Page 27 of Offside

“Mm. See, the semifinal gets the normal amount. That’s you. That’s a Tuesday.” He turns the cup once. “This is a different amount. You did the other amount when Dad died. The kit room that time was you driving to Brno twice in one month for meetings that could have been calls.” He isn’t accusing me of anything. That’s what makes it unanswerable. He’s reading a gauge. “You’re carrying something. I can see it. It doesn’t have a shelf yet so you’re out here building shelves for everything else.”

The lobby carries on around us. The lift dings. Staff cross with trays. A tournament breathes. My brother drinks his coffee and watches me with our mother’s eyes and doesn’t push.

Pushing I could defend against.

“It’s a big week,” I say.

“Okay,” Tobík says, easy, and means it. He reaches over and takes a cookie from the box. And with his mouth full, no ceremony, my managed brother leaves a door standing open in the middle of a hotel lobby. “Whenever, though. If it ever wants saying.” He shrugs. Crumbs on the lanyard. “You don’t even have to say it well. You can say it badly. It still counts.”

“Eat something with the coffee,” I say, and signal the bar for a plate. “You’re all biscuits and lanyard.”

“And there he is,” Tobík says, warm, to the ceiling, to the tournament in general. “The plate is summoned. The topic is closed. It’s like watching Mami with a tea towel.”

He finishes his coffee and leaves to meet Damián at the club shop. He hugs me on the way out, and the lanyard leaves an imprint on my collarbone that outlasts the hug.

Team dinner and then recovery are the only things on the scheduled for the night. At dinner, coach stands up and delivers the full address.

“Rest. Hydrate. Nobody gets clever.” He looks at Novotný. “Nobody.”

“Why me?” Novotný asks, to the room.

“History,” the room says back, almost as one.

“Twice,” Polášek adds. “History twice.”

The room disperses, and on the way out I straighten the set-piece folder, because the folder can take it.

Instead of sleeping, I can’t keep the thoughts away. Damián, letting my worst words of the week go through him and staying kind. Mami on the phone every night, asking for nothing with both hands. Tobík telling me I can say the thing badly and it still counts.

Every person I love keeps leaving a door open for me. I know they’re open. And every night I count the doors, and hold my own door open for other people, because that’s what a captain is for. The one box in the mental warehouse stays where it is. Taped. Unlabeled. Heavier every time I walk past it and don’t look.

?

Chapter 9: Šíma

Dinner is quiet, the squad half inside itself the way squads get when the match starts getting bigger. Horak sits down across from me with his tray and the face of a man carrying a question.

“Your first semifinal,” he says. “What was it like?”

“Loud. I was twenty-three. I warmed up so hard I was tired by kickoff.”

“That’s not encouraging.”

“We lost. Also not encouraging. Here’s the encouraging part.” I point my fork at him. “I remember every minute of it, and I remember nothing about the flight home. The match stays. The rest evaporates. So be present in the match.”

“Be in the match,” he repeats, as if it’s scripture.

“And eat the fruit.”

He holds up a banana on his way out later. I stamp my approval with a nod.

Down the table, Novotný is negotiating with Polášek for his family’s ticket allocation. Polášek is up to eleven relatives andcalling it a delegation. Kovár eats what the plan says, exactly that, nothing else, and is gone before the fruit.

Upstairs, our hotel room looks like a customs checkpoint. Damián is organizing. He’s organizing the way other men think, a shirt at a time, and I’m on my bed officiating with a water bottle because that’s the traditional seating.

“Rate the piles,” he says, points to the left one. “Tournament pile, and the one on the right is the non-tournament pile.”

“Tournament pile is winning. Non-tournament pile has no depth.”