Chapter 3 Šíma
Damián wakes up laughing at his phone, which is a new development in this roommate study.
“Tobík says the neighbors complained about the noise from last night after we won,” he says. “The building manager left a note. He’s framing the note.”
“Of course he’s framing the note. He’s a Hájek. They document.”
I say it from my bed, face down, in yesterday’s clothes, which is where the record will show I woke up. The clothes are part of the system. A man who comes home late from a diner sleeps in his clothes. It’s method acting, except the method is my life.
Damián puts the phone down and looks at me for exactly one second longer than the look requires.
“How was the diner?”
“There was a ceiling fan,” I say, into the pillow. “You’ll hear about it at breakfast. I’m not doing two shows.”
He laughs and goes to shower, easy and loose. A man with nothing hiding in his pockets. He kept a part of himself hidden for years. Now he wakes up laughing. There’s a drawer for evidence like this that proves the wrong case. It’s getting full. I keep it shut with my foot.
Recovery day. The schedule is on the group chat: recovery pool at ten, food at twelve, films of other teams’ quarterfinals at four.
Breakfast is the squad at three tables pretending to be one table. I arrive to a request already on the floor.
“The diner,” Novotny says. “?íma. The diner.”
“I’m eating.”
“You’re never eating. You’re narrating with food nearby.”
“Fine.” I put down the fork. “Item one. Diner on Peachtree. There’s a ceiling fan with a personality problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“Two speeds. Wedding and interrogation.”
“Which was it on?” Novotny has both elbows on the table now.
“It changed. Every time the server lied, the fan went to interrogation. I tested this for two hours. By the end I was asking the questions and the fan was handling the pressure.”
“You deposed a server,” Polá?ek says.
“The fan deposed him. I took minutes. There’s a custody situation involving the day shift that I’m not at liberty to discuss.”
Novotny puts his head on the table. The physio has stopped chewing. The story ends and nobody asks for the address. Years of stories and not one request for an address.
“Was the fan there when you arrived?” Tomá? says, from down the table, not looking up from his eggs. “Or did it hear you were coming?”
“The fan and I arrived at an understanding.”
“You said that about the parrot.”
“The parrot and I arrived at a settlement. Different place, different process.”
The table laughs. This is the double act.
Ten years of it, seamless, no rehearsal required.
He feeds me the straight line and I hit it.
What the squad sees is two best friends doing the bit they always do.
What the record sees is the man who invented the ceiling fan at one in the morning asking the fan questions in public.
If you want to hide a wire, run it through the wall everyone already looks at.
Last night is documented as watching film. Film is what it was allowed to be. Film has no aftermath, so there’s nothing to review. Play was within the rules.
One irregularity was noted. Pulling the stair door shut behind me, I did the corridor scan I always do, and his peephole was dark.
A peephole is a bright little coin when the room behind it has no one interested in what’s happening in the hallway.
His was dark. It stayed dark the whole slow swing of the stair door, which was three seconds.
Three seconds of dark peephole is a man watching a corridor with nothing in it but me.
Or it’s a towel on a hook.
The ruling after review is a towel on a hook. File closed.
I’m an excellent official. Ask the file.
At the practice facility, the pool is warm and the squad is loud and recovery is a word we use for floating.
“Five days to the semifinal,” Novotny announces, from the shallow end. “Then the final.”
“Three days after that,” Polá?ek says. “It’s printed on the tickets.”
“Details.”
“Nine days and this hotel is a rumor.”
“Four training days, one travel day,” Tomá? says, on his back, eyes shut, doing captain math at the ceiling. “Recovery today. Don’t front-load your legs.”
Nine days and this hotel is a rumor. I float on that for a while, professionally.
Nine days is two matches. Or it’s one match and a consolation nobody dreams about.
After nine days, the schedule stops being one lift and becomes fifteen boarding passes.
The film room closes for the tournament.
Everything that runs on the schedule stops running, because that’s what schedules do. They end.
That’s not a feeling. That’s a fixture list. I notice it from a distance, with a clipboard.
Tomá? surfaces next to me mid-length, because of course our intervals match. Years of the same conditioning staff. That’s all that is.
“You’re quiet,” he says. Public register, two men in a pool with too many witnesses.
“I’m cooling down verbally. It’s a method.”
“Cool down faster. You’re on media right before me at twelve, and if you do the fan story for the press I want credit as a researcher.”
“You’ll be listed. Contributing skeptic.”
“Senior contributing skeptic.” He smiles over at me.
“Don’t get greedy. The fan gets top billing and the fan knows it.”
He pushes off the wall and goes, and I watch the water where he was for one length exactly, which is a normal amount of lengths to watch.
The label on that file has been best friend for over ten years.
The label is load-bearing. I don’t audit load-bearing labels during a tournament. Ask me something easier.
Ková? does his lengths like a metronome with a grievance.
He gave ninety-four minutes to the best winger in the tournament, and then the party couldn’t hold him.
The file got a new page last night, and I don’t have a name for the page yet.
When he racks up and towels off, I’m at the rail, because the way to be available to this man is to be geographically convenient and administratively silent.
“The pool fix anything?” I say.
“It’s a pool, ?íma.”
“So no.”
He almost smiles. Almost is data. I hold out his water bottle and he takes it.
“The room’s doing films at four,” I say. “Other quarterfinal matches. Attendance is a strong suggestion.”
“I’ll be there.”
“I know you will.”
He looks at me then, one second, maybe a second and a half. There’s a version of this where I ask. I can see the door from here, his side and mine. But with Ková?, you leave the door open. You keep the hallway warm. You never ask a man to arrive before he’s packed. He’ll come when he comes.
“You noticed,” he says, at the door.
“I notice everything. It’s a condition.”
“I know,” he says. “I’m counting on it.”
And he goes, and I stand at the rail with that sentence, and I file it in his folder.
Media at twelve is a room with a red backdrop and thirty phones. I do it the way I always do it, which is why they keep sending me.
A journalist asks about the mood in camp. I tell him the mood is that Novotny has annexed the omelet station and we are seeking a diplomatic solution. A journalist asks about the semifinal. I tell her we are aware of it. Laughter, clips, everyone eats.
Then a man in the third row.
“You’ve been playing on the Czechia National Team with Damián Mare? for a long time, and now he stays in Atlanta when this ends. What changes for you?”
“Nothing,” I say. “He’s keeping the humidity and I get to go home to my own bed.”
More laughter. Next question. The broadcast doesn’t miss. That’s the whole point of the broadcast. But the question follows me out of the room anyway, and somewhere between the backdrop and the lift it rewrites itself. What changes for you?
Nothing.
The film room at four is full, which on a rest day is either professionalism or fear.
Ková? is there, third row. Tomá? runs the remote like air traffic.
Coach says four words total and leaves after the final match highlights reel.
I say my one thing per half, the room laughs on schedule, and five rows of the national team watch other countries fight over the win we want.
Dinner is quiet, and I do the rounds anyway. A table needs maintenance even on rest days, especially Horak, who has learned he can be seen crying after the quarterfinal in seven time zones and is taking it hard.
“Seven,” I tell him. “The record. Nobody’s ever cried in more than six. You’re a pioneer.”
“Where was it seven?”
“Doesn’t matter. You made strangers feel things. That’s your job, done properly.”
He laughs, which was my job.
Damián sits down next to me with his tray. Chicken, rice, the face of a man about to be casual on purpose.
“Tobík’s coming to training tomorrow. Guest of the federation, very official, there’s a lanyard.” He says the word lanyard like it’s a small country he’s been given. “Dinner after at his place. Family thing. You’re invited. You’re always invited, I’m just making sure you are aware.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“You won’t.”
“I won’t. But I’ll do it warmly.”
He grins and eats. The man made one announcement and has a whole life now. Some mornings I can feel how empty his side of the room is. I mean that as praise. I’m not looking into why it doesn’t sound like praise.
Inadmissible. Struck. Moving on.
Later, I do my stretches in a room that smells like Damián’s cologne and laundry bags. Damián comes in from the bathroom, flips his pillow twice, and lies down like scaffolding coming down.
“If you’re staying up to write the tournament memoirs,” he says, “use the small lamp.”
“The memoirs are embargoed until after the final.”
“Night, ?íma.”
“Night.”
He’s asleep in four minutes. I clock it without meaning to.
The phone stays dark. No film on rest days.
That’s the rule. It’s a good rule. I wrote it.
Tonight, the rule has a weight I don’t remember signing on for.
I check the dark screen twice anyway. The screen gives me back the room.
The lamp, the two beds, one man sleeping.
A dark little rectangle, watching a room with nothing in it but me.
?