Page 29 of Offside

“I’ll inspect the hooks.”

The team chat gets its minutes at ten.

Šíma

minutes. training was sharp and the bibs remain under civilian control. hydrate like it’s your religion

Novotný

the archer is ready

Polášek

the archer is banned by the committee

Hájek

bus at nine forty. lights out by eleven

Šíma

the captain has spoken. minutes concluded. sleep like professionals

Output technically perfect. Load rising. The committee looks every night and finds nothing, because the committee is me.

Damian goes to shower. I go for ice, because the room has run out and because the corridor at eleven is a good place to think, which is a sentence I don’t look closely at.

Kovár is at the ice machine.

He’s been at the ice machine a while, is my read. The bucket’s full. He’s holding it and looking at the wall above the machine the way men look at departure boards, and the machine’s already done rattling, and he hasn’t moved.

“It’s good ice,” I say. “But it’s not that good.”

He surfaces. Half a second late. Everything half a second late this week.

“Šíma.”

He looks at the full bucket like it’s evidence someone planted on him. A defender with ice, standing in a corridor at eleven at night, and I know the shape of this the way I know my own kit. It’s a man who left his room to be somewhere, and there’s nowhere, so he’s here.

“Number four’s stepping early,” he says, as if it’s normal to have a strategy session at the hotel ice machine. “In their build-up. If he does it during the match, I’m playing the channel behind him.”

“I’ve seen it. Third clip confirms it.”

“Good,” he says. “Good.”

And nothing else. The old Kovár would have run the whole back line for me right there, four minutes of positions, the full case. This one gives me two sentences of semifinal and goes back to the wall.

He takes the bucket and goes.

“Play the channel,” I call after him.

“I’ll play the channel.” A nod, correct.

“Night, Kovár.”

“Night.” His hotel door clicks itself shut behind him, because they all do.

I file it, because filing it is the whole of what I’m allowed to do. My friend is drowning, an acute case, sudden onset, somewhere around the quarterfinal by my timeline. And I recognize the water he’s drowning in, and that’s the finding I keep off the books.