Hammer and Curl

Traci Ryder was twenty-four years old, and she had spent most of those years with a hammer in one hand and a nail in the other, so when people at the Maple Leaf Curling Club asked what she did for a living and she said carpenter, they usually did that little laugh, the one that went oh, a woman carpenter, how quaint, and she had learned to let it slide off her like snow off a metal roof.

She was not so good at letting things slide at the curling club, though. Curling was the one place where nobody could tell her anything. She'd been throwing rocks since she was old enough to legally buy beer, for four years now, since her twenty-first birthday fell right at the start of the season and her uncle had celebrated by paying her club fees as a joke that turned out to be the best gift she ever got.

Her boss, Asher Davies, owned the small construction firm where she framed houses five days a week. He was forty-eight, never married, quiet in a way that Traci had originally read as boring and had slowly come to read as just quiet. He taught an adult ed carpentry class on Tuesdays too, which meant he could explain the same thing three different ways without ever sounding annoyed, a skill Traci admired more than she ever said out loud.

The first time she noticed anything different about him, she couldn't even tell you the date, just the night. It had been a league game back in November, and Asher had come out to watch, sitting up in the warm room with a coffee like a bunch of the guys from the site did. Traci had been skipping her team, which was unusual but not unheard of, and she'd called a tricky raise that nobody thought would work, and it had worked, and the whole bench had cheered.

Except Asher had leaned forward instead, elbows on knees, watching the next end with this total focus, and when one of the lead throws came up light by two feet, he'd muttered something under his breath. Traci couldn't hear the words but she could see his mouth move, see the little frustrated twitch of his jaw, and something in her chest did a weird flip, a jolt, like when a nail gun misfires an inch from your thumb. Sudden and sharp and gone before you can name it.

She'd spent the rest of that game sneaking glances up at the glass instead of watching her own rocks, which was embarrassing, and she'd driven home that night thinking, well, that's stupid, he's your boss, he's old enough to be your, well, not your dad, but your dad's weird friend anyway. It didn't stop it from happening again. Every time she caught him caring about something, really caring, the jolt came back, and she'd started to suspect it wasn't going away on its own.

* * *

The sign-up sheet for the annual mixed-doubles tournament went up on the corkboard by the club's front desk on the first Saturday of February, and Traci was standing there with a pen before the frost on the windows had even started to sweat.

"Looking for a partner, hon?" asked Dot, who ran the desk and had run it since roughly the invention of ice. Dot was sixty-something and knew everyone's business, which she considered a public service.

"I'm entering solo for now," Traci said, writing her name at the bottom of the sheet. "I'll fill in a partner after."

Dot sucked air through her teeth, the universal sound of bad news incoming. "Sweetheart, the field's been full since Monday. Mixed doubles needs two registered names on a line, and every line's got two names except yours. I can't hold a spot for a ghost."

"I'll find somebody," Traci said, capping the pen with more force than the pen required. "There's two weeks. Somebody's partner always pulls a hamstring or discovers their wife is having their baby during the tournament or whatever."

"That's sweet," Dot said, in the tone of a woman who had heard a lot of sweet things evaporate. "I just don't want you showing up draw day with nobody and being heartbroken about it."

"I don't get heartbroken," Traci said. "I get even. Write my name down."

Dot wrote her name down, or rather uncrossed it out of the maybe column and into the entered column, and shook her head the whole time, and Traci walked out to her truck feeling pretty good about a situation she had absolutely no plan for.

* * *

The problem solved itself three days later in the most annoying way possible.

They were on a coffee break at the site, Tuesday afternoon, the two of them leaning against Asher's pickup out of the wind while the rest of the crew argued about whether a certain wall was supporting weight, which it was, it obviously was, and Traci was halfway through a thermos cup when Asher cleared his throat in that way he had, the way that meant he'd been rehearsing a sentence.

"So," he said, looking out at the frozen job site like it was interesting. "You're signed up for the tournament. Dot mentioned it."

"Dot mentions everything," Traci said. "She's a public utility."

"Right. Well." He turned his coffee cup around in his hands. "My partner, Marcel, he broke his wrist Saturday. Skiing, of all things, and the man hasn't skied since the nineties. So I've got a spot on a line and no body to fill it, and I heard a rumor there's a carpenter standing at the desk with a ghost partner problem."

Traci looked at him. He looked at the parking lot.

"You're asking me to be your partner," she said, because she wanted it said out loud, plainly, no weaseling.

"I'm asking you to be my partner," he agreed. "Mixed doubles, two weeks of practice, and a vintage ham radio to the winners, which I understand you've been telling everyone you're going to win."

"I have been telling everyone that, yeah."

"Then you need a body," he said, and there was the smallest grin under the mustache, the one he almost never let all the way out. "And I need a thrower, because my draw has gotten honest-to-god embarrassing since I stopped playing regular, and I'd rather lose with a good teammate than lose alone."

Traci made him wait a second, just on principle, sipping her coffee while the wind tried to get down her collar. The truth was the jolt was already going, right on schedule, because he'd come to her instead of asking one of the old boys up in the warm room, and that meant something even if she couldn't say what.

"Alright," she said. "But I'm skipping. You're sweeping and calling line. And if you tell me to calm down in a game I'm leaving you on the ice."

"I would never tell you to calm down," Asher said, hand over his heart like he was swearing in front of a judge. "I've watched you throw. Telling you to calm down would be like telling a table saw to relax."

"See, you get it. That's why the crew likes you." She finished her coffee and crushed the cup. "Practice when? And I swear, if you say Tuesdays, you've got your adult ed class Tuesdays."

"Thursdays and Sunday mornings," he said. "The ice is dead those mornings, we'll have the sheet to ourselves."

"Sunday mornings," Traci groaned. "You're trying to kill me."

"You're twenty-four," he said, climbing back into his coat. "Sunday mornings are what youth is for."

"Wow, okay, grandpa," she shot back, and she loved, really loved, the way he laughed at that, a real laugh, head back, not the polite site-supervisor chuckle. "Pick me up at seven Thursday. I'm not driving to the club in the dark, my truck's got a marginal heater and I'm cheap."

"It's a deal," he said, and then, quieter, like he was only saying it because the wind was loud and she might miss it, "Thanks, Traci. Marcel was going to be tough to replace."

"We'll see," she said. "Marcel never fixed my coffee the way I like it."

He had no idea what she meant by that, and she had no intention of explaining, and she went back to the wall with a grin she kept pointing at the ground so nobody would ask questions she couldn't answer yet.

Thursday came around and at seven sharp the pickup was idling outside her place, and Traci came out with her bag and two coffees and found Asher already holding the door for her like they were going to a wedding instead of an empty rink. He'd shaved closer than usual, she noticed, and he had a new looking wool hat on, and she decided not to say anything about either thing because she was trying very hard to be a professional athlete about this.

"You're early," she said, dropping into the seat.

"You said seven."

"I said pick me up at seven, which means arrive at seven oh five and act like traffic was bad. There's no traffic in Thunder Bay at seven a.m., there's never been traffic in Thunder Bay."

"Noted for next time," he said, pulling out. "You want the radio on?"

"I want you to tell me the truth about how rusty you are so I know what we're working with."

"Terrible," he said cheerfully. "My guard weight's a coin flip and my draws are coming up short by four feet or going long by six, nothing in between."

"So what you're saying is I'm going to be carrying this team."

"Basically what I'm saying, yeah."

* * *

The club was empty except for Dot up front and the ice tech somewhere back by the compressor, and the sheet was scrubbed and pebble fresh and absolutely silent, that dead quiet you only get on empty ice, the kind of quiet Traci had loved since she was twenty-one and her uncle paid her first year's fees and she walked into this building for the first time thinking it would be boring and finding out instead that it was chess with brooms and nobody had told her.

Asher was slow getting his stones sorted, and she watched him out of the corner of her eye while she stretched, and sure enough his first draw came up four feet short just like he'd promised, and his second one sailed clean through the house like it owed him money.

"Wow," she said.

"Don't."

"I'm just saying, that was a full scouting report you gave me in the truck."

"I did the math on the way over, I've got roughly eleven good shots left in the tank and I intend to spend them wisely."

"Okay, hot shot, throw another one and let's see the tank."

He threw another one, and it was short again, and she bit down on the laugh but not all the way, and he pointed a brush at her like she'd personally caused it.

"This is what I think about you," he said, sliding back down the sheet. "You're enjoying this too much for somebody who needs a partner."

"I'm enjoying it exactly the right amount. Now come here, because your sweeping is worse than your drawing and that's actually the fixable part."

That was mostly true. His line calls were fine, better than fine, he read the ice like a set of blueprints, but his sweep pressure was all arms and no legs, and he was leaning too far over the top of the brush which killed half his weight before the stroke even started. She'd been watching guys sweep badly for four years and she had convictions, real ones, the kind she usually kept behind her teeth around the old boys who didn't love being coached by a twenty-four year old woman with a tool belt attitude.

With Asher she didn't keep anything behind her teeth, and that was getting to be a habit already.

"Stop, hold it right there," she said, coming around him as he set up for a sweep. "You're hunched. Look at you, you're curled over that brush as if you are a question mark. Get your grip lower." She put her hand on his forearm and slid it down the brush handle. "Lower. There. Now get your shoulders over the stone, not ahead of it."

"Like this?"

"Half of it. Here." She moved behind him, close, and put her hands over his on the brush, one on the grip and one further down the shaft, and she pressed the angle the way she wanted it. "Pressure goes down the ice, not down through your knees. Push with the top hand, guide with the bottom."

"Okay," he said, and his voice had gone kind of careful, and she realized how close she was standing, close enough that she could feel the heat coming off him through two layers of synthetic.

"Anyway," she said, and she did not take her hands away, was the thing. She told herself she was adjusting his grip one more time, and maybe she was, a little, but mostly she was standing there with her hands over a forty-eight year old man's hands on a curling broom at nine in the morning on a Thursday and her heart was doing something unprofessional.

"You're still holding on," Asher said, not unkindly.

"I'm checking your angle."

"Uh huh."

"Shut up and sweep," she said, and let go, and he pushed the stone and swept it the whole way down with actual proper pressure for the first time all morning, and it stopped on the button, and they both yelled about it like they'd won a Brier, which honestly it kind of felt like they had.

"There it is," she said. "That's the stroke. Do that every time and I can just throw and look pretty."