“It’s Davide’s kitchen.”
“And tonight it’s mine, and you’re a guest in it. Sit. Drink. Narrate if you must.”
“Oh, I must.” He sits at the counter with wine, narrating like television. Davide comes home to find the Czech Republic’s starting right-back sweating onions in his kitchen while Italy’s left winger provides unlicensed commentary.
“There’s a defender making soup in my house,” Davide says to the room, in the tone of a man confirming the address.
“You’re invited,” I tell him. “It’s your kitchen. There are rules, though. No sauce jokes. No touching the pot. And whatever he says about the marjoram, the marjoram stays.”
“He’s been like this for an hour,” Enzo says, luminous. “He benched me, Davide. In your kitchen. I’ve never been so offended in my life. Don’t touch the pot.”
The soup takes the time it takes. That’s the first thing my mother ever taught me about it. While it takes it, the kitchen fills up with the three of us. Davide sets the table wrong, and Enzo fixes it, and neither of them mentions it. A whole marriage of habits I’m apparently now inside of.
At the halfway mark, I order Enzo to taste. One spoonful. He holds it. Two seconds.
“More marjoram.”
“No.”
“More marjoram, Marek.”
“It’s my mother’s soup.”
“And she’d side with me. Mothers always side with me.”
He’s right, and she would. I add the marjoram and don’t give him the satisfaction of watching me do it, and he watches anyway, satisfied. I tell the story of the Ostrava away trip and the frozen pitch and Novotný‘s sandwich, and time it right, and Enzo laughs so hard he has to put his glass down, and Davide watches him laugh, and then watches me watch him laugh, and says nothing at all, thankfully.
This is the first witness I have not accidentally acquired. Davide knows Enzo. Davide will remember the face I make when Enzo laughs, and for once I do not reach for a reason to become smaller.
My mother’s soup, when it lands, is not my mother’s soup. The potatoes are wrong and the mushrooms are polite and the smoke is American.
Enzo takes the first spoonful and holds it. Two seconds. I taught him that, and he’s using it against me, the thief.
“Marek.” He puts the spoon down. “It’s good.”
“It’s a tribute act.”
“It’s good. Tastes like somebody’s kitchen. Somebody real. I want to know every single thing about the woman who taught you this, starting with whether she knows what you do with your hands at a set piece, because as a professional I have questions for her.”
“She knows I defend. She thinks I’m careful.” I refill his bowl without asking, the way his father serves people he’s decided to keep, and I watch him watch me do it. “She’s right so far about half of it.”
“What’s her name?”
“Alena.”
“Alena.” He repeats it like a thing being shelved somewhere permanent. “Does Alena know where you are tonight?”
“Alena knows I’m eating well. It’s the truest thing she knows about this summer.”
He hears everything inside that sentence and files none of it against me, which is its own kind of table manners.
Davide has seconds. Davide has thirds.
“Question,” he says, on the third bowl. “Do your lot know you cook?”
“Nobody knows I cook.”
“Good. Wednesday I want him distracted, not fed.” He points his spoon at Enzo, then at me, then thinks better of whatever the spoon was going to say next.
