“He gets ninety minutes of my full professional attention,” I say. “It’s all the other days I’m renegotiating.”
“Renegotiate after the match,” Davide says, and goes back in for one more bowl.
Somewhere between the second bowl and the dishes, he stops being surveillance and becomes company. I suspect that was Enzo’s plan all along. Possibly Davide’s too. The Italians have outmaneuvered me in a kitchen, yet the soup was my idea.
We do the dishes in a chain, him washing, me drying, Davide putting away and editorializing. The pot gets left to soak by unanimous vote, with the ceremony of a jersey being retired. At the door, Davide diplomatically discovers something urgent on his phone.
“The soup pot stays,” Enzo says. “Collateral. You’ll have to come back to wash it.”
“That was the plan. The pot is doing exactly what I want.”
“I know.” He grins, and it’s the whole one, the real one, no rationing anywhere in it. “Two years I got the night version of you. The day version alphabetizes his market list. I’m still deciding which one I like.”
“Take your time. Both of them made you soup.”
The walk back is warm and ordinary. Ten o’clock, families out, the city humming its one note. I’m carrying an empty bag and a full one at the same time, which is not a sentence I could diagram for anyone at the hotel. The second loaf doesn’t survive the walk. Angelo knew. That’s why there were two.
Šíma is in the lobby with a protein bar and the patience of geology. “Early training tomorrow. Ready for it?”
“Always.”
“Good. Get some sleep,” he says, not asking any other questions. I file it with the rest of today and take the stairs, and I hear the echo of it the whole way up.
Novotný mutes the highlights when I come in. “You smell like somebody’s grandmother’s house.”
“Thank you.”
“It wasn’t…” He gives up and unmutes.
I lie on my bed and take out my phone. I owe a debt from three nights ago, one word delivered when two were promised.
I type two.
Again tomorrow?
The reply comes back before the phone is even down. One word, his turn, the whole ledger balancing itself across four blocks of night air.
Ješte.
I set one alarm. Just the one. Then I lie in the dark, grinning at a hotel ceiling like an idiot, a professional athlete with wet sleeves, marjoram under his nails, carrying hope, which I understand now is the single most frightening thing I have ever smuggled through a lobby.
Chapter 13: Enzo
Davide leaves for an afternoon media thing and hands me the apartment like a man handing over the keys to something he’s decided not to understand.
“I’ll be home late after dinner,” he says at the door. “The soup pot’s in the drainer. I did not wash it. That felt like your business.”
“It’s collateral.”
“I gathered.” He shoulders his backpack, then stops. “The day version of him. I liked him too. For the record.”
Then he’s gone. The apartment is mine for the day. I text one word to a hotel four blocks east.
Now.
He’s at the door in twenty minutes, which for a professional athlete days out from a quarterfinal is a small act of recklessness. He’s brought bread from a bakery I don’t know yet.
I don’t let him get it onto the counter. I take it out of his hands and set it down. Then I back him against the door I just closed.
