Page 3 of Offside

“Say it a hundred, then. I will alert the news.”

“Did you eat?” he says. “Real food.”

“I had a protein bar with notes of chalk.”

“There’s chicken in the back. I told them to hold a plate.” He is already flagging the barman, two fingers, done. “Eat it before Novotný smells it.”

He does this for everyone. I want that noted. He feeds this entire squad like a one-man kitchen, and the plate was held before I answered, and the record declines to state whose plate gets held first. Then he grins, eyes shutting all the way, and the squad takes him back, because a captain at a party belongs to everyone.

My phone buzzes between songs. Tomáš. From thirty feet away.

Šíma. Bus at nine. Recovery at ten. Sit near the front so I don’t have to count you.

There is a rule about texts. Nothing that could not be read aloud to the entire dressing room, ever. In five years there hasn’t been one message between us that could not be pinned to the tactics board. Bus times. Recovery slots. Once, a photo of a menu with one item circled. If you read every text we have ever sent, you would learn nothing, and you would be right, because there is nothing to learn. The rule works. It is one of mine.

I read his text twice. The second read is for thoroughness because I am a thorough person.

When I look up, he isn’t looking at me. That is also correct. Everything in this room is correct. The win is real, the joy is real, all of it, mine included. The ache is not instead of the joy. The ache lives under it, the way plumbing lives under a city, and tonight the city is having a parade.

Around one a.m., I stand and announce my departure, because my departures are announced. That is what makes them invisible.

“Noting for the record,” I say. “I am leaving at the peak. The record rewards a man who leaves at the peak.”

“The record is you,” Polášek says. “You are describing yourself in the third person.”

“The record is impartial, Polášek. That is what makes it the record.”

I leave with no destination stated. There is a room on the fourth floor with my name on half of it and Damián’s on the other half, and I take the stairs anyway, because the stairs are the rule, and I keep my rules even when they are pointless. Especially then.

Four flights. My heart is going at a number I associate with second halves, and take the last landing two steps at a time.

?

Chapter 2: Tomáš

Room count at the bar, one in the morning. Eleven players, four staff, one phone still pretending to be a DJ. That’s eleven too many. We have recovery at ten.

“Bed,” I say. “All of you. Bus at nine.”

“One more song,” Novotný says.

“You said that three songs ago. I counted.” I didn’t. Šíma counts. I schedule. “Bed.”

“It’s a semifinal,” Novotný says, like the word is a permission slip.

“It’s a semifinal in six days. Tonight it’s a bedtime.” I take the bottle out of his hand and put a water in it. He looks at the water like it insulted his family. “Drink it. Go up.”

“The kitchen could do a goulash,” Novotný says. “A celebration goulash. I know a guy on the night staff.”

“You met him tonight,” Polášek says.

“We bonded.”

“You showed him your medal from the under-nineteens.”

“That’s bonding.”

“The goulash is at eleven tomorrow,” I say. “It’s called lunch. Bed,” I say again, and point, and they go. They complain the whole way to the lift, which is how you know they’re happy. I stay until the bar is a bar again and not a situation.