Page 18 of Offside

Mami looks between us like a woman at a tennis match.

Then the mains land. Novotný leans back with the face of a man who has waited all tournament, and says the word.

“Bucharest.”

The table goes up before Šíma even moves. Polášek clears the glasses from in front of him like a man preparing a runway. Mami looks at me, delighted. She has heard OF it, the way you hear of weather in another country.

“We’re all seated,” Novotný says. “You said it’s a seated story. Everyone’s seated. Mami’s seated.”

“The conditions are met,” Polášek says.

Šíma looks around the table once, counting the room the way I count the room. I watch him decide it’s a yes. Something in my chest stands up and finds its seat. I know this story the way the sound engineer knows the song.

“Bucharest,” he says. “Five years ago. October friendly. A hotel with chandeliers and one working lift. The federation books us two to a room. And in the ballroom, there is a wedding. The Ionescu wedding. Remember the name. It matters later.”

“It matters later,” Novotný tells Mami.

“Curfew is eleven. At eleven twenty I go down for water, because the minibar is expensive and I have principles. I’m in team shorts and a shirt from an event I did not attend. I come back up. My key card has died. Not expired. Died. The little light looked at me and did nothing.”

“The clerk,” Polášek says, to the ceiling, like a man naming a saint.

“Drago?. Night clerk. A man built entirely out of policy. I say, room three-eleven. He types like he’s defusing something. Then he looks at me, and he says, and I will hear this on my deathbed, the system says this room does not exist.”

The table is already going. Mami has both hands over her mouth.

“I say, I sleep in it. He says, not according to the system. I say, my bag is in it. He says, the system disagrees. There is no manager until six. There is no spare room, because of the wedding. And that, Mami, is how your national team’s number ten came to be homeless in a lobby in Bucharest. In shorts.”

“In October,” I say.

“In October. Thank you, captain. The cold is important. Because the only warm place off that lobby, past two glass doors, was the Ionescu wedding.”

“No,” Mami says, with total joy.

“Why didn’t you call someone?” Horak asks.

“My phone was in the room. With my citizenship.” Šíma spreads his hands. “Legally I was a rumor.”

“I was going to stand quietly by the radiator like an installation. But there is an ice swan on the buffet. A swan with a face, Mami. A swan with opinions about me specifically. And while I am having it out with the swan, a woman in gold grabs my arm and says something urgent in Romanian. What she is saying, I learn slowly, is that the best man is in the bathroom and is not coming out.”

“The prawns,” Polášek says, reverent. He knows the beats. The whole squad knows the beats. It’s a mass, not a story.

“The prawns. And somewhere between the swan and the prawns it is decided, not by me, that the tall foreigner will hold the microphone. Nobody at that wedding knows who I am. A man in shorts. They handed me a microphone on the strength of my height and my posture.”

“The toast,” half the table says at once.

“Do the toast,” Novotný says.

“The toast doesn’t exist outside Bucharest. The conditions were specific. There was a chandelier.” He waits for the boos to crest and settle. “I gave the toast in Czech. Match voice. With feeling. A cousin translated it into Romanian without knowing any Czech, and whatever he invented was so beautiful the bride’s grandmother stood up and kissed me on the cheek. I said, this woman has been drinking wine since noon and believes in love. They wrote it on a napkin. It might be on their wall.”

“What was the song?” Mami demands. “There’s always a song.”

“They played one Czech song in my honor. Then it was ABBA.”

“I’ve heard this eleven times,” Damián says, “and the swan gets a bigger part every year.”

“The swan earned it.”

“Why does the name matter?” Horak says. “You said Ionescu matters.”