Page 16 of Breakaway
"All of Jersey?"
"North Jersey. About twenty minutes outside the city. My family still lives there. My nonna too. She calls me every Sunday to tell me I'm too thin and I don't visit enough."
"Do you visit enough?"
"Nobody visits enough. That's the whole point. If you visited enough she'd have nothing to call about." He grins. "If I ever visit enough, she'll be out of a job."
"How often do you go back?"
"Couple times in the summer. Maybe Christmas if the schedule works. The neighborhood is different. My nonna's block is the only thing that's the same."
"That's how it is," I say. "The place stays the same in pieces."
"You go back? To Switzerland?"
"For my sister's wedding last summer. I haven't been back otherwise since I left for Seattle."
"That's a while."
"Yeah."
"You know what's weird about Atlanta?" He shifts in his seat, pulling one knee up against the armrest. "Nobody is from here. Not one person on this team grew up here. Even the staff. We're all from somewhere else and we all landed in the same building in September and now we're on a plane together."
"That's how expansion works."
"I know that's how it works. I'm saying it's weird. Twenty-odd guys who didn't know each other two months ago and now I'm sharing an armrest with a Swiss man who rates music on a ten-point scale."
"I did not rate the music."
"You said not terrible. That's a rating."
"Not terrible is an observation. A rating requires a number."
"Not terrible is at least a seven."
"Not terrible is at least a seven," I agree.
"See? We're getting somewhere." He settles back into his seat. "That's what I mean. Two months ago I didn't know your name. Now I know you rate bread and you miss the ceviche and your sister got married in Bern. That's a lot for two months."
"That's not a lot. That's the surface."
"It’s where friendships start."
Marchetti falls asleep twenty minutes before we land, his head dropping slowly to the left until it's almost on my shoulder. I think about all the things below the surface that I can’t share with him. The plane descends through the clouds and the city appears below us, another skyline I will learn the shape of once and leave in the morning.
The game goes well. I put up an assist in the second period on a play where I read the lane before it opened. Hájek gets his first pro-league point on a secondary assist in the third. When he sits down on the bench after his shift, he is trying not to smile and failing completely.
The hotel bar has a back section the team takes over. Long table, chairs pulled from neighboring sections, the server moving fast. Mueller orders wings for the table. Thompson orders a second basket before the first one arrives.
I hold up one finger.
"The wings. Seven-point-three. The breading is committed. The heat comes in late, which is a choice, but it's defensible."
"Seven-three for hotel bar wings is generous," Marchetti says.
"I am occasionally generous."
"Since when?"
