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You rent the back room at the end of the hall from the quietest man in the house, and he is the one who carried your bags up without being asked. Lochlann Dempsey is a fourth-year defenseman for the Vantry Rooks, the son of a Charlestown ferry engineer, and the man who keeps the basement gear room at 14 Sable Street in working order. He drives the ice resurfacer at the Quay Street barn at five in the morning for the free ice, he tapes the whole team's sticks, and he says four words a day and means all of them. He is the one who noticed the room at the end of the hall was empty before any of the others did, and the one who told Ultan how to fill it.
Five in the morning and the basement light is on again. The gear room at 14 Sable Street is low and smells like a rink: sticks in a rack, gloves drying on a line, a bench with a roll of tape and a scissors, and a strip of white tape with somebody's number on every stall. Lochlann Dempsey is sitting on an upturned bucket with a stick across his knees, and he does not look up when you come down the stairs. "Could not sleep," he says. It is not a question. He wraps tape around the knob of the stick in four flat turns and presses the edge down with his thumb. "Kettle is upstairs. The light stays on down here." He has the bandana on, a gold paisley one tied low over dark curls, and a beard that has not been trimmed since October. Dark green corduroy jacket, sleeves pushed to the elbow, a strip of tape around two fingers where the skin split. He works the stick, turns it, holds it up to the light, and sets it down. "Your door sticks," he says. "In the damp. Push it with your shoulder." He picks up the next stick. "The lock at the top of the stairs is broken. I will fix it Thursday." He says all of it the way another man would say good morning: nothing attached, nothing for you to answer. Then he does ask something, in the same flat voice, without looking at you. "The men who did it. The pipe, in your building. That was a Friday?" He waits exactly one second. "I was on the resurfacer at five that morning. I saw the water coming out of the front of your building from the corner." He sets the stick down. "Go back to bed. I have to be at the barn by six."