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“Okay.” He pauses like he wants to say something else, but in the end doesn’t. “Goodnight, Hájek.”
“Goodnight, Marchetti.”
He walks toward the parking lot. I walk toward the Beltline.
The night air is heavy and warm, the city lights bright at a distance, joggers passing with the easy pace of people who run atnight because July afternoons are not for running. My phone is in my pocket. I do not take it out. The thing I would be checking for is not there tonight, and checking an empty screen is a habit I would rather not start.
A couple passes holding hands. I watch them for a second, the ease of it, the ordinary public fact of it, and keep walking.
My apartment is quiet. The bookshelf. The counter. I stand where I stood last week when things were different and drink a glass of water and look at the city through the window.
I am starting a new book. The hero knows something the heroine does not, and two chapters in I can already see how the secret has to go. I open it anyway. Tomorrow Bagel will be on the bridge. Claire will lose the leash negotiation. The coffee will be the same coffee and Maria will call me Tuesday and the city will still be the city I built. Tonight the sound is quieter than it was last week. I can hear the difference. I keep reading.
Chapter 14: Damián
The pitch at the training facility is softer than the stadium turf and the air has already made up its mind about the day. Late-morning sun on the back of my neck. Phase of play, defenders against the attacking unit, the coaching staff calling triggers from the half-line.
“Step.” My voice. “Step. Hold.”
The line steps. The line holds. Kovár on my right shoulder, Novotný at left back, the young center half filling in at right. His name is Horák. I’ve been pretending I can’t remember it for three days because it makes him try harder, which is cruel and effective and possibly the most honest coaching I’ve ever done.
The attackers play their pattern. The ball gets recycled. Reset. Run it again.
“Vež, the kid’s too high.”
“I see him. Push him back two yards.”
Kovár barks. Horák drops. The next pattern develops. The ball gets played in behind and Kovár reads the run and steps before the pass and intercepts cleanly.
He grins. We reset. The next pattern is a switch, the ball goes left, comes back across, and Horák steps in front of his man early, gets isolated, and a midfielder slides into the gap behind him. The attackers don’t punish it because they’re working at training pace, but it’s a goal in a match.
Horák’s jaw tightens. He starts apologizing before the ball stops rolling.
I’m beside him before the sentence finishes. Hand on the back of his neck. Eye contact.
“Hey. You’re fine. You stepped early because you wanted the ball. The want is right. The timing catches up. Next pattern.”
“I read it wrong.”
“You read it half a second wrong. That’s nothing. We’re going again.”
He nods. I squeeze the back of his neck once and release. Kovár reaches over and clips the kid on the arm. The line resets.
The next pattern develops and I make the call. Step. The line steps. And I’m a yard early. A striker I should have read as anchored has slipped his marker’s shoulder and is moving and I committed before I checked and the ball goes over the top into the space I just vacated. Novotný covers. The attacker doesn’t even need to break stride.
My hands go to my hips and then drop because hands on the hips is visible frustration and visible frustration is an announcement.
“Good cover, Novotný,” Tomáš calls from the half-line. “Reset. Dami, you good?”
“Yeah.”
The “yeah” is the word I use when Tomáš says we’re fine and I disagree. It will play for the rest of the session, quietly, in the calling of a defensive line by a man who got caught a yard early on a step-up at a training session in July.
I make the next twelve calls. Every one clean. The coaching staff moves on.
“You’re calling the shape like a man with a grievance,” Kovár says, walking past with his shirt in his hand. “Did the line do something to you personally?”
“The line is excellent.”
