Kovár, face against the window, doesn’t move. Novotný reaches over and pokes his shoulder. Nothing.
“Is he alive?” Polášek says.
“He’s conserving energy.”
The morning through the bus window is already thick. Atlanta green and hazy blue, the air sitting on everything like it has plans. The interstate gives way to two lanes and then to the gates of the facility. The grass here is different from German grass, softer and thicker. I step off the bus and the air hits my skin like a warm cloth.
I fall into the warm-up without thinking. Dynamic stretches in a circle, my body in the sequence before the physio calls it, the familiarity settling the way it always does.
“Vež, you’re with me on the heading drill,” Tomáš calls, jogging over.
Crosses from the right, clears from the left, reset, repeat. Tomáš sends them in with the flat, accurate delivery he’s been perfecting for a decade, and I meet each one at the top of the jump. Direction chosen before I leave the ground. The timing is right. The ball and the body are in agreement. For twenty minutes, my chest has nothing unauthorized in it. Just air and effort and the clean certainty of a header landing where I aimed it.
“Clean,” Tomáš says after the fifth one. “You’re timing them early.”
“I’m timing them correctly. Your delivery is late.”
“My delivery is never late.”
“Your delivery was late on the third one. I had to adjust.”
“You adjusted because you jumped too early.”
“I jumped when the ball told me to jump.”
“The ball told you wrong.”
I grin. He grins back. Ten years of the same argument, neither of us giving an inch.
We break for water under the shade structure. The heat finds you anyway, wrapping around the metal posts. Kovár has somehow found food. Novotný is standing next to Polášek, who is drawing formations on a napkin.
“Kovár, what are you eating?” Šíma asks.
“A banana.”
“That’s your third banana.”
“I’m a growing boy.”
“You’re twenty-nine.”
“I’m growing emotionally.”
“Your emotional growth is not my concern. Your caloric intake before a recovery session is my concern.”
“Šíma, you ate a croissant on the bus.”
“I ate it with purpose.”
Kovár reaches over and grabs the back of my neck. Pulls me in. Shakes me once, the way he does. I lean into it. Šíma’s shoulder presses against mine from the other side, warm from the sun.
“Vež.” Tomáš‘s voice drops half a register. The others can’t hear. “Have you called the club?”
“Soon. After the group stage.”
“Your contract expires before we finish the group stage.”
“I know when the contract expires, Tomáš. My agent tells me every day.”
