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We turn the corner toward the players’ tunnel. The air is cooler here, underground. Voices echo off concrete. My pulse is sitting high in my throat. I’m going to be standing in front of Damián with grass stains on his socks and ninety minutes of the pitch still on his skin, and my teammates are going to be watching, and my face is going to do something that I won’t be able to hide. I’m going to let it.
Chapter 6: Damián
The body takes longer to come down than people think.
The match is over. We’ve shaken hands and walked off and the tunnel has swallowed us, and my muscles are still playing. My calves are still reading the pitch. The aerial duel in the fifty-eighth minute is still firing in my neck. The contact point, the angle, the ball meeting my forehead and traveling to Tomáš who put it forward and three passes later the net moved. I can feel that sequence in my body like a pulse.
I love this part. The residue. The game living in the muscles after the whistle, the body holding what the mind has already filed away. The pitch makes sense. The pitch is the one place where what I do and who I am are close to the same thing.
Kovár is on the bench across from me pouring water over his head as if he’s been told water is going extinct. Šíma is lying flat on the floor with his eyes closed and his boots still on.
“Šíma. Take your boots off.”
“I’m processing.”
“Process without boots.”
“The boots are part of the process. They ground me to the earth.”
“You’re lying on a tile floor in a locker room that smells like Novotný.”
“I heard that,” Novotný says from somewhere behind a locker.
Tomáš drops onto the bench beside me, shirt already off, the red bunched in his lap. He played ninety minutes at a pace that would kill most people and looks like he could run another half if anyone needed him to.
“Good ball. The fifty-eighth.”
“You made the pass.”
“I made the pass because you put it exactly where I needed it. Don’t give that away.”
“I’m accepting the compliment while also noting that your assist was excellent.”
“Just say ‘thank you, Tomáš, I’m brilliant.’”
“Thank you, Tomáš.”
He grins. It’s the grin he’s been giving me for ten years after we combine on something and neither of us will admit it first. I let it land. This room. These people. The coach comes through with the post-match notes. One-one, fair result. He says what coaches say after draws. I take it in. We go again in a few days.
Kovár throws a balled-up sock at Šíma’s head and Šíma doesn’t flinch.
“Are you actually asleep on the floor, Šíma?”
“I’m in shavasana.”
“You don’t know what shavasana is.”
“I’m in athletic shavasana.”
The corridor beyond the press gauntlet hums with the slow drain of the crowd of voices still pulsing through the walls. My hair is still damp from the shower. The flush is still on my skin. The city outside this tunnel does not let things dry, and I am becoming familiar with the way it sits on the body.
Tomáš has his phone out as we move toward the player exit.
“Tobík’s here. He brought some of his teammates.”
“Good.”
“The hockey ones. Three or four. They’re coming down.”
