“No hiding,” I say.
“That’s the dream. That’s the whole reason we do this.” He’s glowing. “You get to stand in front of everyone and be exactly as good as you are.”
He means it as a gift. It lands as a verdict. He jogs off toward the ice baths, delighted for me, and never once knows he saidthe truest and most frightening sentence of my week. Tomáš means the pitch. He means the clean part, the one with grass and cameras and a whistle to tell everyone when the danger is over. I hear the sentence in every room without a whistle.
Tomorrow, I mark Enzo on the largest stage either of us stands on, in front of everyone I’ve been hiding from. Everything I want and everything I’ve hidden. One pitch. One time. Cameras on all of it.
I know his body better than anyone alive, and I will use every gram of that knowledge to try to stop him, completely and professionally, because the match is sacred and neither of us would ever forgive the other for a soft afternoon. Every time I read his hips and close his angle, I’ll do it with what I learned on the pitch in Naples and Rome and in a bed four blocks east. Seventy thousand people will call it defending. It will also be the most intimate thing I’ve ever done in public, and not one of them will know.
That night I sit with the phone a long time. His word comes at ten.
Tomorrow.
I do the thing I have never done, which is answer honestly when the honest answer is fear.
Tomorrow.
I’m not afraid of the winger.
The three dots come and go and come back.
I know. See you on the grass. Then, off it, if you’re still standing.
I put the phone down. I don’t sleep, and for once it isn’t a box keeping me up. It’s the opposite. Every box is open. Everything is on the table. Tomorrow, I walk onto the biggest pitch of my life carrying every single thing I’ve spent over a decade refusing to carry anywhere at all.
I know exactly what I have now, and that is the entire change from the man who drove home all those times. I would rather have the man than the building. That’s what makes tomorrow unbearable. And it’s what will make the running, if I run, the worst thing I’ve ever done.
I set two alarms. I know what both are for now. One is the match.
I lie awake a long time deciding not to name the other one.
BRNO'S BEST #3
Šíma
the Valenti file. I have watched four hours of tape and I have feelings
Novotný
tactical feelings?
Šíma
mostly fear. he is unpredictable and also very fast, which is a rude combination. you don’t know what’s coming and then it has already happened
Kovár
you can delay it. don’t read him early. he sells the outside and takes the inside, and when you stop buying the outside he takes the outside. wait him out. he plays added time like it owes him money, sonothing is finished until the whistle. and don’t watch the feet. the feet are advertising
Šíma
I asked for a paragraph and received a dossier. Kovár has nine points on one winger. the man has never once scouted his own mother this thoroughly
Kovár
the file writes itself
Novotný
