Yuri was back in the US, he explained, because a new manager did not think that hockey was culture, and thus Yuri was not qualified for Cultural Attache cover.

"That manager will not last long in Leningrad," Griff exclaimed! They might have talked about the uncertainty of Russian politics in this year of the fall of the Berlin Wall,

"This is a good time to be in the Bay Area because negotiations about a new Hockey team in San Jose are in progress," Yuri said to Griff. "Meanwhile, in the Spring, Sergei Priakin signed with the Calgary Flames, and now Aleksandr Mogilny is playing for the Buffalo Sabres."

When Mackie Alarie was stalking Caydance, Griff remembered, welcomed for various reasons by the students of all genders in Caydance's class, Yuri was positioned strategically beside the door to her classroom -- wearing a dark blue, red and white stripe-banded hockey jersey with Russian lettering, which he said could be translated although not exactly as "SKA Leningrad".

I probably, Griff thought, should have told my wife that her brother left me a phone message regarding the return of Yuri to her classroom. But a Brooklyn-born Hockey enforcer who could guard US diplomats in Leningrad and at the same time make friends with Leningrad hockey fans by filling in for Hockey Club SKA when they were short-handed was capable of protecting an arts class.

With that worry eliminated, Griff drove into the Huygens campus with the Saturday game against Pac Ocean on his mind.