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“They’re offering you the captaincy. Kessler is retiring. What is there to consider?”
“I said I’m thinking about it.”
He looks at me. I look at the pitch. The Czech gets short and clipped between us the way it always does when I close the door, and Tomáš reads it the way he’s been reading it for ten years.
“Okay,” he says. “Don’t let it expire, Dami.”
After practice, I shower and change and ride the bus back. Tomáš sits across the aisle and talks about Tobík.
“You should see the way people stop him on the street,” Tomáš says. “He’s been here nine months and the city loves him. He walks the path every morning. Everyone knows him.”
“Atlanta suits him.”
The sentence comes out smooth. Not at all how someone would sound if they’d said the same thing in a coffee shop they’d intentionally walked to.
“He’s proud of it. The life he’s building. I didn’t expect it, honestly. He was always my little brother. And now he’s this person in this city and people just want to be around him.”
“He’s easy to be around,” I say.
The hotel room is quiet later that night. Šíma is at dinner with Novotný. I told them I was tired. Nobody checked.
My phone rings and I see my agent’s name. I answer because not answering Peter is a stalling tactic with a shelf life, which expired two weeks ago.
“Damián. Glad I caught you.” Peter’s voice is the voice of a man who makes twelve percent of everything I earn and has never once deserved less. “The club called me again. They’re getting nervous.”
“I know.”
“They need a timeline. Kessler’s retirement announcement is tied to your decision. If you’re signing, they want to announce together.”
“I understand.”
“So what do I tell them?”
“Tell them I appreciate the offer. Tell them I need a few more days.”
“Damián, you’ve had ninety days of a few more days. This is the captaincy. This is the Bundesliga. What am I missing?”
“Nothing. A few more days.”
A pause. Peter’s pause is calculation, not judgment. I prefer it to my father’s, which is disappointment, and which arrived an hour ago in the form of two question marks and nothing else.
“I’ll buy you three more days,” Peter says. “After that, they’re going to start talking to other people.”
“Fine. Thank you.”
“Call me when you’re ready.”
I hang up.
The Bundesliga is the right choice. The armband is the culmination of every early morning and every correction absorbed until the corrections became instinct. I should take it and call Peter and call my father and stop being a man who walked to a coffee shop on the Beltline to accidentally run into someone on purpose.
Chapter 5: Tobík
Marchetti is explaining soccer to Thompson and getting everything wrong.
“It’s basically hockey without the ice,” he says as we cross the bridge toward the stadium. “Two nets. Two goalies. Guys trying to score. Same sport, different surface.”
“It is not the same sport,” I say. “The field is much larger. The game is ninety minutes. There is no fighting.”
