Chapter 15
Natalia
Diogo calls me at seven in the morning. At that hour, in Europe it’s already late afternoon, so the fact that he waited until I’d be awake tells me this is serious.
“It’s formal,” he says without even a hello. “I’ve got the offer in writing from the French club. Three years and a ton of money.”
He gives me the contract figure, and then the bonuses I’d get for various things, like titles won or number of goals.
It’s more than I’d make in Seattle over five seasons.
At thirty-one, he insists this could be the last big contract anyone puts in front of me, especially one that means three seasons.
I wouldn’t have to worry until thirty-four.
Then would come the one-year deals, the “let’s see how the knees hold up” ones. We both know it.
“You’ve got cheap daily flights to S?o Paulo. Belo’s a hop from there.”
“Tell them I’ll think about it a few days.”
“What do you mean, think about it, Natalia?” he protests.
I hang up before he keeps pushing, because I know how much of a pain he can be about this stuff. Every time I change teams, he takes a commission, and with the rate I’ve switched all my life, to my agent I’m a real gold mine.
The last time a big European club put a serious number in front of me, I left Camille and went to the UK without a second thought.
Now I say I need a few days to decide. I don’t know if it’s a sign of maturity or stupidity, because this thinking-it-over thing is new to me and I still don’t know if I like it.
***
The next day I tell Iris, because I need to tell someone and with Holland I’m flat-out terrified.
“Man, leave, Brazil?” She looks at me like I told her I’m quitting soccer to sell washing machines. “Leave for where? You’re already on the best team in the world. What have you got to go looking for in Europe?”
For Iris there’s no debate. For her and for a lot of other American players, playing for the Seattle Emeralds is the summit; anything else is stepping down.
So I explain that it’s the biggest contract I’ll see in my life, that it’s more money than I’ll make here, that it means being one overnight flight from my parents.
And that I’ve lived in so many cities that going to France is no problem at all.
“You’re better off here,” she says, with no explanation.
***
Hale comes to Seattle to cover the next game.
They tell me on Tuesday, probably so I can get myself ready mentally in case I run into him.
At first I get mad, but by Thursday I decide to talk to Paula, Iris’s girlfriend.
I tell her everything. It takes her no more than a day to meet me at a Ballard café, one of those with too many plants.
She doesn’t order anything. She waits for me to sit and for the waitress to walk away.
“There’s a woman,” she tells me, slow and low, weighing every word.
“She worked in the press department at your old club when the Bianca thing happened. They let her go the next season and she didn’t take it well at all.
She blames Hale and she’s willing to testify.
I’ve checked that she’s reliable and knows what she’s talking about,” she says, with a long pause.
“From there it’s your call, I stay out of it. ”
I find Hale outside a Belltown restaurant, waiting for a cab.
“If you publish one word about Bianca, I’ll publish things about you that will destroy your career,” I warn him, planting myself next to him. “I have material you won’t like.”
He looks me up and down, in no hurry, like he’s calculating whether it’s true or I’m bluffing.
“You really think I’ll believe something like that?” he asks with a sneer.
I don’t give him the pleasure of staying to argue. I’ve already said what I came to say, and we both know this doesn’t end on a Belltown sidewalk, so I turn around and leave. If he wants war, he’ll get it. And the smile stays on my face the rest of the night.
***
My running shoes are in a clear box by the entrance of Holland’s house, next to Lina’s rain boots. It might seem silly, but I look at them every time I come in and think it’s the first time in years that something of mine seems to fit in a house.
Holland’s washing the dinner dishes when I get there. Lina’s already asleep. I lean on the counter and watch her hands move in the water, unhurried, sorting the silverware before drying it, because she’s incapable of not organizing something.
“You’ve been a little distant lately,” she says without turning around, drying her hands on a dish towel.
“I’ve gotten offers from two clubs in Europe,” I admit, letting out a long sigh. “It’s nothing for now.”
“Offers?” she presses.
“Yeah, well, you know how it goes. There’s always some kind of offer. They talk a lot and then there’s nothing,” I hedge.
She leaves it there. She believes me, or decides to believe me. Maybe she just doesn’t feel like knowing more, because sometimes you don’t want to know things until they’re past fixing. She puts the towel away and kisses my forehead as she passes me on her way to the living room.
Just then my phone buzzes in my pocket. Bianca.
“I’m tired of waiting,” she says without a hello, the second I shut myself in the bathroom. “I’m going to hold a press conference.”
“Wait for the custody ruling, please,” I answer, lowering my voice. “Two weeks. Three at most, that’s all I’m asking. When Holland has the Lina thing closed, we plan it right, we find the moment, we do it without—”
“I’m not going to wait for a daughter who isn’t mine,” she complains.
“Listen, I’ve got it handled,” I cut in. “I talked to Hale, face to face. I’ve got a woman who ran the press at our old club and is willing to testify that they knew about the photos. Leave it to me, just wait for the custody ruling, and then we drop everything at once and he’s got nowhere to run.”
“Stop.”
She says it so low I almost don’t hear her.
“You went to see Hale on your own? You have a witness… and you call me to ask me to wait?”
She goes very quiet, and by how she’s breathing I know I’ve lost her trust.
“I was doing it for you,” I admit with a sigh.
“You were doing it without me,” she corrects.
She doesn’t shout. I wish she’d shout, but she lays it on me, lowering her voice.
“It’s my face in those photos, Natalia, it’s my naked body and Julia’s, not yours.
And you’re running around Seattle playing detective and threatening reporters like it’s a problem to fix before I even find out about it myself.
Do you know how long I’ve been waiting? I waited for the club.
I waited for your season. Now you’re asking me to wait for your girlfriend’s custody agreement. Not this time. I’m sorry, but no.”
And she hangs up.
I had convinced myself I was protecting her. That I kept quiet for her, that I held on for her, that my silence was a shield for someone who didn’t yet know how to defend herself.
I clench my jaw and sit on the edge of Holland’s bathtub, phone still in my hand, waiting for another call from Bianca that I know won’t come.
There’s a soft knock at the door.
“Everything okay in there?” Holland asks.
“Yeah. I’m coming out now.”
But I don’t. I stay another minute on the edge of the tub, in a house that looks more like a home every day. Hiding information from every person who matters to me.
Like my grandmother would say, what you keep quiet weighs double.
And it’s already starting to weigh too much on me.