Chapter 4 #2
“Eight,” I said, signing the area to the side of my name. “Give me a second to find your socks.” She turned her back to me and started rifling through an organized container behind her.
“Mr. Kulti, I have you down for a medium shirt and large bottoms, does that sound right?” the other employee who wasn’t busy asked, her voice sounding a little high, a little breathless.
Her hands were folded and pressed to her chest, her eyes only just barely holding that glint of nervous excitement in them.
“Yes” was the simple answer that rumbled out deeply; his enunciation was sharp with just the slightest hint of an accent that had been watered down from living in so many different countries over the years.
I felt his tone right between my shoulder blades. I could remember hearing him talk about whatever game he’d just finished playing dozens of times. Poop, fart, hemorrhoids. Sal. Get it together.
I swallowed hard, unable to get over how different he looked.
Back when I’d been a fan, he’d gone through every hair style from dyed tips to a mohawk.
Now standing there, his hair was shaved short, and his arms were loose at his sides, his spine rigid.
A hint of his cross pattée tattoo—a cross with arms that narrowed toward the center—appeared beneath the hem of his T-shirt sleeve.
It wasn’t huge from what I remembered, maybe five inches high and five across, and he’d had it for a long time.
When I was younger, I thought it was kind of neat.
Now… meh. I liked tattoos on men, but I liked big pieces, not a collection of random little ones.
But whatever, it wasn’t like anyone was asking me for my opinion.
“Here you go, Sal, I got ’em,” the staff member said, handing me another sealed packet. “We’ll have the rest of your gear later.”
“All right. Thanks, Shelly.” Holding the uniform under one arm, I took another glance at Kulti, who was steadfast keeping his attention forward, and fought the anticipation that pooled in my chest. My feet wouldn’t move, and my stupid eyes wouldn’t move either.
At no point in my childhood had I ever really expected to be so close to this man. Never. Not once.
But after a second of standing there awkwardly, hoping for a look or possibly a word?
I realized he wasn’t going to give me either.
He was making a point to keep his eyes forward, lost in his own thoughts; maybe he wanted to be left alone, or might have purposely not wanted to waste his time speaking to me.
That thought went like a mortal blow straight to my chest. I felt like a preteen girl who wanted the older guy to pay attention to her when he didn’t even know she existed. The hope, the expectancy, and the following disappointment sucked. It just sucked.
He wasn’t going to acknowledge me. That much was clear.
All righty, then. While I wasn’t exactly a Jenny who made friends with everyone, I liked being friendly with people. Obviously this guy wasn’t going to win a Mr. Congeniality award anytime soon, since he wouldn’t even bother looking at me standing there two feet away.
So… that didn’t sting at all. My heart didn’t feel funny either.
Then I remembered the crap with the journalist outside and the effect that kind of attention could have on me. I tried my best to keep under the radar. I just wanted to play soccer, that was it.
With another quick glance at the man who was standing, oblivious to everything around him, I took my crap and went to change. I didn’t need Reiner Kulti to talk to me. I hadn’t needed him before, and I wouldn’t need him in the future.
IF I THOUGHT for a second that things would get less hectic as the days passed and Kulti’s presence slowly became old news, I would have been sorely mistaken.
It didn’t.
Everyday there were at least half a dozen reporters outside of the field or headquarters. Wherever we’d be that day, they would be there. I’d scraped the skin on my neck nearly raw from how much I was scratching at it on my walks toward wherever we were meeting.
I tried to stay as far away from them as I could.
It was just like I tried to stay away from the team’s new coach.
To be fair, he made it easy. The German stayed in the corner of the universe he had dug out for himself—a lonely little corner that included him and him only.
Apparently, only Gardner, the mean bat known as the fitness coach, and Grace got invitations every so often.
He stood and watched; then he moved a little to the side and kept right on watching.
“I feel like we’re in the lion exhibit at the zoo,” Jenny whispered to me when we were taking a break during our last meeting.
We were in that bathroom alone after having just sat through two hours of scheduling details, and I was on the verge of wanting to stab myself in the eye with my pen.
I was restless sitting in the chair doing nothing.
My prayers had been answered when they gave us ten minutes to use the bathroom and get a drink.
I looked at her in the reflection of the bathroom mirror and made my eyes go big. I guess I wasn’t the only one who noticed the wordless man who went through the meeting with his back against the wall and his arms crossed over his chest. “It does feel like that, huh?”
She nodded like she was glum about it. “He hasn’t said anything, Sal. I mean, isn’t that weird? Even Phyllis,” the mean old fitness coach, “talks every once in a while.” She hunched her shoulders up high. “Weird.”
“Very weird,” I agreed with her. “But we can’t say—”
The door opened, and three of the newer girls on the team walked in, joking around with each other.
Jenny shot me a look in the mirror’s reflection, because what was more obvious than immediately stopping a conversation when other people walked by?
I might as well have the word guilty tattooed on my forehead.
So I spouted out the first thing that came to mind, “—that you didn’t ask for onions on your burger without sounding like an asshole… .”
One of the girls smiled at me before going into the stall, the other two ignored us.
Jenny visibly bit her lip as the newcomers went into the bathroom stalls. “Yeah, you can’t complain about that…?” She mouthed, “What was that?” the second they were in.
“It was the first thing I thought of!” I mouthed back to her with a shrug.
Jenny pinched her nostrils together as her face went red.
“I know, right?” I held my arms out at my sides in a “what was I supposed to say?” gesture, even though she was too busy trying not to burst out laughing to see me in the mirror.
God, she was no help in our made-up conversation.
“I clearly asked for no onions, but whatever. I guess. It’s not like I’m allergic to them. ”
By that point, Jenny had her forehead to the bathroom counter and her back was arching with repressed laughs.
I kicked her in the back of the knee lightly just as one of the toilets flushed. She looked up, and I mouthed, “Stop it!” to her. Did she? No. Not even close.
Yeah, she was too far gone to keep going with the charade. One look and the other girls would see Jenny losing it over onions. God, I really was a horrible liar.
I shoved her out of the bathroom just as one of the latches turned.
“THERE’S a rumor going around that you’re going to be rejoining the national team soon, any word on that?”
It was the first official day of practice, and my feet were itching. After nearly six months of playing soccer with friends and family, while training and conditioning on my own, I was ready.
And of course I’d gotten waved down by a writer for Training, Inc., a popular e-magazine.
So far, two questions in, it was going fine.
That still didn’t mean that I was going to open my big mouth and tell him all my deepest secrets. Vague, Sal. Don’t ever confirm or deny anything. “I don’t think so. My ankle still isn’t back to where it needs to be, and I’m busy with other priorities.”
Okay, that wasn’t too bad.
“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”
“I’m working with youth camps.” I left out the other small parts of my life, the parts that weren’t glamorous and had nothing to do with soccer.
No one wanted to hear about our miserable paychecks and how most of us had to supplement our incomes by getting second jobs.
That didn’t go with the image most people had of professional players in any sport.
And no one especially wanted to hear that I did landscaping when I wasn’t busy with the Pipers.
It didn’t embarrass me, not at all. I liked doing it, and I had a degree in landscape architecture.
It wasn’t glossy or pretty, but I’d be damned if I ever let anyone give what I did a bad name.
My dad had supported our family being the “the lawn guy” or “the gardener” and any and all other things that could put food on our table.
There was no shame in hard work; he and my mom had taught me that from a very early age when I had cared what other people thought.
People would laugh and crack jokes when Dad would pick me up from school with a lawnmower and other tools in the back of his beat-up truck, with his goofy hat and sweat-stained clothes that had seen better decades.
But how could I ever give my dad a hard time about picking me up from school so he could take me to soccer practice?
Or he’d pick me up, take me to a job or two with him, and then he’d take me to practice.
He loved us, and he sacrificed so that Eric and I could be on those teams with their expensive fees and uniforms. We got where we were today because he worked his ass off.
As I got older, people just found more things to pick on me about and laugh. I’d been called a priss, stuck-up, a bitch, and a lesbian more times than I could count. All because I loved playing soccer and took it seriously.