1 Chapter 1
February 1988
Calgary, Canada
The XV Olympic Winter Games
The pairs long program
The feathered hem on Kyoko Maki’s shimmery silver-gray skirt fluttered in the breeze as her partner, Nobuo Tsuchino, took her tiny left hand in his right one and offered an extra, affectionate squeeze before letting go. They skated toward one corner, where Nobuo firmly took his partner’s waist in both hands, lifted her lovingly, and tossed her a good twelve feet forward, almost as high as the short wall encompassing the ice. Kyoko spun in the air three times and then landed on one foot on the outside edge of her blade. The arch in her back on the landing was beautiful and strong. It was a perfect throw triple flip.
Nobuo stroked toward her to catch up to where she had settled. He wrapped an arm around her middle again and this time spun her on her toe into a gorgeous layback. Refrains of “Bells of Moscow,” A.K.A. Rachmaninoff’s “Prelude in C-sharp Minor,” built to a frenzy of piano keys hit hard, creating harsh, dissonant chords before fading in volume and harshness into its slow, sober, peaceful last several measures. The haunting tune was barely audible in the stands by then, drowned out by the roar of the excited crowd. Even over the airwaves it was hard to hear by the time the duo prepared themselves for their final move.
Kyoko bent forward in a Charlotte spiral position, her head touching her knee, her free leg up, making her body a vertical straight line. Nobuo threw his head back, wrapped both of his arms around her, and laid her extended leg upon his shoulder. The two began to spin, slowly at first, then faster and faster until they blurred into one. When they stopped precisely on the music’s final beat, coming together in a passionate embrace, the applause grew even more robust and every person in the audience leapt to their feet. “Maki and Tsuchino,” as the commentators referred to them, took in deep, cold breaths and bowed to their fans. One smiling, one in tears, they fell into a clinch once more, allowing the final moments of their Olympic triumph to sink in.
When Nobuo finally released his partner, instead of taking her hand to exit the ice, he dropped to one knee, right in the center of the five multicolor rings. “Kekkon shite kureru?” “Let us share one name,” he added also in Japanese. And as he searched Kyoko’s stunned expression for an answer, his vision blurred with tears of his own. “Make the rest of my dreams come true. Be my partner forever.”
Their first dream, the one on which they had focused every minute of their lives since preadolescence, was now out of their hands. They had performed the program perfectly, climaxing—before their combination spin—with a throw jump no one else in pairs skating would repeat successfully for decades. Their technical score, as expected, was a row of 6.0s, but their artistic score, not as high as the Russian team’s, kept them off the top of the podium. Still, when Kyoko Maki agreed to become his bride, right there in front of thousands of screaming fans, Nobuo Tsuchino couldn’t imagine feeling any more like a winner. 1
October 2013
St John, New Brunswick, Canada
The ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating—Skate Canada
Practice ice, ten hours before the pairs free skate
“Shit! No, Tom Alan! No!” Nobuo Tsuchino bellowed. “Chigau!You must throw her harder. Higher!” It was twenty-five years later, and Nobuo Tsuchino was now a father and a coach.
“You must throw her more gracefully,” Kyoko Tsuchino chimed in. “And your landing, Erika,” she said to her daughter, “it is not as elegant as it should be.”
A new decade, a new millennium, another Olympics, and a new pair—not representing Japan, but America. Kyoko Tsuchino seemed more determined than ever not to let poor artistic marks keep her and Nobuo’s protégés off the top step in Russia, as they had kept her and Nobuo off the top step in Canada.
“I’m trying,” Tom Alan complained, answering his coach in Tsuchino’s native language. “I am!” Though about as un-Japanese as a boy could get, Thomas “Tom Alan” Baranowski, the sandy-haired, blue-eyed, American-born child of an Italian-American mother and a Polish-American father, spoke Japanese almost fluently and understood every critique and curse word in either tongue. Next, he turned to Kyoko-san, his head choreographer, and in softer English with all signs of petulance gone, he said, “I’m sorry.” He knew his partner’s landing was his fault, not hers. It was hard to look elegant when you were lurching forward, struggling with all you’ve got because some huge, six-six goon of a guy who was supposed to throw you as if he was releasing a delicate dove, chucked you like a dude hurling logs in a lumberjack contest. “I…I didn’t throw her right.”
“Hey, at least I stood up,” Erika offered, skidding to a stop next to him. “That’s better than an ass-landing.”
Tom Alan’s nineteen-year-old partner had her mother’s doll-like Japanese features but with a mouth that sometimes belied it all. She liked to curse—maybe to shock people, maybe because as an athlete she was allowed no other vices. It was definitely a form of rebellion. When she spoke Japanese, she used words and phrases normally reserved for males, and when she spoke English, said words no Japanese woman ever would. She knew a lot of words; she was smart—gifted, even—but her favorite words were definitely blue.
