The Moonstone Starlet

Chapter 1

Practice was supposed to start promptly at 11:00 a.m. She was supposed to arrive at 9:00 a.m. to meet the coaches and be briefed for the day. She was supposed to have a meeting yesterday to learn about the game and pick up her press pass and parking pass. But instead she was on her way from the airport at 11:00 a.m.

When she finally arrived, the rink was alive with the sounds of hockey. A dozen skates scraped and cut across the ice. The crack of sticks, the thud of the puck hitting the wall. The bark of Coach Quennville putting the players through drills.

Elia finally came down the steps from the 100 level at around 11:45, being led by a security guard and followed by three cameramen and a boom mic operator. When she finally reached the bottom John could see she was on a phone call.

“Harvey, just relax. I don’t have the storyboards because I don’t give a fuck about storyboarding...My question is, why are you balking at the casting budget?...Colin is doing this, I need you to approve contract…I don’t have time to come to LA, I have a massive time commitment for the next 8 months, you can come to Chicago or talk to my assistant...I can’t talk anymore right now!” She held the phone away from her head now, the person on the other line was yelling incoherently. Turning around she handed the phone to one of the cameramen.
“Bill, can you take care of that?”
“Hello? This is Bill. I’m the cameraman…” The cameraman pulled the phone back, “He hung up on me.”
Another phone started ringing.

“How did he get the number to my emergency line, come on,” she sounded exasperated, searching for another phone in her backpack. She handed it straight to the cameraman, Bill.
“Hello? This is Bill. I’m the cameraman…Yeah he hung up again.”
“Do you know how to block numbers? Can you--”
“--Elia why didn’t you tell Sam to come with, I am not your assistant,”
“I’m not bringing Sam within 100 yards of here, are you kidding me? That little harlot, no. Which of you interns wants an extra $200 in your paycheck? Block this phone number on this phone!” The young man holding the boom mic grabbed the phone.

“Hey, Stan, I am so sorry, it won’t happen again, I was in Africa, my flight back got delayed--I don’t plan on going to Africa again until next year so--”
“---Look it’s fine, you are here now, let’s just get this started.”

She sat down on the bench and started changing into skates she pulled out of her bag. Her thin brown hair was pulled back into a pony tail and through a Yankees cap. She was wearing dark jeans, a white v-neck and an awkward grey sweater over it. It almost looked like it was on backwards, the collar was lower in the back than in the front where a half zipper was all the way unzipped. She slipped out of a pair of boat shoes, pulled some socks out of her bag. One of the cameramen was changing as well, and they chatted cheerfully as they laced up. Her demeanor was dramatically different than the previous meeting.
“You ready for this?” She asked the cameraman, Bill, sitting next to her.
“Yeah, I rollerbladed on the lakeshore path for like 10 minutes yesterday.”
“I hope you practiced while carrying a camera,”
“Yeah, I had a gopro,” they both started laughing.
The other cameramen were much younger, and seemed a little hesitant to join in on the laughter.

Elia and Bill stood up and held each other’s sleeves for balance.
“Okay let’s get real.”
Slowly Elia stepped out onto the ice, followed by Bill, whose top heavy figure looked very unsteady.
“Interns, do you have any questions?” Elia asked the other cameramen and the boom operator. They shook their heads as they skated out. Those kids could skate fairly well, especially since they were carrying equipment.

The coach had stopped practice and lined up the guys near the visitor’s bench where Elia and her crew had stepped on to the ice.

“Alright guys, we’ve talked about this already. Elia Downs is here to film some kind of documentary about the team for the season, and uh, just act like your regular selves. Try to keep your language clean though. Okay.” He paused and looked around. “What, I’ve got to say more than that?”

Elia stepped forward and offered her hand to him, “It’s nice to meet you, I’m Elia.”
“Oh right, Joel Quennville.”
“How long have you coached here in Chicago?”
“This is my second year here”
“Oh great, cool.” She scribbled some notes down on a piece of paper and turned to face the players.

“Hello everyone, I am Elia Downs. I am here to film your every step and every word you say and craft it in a way that makes people like you and want to buy tickets to your game. Please, don’t feel you have to act differently around me or anything, we will be with each other all year so might as well get used to it. Are you all wearing mics?” everyone nodded. “Okay cool. So, does anyone have any questions before I meet you individually?”

“Yeah, I do. Do you have a boyfriend?” a young man asked. He had brown hair that fell down to his large jaw line. Two small blue grey eyes looked at her from beneath his helmet.

“Your name? Number 37?...” Elia asked, looking down at a packet of paper.
“Adam Burish.”
“Ok, yes there you are…” she looked up from her papers.
“To answer your question, yes I do have a boyfriend, his name is Jeremy. Any other questions?”
“Uh, yeah, I have one more question. Do you think you will be breaking up any time soon?”

Elia’s eyes narrowed, and her left eyebrow raised. When her mouth tightened her high cheekbones and angled jaw looked exaggerated. She had anticipated the possibility of some of the men being assholes, but she hadn’t expected it to start this fast.

Quennville spoke up now “Burish, come on---” but Elia cut him off.
“Thanks Coach, but it’s ok, i can handle this.”

She skated up to Adam, and standing just a few inches from his face started to speak.

“Let me just break this down for you right now, Adam. Even if I am to become single, you are in no way included on a list of possible rebound bangs. For starters, you are from Wisconsin, and I just don’t do that. Two, you are from Wisconsin. Three, I don’t sleep with professional athletes because they typically just aren’t very good in bed, and I’m not about to test that theory with a hockey player.”
She turned around and started skating to the left end of the line.

“Okay, I think we’ve had enough with the questions.”

She made her way down the line, introducing herself to each player, asking them a couple questions each. Did they have a nickname? What was the most challenging part of getting into the NHL? Where were they from? She wrote notes on everyone down on her roster list.

“Number 88, alright, you are Patrick Kane?”
“Yes mam.”
“Where have I heard that name before?”
She looked at him quizzically, her eyes squinting slightly.
“Oh, are you that kid that got arrested for beating up a cab driver?”

Patrick looked down at his skates. Not only did Elia not know who he was based on his playing ability, but she also recognized him by something stupid he had done on one drunken night last month.
“Hey, you show me a person that says they’ve never wanted to beat up a cab driver, and i’ll show you a liar,” she patted him on the shoulder like they were old friends. “Do you know how many times I’ve been arrested?”
He looked up and shrugged, “No…”
“Yeah, exactly. Cause I have a sick PR team and amazing lawyer that keep that shit tight. Also! My number one piece of advice for life is to have a driver, don’t mess around with cabs. Anyways...My scouting report says you were a first round draft pick?”

He nodded. Elia didn’t know why, but the second she met Kane she felt like it would be a good year. Patrick was shorter than the rest of the guys. His blonde hair curled awkwardly around his face, and he had a nervous mischievous smile, but his pale blue eyes were kind and innocent.

“You’re the same age as my brother, Ryan.” She smiled at him.

Patrick didn’t really understand what was going on so he half smiled back. “I have three sisters, but they’re all younger than me.” She just nodded and stepped down the line.

The next player in line looked at her as if he were set in stone. His jaw was clenched, his big brown eyes hardened. For a second she looked in his eyes and felt as if she would crumble. She looked away from his icy gaze.

“So...you have a C on your jersey, which means….you are the Captain?” Her eyes flicked up to his face and quickly down to her notes again.

“Yes, I’m Jonathan Toews.”

“I’m sorry, can you pronounce your last name again?” She wrote it out on her paper as he sounded it out again.

“Ok thanks...So, they call you Captain Serious? Why is that?” She asked sarcastically.
“People think I’m serious.” He replied flatly.
Elia looked sideways at Kane, shooting him a smirk. He held back a laugh.

After about twenty minutes, Elia had finished meeting the players, and skated back towards the middle of the line.

“Thank you so much for taking the time out of your practice to meet me. I am so sorry I was late and had to interrupt you. I am going to really try to learn everyone’s names as quickly as possible, but please if I say your name wrong, don’t hesitate to correct me. Especially you two--” She pointed at Dustin Byfuglien and Niklas Hjalmarsson.
“Alright. I need someone to shoot with a bit, that is up for teaching me all about hockey. Patrick Kane? Coach is that alright?” Quennville nodded.

For the rest of the team practice resumed while Elia talked to Patrick about hockey. The two hit it off immediately, talking and joking about things that didn’t really make sense. They skated over to the goal and filmed Elia and Patrick talking to Antti Niemi, the goalie. Then Elia skated off the ice and went into the locker room with the equipment manager Clint Rief. They came back out with Elia wearing a helmet and some pads, and carrying a stick.

“Wow skating with a stick is so much harder!” She yelled as she rejoined Kane, who was now standing with Niklas Hjalmarsson and Tomas Kopecky. Adam skated up to them now.

“Hey, Elia. I wanted to apologize for my comments earlier. I just think you’re really beautiful and I want to get to know you better. Also, I think you are really talented, like, the episodes where you were in Entourage, that was a great performance.”
Elia laughed at him.
“I’m being serious, I thought you did an awesome job!”
“Do you realize you just complimented my acting ability based on my appearance in a show in which I was playing myself?”
“Well…I’ve seen other stuff that you were in too.”
“Oh yeah? What was your favorite?”
“I really liked the Poisonwood Bible. It was cool that your experience filming it inspired you to do so much charity stuff in Africa.”
“Did you read that on wikipedia?”
“No, I really thought that.” She looked at him skeptically, trying to decide if there was any sincerity in his voice.
“I also really liked The Mission. I gotta admit though, my favorite part was seeing you walk down that hallway,” He had made the decision easy for her.

The Mission had been a sequel to The Recruit, a movie about espionage and action. In one scene she walks down a hallway naked to seduce Colin Farell. She put her hands on his shoulders and leaned in close to his face.
“You think I have a nice ass?” Adam’s face turned to that of a kid that just got away with cheating on a math test.
“Yeah of course I do!”
“It wasn’t really mine, it was a body double.” She pulled back and started skating backwards from the key while the other guys started laughing at Adam, who looked devastated. Patrick said he had to get back to practicing something and skated over to Coach Quennville.

“Who wants to teach me how to shoot this shit?” She lifted her stick and pointed at Marian Hossa. He glanced at her and skated the opposite way. A red headed guy with an oddly confounded look on his face came over.
“Brian, right?”
“Yeah, hey. I don’t think you are ready to shoot, first you need to learn how to skate with the puck and pass. You actually skate pretty well already.”
“I took figure skating lessons when I was a kid...And I may have practiced once or twice before I came in here,” she laughed. Brian had expected her to be an uncomfortable presence for the year, but found her immediately disarming and warm. Instead of glamour and presumption she was kind of awkward. She laughed easily, and joked in such a way as to include everyone around her. In person she really just looked like a regular girl.

They skated around the ice on one half of the rink with the wall on their right side, passing the puck back and forth. Elia stumbled forward a few times, but only hit the ice once on a pass where she reached too far. She was doing pretty well, so Brian skated up a bit and asked her to pass it up the ice rather than across. She switched positioning on the stick and backhanded it to him. Just as he was about to receive the slow pass he was pushed into the wall by Adam Burish.

Elia started yelling “PENALTY!” and skated up to them.
“What the hell Burish?” Brian asked.
“What?” he replied, grinning.
“Go to the penalty box!” Elia yelled. “Why aren’t you receiving some kind of punishment!” She looked truly upset.

“Elia, that was legal hit,” Brian tried explaining the concept of boarding to her.

Elia’s jaw was dropped in astonishment. She couldn’t understand how its okay to hit each other. Adam was even more shocked that she truly knew so little about hockey. They spent the next five minutes telling her the difference between a legal hit and an illegal hit, about the strategy and the way you put a team together. Something about her was starting to shift, as if the game was starting to become exciting.

“Alright let me try this out.” She pushed backwards a ways, then started skating faster until she reached Adam. She tried slamming him into the glass but instead of him moving she bounced back off. Burish reached out to stop her from falling and both of them fell down onto the ice.

They lay on the ice laughing. From across the ice Toews yelled at them to get up and stop fucking around. Elia yelled back that she couldn’t get up. It was true, their skates had gotten caught up with her stick. When they finally both stood up they couldn’t catch their breath from laughing so hard.

Patrick stood across the ice with Toews. He was uneasy. Although he liked Elia, he could tell there was going to be friction between her laid back attitude and Jonathan’s serious demeanor. Especially if she continued to goof off at his practice.

He was right. A minute later Toews was skating towards them.

“You are being disruptive to practice.” Jonathan said, robotically.

Elia hesitated, unsure of how she wanted to proceed. She understood that she was probably a little disruptive. Okay, maybe more than a little. But she had a job to do too. He was disrupting her creative process. Maybe it would be better to cede now and push later?

“John and Stan gave me full access to the team, regardless of the setting,” yielding had never been her strong suit. If Jonathan had registered her aggression he didn’t show it.

“I want you to get off the ice.”

Before Elia had a chance to respond Coach Quennville blew a whistle and Toews turned away to face him. Practice was over. Everyone headed back to the locker room.

As everyone changed out of their gear somebody put the radio on. Elia started singing along to the radio without realizing it.

“They call me 'hell'
They call me 'Stacey'
They call me 'her'
They call me 'Jane'
That's not my name
That's not my name!”

Versteeg started singing along and Kane started dancing. Jonathan turned off the radio and hooked up his iPhone instead. Elia and Versteeg started chatting about karaoke and then announced they were going to Blue Frog that night and everyone should come.

“Serious question,” Elia started, “Do we start out with Kelly Clarkson?”
“I’m saying we go Black Eyed Peas all the way.” Kris replied.
“Wow. That’s bold. That’s a bold move.”
“That’s how I do it.”

The invitation was immediately accepted by most of the team, surprisingly even Toews. Elia had a quick meeting with John McDonough before leaving for the day. She had gotten a lot of good footage, and was excited about continuing on. Before she left she thought about asking John how much rein she really did have to interrupt practice. Instead she kept quiet.

Notes