Page 17 of Offside

“Seats eight,” I say. “You know seven people?”

“I know you. That’s one. Tobik is two. The rest will develop.”

“Chairs?”

“Six now, two later. There’s a delivery window.” He grins at the ceiling.

“Domesticated. They’ll write about it.”

“Let them.” He throws a sock at the staying pile like it owed him. “You’ll come through Atlanta. Whenever. There’s a chair with your name on it.”

“Everything has my name on it today. Containers. Chairs.”

“That’s what it looks like,” he says, “when people plan for you,” and goes to brush his teeth like he didn’t just leave that on the carpet for me to trip over in the dark.

Lights out at eleven. Day’s rulings, for the record. One pattern, identified and dismissed. One sentence, stopped at the border, contents undeclared. One svícková in a fridge with my actual name on it in a mother’s handwriting. One table, walnut, seats eight, bought by a man who lived out of rooms someone else cleaned.

No findings. The court notes that the officiating took eleven hours today and used to take none. It does not ask why. It has seen what happens to people who ask why in this building. They end up honest. Too honest.

?

Chapter 6: Tomáš

Ibooked the back room of the smokehouse we annexed in the group stage for a team dinner. You don’t rotate a winning venue. You keep everything as similar and the same as possible.

I do the headcount at the door, out of habit. Twenty-two players. Staff. One mother.

Mami arrives in her matchday scarf even though there’s no match. She kisses Horak on both cheeks like he’s hers. She tells coach he looks tired, in a tone that makes him agree. Tobík has taken our grandfather to a baseball game, which the grandfather is attending purely for the novelty of it.

The waiter from last week is on our section again. Theo. Efficient, fast hands, remembers who drinks what, which in this squad is a necessity. I tip him at the start now. He’s earned the trust.

I take the seat with the sightlines, because a captain sits where the whole table can find him. That’s the reason. It has been the reason for years.

Šíma is three drinks deep before the bread arrives. Two by the bread, loud by the soup, legendary by the mains, every squad dinner since I’ve known him. Part of the show.

Mami has him by the elbow within minutes.

“Šíma. You didn’t come for my svícková.”

“I had a prior engagement with a film.”

“A film.” She pats his cheek once, the way she does with everyone she considers family. “Next time the film waits. Food doesn’t.”

“It was decided at birth,” I tell him. “Stop litigating.”

Dinner runs the way good dinners run. Novotný versus Polášek on whether brisket is goulash’s American cousin. Damián on my right, easy, folding a napkin into what he claims will be a swan.

“Item,” Šíma says, down the table, mid-soup. “The corner against Italy. The replay shows wind assistance.”

“The wind.”

“Two flags were moving. I have footage.”

“It was a PERFECT ball, delivered into weather.”

“The record will note the weather claim.”

“The record can note it was PERFECT.”