Hockey Coach (Part 2)

The game begins. A tall man dressed entirely in orange is hammering slapshots at everyone: at a goalie with his mask up having a drink, at a girl that has fallen on the ice, at two people in the crowd, at the coaches in the boxes, even at the Zamboni driver as he is closing the gates to the ice. I hear two men laughing and discover that they are sitting on chairs on the cement floor. Their skates grate against the cement floor. – You two had better show me what’s in those bags, I say to them. – Screw off, faggot, they say. I look at my clipboard to write a complaint, but the form has become one of Van Gogh’s paintings covered with little numbers and lines. My assistant is wrestling with one of the men for a cassette tape. I hear a moaning, and look back to see Fat Matthew, the fattest boy from my high school, wearing nothing but a jock strap. He’s grown man now, his body nothing but dark hair, blubber, and welts from where the pucks have hit him. He’s crying, being hauled off to the penalty box by a coach who has him by the hair. An explosion at one end of the rink made shards of ice fly in every direction. The man in orange comes flying around the net, using his hockey stick to keep a football up in the air. I decide to head to the dressing room in order to decipher the Van Gogh. But the man in orange is coming right at me. He spins around backwards and smashes the football right at me.