Chapter 6 Damián
The body takes longer to come down than people think.
The match is over. We’ve shaken hands and walked off and the tunnel has swallowed us, and my muscles are still playing.
My calves are still reading the pitch. The aerial duel in the fifty-eighth minute is still firing in my neck.
The contact point, the angle, the ball meeting my forehead and traveling to Tomá? who put it forward and three passes later the net moved.
I can feel that sequence in my body like a pulse.
I love this part. The residue. The game living in the muscles after the whistle, the body holding what the mind has already filed away. The pitch makes sense. The pitch is the one place where what I do and who I am are close to the same thing.
Ková? is on the bench across from me pouring water over his head as if he’s been told water is going extinct. ?íma is lying flat on the floor with his eyes closed and his boots still on.
“?íma. Take your boots off.”
“I’m processing.”
“Process without boots.”
“The boots are part of the process. They ground me to the earth.”
“You’re lying on a tile floor in a locker room that smells like Novotny.”
“I heard that,” Novotny says from somewhere behind a locker.
Tomá? drops onto the bench beside me, shirt already off, the red bunched in his lap. He played ninety minutes at a pace that would kill most people and looks like he could run another half if anyone needed him to.
“Good ball. The fifty-eighth.”
“You made the pass.”
“I made the pass because you put it exactly where I needed it. Don’t give that away.”
“I’m accepting the compliment while also noting that your assist was excellent.”
“Just say ‘thank you, Tomá?, I’m brilliant.’”
“Thank you, Tomá?.”
He grins. It’s the grin he’s been giving me for ten years after we combine on something and neither of us will admit it first. I let it land.
This room. These people. The coach comes through with the post-match notes.
One-one, fair result. He says what coaches say after draws.
I take it in. We go again in a few days.
Ková? throws a balled-up sock at ?íma’s head and ?íma doesn’t flinch.
“Are you actually asleep on the floor, ?íma?”
“I’m in shavasana.”
“You don’t know what shavasana is.”
“I’m in athletic shavasana.”
The corridor beyond the press gauntlet hums with the slow drain of the crowd of voices still pulsing through the walls.
My hair is still damp from the shower. The flush is still on my skin.
The city outside this tunnel does not let things dry, and I am becoming familiar with the way it sits on the body.
Tomá? has his phone out as we move toward the player exit.
“Tobík’s here. He brought some of his teammates.”
“Good.”
“The hockey ones. Three or four. They’re coming down.”
They come around the corner in a cluster, and the first thing I see is the Czech scarf.
Tobík has it draped around his neck, red and blue and white, absurd in this heat.
He’s not embarrassed about it. He came to a national-team match in his country’s colors in a city that is not his country’s, and he’s worn it like he meant it.
The man beside him is talking too loudly. Marchetti. I’ve seen enough of the team posts to know the cast. The taller one must be Thompson. The third is filming on his phone, which I would normally find rude and tonight do not.
A woman at the gate stops Tobík. She says something I can’t hear.
His face opens. She takes a photo with him.
He waves to someone behind her. Another woman is calling his name.
Not Hájek. Tobías. A man in a food-service uniform recognizes him next and Tobík touches his arm the way Tobík touches everyone, which is without thinking, without calculation.
I have been watching a man walk a path in Atlanta for months from another continent.
I have memorized his Beltline route from photographs.
But the phone didn’t show me this part. The phone showed me a sketch of him.
In person, he is someone in a Czech scarf, getting recognized by strangers in a stadium corridor in a city he has decided to call home, and I should be fine about it.
Tomá? starts walking toward them. I follow.
“Tobík.” Tomá? opens his arms and Tobík walks into them, and they hug the way brothers hug. Tomá? pulls back and holds him by the shoulders and says something fast in Czech I don’t quite catch.
“You were excellent.” Tobík’s English is careful, every word measured out. “The pass in the fifty-eighth was very good.”
“The pass was because Vě? put it on my head.”
Tobík’s eyes find me.
I’m standing four feet away with the post-match flush still on my skin and his eyes land on me and I feel it in my whole body.
Same as I did three years ago. Contact and direction.
The way a ball arrives at the top of the jump and the body knows where it’s going before the mind catches up.
Yes. Excellent comparison. Probably not the same thing.
“Damián.” He says it with the particular weight of a person who means the name.
“Tobík.” I keep my voice level. “Did you enjoy the match?”
“Very much. The stadium was incredible.”
“You brought your teammates.”
“Yes. They are learning about football. The progress is slow.” He gives me a small smile, then introduces me.
Marchetti steps forward and extends a hand. “Hey, man. Great game. That header thing you do is insane.”
“Thank you. Heading is the easy part. The positioning before the jump is the work.”
“See?” Tobík says to Marchetti. “This is what I was explaining. The jump is not the point.”
“Hájek. You’ve been explaining things to me all night. I need a break from being educated.”
“You need more education, not less.”
A woman walks past, recognizes Tobík, calls his name. He turns and waves. Marchetti throws his hands up.
“It’s STILL HAPPENING. Thompson, are you seeing this?”
“I’ve been seeing it all night.”
“Everyone in this city knows him.” Marchetti turns to me. “EVERYONE. We got stopped so many times between the parking lot and our seats.”
“How does this happen?” I ask. The question comes out as curiosity because I’ve shaped it to sound like curiosity. I could have answered it myself from a phone screen in Germany at one in the morning. Very normal behavior from a person with no particular interest.
“I walk the Beltline,” Tobík says. “I take photographs. People are friendly in Atlanta.”
“He’s being modest,” Thompson says. “He’s apparently famous. We’re just now finding this out.”
Tomá? shakes his head, half-amused. “I told you. The city loves him. Nine months and he’s built this whole life here.
” He turns to Tobík and the next sentence comes out the way Tomá? says things he’s already decided.
“You live here, Tobíku. Show Damián around. He’s been in the hotel and the training facility since we landed. ”
“Of course,” Tobík says.
Tobík looks at me. The warmth in his smile arriving before his mouth decides what to do with it, and I feel it land behind my ribs the way it landed at a coffee shop days ago.
“I’ll text you,” he says. “When you have a free day.”
“Good.” The word comes out level and carries nothing it shouldn’t. Neither of us mentions to Tomá? that this plan was already decided.
He nods. Marchetti is already pulling him sideways to take a photo with someone, and Tobík goes, the scarf swinging against his back.
Tomá? claps my shoulder and drifts toward Thompson, who has begun asking him about the offside trap with the misplaced confidence of a man who has just discovered the offside rule.
The bus back to the hotel is fifteen minutes of quiet. Ková? is asleep against the window before we leave the parking lot. Novotny is FaceTiming his girlfriend at a volume that suggests she has not asked him to lower it. Tomá? is on his phone, scrolling something I can’t see.
The AC hits me first when I get back to the room, then the quiet. ?íma told me on the bus that he was going somewhere “with character,” which I have learned to translate as a bar I will hear about over breakfast in detail I didn’t request.
I pull the shirt over my head. The water bottle on the desk is warm but I drink it anyway.
My phone has two notifications waiting. A missed call from Dad.
No voicemail. Below that, the email from the club is still sitting where I left it this morning.
The deadline is closer than it was at breakfast.
I stand up. I cross to the window. Somewhere out there is a man who stands in a stadium corridor being recognized by strangers, and the word “no” has apparently been removed from my operating vocabulary in his vicinity. Tomá? didn’t see it. Tomá? handed me his brother on a platter.
Recovery at nine. Weights at eleven. Walkthrough at three. The day tomorrow has shape. Somewhere inside the shape there will be a text from Tobík, and on the other end of the text there will be a Beltline I have never walked and have walked a hundred times.