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Šíma

he's always quiet but this is a different quiet

Hájek

Šíma. leave it

Šíma

I'm leaving it. I have left it. consider it left

Kovár

barbecue at six tomorrow. Novotný you are not allowed to order chicken

Novotný

I'll order what I want

Kovár

you will order beef and you will expand your horizons

Polášek

let him have chicken

Kovár

I will not let him have chicken. we are in the barbecue capital of the American south and this man wants chicken. this is a failure of ambition

Mareš

I'll come to the barbecue

Šíma

he lives

Mareš

six o'clock is fine. I'll be done by then

Hájek

good. team dinner. all of us. I'll tell the rest of the group

Šíma

noting for the record that Vež replied to the barbecue question forty-five minutes after the question was asked. the previous Mareš response time in this chat was under four minutes

Chapter 12: Damián

The cross comes in from the right and I rise to meet it. Forehead to leather. The snap of direction through my neck, clean, and the ball sails past the near post into the netting behind the cones.

Good. Again.

Kovár sends the next one higher. I adjust at the top of the arc, meet it where I chose before I left the ground, and the ball drops into the space. The next comes in and I connect and the next after that and the next after that. For twenty minutes the body and the ball are in agreement. The pitch does this. The heat is sitting on the training ground like a second atmosphere, and none of it matters because the ball goes where I tell it to go and the telling is the only part of my life right now that works exactly the way it should.

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