I arrived at the Merry Widow at a not-so-late hour. Nick, as ever, was on the bar. The Irregulars lined it. Games played out on the screens. Nick knew the betting lines, the scores, and the times left in each. He knew the starting goaltenders and those who’d been pulled and replaced. The Irregulars gazed foggily at the game directly in front of them, and some didn’t even recognize the teams’ sweaters. Nick didn’t have a deep bench. The third-liners among the Irregulars were fractured souls, some displaced, and the fourth-liners irreparably broken. Polo was the Irregular sitting closest to the door. Nick and the Irregulars called him Polo because they’d given up trying to pronounce his surname. Polo was reading a back issue of Lidové Noviny that his sister had sent him from Prague. Polo’s an owlish, unassuming old-timer who went to the Merry Widow to immerse himself in hockey, the game he loved, and to forget the women who passed through his life, though with less frequency lately.
