Chapter 5 Šíma
We drill corners at the end of the morning session, exactly as the captain ordered. Six bodies, and the first delivery arrives like a subpoena.
“Again,” Tomá? says, from the flag, and we go again.
“Better. Novotny, you’re arriving early.”
“I’m enthusiastic.”
“Arrive enthusiastic later.”
The fifth delivery comes off the flag flat and mean and finds Novotny’s head right where the keeper should be standing, and somewhere in their video room his understudy is going to watch it and learn what his summer will be like.
Between drills he crosses behind me and says, “Good ball,” quiet, already moving away. The file cracks open along its seam. Good ball. Two words, factual, the kind of thing captains say a hundred times a week. He said it at half volume. Half volume is ours. I close the file with both hands.
The day’s first exhibit came earlier, at breakfast. There is a plate at my seat when I come down at nine minutes to nine. There is always a plate. Eggs, toast, two bananas, assembled before the line closes, sitting at the empty chair next to Polá?ek like a small verdict in my favor.
“Your food waits for you,” Polá?ek says. “Mine has never waited for me anywhere.”
“Seniority.”
“You’re only two months older than me.”
“Two months of service, Polá?ek. The pension reflects it.”
Later, the video session ends at three. The room empties on schedule, Novotny giving a detailed review of dinner into the corridor. And the captain stays.
Protocol in small rooms is dispersal. It isn’t written anywhere.
We never wrote anything. But I drafted every clause and I know when one bends.
The captain of this squad sat in a dark room with me for film review for eleven unnecessary minutes, holding the remote like the remote had asked him personally to stay.
The finding, if I made one, would need a witness.
The only witness is a man who has been the most reliable person the rules have ever had.
He leaves on the minute. He answers regulation with regulation.
If the rule-follower is drifting, the rules have a problem.
The rules cannot have a problem. The rules are what keep half of him in my possession, which is the number I negotiated with myself a long time ago, in a hotel I tell jokes about.
Corners. The finding is corners ran long. It’s even true. The best findings are.
File closed.
The file reopens twice during the afternoon and I close it twice.
A file that needs closing three times in one day should be transferred to another official.
There is no other official. There’s me. I built the court, I staff it.
Lately, I am also the defendant, and nobody in this building knows the docket even exists.
The afternoon gym is a bunch of men working out using bikes and bands. The physio is triaging hamstrings like a woman running a field hospital. Novotny is pedaling with the resistance set to zero so the number on his screen looks like a miracle.
“Look at my output,” he says.
“Your output is fraud,” Polá?ek says, next to him, geared to the ceiling.
“The screen says what it says.”
“Corners tomorrow,” I tell them, passing. “Same six. The near post loves you, Novotny. It told me.”
“Everything tells you things.”
“I’m approachable. It happens”
“?íma.” The physio, over her shoulder, mid-hamstring. “Tell your hip flexor to stop lying to me.”
“It’s not lying. It’s protecting its sources.”
The ice baths after are democracy. Everyone hates them equally.
“How long?” Horak says, into his ribs, breathing like a kettle.
“Three minutes.”
“It’s been three minutes.”
“It’s been forty seconds. Think about the seven time zones. They believe in you.”
“Seven,” Horak says, and goes back under.
Coach walks the room once, says, “Good. Now rest,” to the room in general, and leaves. Three words for twenty men. He’s saving the rest for the match.
Dinner at the hotel is half a squad, the other half scattered to families and video calls and hotel rooms. Damian and Tomas having dinner at Tobik’s place, their mother cooking. The place I chose not to go.
Novotny demands programming before his tray is even down.
“Rank the celebrations. All time. This squad.”
“Number one. Horak, hypothetically, in the semifinal, because he has planned nothing and panic is honest.” Horak salutes me with a fork.
“I have planned something,” he says.
“Don’t tell me. If I know, it’s a performance. Number two. Polá?ek, Ostrava, the handshake.”
“It was a good handshake,” Polá?ek says. “It said what it needed to say.”
“It said nothing. That was the beauty. A man scores in the ninetieth minute and shakes hands like a notary. Number three, and the committee is unanimous, Ková? against Portugal, pointing at the man who gave the assist for eleven straight seconds. Longest point in federation history. The assist man got engaged that same week. Correlation.”
“And mine?” Novotny says.
“Yours are performances. These were celebrations. Different category. The committee honors your commitment to the arts.”
At half past nine, the lobby doors open and produces the captain, back from a family dinner, carrying a stacked tower of food containers like a man who lost an argument with his mother, which is exactly what happened, because that argument has never once been won.
He sees me at the far end, conducting my nightly review of the hotel’s foot traffic. He comes over and sets the tower on the table between us. Squad-visible, all of it, bright lobby, staff at the desk. Daylight, as the rules count daylight.
“How was the kitchen?” I say.
“She cooked for eleven people with two pots. She thinks it’s camping. Took forty minutes, and nothing was cold.”
“The woman should be given a trophy.”
“In the fridge, there’s a container with your name on it. She wrote it in marker.”
“What is it?”
“Sví?ková. In Atlanta. It shouldn’t be possible. It’s better than home.”
“Tell her I am grateful.”
“Tell her yourself, she reads any messages you send her.” He straightens the tower. Squares it to the table edge. His hands do logistics when the rest of him is busy. “You should have...”
The sentence stops. Three words in, brakes, full stop, a sentence pulled off the road with no skid marks, and he has already turned it into, “You should have the dumplings tonight. They don’t keep. The beef keeps.”
“Noted. Dumplings urgent, beef stable.”
“That’s the note. She sent enough for the floor,” he says. “She thinks the federation doesn’t feed us.”
“She’s met Novotny. The evidence supports her position.”
He laughs, once, eyes going shut on the way. Bright lobby. I look at the desk staff looking at nothing.
There was a half second there. I want the record to hold the half second.
A half second where the sentence was going somewhere true.
You should have come. Or further, somewhere neither of us has an address for.
And I had my own true thing ready, because I always have it ready.
That’s what the safety is for. Either of us could have said one honest word in a bright lobby, with staff at the desk and a tower of his mother’s cooking between us.
Instead, dumpling logistics. Executed cleanly on both sides. Five years of training, and neither of us even had to check that the other’s exit was open. It’s always open. We keep them open for each other.
“Night, ?íma,” he says, collecting the tower and leaving the one for me.
“Night, captain.”
He goes. I stay on the couch and give the lobby fifteen more minutes it doesn’t need.
The chat gets its minutes at ten, because the chat expects minutes, and expectations are load-bearing.
?íma
official minutes. corners were drilled, the near post has been notified. novotny’s bike said 900 watts and his resistance said zero. the matter is referred to the authorities
Novotny
the screen says what it says
Polá?ek
the screen is a hostage
Ková?
the screen knows
?íma
first the eggs, now the screen. the man is building a unified theory
Hájek
bus at nine thirty. training at ten. that is the whole announcement
?íma
the captain has spoken. minutes concluded. drink water between the waters
Technically, perfect output. The committee would find nothing wrong with it, and the committee looks every night, because the committee is me.
Upstairs, Damián is folding laundry into two piles, and I know without asking that one pile is staying on this continent.
“You missed a nice dinner,” he says, nodding at the box I am putting in our mini-fridge. “She asked where you were. I said film. Everyone said ah, film, like it was scripture.”
“Film is scripture. You know this. Attendance is doctrine.”
“You know what I bought today? First thing for the flat.”
“A trophy shelf?”
“A table. Big one. Walnut. Seats eight.” He says it like a confession, which for him it might be.
“Too many years of hotels, ?íma. A man forgets tables exist. Room service on the bed, buffets, folding trays. You live your whole life in rooms someone else cleans and you start thinking that’s a life. ”
The sentence walks past me on its way to nowhere and puts one boot down, hard, dead center.
“Seats eight,” I say. “You know seven people?”
“I know you. That’s one. Tobik is two. The rest will develop.”
“Chairs?”
“Six now, two later. There’s a delivery window.” He grins at the ceiling.
“Domesticated. They’ll write about it.”
“Let them.” He throws a sock at the staying pile like it owed him. “You’ll come through Atlanta. Whenever. There’s a chair with your name on it.”
“Everything has my name on it today. Containers. Chairs.”
“That’s what it looks like,” he says, “when people plan for you,” and goes to brush his teeth like he didn’t just leave that on the carpet for me to trip over in the dark.
Lights out at eleven. Day’s rulings, for the record.
One pattern, identified and dismissed. One sentence, stopped at the border, contents undeclared.
One sví?ková in a fridge with my actual name on it in a mother’s handwriting.
One table, walnut, seats eight, bought by a man who lived out of rooms someone else cleaned.
No findings. The court notes that the officiating took eleven hours today and used to take none. It does not ask why. It has seen what happens to people who ask why in this building. They end up honest. Too honest.
?