There's a Shark in My Hockey Pool (16 page)

Derek lowered his head. There. He'd said it.
There was no chapter in the Common Law Manifesto that covered this
tough topic. Everybody was different, the degree of difficulty
always changed ... but a purge was a purge was a purge. She should
be crying by now. He looked back at her to see how she was taking
it. The purge had turned to paradise.

There were tears welled up in her eyes
alright. But they were happy tears. The kind that rain down at
wedding receptions and airport arrival gates ... massive cloudburst
outbursts that don't dampen the proceedings or cancel flights.

Helen felt a hot flash and hoped it wasn't
menopause. He'd said he didn't deserve her. She couldn't remember
the last time Derek had put her up on a pedestal. At the same time
there was a low, nagging suspicion that somebody had some bad
cheese from Copenhagen. But she'd been wasting away for years ...
and Derek was now throwing compliments her way like sausage samples
at the grocery store. This was an improvement, a small step for
chapel chasers, but a giant leap for their relationship.

She racked her brain to try and remember
where she'd put her black lace teddy. She'd only worn it twice for
Derek. Once after the opening of Derek's company ... and the other
following a Mike Allison overtime goal in the 1987 Norris Division
Final against Detroit. The Red Wings went on to win the series and
Helen's teddy went into deep hibernation. Until tonight. She
gleamed at Derek.

"Sometimes you say the sweetest things."

... 4 ...

Artie poured over a newspaper ad featuring a
belly dancer with an hourglass figure. Her high cheekbones and
higher forehead made her a dead ringer for his Aunt Mildred in
Peterborough. His aunt also had a moustache that rivaled his own.
The belly dancer's veiled face made this a moot point. Aunt
Mildred's belly was bigger too. Artie wondered if this made his
aunt the better dancer of the two. There was something about the
jump-start jiggling of a belly dancer that blurred the line between
looking erotic or ready to erupt.

He turned back to the ad. There was more. In
bold type it described an appearance scheduled for 8 o'clock that
night at the Caravan Club by the great Maharishi Fishi, a
spoon-bending psychic from India. To the right of the belly dancer
in the ad, was the swarthy swami ... looking very smarmy. He had
his chin cupped in one hand, with an expression on his face that
reminded Artie of the split-level eyebrows that fell to the
basement level with Don Adams every week during the 1970s aboard
the Get Smart elevator.

Derek sat nearby, reading the Hockey Bible.
He was staring at the "Player Transactions" section and his heart
skipped a beat when he thought he saw "Helen" in the copy. Closer
inspection found the word to be "Helena".

"Here we go," Artie said.

"Eh? What's up?" Derek looked up from the
tabloid and saw Artie and the newspaper.

"Hey, I thought I told you we're not taking
any players from the damn classifieds. This isn't some bloody house
league team."

"No, no. The Maharishi Fishi is in town
tonight."

Derek returned to his paper, nonplussed.

"You can go if you want. I'm not into those
foreign ballets."

"He's a psychic," Artie said. "The guy can
bend spoons."

Derek's attention spanned the distance
between them once more.

"Now there's a way to get out of doing the
dishes."

"Hey," Artie said, "he could give our players
the positive mental attitude they need to beat Herculean."

Marcotte mulled it over. Hammond may have
something. Derek had always been impressed by the motivation that
Red Kelly had achieved when he used "pyramid power" with the Maple
Leafs in the seventies. The players had stacked their sticks
together under a makeshift shrine of Leafs towels, pucks and
underarm deodorant that was topped off by a pyramid.

The ease of this locker room exercise wasn't
lost on the players. There were no tarot cards to memorize or the
leg-locking yoga-nomics of transcendental meditation. All they had
to do was sit back and ... believe. Darryl Sittler less so than
others. He had achieved his own cosmic plane a few years previous
in a game against the Bruins, when he'd scored six goals and
assisted on four others.

At each news conference Kelly would calmly
relate to the media how the sticks usurped the synergy that effused
from the base of the pyramid. The media was quickly entranced as
the Leafs sailed on into the second round of the play-offs -- heady
stuff for Toronto teams of the post-Keon era.

Several other teams had employed
psychiatrists to help the players focus. It made sense -- but it
didn't. Hockey was a thinking man's game. It was also the world's
fastest team sport. When a player stood beside the goal wondering
whether to pass or shoot, there was always a third thought to
consider. Will the net magnets release when the defenseman crunches
my head into the post?

Derek was sure these team psychiatrists liked
to believe they were a little psychic. It came with the
territory.

"What time is the show?" Derek asked.

The downtown Toronto street was lined with
market stands and their fresh supply of produce. Derek and Artie
strolled along the sidewalk. Artie stopped in front of one of the
fish markets.

"Wait a second. I'll be right back."

Artie stepped inside the open air market,
leaving Derek to look at the vast array of seafood. He hadn't eaten
seafood in a long time. Shrimp was okay ... as long as it was
breaded. The sight of seafood triggered memories of a hockey
banquet he'd attended when he was 17. The ballroom his hockey
league had rented adjoined another large room that was booked for a
Japanese wedding. During the course of the evening, some of the
hockey players had snuck out doors for a smoke or to grab a beer
from a two-four in the trunk of a car. Derek covered all the bases,
sneaking into the Japanese ballroom as well ... to partake in the
sake and sushi spread.

What followed was a night-long ascension to
the porcelain thrown, during which he swore off all brands of beer,
raw fish and Japanese baseball.

Derek shuddered and watched as Artie
approached the owner of the stand. Following a brief conversation,
Hammond gave the middle-aged man a pair of tickets. He clapped the
man on the shoulder and returned outside to Derek.

"What was that all about?" Derek asked.

"Oh. That's Louie, an old friend."

"Old friend, eh? I thought we agreed any
complimentary tickets we give away would be to relatives."

Artie reached into a plastic bag-lined box
filled with halibut and crushed ice ... and took out a handful of
ice. He popped some of it into his mouth and gestured towards the
traffic on the street. Derek's eyes never left Artie's half-full
cheeks, swimming with fishy ice.

"We lived over on Dundas when I was a kid. In
the summer, my dad would go fishing every weekend. I, uh ... wasn't
the outdoor type ... so I stayed home. My mother would send me over
here whenever dad came home empty handed."

Artie grinned.

"I saw a lot of Louie."

"I hope your old man had a sense of humour."
Derek said.

"Oh, Ma wasn't trying to rub his nose in it.
As a matter of fact, she always had me buy something exotic ...
something that Dad wouldn't have been able to catch in any lake
around here."

"Exotic. Right," Derek said, exiting the
stand between the Arctic char and Caspian squid.

At the Caravan night club, a teal-turbaned
doorman collected money from the patrons filing past him. The
management of the Caravan recognized the hard economic times facing
much of its East Indian clientele. Several cowbells had been
accepted in lieu of funds. A sign beside the doorman read: "TONIGHT
ONLY ... THE MAHARISHI FISHI". Beneath the sign was a metal rack
that contained flyers for real estate and $99 Persian carpets.

The Maharishi's show had just ended. Artie
and Derek made their way down the hallway backstage. The carpet
beneath their feet stank of cigarette butts and Southern Contort.
The dim glow from the lone light bulb in the hallway minimized the
extent of carpet damage. Artie remembered the rack of rug ads at
the front door. He recalled how the car of a mechanic also usually
went lacking for repairs.

Derek stopped in front of a door with a
yellow piece of foolscap taped eye level to it. On the paper was a
list of six names. The top five had been crossed out. The name at
the bottom read, "Maharishi Fishi".

"This must be the place, " Derek said. "He's
all yours, Artie. Go ahead, knock."

Artie looked a little nervous.

"What does one say to a Maharishi?"

"I'd advise against playing twenty
questions."

Artie knocked twice on the door. It opened
almost immediately. The Maharishi Fishi stepped into the doorway,
wearing a gold turban and maroon silk cape. Derek hadn't seen so
many tassels since his high school graduation.

"Excuse me, your ... uh, excellency," Artie
said. "My name is Arthur Hammond and this is my business associate,
Derek Marcotte."

"You two are scampering around the country
like decapitated chickens, so you can save your sausage ... in this
game called hockey?

"Uh ... how'd you know?" Derek asked.

"It is my nine-to-five working day to know."
The Maharishi took a quick look down the hallway in either
direction, then gestured to Derek and Artie to enter.

"Come in. Come in quickly. Please dirty my
welcome mat."

Artie and Derek ducked into the Maharishi's
dressing room behind him. Derek closed the door behind him.

"Expecting someone?" Derek asked.

"You are wrong and right at the same time. I
am not expecting someone, but someone may be looking for me ... and
I am not wanting this person to find me.

As the Maharishi spoke, his left eye narrowed
while his right eye opened wider.

You see, some one with my statue is not
without difficulties. No, siree, bobby. Every city I visit ...
every town my hat hangs up in ... gives me much problems. They tax
me like tomorrow will never happen. Little problems that keep
growing."

"Damn GST will kill ya," Artie said.

"No," corrected the Maharishi. "I mean little
... as in ..." He reached out with his hand and measured a height
about three feet from the floor.

"Oh, boy," said Derek and Artie in
unison.

The Maharishi collapsed into a refurbished
mauve easy chair and wallowed in guilt.

"The women of your country were heels over
head in love with the Beatles ... and rolling rock ..."

"That's, uh ... rock'n roll," corrected
Artie.

"Thank you very much. These ladies are as
lonely as pencil pals and chasing willy-nilly after Willie Nelson
and middle-of-the-street gurus like me. At first I paid no money to
attention. It was life in the very quick lane ... and when I make
my curry, I always cook for two."

The Maharishi winked at Artie.

"But before I believed my eyes, I was making
so much curry for so many, many people ... I felt like a Mister
Mickey Dee's drive-thru-this-way. These horny housewives wanted to
know everything. Who shot JFK? Where was Elvis? Was there
Hog-in-a-Daze in heaven? I was concentrating so much for them, my
turban was tightening around my head like a cobra with a cuckoo
bird."

"I was running my onions through the
check-out line one day at the Wiggly Piggies ... and I picked up
one of those garbage can magazines. I could not imagine what I was
seeing ... when I read a story about a psychic's head exploding.
Then and there ... 4 o'clock at 152 Landmark Street ... I built up
my mind to never cook curry for more than six."

He ran his hand through his thinning
hair.

"I went home and told four of the women that
they would have to hit the freeway. They called me all the words in
the textbook. Then they wrote me a naughty letter with many four
letter words ... and one word that was nine letters long. It was
paternity. I was standing beside myself with surprise ... because
two of them had never seen Mr. Winkie."

The Maharishi paused with one eye shut,
mentally counting.

"The women say five of the children belong to
me because of D-N-A. Put a cross in my heart, I only put M-S-G in
my curry. I think they are giving me the negligee, I mean slip. I
must warn you. We are only itching the surface of the scary stories
that never get the daylight turned on them."

"The two women who did not see Mr. Winkie
then said I had used my mystic powers to ... how did they put it
like poets? ... to fog up their feminist viewpoint. I promise you I
am bending spoons, not making rain. One of their hairdressers knew
an entertainment lawyer who was very rich. I was shaking in my
galoshes."

Derek and Artie looked at him, hoping their
concern appeared genuine.

"I got out of there like a bat escaping hell.
For six years I have been outside the lighted spot, playing banana
number two on the psychic circuit. Next year will be very lucky for
me, I am sure. I am feeling much better, thank you very much. I
even picked up my sitar for the first time last week since Allah
knows when. I was practising the Beatles White Album. Would you
like to hear it?"

Derek looked at his watch.

"Perhaps next time. We're pushed for time and
... were, uh ... wondering if you might take us up on this ...
hockey thing."

Derek couldn't believe what he'd just said.
Yet there was something in the air and it wasn't Southern Contort.
It was a strange aura that suggested, while this psychic may be a
few hundred bricks short of a pyramid ... Marcotte hated leaving
any of those bricks unturned. If speaking in tongues at center ice
would help him beat Erskine, he'd do it.