Away Running (17 page)

“Catch your breath,” I told them. “All right, two plays.” I called our bread-and-butter play of the season: “Split left, flare left, tight-end delay right. For the second, shotgun draw 43.”

It was risky, as both plays would keep the ball in the middle of the field, keeping the clock alive, but hopefully the Argos wouldn’t expect it, and we’d get big gains. Regardless, we’d have to use our last timeout after.

“On one, on one.
Vous êtes prêts!
”

“Break!”

As we lined up, I told Mobylette, “After you get tackled on the draw”—the second play—“find the ref and call a timeout immediately, even before you give him the ball.”

“
Moi pas plaqué
”—Me not get tackled, the cocky bastard said, his smile bright against his dark face.

The first play worked like a charm. Number 9 charged on a blitz, I lobbed the ball right over his head to our tight end, Jean-Marc, and we gained thirteen yards and a first down.

We hurried to line up, the Argos dragging—1
:
27
,
1
:
26
,
1
:
25—and I gave a false signal, tapping my ear hole. Number 9 clearly picked up on it. When he sprinted out toward Moose on the snap, I slipped the ball into Mobylette’s belly and he was off, backside.

Boy, could he run!

He juked the other linebacker and bounced outside. The safety pushed him out of bounds after a nice gain, all the way to their 35.

He hustled back to line up, and I saw his smile before I caught his words. “Me permit him get me,” he said, “but save last timeout.”

The clock was stopped at 1
:
02. I felt myself breathing hard, but the others looked spry.
They were on!
I didn’t huddle us up. I tapped my thigh, the all-go route, to keep their
DB
s honest. And who knew? Maybe one of my receivers would get open.

None did, but as I was reading number 9, I lost sight of my backside, and their blitzing corner tagged me. The ball came loose. I didn’t see this—all I saw was turf—but I
heard their sideline and fans hurrah. Then I heard our guys hurrah, and I looked up, and Claude Benayoun was lying on the ball.

The clock was winding down—00
:
50
,
00
:
49
,
00
:
48…

We’d lost seven yards. I patted my ear hole as our guys lined up, took the snap. The Argos thought this meant Moose, so I went the opposite way again, to Manu. An eleven-yard gain, back to the 31-yard line, and the clock was stopped with thirty-three seconds left.

I patted the top of my head, took the snap. Sidi cleared number 9, but the safety closed hard, so I dropped the ball over his head to Moose. He made a good catch of my wobbly throw. His man tackled him right away, in the middle of the field.

I called our last timeout.

We had a first down, but that didn’t matter. With only nineteen seconds left, we’d have time for two plays, max, to get the ball the last seventeen yards into the end zone.

Coach Thierry, Coach Le Barbu, Freeman and the other coaches waited for me in a group on the sideline. The rest of the team stood not far behind, wound tight but quiet. The stands were still too.

“Well, what do you think?” Coach Thierry asked.

I was hoping he’d tell me. I turned toward Free.

“Take him on,” he said in English. “For real. The Canadian backer is itching to make a play.” Then, in French
(though the coaches had surely understood his English), he said, “Try the play-action he blew up earlier.” The play he scored on. “He’ll bite on the fake to Mobylette this time.”

I looked at Coach Thierry, at Coach Le Barbu. Neither said anything.

“Let’s do it,” I said.

The huddle was silent when I returned. Moose, Mobylette, Jorge, Sidi.

“Who wants it?” I said.

Nobody responded. Nobody moved.

“Who wants it!”

“
Moi!
”

“
À moi le ballon!
”

They were all talking at once now.

“Settle down,” I told them, and they did. “Number 9 thinks he’s hot shit, but he’s the weak link. His cockiness is his weakness. We’re going right at him. Double T, motion, inside loops. I need protection, and I need you guys”—I looked to my receivers—“to get open in the end zone.”

I paused, took a deep breath.

“We’re out of timeouts, so if we don’t get in, everybody hustle back and line up fast. We’ll run the same play again, only flip the formation.”

I took another breath.

“Okay,” I said. “On one.
Vous êtes prêts!
”

“Break!”

Number 9 aimed his gaze at me as we lined up. He wasn’t saying anything, just staring. He cheated up, showing blitz, and their strong safety cheated over onto Moose. That should open up the seam on the left of the goalpost, where Sidi was supposed to end up. If I had time.

I didn’t really know what was happening as it was happening, just that it happened. Mobylette sold the fake so well that number 9 tagged him, grunting, “Damn!” when he realized he’d been had. The line must have been blocking well because it was like a 7-on-7 passing drill. I had all the time in the world, no pressure. I watched the corner and safety double up on Moose. I watched Sidi break behind them. I saw the pass—a really nice, tight spiral—sail right at him. Sidi raised his hands and cradled it into his body, then fell backward into the end zone.

The final seconds ticked by—00
:
03
,
00
:
02
,
00
:
01…The referee whistled the end of the game.

The roaring faded in then. All the screaming and cheering. Even from some of their fans, so spectacular was the ending.

Our guys rushed the field, singing and dancing. “
Olé! Olé-Olé-Olé!
”

Moose grabbed me up in his arms. Claude, Jorge, Paco and some others lifted Sidi onto their shoulders. On the sideline, Free and Coach Thierry were jumping up and down.

The Argonautes. A few stood about, shell-shocked. Most left the pitch, heads hanging, without shaking our hands. The linebacker, number 9, just sat on the field, his shoulders jerking, visibly sobbing.

Sidi was suddenly beside me. He was crying too.

“
Merci
, Matt,” he said, one arm around my neck. “
Merci!
”

» » » »

The showers in the stadium’s locker room were enormous compared to the ones at the Beach, ten or twelve jets along facing walls. Free and I pulled trainers’ tables under the two at the far end, took off our clothes, opened the valves full blast and lay down. We stayed under the hot stream a long time, neither him or me speaking, guys coming and going, still dancing and singing. “
Olé! Olé-Olé-Olé!
”

Sometime later, Coach Thierry poked his head in. “
Eh-oh, grouilles-toi
,” he said—Hustle now. “We’re loading the bus.”

I must have fallen asleep. Freeman had already left.

Leaving Aix, it was like I only then noticed the landscape, fields and fields that were purple with lavender. The
car-couchette
wasn’t any more comfortable than it had been the night before, on the way down. The metallic seat frame pressed into my back, and the
AC
was fussy, either too cold or too hot.

Free, who was in the sleeper above mine, leaned over the bunk’s edge. “Dang, Matt,” he said. “We’re number two in the country. We’re playing in the final.”

“Dang,” I replied.

Moose, in the next sleeper down, leaned into the aisle. “What else did you expect!” he said, dismissive. He was all bravado now. Everybody was. We were dead tired, but all the sleepers buzzed with chatter and shrieks and laughter.

“
Et les gars
,” he called to the rest. “These ’
Ricains
have no faith. They think we’re just
racaille
and
voyous
”—scum and thugs—he teased.

Freeman shot back. “Thugs? You guys are soft.” He used the wrong word for
soft
—
doux
instead of
mou
—but everybody understood. “
Non
, it’s me. I am
voyou
.” And he popped out of his bunk and into the aisle, throwing gang signs with his hands and starting into this old rap by the French group Assassin:

Le futur que nous réserve-t-il?

De moins en moins de nature, de plus en plus de villes!

He couldn’t rap to save his life, especially in French, but the guys were hooting. Moose too. Free and Moose seemed to have gotten closer, despite the rough start.

I leaned back in my bunk. The championship game was one week away. And after that we’d be leaving, Free and me. Me, back to Montreal—to Orford for summer school. Business classes.

I pulled out my cell and texted my dad.
DR 17–Aix 10
. I added that I’d thrown the winning
TD
as time ran out.

No response. Maybe he was out at the cabin or his phone was off.

MATT

The Monday afternoon after the Argonautes win, Aïda texted me from the Louvre. She’d texted me the week before too, and she and I had met at the Fontaine des Innocents at Les Halles and sat and talked. It turned out that she came down to the city on her own sometimes when there wasn’t school, without Sidi or anyone else knowing. (She said Sidi would throw a fit and tell their father.) She went to museums or to public gardens to stroll and read or to the Centre Pompidou, like Freeman and I did.

I texted an excuse to Free, who I was supposed to get together with, and met up with Aïda instead. She had on the red-and-white headscarf—the one she had taken off under the Étoile to show me her hair. But instead of going into the Louvre, we crossed the street to the Pont des Arts,
the steel-and-wood pedestrian bridge that stretches from the museum over to the Institut de France. Free and I would come to the Pont sometimes. Young people would be lounging around, smoking and talking; someone might be playing a guitar. This afternoon, it was quiet.

Aïda and I didn’t say much either, just casual chat, then we were quiet too. We sat on the wooden planks in the middle of the bridge, our backs against the metal railing, the Seine coursing underneath. In front of us was the Île Saint-Louis, hints of the spires of Notre Dame between the rooftops.

“I saw a movie earlier,” she said finally.

“Oh yeah. Which one?”

She said the name, but I didn’t recognize it. “It was about a girl,” she said. “Or a young woman, really. Eighteen. She comes from a good family—very bourgeois, you know—and she does well in school and has good friends.”

“And she’s unhappy, of course.”

“No,” Aïda said. “Actually, she’s not. But she prostitutes herself all the same. She makes an online ad and meets these random men in a hotel near Montmartre.”

“Wow.”

“I know.”

I couldn’t tell if she was saying all this for the shock value or what.

“The girl isn’t outraged or rebellious or making a point,” Aïda said. “It’s just what she does. And watching, I felt like I wasn’t supposed to feel sad either.”

“Did you?” I asked. “Feel sad, I mean.”

“Just kind of empty.” She looked over at me, then away again, uncharacteristically reserved. “And I guess a little sad too.”

One of the tourist boats, a Bateau Mouche, glided by beneath the bridge, every row full of tilted-up red faces, looking at the old architecture. A few seemed to catch sight of us.

“So what happens in the movie?” I asked.

“A man is murdered, and everything gets complicated,” she said.

Then she added, “Listen, I have to get back,” and it was only then that I noted the fading light. The sun was dropping toward the rooftops so fast you could almost see it moving.

I walked her toward Les Halles, where she would catch the
RER
. Foot traffic had picked up with the end of the workday. We passed beside the Saint-Eustache church, where skateboarders in baggy pants and knit caps back-sided and frontsided around the park benches. One did a railslide down a freestanding metal bannister, his board
screeeeeech
ing. A little farther on was this boulder, at least ten feet high, sculpted to look like a huge head resting
lightly in the palm of a stone hand. A couple lounged in the cupped hand, the woman whispering in the guy’s ear, the guy laughing.

I pointed to the church. “It’s a mixture of Gothic and Renaissance.” I’d read that in a guidebook,
Le Guide du Routard
. “Freeman says it’s ugly.”

“Really?” she said. “It’s my favorite.”

“Mine too. It looks like a giant ship, its sails catching the wind, bearing down on the Forum.”

I hadn’t read that. I was just winging it.

“That’s what I like about it too.” She pointed from the church to the metal-and-neon shopping mall. “Two worlds colliding.”

We took the long escalator down into the Forum, where the
RER
station was, me in front, her behind, so that people in a rush could get past. I could almost feel Aïda’s breath on the back of my neck. Midway she laid a hand on my shoulder. I stared down into the fluorescent-lit dark, then rested my hand over hers. We rode in silence like that, still as statues.

I heard a muffled drumbeat, Bob Marley’s “Revolution.”

“Funky ringtone,” I told her.

I’ve always loved Bob Marley. Before my parents split up, we would take family vacations in the Islands during the winter, and her ringtone reminded me of dancing to
his music on the beach in Jamaica with a girl named Lora, whose older sister worked at the resort. I also remembered my mom on that particular trip sitting me down in the hotel for a talk. She warned me to be careful “playing tease with the locals,” and I told her she was being racist.

“
Putain
,” I heard Aïda say. She was reading the display on her phone. “I need to get back to Villeneuve. Now.” She dropped my hand and took off at a clip.

I struggled through the crowd, trying to keep up. She didn’t stop until she got to the ticket turnstile at the
RER
station.

“Wait,” I said. “What’s going on?”