Chapter 2 Damián
Ková? looks like he hasn’t run in six months.
I tell him this while he’s still pulling his bag through the hotel lobby, and he sets it down and puts his hands on his hips and gives me the face he’s been giving me since we were seventeen and I told him his first touch was a war crime.
“I’ve been playing in Italy. We walk with more purpose.”
“You walk with the purpose of a man who’s eaten too much pasta.”
“Vě?.” He grabs the back of my neck, pulls me in, knocks his forehead against mine. “I’ve missed your shit.”
I’ve missed this. The lobby is filling with men I haven’t seen since November and the noise is building in a way that makes the front-desk staff glance at each other and choose to look down at their screens.
Novotny comes through the revolving door arguing with Polá?ek about a Champions League match from six months ago, both of them already too loud for the marble floors.
?íma is sitting on a luggage cart he is definitely not supposed to be sitting on, eating an energy bar and narrating arrivals like a commentator.
“And here’s Vě?, the tower of the back line, looking lean, looking focused, looking like a man who definitely has not been staring at his phone for three months instead of returning his agent’s calls.”
“I return calls,” I say.
“You return calls the way Novotny returns passes. Eventually, and to the wrong person.”
Novotny looks up from across the lobby. “I heard that.”
“You were meant to.”
“Who’s rooming with Novotny?” I say. “Because last time he snored through an earthquake.”
“I’d rather sleep on the pitch,” Ková? says.
“The pitch has better air conditioning,” Polá?ek adds, and Novotny throws an energy-bar wrapper at him that lands two feet short.
?íma slides off the cart. “I’m filing that as inconclusive. The wrapper landed but the intent was unclear.”
“The intent was at his face,” Polá?ek says.
“And yet the face is unhit. We need to talk about your accuracy, Novotny.”
“I’m rusty.”
“You’re rusty in Champions League and you’re rusty throwing trash at Polá?ek. The pattern is concerning.”
Ková? has wandered over and picked the wrapper up off the marble. He peels it open the rest of the way and starts eating what’s inside.
“Ková?, that’s Novotny‘s,” Polá?ek says.
“Novotny threw it. That,” Ková? says with his mouth full, “is on him.”
Tomá? appears beside me. He drops his bag next to mine and leans his shoulder against my arm, the way he’s done for ten years when we’re standing in the same place.
“How was the flight?” I ask.
“Long. I sat next to a woman who wanted to tell me about her cat for seven hours.”
“You love cats.”
“I love cats in small portions. Seven hours is not a small portion.” He watches the lobby for a second. ?íma is now providing live commentary on Novotny‘s haircut. “Good to be here.”
“Yes, good to be here.”
He waits. “Have you signed the contract with Bundesliga yet?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“You’ve been thinking about it for three months.”
“It’s a big decision, Tomá?, to stay in Munich. To stay with the team.”
“It’s the captaincy, Dami. What’s the decision?”
“I said I’m thinking about it.”
“Thinking has two outcomes, Dami. Yes or no. Which one are you leaning toward?”
“Tomá?.” I turn and stare him down.
“Fine. But the question stands.”
He watches me. I look at the lobby.
“Okay,” he says. “But call them.”
At dinner I sit between Tomá? and Polá?ek. ?íma is across from me, already three drinks deep, hands moving as he talks.
“I’m going to say something controversial,” he says.
“Don’t,” Tomá? says.
“No, hear me out.”
“That is how every ?íma sentence starts.”
“The food here is better than the food in Brno.” He nods while he says this, as if trying to convince everyone at the table.
Ková? looks up from his plate. “That is treason.”
“It’s a steak, Ková?. The steak is a fact.”
“The steak is American. We’re Czech. There are loyalties.”
“I have loyalties to steak.”
“You’d sell your grandmother for steak, ?íma.”
“My grandmother understands. She is also pro-steak.”
Polá?ek raises his glass. “To ?íma’s grandmother. A woman of taste.”
“To ?íma’s grandmother,” three of us echo. Ková? refuses on principle and is overruled. He drinks anyway.
At some point ?íma leans across the table and points his fork at me. “Vě?, you’re quiet.”
“I’m eating.”
“You’re brooding. There’s a difference.”
“I’m jet-lagged.”
“You flew six hours.”
“It was a long six hours.”
The dinner runs an hour over because ?íma starts the story about the hotel in Bucharest and nobody can breathe by the end.
Ková? arm-wrestles Polá?ek over the last bread roll and loses and blames jet lag.
I eat too much. I laugh in a way that sits close to genuine.
Tomá? leans toward me near the end of the meal.
“How are you, really.”
“I’m fine.”
“Fine like fine, or fine like not so fine.”
“Fine like I’m eating and it’s good and shut up.”
He doesn’t push past that. He picks up his glass. We touch glasses without saying anything.
?íma heads to the bar with Ková? and I take the elevator to our room on the fourth floor.
Through the window, past the interstate, the Atlanta skyline catches the last of the light, the glass towers going copper and then dark.
I have not been in a city this hot in June.
Munich at this hour is still wearing a sweater.
I sit on the edge of the bed and take out my phone. I open the app.
He posted this morning. The Beltline. The golden retriever is back, the enormous one named after bread, sitting on his foot.
He is laughing at the camera. Linen shirt.
Freckles on his nose I have never noticed before, or I have and I keep noticing them anyway.
Behind him the skyline catches light the way it does in every photo from that path.
He captioned it with one word in Czech. Doma. Home. He called the city home.
My phone buzzes against my palm. The screen says Dad.
“Damián.” My father’s voice has the same cadence whether he’s calling from Brno or the surface of the sun. “I spoke with your agent. He says you haven’t called the club.”
“I’ve been traveling.”
“The phone works while traveling.”
“I’ll call them next week, Dad.”
A pause. He decides not to push, but the silence is worse, because I have to fill in his disappointment myself.
“Fine. Call me after.”
“Yes, Dad.”
A beat. “And Damián.”
“Yes.”
“Get some rest. Tournament starts in a few days.”
“I know.”
He hangs up. I put the phone down then pick it up again. The app opens and I see the coffee shop on Moreland with the blue awning. He goes there most mornings when he’s not on the road.
Tomorrow is not a road day. The season has ended for the Firebirds. He’ll be there.
I set the alarm for nine and sleep, eventually.
I wake up at seven. Recovery session is at ten. Three hours. I put on jeans and a shirt I choose carefully and then tell myself I did not choose carefully. I check the mirror. I see a man simply going to get coffee. That is what I am. Simple and straight forward. Excellent reasoning. No notes.
The walk takes fourteen minutes. A Brazilian flag hangs from a balcony on the second block.
A group of teenagers in Mexico jerseys passes me on the corner, arguing about something in rapid Spanish, one of them laughing so hard he has to stop walking.
The city has a different pulse this week.
You can feel the tournament in it, in the flags and the languages and the way the restaurants have posted signs in four languages and the cab drivers are wearing the jerseys of countries that aren’t theirs.
I rehearse on the way. I didn’t know you came here. Casual. The line of a man who did not spend twelve minutes last night choosing this coffee shop over the one at the hotel.
It’s been three years since I have seen him. The bedroom. His face so close. I leaned in. I pulled back. Three years of calling it a weird night, of it living underneath everything without looking too closely.
I turn onto Moreland and recognize the block.
The blue awning is exactly where the photos put it.
The woman visible beyond the espresso machine, through the window, sports tattoos on both forearms, the way I knew she would.
I am walking through a city I have never been to and the city looks familiar in a way that is not flattering to me.
I push the door open.
“Hey. What can I get you?”
“A cortado, please.”
“For here?”
“Yes, please.”
“Sit anywhere. I’ll bring it.”
I sit near the window and angle my chair toward the door. She brings the cortado over and sets it down on the table. The coffee is good. I read the menu on the wall four times. I think about leaving once. I don’t leave, because the coffee is good and that is the reason.
Then the door opens and he’s here in person.
Tobík comes through already mid-step, phone in one hand and sunglasses in the other. He goes straight to the counter, saying something to the barista before the door has finished closing behind him.
He’s speaking English. I’ve never heard him speak English.
I’ve known him since he was twelve. In Czech, he’s fast and easy, the words already there before he needs them. And now he’s standing at a counter ordering a coffee and every word is careful. Measured. He thanks the barista, and the thank you carries more weight than a native speaker would give it.
He is taller than the photos.
Logically, he can’t be taller than the photos.
But on the screen he was flat, contained.
Standing ten feet away from me he is not contained.
His shoulders are broader than the photos showed.
Nine months of professional hockey have settled into his frame in a way the camera didn’t catch.
He’s not the kid Tomá? used to describe, the little brother in gear that was too big.
The gear would fit now, maybe even too small.
He leans against the counter while he waits, which gives me time to watch him.
He picks up a flyer and reads it. His head tilts when something interests him.
His mouth moves slightly, trying the words.
His light brown hair falls forward, curling over his forehead, and he doesn’t push it back.
I have been watching this man through a phone screen for three years and the screen left out everything that matters.
The way he stands. The way his whole body leans into whatever has his attention, even a flyer.
The barista says something and he laughs. Short, surprised, real. I’ve heard him laugh in Czech. It sounds the same in English. I don’t know why that does something to my chest.
He picks up his coffee and turns.
His eyes catch mine and he does a double-take. Then his whole face opens.
It happens in less than a second. Every part of his face reorganizes around something bright and unguarded, the brown eyes going wide.
I lift a hand. The hand goes up without consulting me.
“Tobík.” I hear myself say it. Smooth. Easy. The line I rehearsed, delivered like I didn’t. “I didn’t know you came here.”