CRAVING U (The Rook Café) (3 page)

“Oh I promise I can do better,” he
snarled, his lips drawn tight.  “Just try me.”  He looked Matteo up and down,
just waiting to go toe to toe.  “You aren’t scared, are you?”

“Oh yeah,” Matteo snickered, “I’m shaking
like a leaf.”

They stood off in front of each other.

“Hey, you coming or not?” Dario called
from the double-doors.  “Marika’s about to open her presents.”

Matteo reached the entryway without saying
a word.

“You running away?”  Marcello kept goading
him, hoping for a reaction.

“Don’t worry, there will be many other
chances, I promise you,” was Matteo’s reply, without even turning his head.

“It can’t be soon enough.”  Marcello
rubbed a fist in the palm of his hand.  It seemed as if his friend – for
reasons of his own – couldn’t wait to have it out with him.  Matteo’s reaction,
in fact, was a clear sign that he felt threatened by Marcello in some way, or
at the very least felt himself to be in competition with him, and this revelation
was like throwing gasoline on a fire.

***

The summer passed
sleepily, and without any further incident within the group.  Matteo was often
at home studying and complaining about having to follow his mother’s orders and
bring his grades up to a C average in farmland appraisal.  He was studying
agricultural surveying at the vocational high school, though it would be better
to say simply that he attended the school... his soccer responsibilities kept
him from doing any real studying.  All he wanted was to pass, and he had pulled
it off in most of his classes, though what he invented during his exams on
agrarian biotechnology was a mystery!  But this one course on appraisal was
killing him; all the teacher’s fault, or so he claimed.

Lucrezia had returned from a beachside
resort with a long list of boys she had flirted – and sometimes done more – with,
while Marika and Carlotta had spent a couple of weeks together with their
families in Jesolo – ten miles of golden beaches and an endless array of shops and
clubs on the Gulf of Venice – breathing in the salt air and strolling the
pedestrian areas, examining their images reflected in the shop windows and
fantasizing about their “
currently non-existent
” love affairs, hopeful
words thrown into the gusts of sea winds.

Marcello, Valerio, and Dario had spent
every last cent of their monthly paychecks (and some extra from their parents)
on a vacation in Ibiza – that island of wild bacchanalian nights and
destination number one for young European partiers – wandering from one club to
the next, dancing ‘til dawn, and  attending an infinite series of foam
parties.  While Valerio claimed to have picked up a different foreign girl
every night, it seems that Dario lived the life of a monk, as if he was waiting
for that
special someone
.

The only real news worth mentioning was
the creation of a new couple: Sandra and Giacomo, a benchwarmer on the
Brenta
Soccer Club
who she had met during Marika’s birthday party.  An ideal
couple.  They were perfect for one another: both of them thought of nothing
other than school and church.  In Carlotta’s words, a total buzzkill!

At the same time as the beginning of the
school year, there was the semifinal match of the summer eight-man soccer
tournament.  Halfway between five-on-a-side and real soccer, eight-man was
played on the threadbare astroturf field at the sports center of the Orgiano
Parish Church.  The guys from
The Rook
had split up into two teams:
Matteo was the captain of the
Palladio
, who were sponsored by a local
bakery, while Marcello was at the head of the
Bramante
team funded by
the town nursery.  Whenever possible, they tried to avoid each other.

The rules of eight-man soccer are almost
identical to its more famous version.  The match lasts for two 25-minute
halves, divided by a 5-minute break.

Marika didn’t want to be a minute late for
the crucial semifinal between the two rival teams, and so she had to drive like
a madwoman through the streets of Berici on her faithful steed: a metallic
black Scarabeo scooter with a retro-style helmet case that doubled as a
backrest for her poor cousin during the more hazardous curves.

Her dance lesson with Mr. Maller had run
long.  The sinewy African-American choreographer from Harlem had chosen that
very evening to lengthen the lesson by 45 minutes as a way to combat the loss
of muscle tone during those lazy days of summer: 40 minutes of warmup; 20
minutes for complex exercises to improve their spinning, jumping, dynamism, and
interpretation; 30 minutes of choreography based on the various workshops he
had recorded from
A Chorus Line;
and 15 minutes of stretching to
lengthen their muscles.

They made it safe and sound to the field –
except for Marika’s hair, that is, which the whipping wind had turned into some
form of dreadlocks – and were unsurprised to find so many people sitting in the
stands: parents, friends, and simple onlookers who wanted to enjoy one of the
last evenings of summer weather.

“Look, the others are over there.  Let’s
go sit with them,” Carlotta said.

In fact, they were all there, Lucrezia
included.  Dario too, who obviously wasn’t playing.

“Hi Carlotta!”  He smiled, scooting over
and making room for her.  “Hey Marika, how’s it going?”

“Cool,” she said as she sat down and
joined the conversation about the likely winner of the match.  She had no
doubts about Matteo’s superiority, but she didn’t want to let it show.

Before every match the referee was given a
list of the players’ names and an ID for each of them; without this, they weren’t
allowed to play.  If you weren’t on the list, you couldn’t even sit on the
bench.

While the ref and the linesmen carried out
the usual checks on the correct pressure of the soccer ball and the stringing
of the goal nets, the players were warming up at midfield, preparing their muscles
so there would be no pulls or tears during the game.

Matteo – just like every other member of
his team, after all – was wearing a jet black uniform with lime green trim that
ran up the inside of his arm and down the side, matching socks, and black
cleats with a yellow logo.  The adrenalin of the competition was a powerful
aphrodisiac that made him even more gorgeous: his damp hair brought out his
blue eyes, and his tanned skin beaded with sweat highlighted the taut lines of
his biceps and forearms.  Marika felt herself swept away from reality on a
tsunami of hormones, but the opening whistle brought her back down to earth.

The match was hard-fought and balanced. 
The
Palladio
controlled the game for most of the first half, thanks in
particular to the excellent passing and ball-control of their playmaker Matteo
Zovigo.  The
Bramante
offered little more than deep passes trying to
connect with their sole forward, number 9, Marcello Bassani.

The referee often had to cool off heads
during the first 25 minutes; the on-field tension threatened to degenerate into
a fist-fight.  Marcello in particular was playing very rough, often crossing
the line.  Nothing new here: his style of play had always been very physical.

Meanwhile, in the stands....  “Dario, would
you go get a couple of popsicles for me??  Pretty pleeeease??” purred Carlotta
in a honeyed voice.

“Yeah, Dario, a mint one for me!”  “Cherry
for me.”  “Get a couple lemon-flavored ones and one orange too.”  Everyone got
in on the act.

“OK, OK, one at a time.”  He took everyone’s
order and got up.  He leaned over Carlotta and whispered, “Only because it’s
you....”

“What did I tell you, he’s crazy about
you,” smirked Marika as he walked away.

The score was 0-0 at halftime.  The
players wandered over toward the stands and were swarmed by friends who gave
them their best “armchair coaching” advice on how to play better.

Matteo walked toward Marika, who was busy
licking her mint popsicle.  Overheated and without asking permission, he pulled
her hand toward him and took an icy bite, winking his left eye at her.

Her level of excitement was at a million
rpm.  She took a deep breath and tried to put together two sensible words about
the match: “You know, you should try playing more on the wings....”  If she
could have seen Lucrezia’s face at that moment!

“Next weekend, I don’t have to play...,”
Matteo broke off to high-five one of his friends before going on, “... and
Saturday night we’re going to San Siro Stadium to watch the opening home match
of
AC Milan
.  We’re meeting up at
The Rook
at twenty to six and
should be back by about one.  Do you want to come?”

She would have followed him to the ends of
the earth, but entering an arena with an average of forty to fifty thousand
fans even for the bad games made her feel a bit uneasy.  “Wow!  You know, I
wouldn’t mind seeing some
real
soccer players for once,” she said,
trying to sound funny.

“All right, then, it’s set.  I’m picking
Dario up at five-thirty, and then we’ll come get you.  Be ready!  Tell Carlotta
about it to, if you want.  There’s room in the car.”  When the ref whistled the
end of halftime, number 10 quickly checked the positions of his teammates, then
added, “Send me a text with your cousin’s full name and birth date on it for
the tickets.”

Then, with a nod of his head, he was gone,
hurrying back to midfield while Marika stood stock-still, watching him and
wondering about the boy she knew so well but who was able to bring out the most
unexpected emotions in her.

It seems as though someone other than
Lucrezia had not enjoyed Marika and Matteo’s little tête-à-tête.  Just five
minutes after play had begun, while Matteo was dribbling down field, Marcello
shouldered him hard, leaving him on the ground.  Matteo jumped up quickly and
they began pushing and shouting insults and curses at each other.  The referee
had no choice but to send both of them to the showers.

The match ended in penalty shots and
Bramante
won, thereby earning the right to play in the finals.

Both teams were still in the locker rooms
when Marcello came out of the stadium.  “Hey gorgeous!” he called to Marika,
taking advantage of the fact that she was alone.

“Hi,” she cheeped.  “Too bad what happened
out there.”

“Ah it’s nothing, don’t worry about it,
just part of the game,” he purred.  “You got a second?”

“Now??” His question sounded vaguely
suspicious.  There had never been any great friendship between the two of them,
and this was the first time he had ever asked to speak to her alone.

“Why not?”  Marcello came closer, a
mischievous look on his face.

“Sure,” she agreed, skeptical.  “What’s
up?”

“In private!”  He was flirting with her.  “You
want to go for a ride on my motorcycle?”  He pointed at a naked all-black Honda
CBR 600 RR: a gem of mechanical engineering.

Marika stalled.  She didn’t actually have
any plans for the evening, but considering the guy, she was nervous about accepting. 
Everyone knew that Marcello never did anything for nothing... and in the spur
of the moment, she wasn’t sure what it was he might want.  “I’d love to, but I
can’t.  I have to go to Carlotta’s to study for math.  We’ve got a test
tomorrow on the entire syllabus from last year!”

Marika and Carlotta both went to the
Silvio Pellico High School in Lonigo, a fifteen-minute drive from Orgiano. 
They were on the science track and both doing quite well.  Marika, in
particular, was hoping that in a couple of years her hard work would pay off
and she would get into the University of Padua School of Law.  Her favorite
moment in school, in fact, was Mr. Crispi’s law class; a former public defender
in the juvenile court system, Crispi had traded in cross-examinations for a
more tedious but certainly more relaxing job at school.

Her passion for legal affairs reached
their hedonistic highs in the books of John Grisham, which she devoured.  She
made exception, however, for
The Lux
series by Jennifer L. Armentrout
and the hypnotic, world-famous
Twilight
saga of Stephenie Meyer.

While she was buying time for her answer
to Marcello, Matteo came out of the locker room and saw them out of the corner
of his eye.  An unexplainable sense of distress rose to his chest, catching him
off guard.  He fought not to give in to it.  He refused to believe that it was
jealousy: he and Marika were just friends!  But then why couldn’t he take his
eyes off them?  Two years had passed since Marika had been bitten by the same
Shakespearean monster.

Rattled by the unexpected emotion, he
jogged toward the others and tried to shake it off.  “Come on, let’s roll!” he
said to the group, making up an excuse to move out faster.  “The janitor has to
lock up.”  He turned to Carlotta.  “Call your cousin and I’ll ride home with
you.”

“My cousin?” she said to herself as she
walked away.  “Since when does he call her
my cousin
?”

On the ride back, Marika noticed that
Matteo was strangely quiet.  He didn’t even make any comment about her
driving.  But she didn’t pay too much attention to it, considering how he had
been ejected from the game and had to watch his team lose on penalty kicks.