Although he would never admit it, Jonathan Jones wanted to go to Colorado badly. He loved absolutely everything about that idea: the city, the fans, the stable of quality players they were slowly gathering together. Although precedent, PR, and good common sense dictated that when asked he should smile and say something like “I'm just happy to get the opportunity to play in this league ... any team will do...” he definitely had his heart set and one particular organization.

If he had to he would buck up and learn to love where ever the draft sent him, but he wanted that place to be Colorado. He had wonderful images of himself in their colors, patrolling the blue line, living in some sick house with a view of the Rockies.

So it was with some distress that he left his combine interview with Colorado. Playing it back in his head it was definitely the most awkward of all his interviews. Something hung mysteriously over head and was referred to in passing but never mentioned outright. To say that he was worried was an impressive understatement... did they know? And if they did ... how did they find out? The events that had transpired in that hotel bathroom six months ago were supposed to be kept secret, yet the little looks, and sharply worded comments and leading questions about how he liked his teammates all seemed to suggest that something had seeped through the vows of secrecy.

Then the question became ... did they know too much or not enough? Had they heard bits and pieces and dreamed up something totally outlandish? Or...?

He didn't know what to do so he didn't do anything. He answered their questions like they were the same questions anyone else had asked him and he hoped that was enough.

Somehow he strongly suspected it wasn't.

If Colorado did know ... how many of the other teams knew?

* * * * *

Gregg Avery was lowering his arms on his fourth rep at the bench when he looked up and almost decapitated himself. Above him was a face that hadn't been there before: nose like a little mouse, wide eyes, baby soft skin. He startled and slipped on the 250lb barbell.

Fortunately the new face also had quick reflexes and caught the bar before Gregg succeeded in crushing his own throat.

“Shouldn't you use spotter?” the boy commented, his accent was slight but discernible.

“Well,” Avery grunted as he lifted the bar and sat it back in place on the rack. “Clearly that is you.”

The boy said nothing, hopped two steps back and made a show of looking around while voices drifted in from the hallway. Gregg knew who he was, not by name, but by very abstract tentative concepts and experience. The draft was coming up and this kid was about the right age, which meant that St Louis thought he might be around when they got to pick and wanted to take a closer look at him. There were usually about three or four every year. They would come, tour around the facilities-- a polite show that served more to test how the prospect really felt about the team rather than sell the finer points of St Louis-- then submit to whatever quirky coordination and fitness tests were not covered in the combine, then probably the management would take them out to dinner to observe the boys in their natural habitat and make note of any egregious variation from the normal hormonal-jock-jackassery.

Gregg Avery had not been a first rounder, so he had never gone through this himself, but he could recognize the routine.

“What's your name kid?”

The boy blinked. He was nervous standing in front of even a nobody like Gregg just because he was a real live pro-hockey player. It was cute, but he'd better get over it fast because it was also likely to get old.

“Kirill,” he said after a second pause.

“Grill?” Gregg frowned. “Like the thing you cook hamburgers on?”

“No! No ... ummm ... it's Kirill actually. With a 'K'.”

“Ah.” Avery didn't say what he was thinking: that sounded like the name of Doctor Frankenstein's other, slightly less competent, assistant. Should Igor need to take a sick day to see his chiropractor, certainly it would be a Kirill who would fill in.

“What position do you play?” he asked while his mind was still going over little scenes with Kirill the monster building temp.

“Defense.”

“Offensive or Stay at home?”

Kirill considered the question for a bit longer than he should have. Avery found this amusing, either his English wasn't as good as he was pretending or he was worried if he admitted he played a solid stay-at-home role instead of the ultra glamorous Bobby Orr game, Avery would sneak off and feed this information back to the decision makers.

“I am more ... conservative. But I can score goals too.”

“Good.”

He expected that to be the end of the conversation, after all some of the other boys were wandering in now and with them their Conditioning Trainer was setting up some of his idiosyncratic exercises on the mats at the far end. But the boy-- Kirill-- surprised him by staying put instead of trotting back to contort himself into strange balance testing positions, then he said: “you are ... Avery, right?”

“...Yeah. What have you been researching us?”

“A bit,” the Russian in his accent came out much stronger as he shrugged shyly. “I look at all the places where I might go in the draft.”

“And what do you think about St Louis?”

Another shrug, more undecided than flippant. “It is interesting city. But you I remember because you scored that tying goal second round of playoffs.”

Only a few months ago Gregg Avery would have become flushed with overwhelming smugness at that comment. But now it hardly seemed to matter because despite his big dramatic game tying goal they had still lost the game and ended up going no further. Now all that remained of hockey for him was to watch someone else play someone else in the finals. He wasn't especially interested in that.

“So ... what part of Russia are you from?”

“Moscow,” Kirill said. His surprise was obvious. “You know who I am?”

“No,” Gregg said. “I took a guess. I used to play with a lot of Russians-etc.”

Kirill blinked softly at the suffix '-etc' and Avery opted not to explain himself. It had been a long year. A long year filled with heartbreak. He felt like he was million years old already, and now he had to start it all over again.

* * * * *

Randy Chambers stared out the window of his hotel room while the phone was crammed between his shoulder and ear. In the back of his mind he was imagining the Discovery Channel narration that would play over this scene in the future where the strange customs of sports tribes were studied by ethnographers world wide. As ridiculous as it was, there was a bit of puff and strut to deals. The only place where haggling survived in America really.

“Look Jim, I'm not going to give you Tumanov and Dekkecon for the fourth and some third liner you've got shoved away. Did you see Nikky's stats for last season? He's still in his prime!”

Making trades required one part car salesman, one part day trader, and one part PR manager. The actual value of the players was only as important as the perceived value, and this looked bad. A straight up two for two? Especially when one of the two was a headliner and another didn't even have a name yet? It was unacceptable.

“Unless you throw in some cash,” Chambers added suggestively.

* * * * *

If Alex was surprised when he opened the door there was no indication. He didn't blink, didn't fidget, didn't even shift his weight. Blue eyes only briefly and robotically scanned up Cici's body to identify him and then the Russian stood, body blocking out basically all but a sliver of the apartment behind him, waiting.

When Cici grinned back at him but said nothing, Alex finally asked, “Did he send you here to check up on me?”

“Sort of,” Cici admitted. “I told Marty I was coming into town this week and he asked me to stop by and see how things were going with you two.”

Alex grunted in response and seriously considered slamming the door in Cici's face.

“So ... how are things going?” the cheerful Czech prompted dutifully and in response Alex sighed and left the door open so that Cici could follow him in for the inspection he clearly intended.

“Misha,” Alex said, grabbing Gabby's attention away from the bright idiotic cartoons he was watching. The older Russian nodded towards Cici and continued, “stand up a let this man see I haven't starved or sexually abused you.”

Alex wasn't entirely sure why he'd specified sexual abuse, seeing as such subtleties of translation were lost on Cici's piss-poor pidgin Russian and it barely got a response out of Gabby beyond a confused twist of his lips.

The younger Russian stood, raised his arms and for some reason turned slowly around like a model moving for a tailor.

“You two not getting along?” Cici asked with a frown.

No, it was actually just the opposite. They were getting along smashingly: Gabby was quiet and stayed out of his way, didn't take up much space, didn't impose in any obnoxious ways. But because Alex was, despite his best attempts to pretend otherwise, not a soulless human being he felt compelled to somehow accommodate like any marginally good host would. Gabby playing it so quiet  necessitated that Alex go and ask him things like: what would you like to do? what would you like to eat? do you like pork or would you prefer fish? and about ten thousand other idiotic questions that he hated asking and that Gabby only answered with a shrug and the barest minimum of syllables required.

“It's fine ... and anyway it will be better in two weeks.”

Cici raised an eyebrow at him. “What happens in two weeks?”

“...Nothing.”

“No ... really. What happens in two weeks?”

Despite the irritation of forcing Alex to actually be a human being, Gabby was remarkably useful in other ways. For example, he had an excellent sense of timing, a sixth sense that told him exactly when to spontaneously start flipping through the channels at high speeds in the most irritating way possible. Alex reached forward and snapped the remote out of his young grubby hands and looked pointedly at Cici as if this was his fault.

At which point Cici changed the subject and Alex marveled at the efficiency of that maneuver.

“Hey, are you guys going to watch the draft?” the Czech asked.

“Why would I do that?”

“I dunno ... brings back old memories: tiny future hockey players and their families, the stage, the big board with their names, the silly glamour shots they make them take afterwards ... don't you remember your draft day?”

Alex shook his head. “Russian players weren't allowed to come back then.”

“Oh right ... sorry, I forgot. Well aren't you just a little bit curious about who we're going to draft?”

The Russian shrugged, tossing the remote back and forth in his hands as Gabby subtly scooted towards the television to continue his annoying channel flipping manually. “Why would I? When was the last time New York played a player they had drafted?”

“That's really besides the point. It's exciting!”

“No it's not,” Alex insisted. “It's a bunch of idealistic kids being rescued from horrible little Canadian towns only to be dumped in even more horrible little American cities.”

“Wow, I don't know if I can handle this much optimism from you ... Sasha,” Cici commented sarcastically.