The Moonstone Starlet

Chapter 19

“Come on, put it in, put it in, put it in...SHOOT IT. COME ON. FUCCCKK!” Elia paced the Blackhawks suite in the United Center. It was the middle of March and they were tied 3-3 with the Capitals in overtime. Elia knew Jonny would already be pissed they hadn’t finished it in regulation, but on top of that he had been in a slump for the past six games. If he could just get an assist or a score in this overtime period...Elia’s whole body felt tense thinking about it. The clock was ticking down. Sharpie intercepted the puck in the neutral zone and took it down the ice. He shot it straight into the goalies glove. Elia swore, loudly, slamming a rolled up magazine against the empty seat in front of her. Less than two minutes left. The Capitals controlled the puck in the Blackhawks zone, the pass to Niklas Backstrom, the shot. It was in. The Madhouse went silent. Elia chewed on her lip, not moving, just staring at the ice. Her phone rang. She answered it without looking.

“Talk to me.”
“When photos are uploaded to yfrog they become yfrog’s to distribute. Unless they decide to pursue charges, Ok! can use any photographs posted there. They weren’t copyrighted, you have no legal right.”

Elia unrolled the magazine she was clenching. The tabloid cover was a photo of Elia with a black eye, wearing a bikini, standing with Paul, holding drinks and showing off new matching tattoos in an alley in Belize City. The headline read “Elia Out of Control!”. Inside the article had several more pictures which apparently led to the conclusion that Elia was partying out of control. In a way, they had partied out of control. One night somebody had accidentally lit a beach gazebo on fire on the island, but that wasn’t even addressed in the article.

“It’s not fair that they are making money off of pictures Biz posted on Twitter.”
“If you want to take this to court--”
“--No, let’s just forget it. But can you look into finding a way for us to be in control of photographs from now on?”

She finished talking to her lawyer and hung up the phone. When they had gotten back from Belize, Paul had posted a bunch of pictures on Facebook and Twitter, which wasn’t a big deal. But Ok! magazine had decided to take half a dozen and run a story on them. Now everyone was talking about them. Elia and Diego Luna skinny dipping. Ellen Page, Emma Watson and Orlando Bloom maybe smoking a bowl. Paul drawing on a passed out Elijah Wood’s face. Just some island shenanigans, nothing unusual. Elia wasn’t that upset about the pictures, but some of the other guests on the island were more private, and had asked Paul to remove a lot of pictures. The other problem with the pictures was Paul himself. Elia had a waiting list of people wanting to be invited onto a team for the annual game and were livid at seeing someone get to jump the line. When Billy Boyd had to cancel last minute on Elia’s team of course getting an athlete in top shape was an advantage. It was all annoying crap that Elia didn’t want to deal with at the moment. She had a bigger problem at hand right now, which was Jonathan.

She headed down to the locker room. It was always interesting to see how the players handled a loss. Some, like Byfuglien or Kane were able to let it roll off them. Sure, they were upset, but they didn’t let it sink in and fester, like Jonathan or sometimes Sharpie would do. Dave and Keith would get angry, but they could direct that intensity back into the game fairly successfully. A lot of the guys took it in stride, watching the playbacks in the conference rooms and learning from mistakes. Planning how to get better next time. Jon wasn’t talking to anybody. He was storming through the locker room and the showers like a dark cloud, finally shutting himself in one of the meeting rooms alone. When he came out an hour later, Elia was upside down with her heels against the wall, supporting herself on her forearms.

“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Pincha Mayurasana,” She replied, falling over. Yoga was not her strong suit.

Jonathan rolled his eyes and walked down the hallway. Elia followed after him. He ignored her for a while, then came to the conclusion she wasn’t going to leave and told her to go home. He didn’t want to meet the team out for dinner, he wanted to be alone. She said they didn’t have to go out with the team, she would stop at Whole Foods and pick up something to cook. He reluctantly agreed. Elia didn’t want to push him too much, and it ended up a very quiet evening at her house. She made steak with a chimichurri yogurt sauce and an israeli couscous salad. They ate dinner while watching “Angels and Demons” on Netflix Instant. Jonny started talking a little towards the end, wanting to discuss the differences between the book and the film. They talked about Dan Brown books for a while before Jonathan mentioned he hadn’t read the most recent one because of hockey. At the mention of hockey he was back in his zone. He thanked her for dinner and went home.

A few days after the Blackhawks lost to the Capitals, they flew to California to play the Ducks. The change of scenery hadn’t helped, and the Blackhawks lost 2-4. Jonathan had not only failed to score, but had lost a face off that indirectly resulted in a goal. To a normal person that might seem like a coincidence, but it was Jonny, and he internalized everything. Elia was trying to figure out a way to help him take his mind off himself so he could just get back to playing normal. She was starting to think extreme measures would be needed.

The team stayed in California to play the Kings the next day. The morning before the game Sharp was walking outside to make a phone call when he saw Elia standing up on a hill to the right of the hotel, smoking a cigarette. She was standing next to a bag and holding something in her hand. He walked over to see what she was doing, wondering if she was plotting another prank on him and Burish. She nodded hello to him as he walked up, then continued looking out down the sidewalk. It was if she was waiting for something, but apparently not him. It was unusual to see her out without Kane. He asked her what she was doing.

"Sharpie, do you think Tazer has been acting weird lately?"

He knew what she meant. Toews was always really hard on himself. He was working himself out of a slump, that much was clear. His healthy eating and working out had become even more obsessive in the past week, but it wasn’t exactly weird for Toews to be like that.

"He's been beating himself up about his playing lately." She continued.
"What have you got in this bag?" Patrick asked, peeking into her bag. It looked like balloons or bean bags or something. She wasn't listening to him.
"Do you know the one thing I've recently discovered I'm good at?"
"Making hockey videos?"
"Besides that. I have an incredibly unique talent at pissing off Jonathan. And the way I see it, he can't be mad at himself if he's busy being mad at me."

Sharp looked at her, confused. Then he saw what she was waiting for, Jonathan walking back from the parking lot. He was returning with Quennville from an interview with the local press.

"Can you hold this?" She said, thrusting a plastic y shaped stick into his hand.
"Is this....a slingshot?" He asked. She didn't respond, just took his hands and turned them in Johnny's direction. She took one of the balls out of the bag and set it in the rubber band holster. Looking at Jonny, she lined up Patrick’s hand, pulled back the elastic and let it fly. It struck Jonathan in the chest and exploded in red.

"Elia, are these paint filled balloons?!?"
"Yeah, you might want to get out of here."

From 150 meters away Jonathan yelled. He looked around confused at first then saw Elia. Sharpie side stepped away, handing the slingshot back to Elia. She took a final drag of her cigarette before tossing it into the grass and pulling another paint ball out of the bag. She launched it and it landed in front of Jonny, a splash of purple sprayed the front of his suit pants. He yelled again like a wild beast and started running towards Elia.

"Run Sharpie, save yourself!" Elia yelled.

He kept backing away.

Elia kept launching balloons until Tazer was about twenty feet away. He was yelling incoherently, various colors of paint all over his clothes and his face. Sharpie thought he made out “THIS IS A $5000 SUIT,” but couldn’t be sure. Jonny reached Elia and wrapped his arms around her, smearing paint all over her. She pushed a balloon against his head until it exploded, covering both their faces with red paint. They were both yelling and screaming, grabbing more paint balloons out of the bag. Elia tried to run away at one point but Jonathan grabbed her arm and they both slipped on the paint drenched ground. Jonathan started yelling “STOP,” getting on top of Elia and holding her arms down. Elia started yelling “I NEED AN ADULT, TAZER IS TOUCHING ME INAPPROPRIATELY!”. Then something weird happened. Jonny started laughing. Now he was yelling that he needed help because Elia was touching him inappropriately.

Quennville had reached Sharp on top of the hill. The two of them watched as Elia and Toews lay on the ground laughing and trying to catch their breath, wiping paint off their faces. Instead of intervening, they shrugged and walked back to the hotel.

“I’m going to kill you.” Jonny said softly in between laughs.
“You can’t, they’ll put you in jail, and they don’t have hockey in jail, only basketball and you suck at basketball.”
“I’ll flee to Canada, they would never extradite me. You owe me a new suit.”
“You should be thanking me, that suit was ugly as shit.”

They sat up, leaning back on their arms. Jonny reached into the bag and pulled out a water bottle.

“That’s not water--” Elia started to say.
“I know you well enough to know that.” Jonathan said as he took a drink. “Jesus, what is this, it tastes like rubbing alcohol!”
“Bacardi Superior.” He passed it over to her.

The two of them sat on the top of the hill for an hour or so. Jon had a couple sips of Bacardi, enough to loosen up, and listed all the ways he planned on getting back at Elia. She just shook her head at each one, saying there was no way he could pull one on her. She could tell when he was up to something and would know. By the time they walked back to the hotel, the paint had started to dry.

The Blackhawks shut out the Kings that night. Jonathan earned an assist in the second period, and scored in the third. He played like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Back at the hotel, everyone was hanging out in Brian Campbell and Brouwer’s room. Brent Seabrook presented Elia with the team’s wrestling championship belt, for beating Jonathan in a wrestling match outside. Jon started shouting that he had actually beaten her. Everything was finally back to normal.

Next in the schedule the Blackhawks were back in Phoenix to play the Coyotes. Elia had a quick brunch with Bissonnette before the game. When the Blackhawks lost in OT the guys told Elia she wasn’t allowed to hang out with Paul before games anymore. The rest of March was marred by inconsistent play. The Blackhawks did beat the Coyotes that night, but lost to Blue Jackets twice in a row, then lost again to the Blues. They didn’t win again until March 31st when they shut out Minnesota. Any time they had a few days in between games, Elia seemed to disappear. She always seemed to have business on the east coast. Testifying at a senate committee hearing in Washington D.C., a horse race in New York, a meeting with a writer in Rhode Island that had submitted a script to her production company. Their final stretch of regular season games in April were close together and Elia spent the final two weeks with the team.

The whole city was starting to buzz with excitement. The Blackhawks had won six games in a row before losing their final regular season game to Detroit. Nobody was even paying attention to the loss, the playoffs were starting. Spring was waking up the city. Patios were being set out. Blackhawks' fans were flooding the bars to watch the games. Elia was incredibly excited, but also starting to feel really nervous. She was going to have to push back the start date for principal photography on her film by at least a month now. Every day that filming was delayed was money going out the door, and a less time she would have to finish the film by the end of the year. The movie needed to be done by December to be considered for this year’s awards committees. She tried to put it out of her mind. They had the Predators to worry about now.

Notes