Page 9 of Offside

Last night is documented as watching film. Film is what it was allowed to be. Film has no aftermath, so there’s nothing to review. Play was within the rules.

One irregularity was noted. Pulling the stair door shut behind me, I did the corridor scan I always do, and his peephole was dark. A peephole is a bright little coin when the room behind it has no one interested in what’s happening in the hallway. His was dark. It stayed dark the whole slow swing of the stair door, which was three seconds. Three seconds of dark peephole is a man watching a corridor with nothing in it but me.

Or it’s a towel on a hook.

The ruling after review is a towel on a hook. File closed.

I’m an excellent official. Ask the file.

At the practice facility, the pool is warm and the squad is loud and recovery is a word we use for floating.

“Five days to the semifinal,” Novotný announces, from the shallow end. “Then the final.”

“Three days after that,” Polášek says. “It’s printed on the tickets.”

“Details.”

“Nine days and this hotel is a rumor.”

“Four training days, one travel day,” Tomáš says, on his back, eyes shut, doing captain math at the ceiling. “Recovery today. Don’t front-load your legs.”

Nine days and this hotel is a rumor.I float on that for a while, professionally. Nine days is two matches. Or it’s one match and a consolation nobody dreams about. After nine days, the schedulestops being one lift and becomes fifteen boarding passes. The film room closes for the tournament. Everything that runs on the schedule stops running, because that’s what schedules do. They end.

That’s not a feeling. That’s a fixture list. I notice it from a distance, with a clipboard.

Tomáš surfaces next to me mid-length, because of course our intervals match. Years of the same conditioning staff. That’s all that is.

“You’re quiet,” he says. Public register, two men in a pool with too many witnesses.

“I’m cooling down verbally. It’s a method.”

“Cool down faster. You’re on media right before me at twelve, and if you do the fan story for the press I want credit as a researcher.”

“You’ll be listed. Contributing skeptic.”

“Senior contributing skeptic.” He smiles over at me.

“Don’t get greedy. The fan gets top billing and the fan knows it.”

He pushes off the wall and goes, and I watch the water where he was for one length exactly, which is a normal amount of lengths to watch. The label on that file has been best friend for over ten years. The label is load-bearing. I don’t audit load-bearing labels during a tournament. Ask me something easier.

Kovár does his lengths like a metronome with a grievance. He gave ninety-four minutes to the best winger in the tournament, and then the party couldn’t hold him. The file got a new page last night, and I don’t have a name for the page yet. When he racks up and towels off, I’m at the rail, because the way to be available to this man is to be geographically convenient and administratively silent.

“The pool fix anything?” I say.

“It’s a pool, Šíma.”

“So no.”

He almost smiles. Almost is data. I hold out his water bottle and he takes it.

“The room’s doing films at four,” I say. “Other quarterfinal matches. Attendance is a strong suggestion.”

“I’ll be there.”

“I know you will.”

He looks at me then, one second, maybe a second and a half. There’s a version of this where I ask. I can see the door from here, his side and mine. But with Kovár, you leave the door open. You keep the hallway warm. You never ask a man to arrive before he’s packed. He’ll come when he comes.