There’s a loser in every relationship. We may not like to admit it, but one of us always gets a little more and one of us always gives up a little more readily.

Kira is sitting on the steps outside the house, breathing in through her nose, but her lungs never feel full. These forests can suffocate a person if she’s longing for something else, but how do you hold a family together if you think only about your own breathing? She’s been offered better jobs, far from Beartown. She’s been offered a managerial role in the firm she works at now, but it would have meant longer working days and being available on weekends. And that would be impossible, because weekends mean guitar lessons and training and hockey games. She has to sell programs and pour coffee and be a couple of kids’ mom and someone’s wife.

Naturally enough, her colleague, a fanatical antimonogamist, keeps telling her “not to put up with that shit!” But what is a marriage if you take away the infatuation? A negotiation. Dear Lord, it’s hard enough for two people to agree what TV program to watch, let alone fashion an entire life together. Someone has to sacrifice something.

Peter gets out of the Volvo with a bunch of flowers in his hand. Kira has an extra wineglass on the steps beside her. White flags. In the end she smiles, mostly at the flowers.

“Where did you find those at this time of day?”

Peter blushes. “I picked them from a garden. In Hed.”

He holds out his hand, touches her skin, and their fingertips touch tentatively.

* * *

It’s only a hockey club. Only a game. Only pretend. There will always be people who try to tell Alicia that, and obviously she’ll never listen to them, the little brat. She’s four and a half years old, and tomorrow she will knock on Sune’s door again. The old man will teach her to fire hockey pucks harder and harder at the wall of his house. The marks on the wall will be like the grandchildren’s drawings other old men pin up on their fridges: tiny etchings in time to prove that someone we love grew up here.

“How are you getting on at preschool?” Sune asks.

“The boys are stupid,” the four-and-a-half-year-old says.

“Hit them in the face,” Sune advises.

The four-and-a-half-year-old says she will. You have to keep your promises. But when Sune walks home with her later, he adds, “But you have to be a good friend to the kids who haven’t got any friends. And you have to defend the ones who are weaker. Even when it’s hard, even when you think it’s a nuisance, even when you’re scared. You always have to be a good friend.”

“Why?” the girl asks.

“Because one day you’re going to be the best. And then the coach will make you team captain. And then you have to remember that a great deal is expected of anyone who’s been given a lot.”

The girl doesn’t know what that means yet, but she will remember every word. Every night until then she dreams of the same sound. Bang. Bang. Bang-bang-bang. Her club lives on. She’s blessed enough never to really understand what happened this summer, how close it came to dying, and how it came to survive. And at what cost.

* * *

If you live with the same person for long enough, you often discover that although you may have had a hundred conflicts at the start of the relationship, in the end you have only one. You keep slipping into the same argument, albeit in different guises.

“There’s a new sponsor—” Peter begins.

“The paper’s already written about it online, everyone’s talking about it,” Kira says.

“I know what you want to say,” Peter says, standing at the bottom of the steps in front of their home.

“No. Because you haven’t asked,” Kira replies, and drinks a sip of wine.

He doesn’t ask now either. Instead he says, “I can save the club. I promised Maya that I’d—”

Kira’s grip on his fingers is gentle, but her voice is merciless. “Don’t drag our daughter into this. You’re saving the club for your own sake. You want to prove to everyone in this town who doesn’t believe in you that they’re wrong. Again. You never get through having to prove that.

Peter grinds his teeth. “What am I supposed to do? Let the club die while people around here . . .”

“It doesn’t matter what people think,” she snaps, but he cuts her off in turn: “My death was announced in the paper! Someone threatened my life!”

“Someone threatened our lives, Peter! Why the hell do you always get to choose when this family is a team or not?”

His tears fall onto her hair. He squats down in front of her. “Sorry. I know I have no right to ask any more from you. I love you. You and the kids. More than anything . . .”

She closes her eyes. “We know, darling.”

“I know the sacrifices you’ve made for my hockey. I know.”

Kira hides her despair behind her eyelids. Every autumn, winter, and spring the whole family lives according to the dictates of hockey, raised up to the heavens when the team wins and tumbling headlong when it loses. Kira doesn’t know if she can bear to put herself through yet another season. But she still stands up and says, “What’s love if we aren’t prepared to make sacrifices?”

“Darling, I . . . ,” Peter says, but tails off.

Kira is wearing a green T-shirt. The words BEARTOWN AGAINST THE REST are printed on it. She bites her cheeks, broken by what she’s giving up but proud of her choice. “Tails called. He’s selling them in the store. Our neighbors were each wearing one when they got home. Christ, Peter, they’re both over ninety. What sort of ninety-year-olds wear T-shirts?”

She smiles. Peter’s eyes dart about in embarrassment. “I didn’t know Tails . . .”

Kira touches his cheek. “Tails loves you. Oh, how he loves you, darling. There may be people in this town who hate you, and you can’t do anything about that. But there are far more who worship you, and you can’t do anything about that, either. Sometimes I wish you weren’t indispensible to them, that I didn’t have to share you, but I knew when I married you that half your heart belongs to hockey.”

“That’s not true . . . please . . . ask me to resign, and I’ll do it!”

She doesn’t ask him. She spares him from having to reveal that he’s lying. You do that if you love someone. She says, “I’m one of the people who worship you. And I’m on your team, no matter what. Go and save your club.”

His answer is barely audible. “Next year, darling, just give me one more season . . . next year . . .”

Kira hands him the wineglass. It’s either half full or half empty. She kisses her husband on the lips, and he whispers “I love you,” his breath mingling with hers. She replies, “Win, darling. If you’re really going to do this . . . win!”

* * *

Then she goes into their house. Sends an email to her colleague: “Can’t take the premises. Not this year. Sorry.” Then she goes to bed. There are three women in the bed that night. Only three.

* * *

The reporter from the local paper calls Peter late that night and asks straight out, “Can you confirm the rumors? Is there a new sponsor? Can you save the club? Have you appointed a female coach? Is Beartown still going to play Hed in the first game of the season?”

* * *

Peter gives the same response to each question; then he hangs up.

* * *

“Yes.”

17

Smells Blood and Catches Fire

On the wall of Richard Theo’s office, beside the picture of the stork, is a printout from the website of the Ice Hockey Federation. It’s the schedule for Beartown Ice Hockey’s season. First game: Hed Hockey.

A fly makes its way in through the open window. Theo doesn’t kill it, just lets it buzz about, more and more lost. He recently read a book about terrorism in which a historian drew an analogy with a china shop: a lone fly can’t overturn a single teacup, but a fly buzzing in the ear of a bull until the bull panics and rushes into a china shop in a rage can accomplish any amount of devastation.