Cliff Marleau collects magnets. The tacky touristy ones, made of polyester resin in bright, solid colors. He puts them on his fridge and they make a gaudy centerpiece to his otherwise quite modern and tasteful kitchen. They remind him how lucky he is he gets to travel so much, and for his job, no less. Before he was thirteen, the furthest he had gone from his hometown in Louisiana was Southern Ohio, when his mom packed him and his little sister up and hauled them away from his father.
But Southern Ohio had a hockey rink, and hockey ended up saving them all. And now Cliff gets to travel, and pay his mothers mortgage, and send his sister through med school, and collect tiny, cheesy magnets for his fridge.
When Roz first came over to his place, he asked Cliff about almost every single one. Why he picked the Space Needle over Mt. Ranier, why he doesn't have the Hollywood sign, what this landmark on the Winnipeg one was. Roz was good at this, at reaching out, connecting. He was really bad at being reached out to.
The next fall, Roz came back from Russia with a magnet to add to his collection, "Moscow" written underneath a building. When Cliff asked what the building was, he explained it was the Bolshoi Theatre, and how his mother would take him and his brother to go see the ballet, and how he pretended it was boring but really, he always thought it was amazing.
Seven months later, Cliff was grabbing a drink for a girl he invited over, when he realized the Moscow magnet was missing. He panicked, and with no explanation to his date, quickly dropped to the floor and started grabbing behind the cabinets, under the fridge. He audibly exhaled when he felt the rubbery edges of it tucked up against the floorboards, and nothing felt right until it was back, stuck to the fridge with the rest of them.
It's that stupid magnet that Cliff is thinking about when Roz tells him he's requesting a trade to Ottawa.
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