I'd Do Anything

Trisha didn’t give Olivia an opportunity to respond and headed for the back room. Lana was already set up at her desk. Two empty light boards sat facing her waiting for Pierre and Sophie, two arts students who were paid for coloring and lines. Trisha lay down on the couch, swinging her legs up to rest her feet on the top of the backrest. It was something she had always done.

“You’re going to get it dirty.” Lana said quietly, not lifting her pen.

Trisha simply responded by kicking off her shoes. They hit the floor with identical heavy clunks. She didn’t open her eyes. It was only eleven in the morning but she was already exhausted.

Then, tired of seeing Max behind her closed eyes, she swung her legs back down and sat up.

“Do you want to go over eighteen?” she asked.

Lana put her pen down. “I think I have the gist of it. Why? Did you have input?”

Lana and Trisha had met at school in Vancouver, where Trisha studied Economics and dabbled in writing fiction and Lana studied art, often feeling unfulfilled by her assignments. They had bonded over science fiction movies and, of course, comics.

When Trisha returned to Montreal, they kept in touch. She tried working as a finance advisor, decided she hated it, and took the savings she had and opened Geek Inc instead. Eventually, Trisha developed a story idea that needed pictures to be told.

And so she called Lana. After a brief musing over the main character, Lana broke out the art supplies and drew a full-color portrait of the woman who would become Rosetta Stark. She moved to Montreal as soon as the paperwork with Idea Comics was signed.

A year later, sitting on the top of the not-a-big-name pile and regulars in the convention circuit, Trisha just wrote and Lana just drew. Lana tried to convince her to draw complete drafts at first, but she found that she had no idea what Trisha was thinking that way. The screen-plays were a little clearer. But Trisha liked bouncing her ideas off Lana. And whenever she could actually visualize a page, Lana listened and decided if it would work.

“So, the part where Teru is being held and beaten up under the stadium, and Rosetta is fighting to get through all the sports fans?” Trisha said, gesturing with her hands.

Her name and her hand gesturing came from her Italian-American mother. Everything else was a product of being French-Canadian. Lana, being from a German family where love and hand gestures were rarely expressed, was always a little fascinated with Trish.

“Uhuh.” Lana said, warily watching the hands flirt with the coffee mug on the edge of the table.

“I was thinking maybe we make it a hockey stadium, and while Teru’s getting beat up there’s a player getting beat up on the ice. You know, like one strip Teru, one strip hockey players, and back and forth for a page or two.”

Lana scrunched up her nose, visualizing. “Huh. Okay. I see what you’re saying.”

“And we make the hockey player getting beat up look like Max.”

Lana laughed. “Oh, so that’s what this is about.”

Trisha rolled her eyes. “It’s not about anything. I’m visualizing for a change! You’re always telling me to visualize!”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I keep seeing Max on the page!”

Lana shook her head. “Isn’t that a symptom of love?”

It took all that Trisha had not to throw the coffee mug at her friend and keep the tone jovial. “Not for heartless bitches like me. Can we do it?”

Lana rubbed her eye. “Well, we can’t put the Canadian’s logo in. It’s trademarked. But I like the idea of the two fights, and I guess I can model the player’s face off of his. It’ll be like an Easter egg, for our fans who watch hockey, if such a thing exists.”

“Thanks.” Trisha grinned, pulling her sketch pad towards herself.

Lana studied her friend for a moment, then sighed and went back to her work.

~*~

That Sunday, Max sat in the bleachers of the community center, watching a bunch of the Old World Tavern regulars play a vicious game of street hockey. The most protection anyone was wearing were the goalies in gloves. One of the bartenders had been the first to draw blood, running into a college-aged girl while chasing the ball and knocking her down. After that it was all-out war.

Max studied Trisha and she crouched and scowled at the tall man across from her. She was playing Left Wing. Her stick was a little too big for her, probably borrowed.

If there was one thing that he just couldn’t get used to, it was her curly hair. In high school, even when she stopped straightening her hair it was still pretty straight. Now it bounced and moved in ways that he was yet to understand. A red flag saying, I am no longer your friend.

Trisha sprinted to catch up with the ball, and threw her entire body weight into the tall man who was playing right wing against her. All one hundred and fifteen pounds of her was enough to push him into the padded wall, and she shot the ball across the floor to a teammate.

“Time!” someone shouted.

Everyone visibly relaxed. Trisha smiled at the man she had knocked into the wall, and then took a moment to collect her breath. PJ came over from his defense position to talk to her.

Standing, Max remembered a time when he had convinced Trisha to get out on the ice and play with him. She had been better than he had expected. He remembered that, but he didn’t know why he expected her to be anything less than good. Montreal was a place where kids learnt to skate before they could walk. And anything that Trisha, did she did well.

He remembered her laughing as she easily skated around him in her figure skates, bearing down on the net guarded by a life-size cutout of a goalie. The puck went in the top right corner with a powerful slap shot.

He came down the bleachers and walked over to where she was retrieving her purse. She had her stick slung over her shoulder. “Hey.” He called.

She looked up. “Hey. I was just about to call you. You just get here?”

“I was watching the game, actually.”

“What did you think?”

“You’re still a pit bull.”

She laughed and held out her stick. “Here, can you give this to Sean? I want to change my shirt.”
Max handed off the stick and waited while she ducked into the women’s locker room. Luckily, he vaguely remembered Sean from Annalise’s thanksgiving party. When she returned, her jersey and undershirt were balled up and she had on a light blue sweater. Her shoes had changed as well.

“So, what’s the plan?” she asked.

He shrugged. She rolled her eyes.

“Well, I’m starving.” She said. “Come on, I know a great place for waffles.”