The final note of the minimalist piano died out in the arena's loudspeakers, leaving behind a dense, almost sepulchral silence. In the center of the Skate America ice, Bek halted his final rotation with a painful rigidity, keeping his head low as his ragged breathing formed small clouds of vapor in the gelid October air. His onyx eyes, blurred by tears of frustration, fixed upon the surface battered by the fall. He knew what was coming. The technical error on the Triple Axel left him out of the fight for the top individual spots of the Grand Prix, but the true cost of that failure would not be measured on the electronic scoreboard—it lay in the isolation that awaited him upon crossing the wooden barrier.
