CRAVING U (The Rook Café) (19 page)

“Yeah, well...”
Matteo hedged, torn.

“What could be
better than this?”  Marika wouldn’t let him go on like that.  “It’s a fantastic
team that invests a lot in its young players.  This is hardly Little League we
are talking about here.  You could find yourself playing for a spot in the
Europa League!”  She did her best to give him an objective view of the
situation; she owed him that at least.

“It’s just a
try-out,” he repeated, his eyes going misty.

“Perhaps, but I
don’t believe it.”  Marika felt like she was alone against the world.  But she
would put on a brave face, at least here.

“Well, thanks for
coming today.  It’s going to be tough in Milan without my unofficial assistant
coach.”  He looked longingly into her eyes.  “I’ll miss your pre-game chats.” 
Matteo neared her, forcing her to try to hide her palpitations.  “And I’ll miss
looking up into the stands and seeing you there.”

On hearing him
talk this way about the future, a grimace of suffocating pain crossed her face,
like someone had just punched her in the gut.

“What’s wrong?”
he asked quickly, as if everything weren’t already clear enough.

“I know you have
to go, and that it’s the best thing for you,” she said, “it’s just that I haven’t
gotten used to the idea of being left behind, alone.”

“You won’t be
alone.”  Matteo brushed his warm hand against her arm.  “Dario and Carlotta are
here, and anyway, I’m not going away forever.”

“Ssssh!”  Marika put
a polished nail to her lips and hissed.  She wasn’t ready to say goodbye yet. 
The noise of the group behind them, meanwhile, had grown louder, annoyingly
louder.  “Well, would you look at all the people here at
The Rook
today,”
she said sarcastically, changing her tone.  “All just for you, I assume.”

Matteo turned his
back on the crowd, which was now chanting his name.  “Who can say?  I hardly
recognize them.”  He shrugged his shoulders insolently.  “I don’t remember the
names of even half of them.”

“Yeah, I suppose,
but it must be exciting to have them all falling over you,” she continued,
trying to provoke him, as sharp as a paper cut.

“I don’t give a
rat’s ass about them.”  His face darkened.  “Who knows what they think?!  It’s
just a try-out.  In a few months I may be right back where I started.”

Marika couldn’t
hold back a desperate smile at the thought.

“Anyway, even if
I did pass the test, there’s no reason to assume that they would keep me in
Milan.”  He had given the whole situation a lot of consideration.  “I could be
placed on loan to another club in the minor leagues in order to gain
experience.”

Lucrezia
meanwhile, having exhausted her patience in waiting for the superstar to return
to the rest of the crew, started walking toward the two not-quite lovebirds,
who were seemingly glued to the parking lot next to
The Rook
.

“
Madame
is
coming!” Marika warned him, using one of their many code names for Lucrezia.

“What a pain! 
She’s worse than an hour of math.”  Matteo looked up to the sky and pretended
to have just received a blow to his nether regions.  “All of a sudden she’s a
huge soccer expert and fan number one.”

“Here I am!”  Her
two arms, wrapped tightly in a very slimming leather jacket, embraced him from
behind and slid effortlessly down to his chest.  “I got tired of waiting.”  She
turned to Marika, who had been doing her best to ignore her.  “Did you hear the
good news?  You don’t look so happy... in fact, I’d say you look rather
depressed,” she commented, making fun of her.  “But then, we’re all so sad that
our number 10, the true captain of
Brenta
, is leaving us.”  She stroked
her fingertips up and down his chest.  “Though maybe he’s something more for
you.”

“Would you stop
it?” Matteo growled, grabbing her hands and freeing himself from her grip.

“I’m going.” 
Marika concentrated on him so as not to see the other,  “I’ll leave you two to
your problems.”

“Wait!”  Matteo
held her back delicately.  “Thanks for coming today.”

“You already said
that,” she replied, pretending to be indifferent while everything around her
began to spin.

“I know, but it
was really important to me.”  His eyes were bleary.  “I just want you to know
that.”

Marika nodded,
biting her lip so as to keep the lump in her throat from exploding.  “It was
important for me too.”  She lifted her nose in a moment of pride, then turned
around to return to Dario and Carlotta, who had been watching the whole scene
from afar.  She dove into the crowd, hoping desperately to blend in with the
others and disappear, which she did until it was time to go back home.  She
rushed back down the dirt path toward the parking lot, allowing herself nothing
more than a single sad smile for Matteo, who returned it from his position at
the center of a group of strangers.

In the car,
Carlotta kept going on and on about the Mardi Gras party scheduled for tomorrow
night.  “It’s decided: I’m going to go as a noblewoman from the 1700s.”  How
much she loved those old-fashioned dresses that forced you to wear a corset and
powder your hair!  “You, Marika?” she asked.

“I don’t know if
I’m coming,” she said, barely listening.

“Bullshit!  We’ve
been working on our costumes for months... grandma will be devastated.”  What a
guilt trip!  “You’re coming, period.”

“Fine, Carlotta,
I’ll come,” she moaned apathetically.  “I don’t want to fight about it.”

The couple in the
front seats exchanged an annoying wink before turning on the radio.  Story
over: tomorrow, everyone to the ball!

Daybreak arrived
inexorably with the typical half-light of the winter months.  Taking advantage
of the school holidays, which included Ash Wednesday, masked balls were being
organized all over the Veneto region.

The Rook
crew had decided unanimously to go to the
Ball
de Casanova
, a costume ball that took place in a historic 16th
century building on the banks of the Brenta River.

At 9pm,
prime-time, they all met up in the Piazza dei Vicari, home to the Orgiano City
Hall.  Marika was in Dario’s Mini, the driver of which was wearing a dark suit
that complemented nicely his mask of Zorro.  Carlotta was seated next to him,
looking like she had just stepped out of a painting by Fragonard: she was a
masterpiece of damask and brocade, in theme with the evening.

Everyone else was
competing for Matteo’s companionship. 
Disgusting!

On the banks of
the Brenta River, the palace from the 1500s awaited them with its three
principle rooms decorated with candles and fire-throwers that illuminated a
scene from different times: minstrels, gypsies, thieves, and harlots roamed the
shadows.  In the entry hall, surrounded by carefully manicured gardens and
trees that climbed the glass walls, there were two spaces dedicated to
techno-house and hardcore music.  At the end of a hall of mirrors,  after
passing the large indoor pool decorated with mosaics and fountains, an elegant
frescoed room opened up, where revival pop music played on a covered terrace;
last, the tower, located at the end of the northern wing in a position from
which you could view the entire grounds, had casino games set up in an
atmosphere of suave lounge music.

Most of the male
participants had swarmed to the Texas Hold’em tables, which featured a “shots”
variant this evening: a round of rum and pear juice at the end of every hand. 
Bottoms
up!
  All this while the masked ladies spread out on the various dance
floors.

Marika had stayed
behind in the casino room, slouched over on a stool next to the open bar.  Her
white silk peplos dress, with a golden inlay just below her breasts, fell
softly about her while her hair, done up in a delicate chignon and held
together with a thin cord wrapped around like a hairband, brought out the rosy
freshness of her face.

“I’m getting in
on the next hand,” Matteo said to Dario as they watched the poker game.  “You
in with me?”

“I don’t think
so.  I don’t like this whole thing about the shots.  Anyway, I’m waiting for
Carlotta... she went to the revival room with Sandra, but she’ll be back in a
minute.”

Matteo was
wearing –
how ironic
! – a pirate outfit: torn jeans and a white shirt
with a burgundy sash knotted around his waist.  “I knew that being with
Carlotta would turn you into a chump,” Matteo said to his friend, waving his
scimitar through the air.  “Do I perhaps need to remind you of the anti-chump
rules?”

“Chump my ass!  I’ve
always been this way, and anyway, she more than makes up for it,” he boasted.  “For
the record, we’re not afraid of showing our feelings.  By the way,” he jabbed, “did
you see Marika?  She’s sitting over there at the bar and looks pretty unhappy.”

“How could I not
notice her?”  Matteo turned his face toward her at the same moment that she was
surrounded by her girlfriends.  “Canosi called me today.”

“Don’t change the
subject,” his friend warned.

“I’m not!” he
said as he gave a signal to the other poker players that he would be sitting in
on the next hand.  “We talked about the medical tests I’m going to have to do
over the next few weeks.”

“And so?”

“He also gave me
his personal opinion about the whole affair.”  His face’s expression told the
whole story.

“So it’s a done
deal?” Dario put Matteo’s look into words.

“Let’s just say
that he thinks that the chances are better than 50/50 for me to be wearing
San
Carlo
white and blue next season.”

“Wow,” Dario whistled,
impressed.

“Yup.”  Matteo
kept looking at her intensely, almost as if he were saying these things to her
alone.  “She’s gorgeous.”  Shy and brazen, sensitive and passionate, brave and
sensual: Marika was like many other girls her age, but to his eyes, she was the
most beautiful of them all.

“It’s true,”
Dario agreed, placing a hand on Matteo’s back and drumming on it gently until
he noticed that Matteo’s attention had shifted.  Marcello had come into the
room, dressed in denim with a holster at his hip and a sheriff’s star pinned to
his shirt.  “What about Marcello and
San Carlo
?” Dario asked.

“He wasn’t called
up for the try-out.”  Matteo was deep in thought.  “They already have too many
players at his position, though they plan on keeping an eye on him for the
future.”

“So he stays with
Brenta
.”  Dario stated the obvious.

“And in Orgiano,”
Matteo specified nervously.

“You mean, close
to Marika?”

Matteo clenched
his scimitar, his eyes burning a hole into Marcello’s back.

The lounge music
had slowly melded into the sounds of chill-out, and a few of the guys present
had taken girls onto the dance floor in the hopes of hooking up.

“Aww, man, I’m
sorry they didn’t call you up to Milan too,” Valerio, dressed as an ambulance
medic, stethoscope hanging from his neck, was saying to Marcello at that very
moment.

Marcello scuffed
his foot against the floor.  “It’s all right, I never really believed in it,
though I was sure they would take
him
... he’s always been Coach’s
favorite.  It’s great PR for Esposito... he probably didn’t get a wink of sleep
thinking about it.”  His eyes caught Matteo’s, staring at him from the poker
table, and a cruel, vicious grin transformed his face.  “But you know what they
say: he who laughs last, laughs loudest!”  He pulled his lips back, baring his
teeth.  “He may have been able to sneak
San Carlo
out from under me, but
maybe I can steal something from him that he cares even more about.”

Valerio followed
Marcello’s gaze straight to the open bar, twirling the stethoscope as he did.  “You
no-good son of a bitch!” he chuckled, approving of his alter ego’s plans for
the hunt.

Unaware of the
allusive comments being made at her expense, Marika placed her strawberry
cocktail on the bar as the two friends approached.

“Good evening,
ladies,” Marcello said grandly to all present.  “Can I steal Marika away from
you?”  They all gladly consented as he pulled her away.

Exasperated by
her friends, Marika followed him into the glamorous, Parisian atmosphere of the
center of the room, where a handful of swaying couples had taken over.

“Howdy!” Marcello
put a muscular arm around her waist, pulling her tightly against his body.

“Howdy!” she
aped, feeling nervous and embarrassed by that unwanted physical contact.

“You’re
beautiful.”  He brushed his lips against the nape of her neck, inhaling her
delicate perfume, while she pushed away.

“Be serious,”
Marika warned him, looking around for Matteo amongst the masked faces.

There at one of
the Texas Hold’em tables arranged along the edges of the large room, midway
through his third hand – “
or is this the fourth?  Those damn shots... they
were just supposed to distract me a bit, but now...
” – Matteo had his eyes
glued to another game unfolding right before his eyes.  The rum had blurred his
vision as well as his judgment, and his buzz was making him feel rowdy.  His
body was lighter, more relaxed, and burning hot.  He was becoming euphoric,
carefree, and his tongue had loosened, rebelling against his brain.  “
Well
done, Marika, well done!  You didn’t waste any time did you?
”  But his loss
of inhibitions and self-control, which a moment earlier had seemed to be such a
benediction, turned suddenly on him, making him dour and pessimistic.  “
You
could have at least waited for me to leave
.”  He started to breath heavily,
almost hyperventilating.  “See you guys!”  He threw his cards down on the table
and jumped up from his seat, while the mixture of hard alcohol in his system
jostled his limbs.  He didn’t want to get drunk, and maybe he wasn’t yet, but
he felt as if he was.  “Dario, sit in for me.”