
“Nowthisis music,” Anton says. “Hear that, guys? This is a band that belongs in Brooklyn.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I should probably keep my mouth shut, but I just can’t. “It’s the same band.”
“What?”
“It’s thesame band—the one you decided was Texas music.” I lift a forty-pound plate off the barbell and return it to the rack.
“Nah,” Anton says, shaking his big head. “No twang.”
“What?”
“It can’t be. I know twang, and I don’t hear twang.”
“The boyknowstwang,” Castro says from the opposite corner, where he’s stretching. “He can feel the twang in histhang.”
These goofballs can choose their own music, because I’m out of here. “Y’all have a good day.”
