Page 59 of Header
“I corrected the error,” I say.
“You corrected the call. You didn’t correct the other thing.”
“What other thing.”
He’s quiet for a second. Eyes on the pitch, not on me. When Tobík looks away it’s because he’s finding words.
“The kid makes a mistake and you put your hand on his neck and you tell him it’s fine. Next pattern. And it works. He’s fine. Because you gave him the thing that lets the mistake be small.” He pauses. “I’ve watched it three times this week. You forgave the kid. You forgave Novotný for the bad pass on Tuesday. You told Horák his positioning was good when it wasn’t good but the telling was what he needed. And every time you make an error you go somewhere else. Not physically. But the person leaves and the mask stays.”
My jaw is locked. I can feel it locked and I can’t unlock it because the muscles already moved without me.
“Everyone’s harder on themselves than on their teammates,” I say. “That’s how competition works. The pitch is the one place where I can’t be wrong and also be fine about being wrong. On the pitch, wrong costs. Off the pitch, you tell people it doesn’t. The kid needs to hear it doesn’t. I need to not hear it. There’s a difference between teaching and performing.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“What are you saying?”
“The kid’s mistake is a mistake. Your mistake is a verdict. And you hand out pardons to every person on that pitch except yourself.”
My fingers tighten on the warm metal edge of the bench. The ground crew is dragging a hose across the turf. A car door slams somewhere behind the stadium. The cicadas keep up their noise.
“You give everyone the thing you won’t give yourself,” he says. The way he says everything. Like an observation about the weather. “I don’t know who decided you don’t get it too. But they were wrong.”
I don’t say anything. He’s not asking me to agree. He’s not asking me to do anything. He just said it the way you’d say the coffee is good, and now the coffee is sitting between us and I don’t know what to do with it except sit here, on a warm metal bench, next to a man who just saw something nobody has seen.
My father calls after matches and tells me I was too deep at forty-three. Tomáš says we’re fine, forget it. Nobody has ever looked at the space between what I give others and what I keep from myself and said anything at all.
“I should shower,” I say. “Review session at one.”
“Okay.” The word is soft. He doesn’t push past it.
I stand. The standing is less abrupt than it wants to be. I manage that much. He stays where he is, forearms on his knees, and his eyes have the gold in them that the sun finds, and he is looking at me with something steady and unhurried that I don’t have a name for.
“I’ll see you at dinner,” I say. “If Tomáš arranges something.”
“He usually does.”
I walk toward the tunnel. The tunnel is dark and cool and I’m walking through it with the gait of a man heading to a review session. This is true. Review session at one.
Also true: a man just said the truest thing anyone has said to me, and I walked away from it with excellent posture and am hiding from a hockey player in a tunnel. Very dignified.
Later back at the hotel, I have the room to myself. Šíma is out somewhere and I am sitting staring at my phone.
I pick it up. I put it down. I pick it up.
I text Tobík. The words go before the thinking catches them.
Are you home?
Under a minute.
Yes.
Can I come over?
Yes.
Four messages. No edits. No rehearsal. I don’t look at myself in the mirror because looking in the mirror would involve acknowledging that I’m putting on real clothes at ten forty-five to go to a man’s apartment and the sensible arguments would win and I can’t let them win tonight.
