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goodnight
Novotný
night
Polášek
night
Kovár
night. dreaming of brisket
Šíma
night
Chapter 20: Damián
Šíma is taping his left boot.
Left before right. He says it’s not superstition. He says it’s science. I’ve watched him do this before every match since we were kids and the science has never been explained, and I’ve stopped asking because Šíma’s explanations are longer than the matches.
“Vež.” He looks up from the tape. “You look calm. You look suspiciously calm. Like a man who’s done something.”
“I’ve done nothing.”
“That’s what people who’ve done things say.”
Kovár is eating a banana across the locker room. His third. Šíma tracked the first two from behind his boot tape with the focus of a man monitoring a security threat.
“Kovár, put the banana down.”
“I’m fueling.”
“You’re fueling for the wrong sport. This is football. We run. You’re eating like you’re about to hibernate.”
“Bananas are potassium. Potassium prevents cramps.”
“Your calves are going to cramp from the weight of three bananas sitting in your stomach.”
Novotný is standing at the tactics board with Polášek, arguing about defensive shape. They’ve been arguing about defensive shape since the bus. The locker room is loud with the usual pre-match rhythm, the click of boots on tile, the physio moving through with tape and ice and the voice he uses when he’s checking ankles. I sit at my locker and pull my shirt on. The number four. The shirt has my name on it and the shirt doesn’t know anything has changed.
Tomáš is at his locker across the room. His phone has been in his hand since breakfast. He’s been reading, texting, and every time I look over he puts the screen down with a timing that suggests the screen was meant to be put down. He’s not avoiding me. He’s quieter than he was two weeks ago, a new kind of quiet I can’t quite read. I assumed it was the conversation from still sitting between us. Tomáš processing. Tomáš deciding what to do with the thing I told him was nothing but a poor decision.
Novotný has the captain’s armband tonight. I’m not wearing it. I haven’t worn it this tournament and for the first time in my career the absence of it doesn’t feel like a thing I lost. It feels like a thing I set down.
I think about Tobík. Not as a wound. Not as the man I texted last week with words I’d take back if taking things back were how life worked. Tobík is in this stadium. Tomáš said Marchetti and Thompson are with him. The Czech scarf is probably around his neck because the Czech scarf is always around his neck at these matches and the consistency of that does something to my chest I don’t have time for right now.
Eight days since the text. Four days since I called Peter and told him I wasn’t extending with the club in Germany. Three days since Peter started talking to Atlanta United. This morning,the finalization. The announcement scheduled for sometime in the next day.
I let the thought sit. I have a match to play and then I will tell the team.
“Vež.” Tomáš‘s voice from across the room. “How’s the hamstring?”
“Fine. Tight from yesterday but fine.”
“Stretch it again before warmup.”
