Chapter 4 Damián
Ková? is asleep against the bus window before we leave the hotel parking lot.
“The width,” Novotny says. “The width in the final third creates the overloads.”
“The width is meaningless if you don’t control the middle.”
“I’m controlling the middle with three.”
“You’re controlling the middle with two and praying the third tracks back. Which he never does. Because the third one is ?íma.”
“I track back,” ?íma calls from four rows up. “I track back with purpose and intention.”
“You track back with the speed of a man who’s already deciding what he’s eating for dinner,” I say.
?íma turns in his seat. “Vě?, I respect you, but my recovery runs have been timed. I’m faster than Ková?.”
“Ková? is asleep.”
“He’s asleep because he knows I’m faster and it hurts him.”
Ková?, face against the window, doesn’t move. Novotny reaches over and pokes his shoulder. Nothing.
“Is he alive?” Polá?ek says.
“He’s conserving energy.”
The morning through the bus window is already thick.
Atlanta green and hazy blue, the air sitting on everything like it has plans.
The interstate gives way to two lanes and then to the gates of the facility.
The grass here is different from German grass, softer and thicker.
I step off the bus and the air hits my skin like a warm cloth.
I fall into the warm-up without thinking. Dynamic stretches in a circle, my body in the sequence before the physio calls it, the familiarity settling the way it always does.
“Vě?, you’re with me on the heading drill,” Tomá? calls, jogging over.
Crosses from the right, clears from the left, reset, repeat.
Tomá? sends them in with the flat, accurate delivery he’s been perfecting for a decade, and I meet each one at the top of the jump.
Direction chosen before I leave the ground.
The timing is right. The ball and the body are in agreement.
For twenty minutes, my chest has nothing unauthorized in it.
Just air and effort and the clean certainty of a header landing where I aimed it.
“Clean,” Tomá? says after the fifth one. “You’re timing them early.”
“I’m timing them correctly. Your delivery is late.”
“My delivery is never late.”
“Your delivery was late on the third one. I had to adjust.”
“You adjusted because you jumped too early.”
“I jumped when the ball told me to jump.”
“The ball told you wrong.”
I grin. He grins back. Ten years of the same argument, neither of us giving an inch.
We break for water under the shade structure. The heat finds you anyway, wrapping around the metal posts. Ková? has somehow found food. Novotny is standing next to Polá?ek, who is drawing formations on a napkin.
“Ková?, what are you eating?” ?íma asks.
“A banana.”
“That’s your third banana.”
“I’m a growing boy.”
“You’re twenty-nine.”
“I’m growing emotionally.”
“Your emotional growth is not my concern. Your caloric intake before a recovery session is my concern.”
“?íma, you ate a croissant on the bus.”
“I ate it with purpose.”
Ková? reaches over and grabs the back of my neck. Pulls me in. Shakes me once, the way he does. I lean into it. ?íma’s shoulder presses against mine from the other side, warm from the sun.
“Vě?.” Tomá?‘s voice drops half a register. The others can’t hear. “Have you called the club?”
“Soon. After the group stage.”
“Your contract expires before we finish the group stage.”
“I know when the contract expires, Tomá?. My agent tells me every day.”
“They’re offering you the captaincy. Kessler is retiring. What is there to consider?”
“I said I’m thinking about it.”
He looks at me. I look at the pitch. The Czech gets short and clipped between us the way it always does when I close the door, and Tomá? reads it the way he’s been reading it for ten years.
“Okay,” he says. “Don’t let it expire, Dami.”
After practice, I shower and change and ride the bus back. Tomá? sits across the aisle and talks about Tobík.
“You should see the way people stop him on the street,” Tomá? says. “He’s been here nine months and the city loves him. He walks the path every morning. Everyone knows him.”
“Atlanta suits him.”
The sentence comes out smooth. Not at all how someone would sound if they’d said the same thing in a coffee shop they’d intentionally walked to.
“He’s proud of it. The life he’s building. I didn’t expect it, honestly. He was always my little brother. And now he’s this person in this city and people just want to be around him.”
“He’s easy to be around,” I say.
The hotel room is quiet later that night. ?íma is at dinner with Novotny. I told them I was tired. Nobody checked.
My phone rings and I see my agent’s name. I answer because not answering Peter is a stalling tactic with a shelf life, which expired two weeks ago.
“Damián. Glad I caught you.” Peter’s voice is the voice of a man who makes twelve percent of everything I earn and has never once deserved less. “The club called me again. They’re getting nervous.”
“I know.”
“They need a timeline. Kessler’s retirement announcement is tied to your decision. If you’re signing, they want to announce together.”
“I understand.”
“So what do I tell them?”
“Tell them I appreciate the offer. Tell them I need a few more days.”
“Damián, you’ve had ninety days of a few more days. This is the captaincy. This is the Bundesliga. What am I missing?”
“Nothing. A few more days.”
A pause. Peter’s pause is calculation, not judgment. I prefer it to my father’s, which is disappointment, and which arrived an hour ago in the form of two question marks and nothing else.
“I’ll buy you three more days,” Peter says. “After that, they’re going to start talking to other people.”
“Fine. Thank you.”
“Call me when you’re ready.”
I hang up.
The Bundesliga is the right choice. The armband is the culmination of every early morning and every correction absorbed until the corrections became instinct.
I should take it and call Peter and call my father and stop being a man who walked to a coffee shop on the Beltline to accidentally run into someone on purpose.