New York is New York. Feels fake, in a way. Sort of like a dream, taken right out of a movie, superimposed from a projector. Walking around and everything feels unreal. Shane had been in enough capital C cities to know the taste of them, the way they smelled, but this one was different; not even different, just everything. All the cities in one. Every single one of them composed into one living, breathing image. 

They lose the game, anyways. 3-2. Hunter gets the last goal in, a once in a blue-moon hat-trick; Shane knows the stats. Afterward the team tries to drag Shane out, tell him it’ll feel better in the bars, tell him he’s gotta find some girl and fuck her hard enough until it goes away, the embarrassment, even though they don’t call it that. Embarrassing in itself, really. Shane wiggles and twists until they leave him alone, even though they never really do. By some twist of fate the flight gets scheduled to the evening the next day. Red-eye, if Montreal was further away. Ample time to sleep away the hangover, texts Comeau in the group chat that Shane never opens, except when there’s nothing to do. He ends up going to sleep at nine in the evening. 

Sucks to be u, texts Lily, at two in the morning. I cant believe u lost to that old fuck.

Shane stares at the light from the phone in the dark. He’s awake, of course, even though he was asleep five minutes ago. He tosses and turns for a long while as the clock ticks, up, up, up, and then swallows the lump of pride in his throat, and texts back.

Fuck you.

Lily sends an emoji. Tongue sticking out, winking. Shane wishes it made him annoyed, or disgusted, or something that could be put into words, stacked together, as easily as anything. Reasoned. This message, he ignores; doesn’t text back. Lets it live there, on his phone, thinks about if Rozanov notices the Read receipt, if he cares. Thinks about how that makes him feel, thinking about Rozanov, like a hot-fire poker in his belly. The embarrassment is a heavy blanket that lets him block all the notifications, shut his eyes and slip into a fitful sleep.

Last time, when him and Rozanov met up. After, Shane had hid all the embarrassment in the scratchy pillow case: Rozanov liked when he was loud enough, but that time Shane had wanted to be quiet, like he was in any way taking the control back. Rozanov hadn’t put up a fuss. Groaned, the same, when he pulled out. 

Ugh, he had said, rubbing his hip with a big palm, half his body propped up against the headboard. He was frowning. Shane was still out of breath, face halfway hidden in the sheets, so it didn’t register as strange that Rozanov was making himself comfortable instead of jumping up and playing hot potato with his clothes. 

What, breathed Shane. He was sweaty. He wanted to shower, but his legs wouldn’t move. His belly felt tight.

Hunter, said Ilya, elaborating, running his hand in circles on the big purple splotch on his skin. Checked me into the boards. 

I hate New York, he added, after a second. 

Shane’s brain still hadn’t caught up to the present, so he found himself muttering: Isn’t it the same as Boston. The type of thing his mind thought up when there was no filter, no script to follow.

Rozanov turned an incredulous eye in his direction. His eyebrows were way up. He looked — silly, or something. Shane almost laughed, at the way the expression pulled at his face, the way it completely changed it, transformed it into something Shane had never really seen, not on the ice, not in the hotel rooms, not in the time in between when he laid on the couch with his hand between his thighs and the television blaring bright, watching Rozanov drone on and on about hockey, his own personal shame.

You are crazy, Hollander, said Rozanov. This must be a Canadian thing. I didn’t think you were stupid.

Hey, said Shane, and it came out as a whine. He was still out of it. Later, when he’d remember this, he’d put his face into his hands in the shower, red with it, his ears hot. So embarrassed it leaked and curdled over into humiliation. He wanted to bunch up and disappear. Even when he thought this, he knew he’d make the same mistake next time, because there was always a next time, because no matter what he told himself in that split second of time before knocking on the hotel room door, it always turned out and ended with him swallowing down bile.

It’s okay, said Rozanov, his voice smooth like honey; he was laughing at Shane, with his eyes. Maybe I fucked you too hard.

Fuck off, said Shane, into the pillow. They fell into a strange silence. Shane could hear the clock ticking: on the nightstand, maybe, but mostly in his mind. He forced himself to count the seconds in-between seconds. How long would Rozanov last? He was bad at sitting still on a good day, when they were at the rink, so seeing him languid and slow, just breathing, made Shane feel like he walked into a store right when it opened. People were supposed to be there, but they weren’t. Rozanov wasn’t even bouncing his leg. His eyes had a strange far away look, half-closed, dark under his long eyelashes.

We should sleep, murmured Rozanov, into the paused, open air. He was still looking straight ahead. His chest rose, fell. His mouth was partway open, his lips wet, shiny. 

Then something clicked back into place. His pupils became small, alert again. Shane watched, as if in slow motion, as the muscles on his arms tensed; as his chest picked up the pace. Rozanov shook his head as if spooked. When he turned towards Shane, he was grinning, all of his bone-white teeth.

Shower? he said, the way he said Take it, Hollander, an hour ago, pushing Shane into the bedsheets with his arm. Shane glanced at his hands: big hands, rough hands, hockey-hands. Absent-mindedly, still missing that vital script, he wondered if Rozanov picked at his fingers; his palms, the backs of them. Such big hands, so much skin. So much ground to cover. The moment was gone. Shane wondered what it was, the thing that Rozanov was so lost in thought over. 

He wakes up at six in the morning. 

What are u gonna do in NYC, Lily has texted. This is new, because usually there are no double-texts, no questions, not ones that can be answered normally, anyway. Shane stares at the message for a while, up in his notifications bar, so it doesn’t mark it as read. He stares at it some more while he brushes his teeth. Six am and the flight isn’t until nine in the evening. They have to be at the airport three hours before. With this much time to kill Shane should sleep in, relax, snore the way Hayden is snoring, still in his streetclothes on top of the comforter. 

Instead he pulls on his sneakers, puts on some sunglasses, a black hat. Makes his way down the stairs, because he doesn’t feel like waiting for the elevator. Sound is nonexistent until he steps out into the street, and then it’s the only thing. Blinds him, for a moment, from the inside out. White-flash of it, surprise. His phone buzzes, once, twice. His brain stumbles, even though his body is a long solid line.

I know ur awake, texts Lily. Shane suddenly wants to turn around, spin in circles; he feels distinctly uneasy. He feels like he’s being watched, which is not a new feeling, but it is new in the form of this. All inside out. Bare; known.

eat a bagel, pinges his phone. Shane stares at the words, incomprehensible to him for longer than he’d like.

Later, when Rozanov had finally left, Shane lay there in the dark, counting his hot breaths against the pillow. There was some buzzing outside, the constant commotion of a busy city. He had to be awake early next morning but every time he closed his eyes he’d get flashes of his own imagined face, mouth open, pathetic and drooling for cock. Like watching back an awful game tape. That moment when you grit your teeth because you don’t want to look anymore.

Sprawling of street. It looks longer than it is, the way these New York streets do. It only takes him ten minutes to walk from one end to the other, ten more minutes to get back. There’s a grocery store selling fresh vegetables around the corner. After it, the line of the street leading into some strange collection of stores, ones he never really sees in Ottawa. It’s chilly here, colder than back at the hotel. No matter how much his breath warms the air around him the seawater whisks it all away, brings it back to the ground. Heat doesn’t rise in this place. It makes him shiver in his jacket, almost a tremor, feeling it all the way deep to his lungs. 

The storefronts are old. Leaning into themselves, a little, shrinking into the brick. Stacked next to each other like legos. Type of stuff he’d see in a movie, maybe, which slowly becomes his only point of reference. Clothing stores selling old t-shirts, dresses. Jewelry, sometimes. Dolls on every windowfront, toys everywhere. Old women in the street with blankets on the ground next to them selling purses. 

On the walls, words, words, words, letters he can recognize, a little, but not understand. Feels, a little, like trying to solve a puzzle. It makes it all sound louder. Blaring. He thinks about Rozanov, about meeting him when he was eighteen, smoking and leaning against the wall. The sign next to his head a big proclamation. NO SMOKING. Surely Rozanov could tell from the drawing. There were universal marks for everything, right? Still, moving around in word wonderland — all it does is make his head hurt. The moment he thinks he can grasp something it slips away from him, a fish in the water. After a while even walking becomes a chore. His head hurts. He keeps hearing bits of conversation that his ear catches but doesn’t decode. It’s so continuous that he ducks into the first building he sees.

A record store. Smells like dust, like old things left out for too long. When Shane walks in, a man in glasses at the counter glances up at him. Just the barest hint of a smile. Здрасте, he says, like Shane is supposed to know what that means. His own tongue is stuck to the roof of his mouth. He nods, sharp, and angles his head to the side; pushes his body towards the shelves, even as his eyes swim, not catching any meaning in the letters strewn about. Everything looks like fucking Japanese, back when he was twelve and his mom tried to make him learn. Why did he come in here? What would this help? What would it do, really, except embarrass him? Nothing, probably. His hands move on their own accord. He picks up random CDs. They have American ones here, some old rock’n’roll, stuff his dad listens to, but to the side there’s that sickening Cyrillic again.

Могу ли я вам помочь? Comes a disembodied voice from the side. Shane jumps: genuinely, startles. His hands knock forward into the shelf. Click, clack. 

“No,” he blurts, too loud, aware vaguely that he’s embarrassing himself, and then turns around and walks outside again.

Ten more minutes of walking. Other direction. Finish the street. His head is pounding. There’s a word that seems to be repeating but half of Shane can’t tell. This same word appears so many times against a white background on these buildings, the same exact letters, and every time, Shane still can’t read it. Familiarity doesn’t breed anything. There’s a CVS on one end of the bunched up stores. The other, the street opens, transforms into a beach. Where that seawater smell was coming from. In a moment of what feels, to Shane, like craziness, he bends down, and toes off his shoes.

The beach is rough and ugly and it’s too windy outside for there to be many people. It feels grey. For a brief moment, Shane tries to be the type of person who gets revelations in nature, but all he can think about is his beating headache, the sand at his toes, the text that he didn’t open because he didn’t want to give another part of him away. 

He makes it to the airport on time. Hayden is trying to stay awake in his stiff blue seat but failing miserably. The rest of the team complains about their shared hangover. Shane smiles, tightly, and tries to stop bouncing his foot.

What are u gonna do in NYC, the message still says, up in the notifications of his phone. He’s been holding onto it so long it’s warm now. Shane swallows against grain, feeling turned-out, embarrassed, humiliated, like he is nothing more than a jagged piece of glass; everybody can see everything, all the way through, all the way down. Hiding wasn’t a possibility; it wasn’t even an option. He would never have any control over that.

He breathes; blinks, rapidly, squinting against the screen light. The airport is a loud, cacophonous creature around him: all the blaring white signs are in neatly stacked English. Exhales, and at the point when there is no more air in his lungs, opens the text thread.

Walked around, he texts back, still feeling the sand at his feet. 

Boring, answers Lily. Shane waits for a follow up text, but it never comes. 

Another flash, instead. Imagination, now, not memory. It makes him feel buried all the same, the way it sticks to his eyelids. What if he called, what if Shane told him, what if they were the type of people to ask how the day went and listen to it and laugh at all the right moments. 

based off very vague memories of a new york trip long long ago

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