“You lie terribly.”
“For you I improve.” He drops into the chair and puts the almonds between us. The Czech session plays mute on the lounge screen in a wide shot, and at this distance the players are only shapes. One of the shapes runs its channel up and down, up and down, tireless, exact.
“You watching?” he asks.
“No,” I say, watching it.
“Course not. Two guys, one television, not watching.” He settles in. “You want to tell me why the not-watching has a face on it tonight?”
“Davide.”
“Fine. Then I’ll say my piece to the television and the television can do what it wants with it.” He eats an almond and addresses the screen, conversational. “A man cooked a six-hour dinner in my kitchen this week. My kitchen smelled like his father’s restaurant for two days. I’ve known him since we were seventeen, and in all that time he has cooked like that for exactly two reasons. Family. And once, years ago, for somebody he never introduced me to, a period when he kept going quiet on Sundays, and on Mondays acting like the calendar had personally wronged him.” He eats another almond. “The television can draw its own conclusions. I’m just here for the almonds.”
The shape on the screen finishes its channel and starts again.
“Davide.”
“Mm.”
“After the tournament. Whichever way it goes. I’ll tell you the whole thing.”
“I know you will,” he says. He hands me the rest of the almonds and doesn’t move for an hour.
Gallo wanders through with a plate of everything and asks the television whether the Czechs mark zonal at corners. Nobody answers him. He nods anyway, satisfied, a man conducting his own private presser, and drifts on. That’s the whole evening. It’s enough, and it isn’t, in exactly the proportions I’ve decided to live with.
I listen to Mamma’s voice note. Four minutes, eleven seconds. The restaurant flooded a little, not badly, don’t worry, your brother fixed it wrong and then Papà fixed the fixing, andnow the two of them communicate exclusively through the dishwasher. She and the cat have reached an arrangement regarding the planter, which means the cat won. Gianna is bringing an engineer to Sunday lunch, we’ll see. Then, with no gear change at all, the way she does it:
“The neighbor asked if you’re bringing somebody to Assunta’s in August. I said who knows, Enzo. Who knows?”
I stand at the window with the phone at my mouth and the stadium glow over the roofline, and I record the reply. The flood, noted. The cat, congratulated. The engineer, to be investigated personally in ways Gianna should be warned about. Then, “Tell the neighbor August is far away. Tell her Enzo is bringing his appetite. Kiss Papà. I love you.”
Who knows. Not me. That’s the honest answer, and I didn’t give it.
Gianna texts at ten.
The engineer is nobody, relax. Also, you did the watch thing during the Kovár question. Only I would notice. I notice.
I text back a photo of the breakfast table, set for one, no caption, because she’s the only person alive who gets the whole sentence from the picture. One word comes back.
Testardo.
Stubborn.
From her, it’s almost a blessing. Almost.
Here’s the fear, since it’s late and nobody’s listening. I know how to hold this line. I could hold it for ten more years. I come from people who hold things. Pans and grudges and dinner tables and doors. Holding is a skill like any other, and it improves with use.
That’s exactly what frightens me. I’m twenty-four years old and already this good at it. Somewhere out there is a version of me who held the line perfectly every day and got very old being completely right, alone, in a kitchen that only ever needed one plate. I met him tonight in a corridor, for a second, when I heard my own voice say stop. He sounded strong, and he sounded exactly like me, and I couldn’t tell whether he was the one saving my life or the one spending it.
I lay out tomorrow’s kit the way I’ve done since I was nine. Shirt, shorts, socks, boots checked twice. I text Ricci a photo of the boots. He replies with a flexed arm and the wrong emoji for the occasion, which is somehow also the right one. The phone goes on the nightstand. The apartment does its machine hum. Across the roofline, a stadium sits in the dark, holding Wednesday.
Chapter 10: Marek
On the way back from team dinner, Šíma falls in beside me, and for once, he doesn’t come at it sideways.
“You’re quiet tonight. Not match quiet. Different quiet.”
“I’m conserving material.”