CRAVING U (The Rook Café) (53 page)

“I think that I could be the man of your
life, not only of your dreams.  Much more than him.”  He stared at her, in
love, ignoring everything else that was happening around them: mini-trains that
you could ride from one chalet to another, kids squealing on the ice-skating
rink, even Santa Claus and his elves who were handing out chocolates and
candy.  “You would be everything to me.  And I’d never cheat on you.”

“He never cheated on me either, not with
Lucrezia or with any other girl.”  Marika darkened, putting the lantern
ornament back on the shelf.  “We were never a couple, how could he cheat on me?”

“Those are just details.”  Federico picked
up the ornament and bought it for her.  “When you consider what he said he felt
for you.”

His words wouldn’t leave her head for
hours, not even after she was home.  She thought about them in the shower,
during dinner, and then alone in her room, where they took on the shape of a
horrific nightmare.  She cared so much about Federico, and all of the evidence
pointed to the fact that he was probably right, but the desire to call Matteo
was like a swollen river, and the banks, wildly drunk with love, could no
longer hold it back.

And if, in the words of Lord Henry Wotton,
the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it, Marika was doomed to
let her fingers pick up the phone and dial his number....

“
The person you are calling is not
available at this time.
”

“I hate you!” she muttered, clenching her
teeth and venting her rage against the anonymous female voice, adding her own, “
The
person you are calling is
...  a gigantic asshole!  God I’m so stupid!  He’s
probably in some club hooking up with some....
Arghhh
!”  She blamed
herself.  “
Idiot, idiot, idiot!
”  When her childish hysterical outburst
had passed and her head was no longer under her pillow to muffle the screams,
she decided to call Dario so as to find out how to get in touch with him.  “OK,
thanks.”  She wrote the phone number down on a post-it.  “OK, I’ll try this
one.  Say hi to Carlotta.”  After hanging up with Villaga, Marika dialed the
new number as she took deep breaths.

Ring... ring... ring...
one, two,
three rings....
“
Olá. Aqui, Pão! Deixe seu recado, e talvez eu te ligo.”

“Hey Pão, it’s
....
”  She was evidently no longer thinking
clearly... she was trying to speak to an answering machine!

“
Hi, Pão
here!  Leave me a message, and maybe I’ll call you back!
”  Luckily, he had
left the message in Italian too.

“Umm, well...
yeah,” she stuttered, lost in conjunctions and fillers.  She licked her lips,
which tasted like felt.  “Hi, this is Marika, a friend of Matteo Zovigo’s. 
When you get this message, could you tell him to call me, please?  Anytime, day
or night, thanks!”  She remembered to breathe again.

“Hello?”  Pão,
one of the few who was also staying in Milan for Christmas, connected his
bluetooth earphone before Marika could hang up.

“Hey!” she
mumbled, returning to her catatonic state.  “It’s Marika, Matteo’s friend.” 
All breathing had stopped.  “I’ve been trying to get in touch with him but his
phone is always off.  Is he there?”

“No.”  His voice
was cold and unfriendly as he turned onto Largo La Foppa, headed to an unknown
destination where Matteo and some other teammates were waiting for him at a
secret location party, the newest vogue in Milan for private, invitation-only,
mandatory dress code soirées.  “What do you want?”  Two drops of frozen rain
smacked the windshield of his amethyst gray 4WD SUV, delivered at the beginning
of the season by
San Carlo
’s main sponsor.

“I need to talk
to him,” Marika said softly, disappointed by Pão’s gruff, off-putting attitude,
so different from the polite, friendly impression he had made on her that day
of
King Musical
.  “His family is really upset that he decided not to
come home for Christmas.  I just wanted to talk to him about it.”

“And why now?” 
Pão challenged her, sounding very suspicious.  “If you want to know what I
think, his family has got nothing to do with this.  I think that the fact he’s
now playing in Serie A is a much bigger factor.”

“Excuse me?”
....
Who the
hell was he to judge her
?!

“I saw how you
treated him this summer, humiliating him in front of everyone... back when he
hadn’t been selected for the team yet,” he thundered.  “You turned him down
without the slightest problem.”

“You’ve got it
all wrong.”  Her anxiety was making her stomach churn.

“I doubt it,” the
fullback replied.  “He was willing to risk being kicked off the team for your
sake,” he accused, “but you didn’t care one bit!  But now... now that he’s a
professional, pursued by other clubs and on the radar of the national team, you
all of a sudden pop up with this pathetic excuse and say you want to talk to
him.”

“It’s not an
excuse.  And maybe it’s not even because of his family that I’m calling,”
Marika said, untangling the knot that had kept her silent up ‘til now.  “I don’t
know anything about other clubs and the national team, and I don’t care about
them either
....
  I love the guy, not the soccer player.”

“Whoa!” Pão whistled, shocked.  “I’m happy
to hear that.  I’ll tell him for sure.”

“You’ll tell him what?”  Marika was
fizzing like a diet coke someone had just shaken up.

“I’ll tell him
that you want to talk to him.”  His voice had changed back to its usual
happy-go-lucky self.  “Nice talking to you, Marika.  Hope to see you again
soon.”

“Yeah... me too,”
she said cautiously, as she hung up the phone.  “
Did I really tell him that
I’m in love with Matteo?
” she mumbled to herself as she hugged her beloved
stuffed Tweety bird to her chest.  “
I can’t have told him that!”
she
heaved.  “
Have I lost all self-respect
?”

But time, ticking
on at the inexorable rate of sixty beats per minute, could not be stopped, and
even Christmas made way for it.  The hands on the clock chased after one other,
and Beijing was now no more than 2 days and an eleven-hour flight away.

“We’re going to
use a 4-3-1-2 formation in Beijing, with a playmaker playing directly behind
the two strikers in the hole.”  Agostini was making his presentation to the
players who had just recently come back to Milan after the holidays.   The
formation was going to exploit the potential not only of the unpredictability
that a playmaker could bring to the offense, but also of two wing-backs that
could push the ball up the sidelines.  The supporting structure up front
consisted of the playmaker and the central midfielder, together with the two
strikers.  “Our offensive strategy is to keep our time of possession high and
look to break through at every opportunity.  We’ll have to be quick, two to
three touches at most, with field-level passes that involve everyone on the
team.”

“And the defense,
Coach?  How are we supposed to cover while everyone else is on the attack?” the
two center-backs asked, concerned about a strategy that used eight players on
the offensive side.

“The entire team
must be active on the defensive side as well, playing a tight zone defense.  We’ll
keep our defensive line high and press them all over the field.  The important
thing is to keep possession of the ball.  When we don’t have it, we’ll be
elastic and reactive on defense.  But on both sides of the ball you will have
to be orderly and compact, and you will have to control the pace and intensity
of the game.”  Agostini showed not the least uncertainty about this new
formation, which had been designed by taking into consideration the strengths
and weaknesses of every single player on his roster.  The strategy was to keep
the opposing team pressed back into its own half of the field and to strike
when they lost their defensive cool.  The only thing he hadn’t completely
decided on yet were the names of the players to cover each position in
Beijing.  “
Whoever
plays behind the strikers will have to direct
everything.”  The playmaker, who was as of yet without a face or a name, was
the compass for all of the other players; it was he who would have to spread
them out over the breadth of the field and find spaces for the strikers deep in
the opponent’s territory.  “For example,” Agostini was drawing penetration
lines on the white board, “when we have the ball in the center, the two
strikers have to move in synch.  While one of them comes back to receive the
ball, the playmaker will come up to occupy the empty space in a give-and-go.  A
quick touch, and then the shot.”  He turned to the group.  “Is that all clear?”

“Crystal!”  Which
really meant:
learning Chinese would be easier
.

After their final
practice session before departing for the “Northern Capital”, Braidi came to
speak with the players in the locker room, to give them a pep talk and let them
know how much the entire
San Carlo
system was rooting for them in this
important international competition, a high-profile sporting event that would
also be extremely challenging and difficult in a nation that spoke Mandarin and
where the winter was harsh and frigid.  “As you know, the Chinese Soccer
Federation has signed an agreement with the Italian Soccer Coaches Association
in order to train the technical staffs of Chinese teams and promote the sport
in Beijing.”  He took a seat on a bench amongst all the players.  “China is
constantly asking our federation to be allowed to have more and more of our
players and coaches, even those from the minor leagues, in order to raise the
level of their game.”  Illustrious pioneers had already opened the Silk Route
to home-grown talent.  “The Chinese love Serie A; they follow the matches and
can even tell you the color of each player’s cleats!”  The club representative
was speaking excitedly in his English two-button bird’s eye jacket.  “It will
be a thrill just to play at the Bird’s Nest with so many enthusiastic fans.” 
Not to mention the major commercial and advertising interests that revolved
around the event.

It was Tuesday
when the team left the plasma room.  Just three nights until New Year’s Day,
and you could see the players’ regret at having to be far from home for the
celebrations.  “You didn’t go home for Christmas, I hear.”  Braidi had button-holed
Matteo in the entry hall so as to get a read on how he was feeling before their
departure tomorrow from Malpensa.

The young
midfielder shook his head with his eyes on the ground, thinking about the
Christmas Eve dinner he had had at the residence: swordfish carpaccio, sea bass
in an herb crust, and Bavarian chocolate cake with a mandarin orange glaze.

“I’m sorry to
hear that.”  His heart went out to the lad.  “Even though I think I know why
you have tripled your workouts and were willing to give up your holidays.” 
Carlo had him take a seat at a high table inside the café.  “Love can change
you.”

Matteo raised his
face, slightly embarrassed.

“And at your age
it is so easy to feel strong, superior, almost invincible,” he said, taking a
philosophical turn.  “But it is equally easy to feel rejected, to doubt
yourself, to feel like you are overburdened by choices.”  Only time would tell
how you handled yourself.

“I don’t know how
it’s going to go in Beijing.”  Matteo was showing his first pre-tournament
jitters, a performance anxiety that he had even prayed to God he wouldn’t have
during midnight mass, seated alone in the sports center chapel on Christmas
Eve.

“You’re already
giving up.”  Carlo had been impressed by the backbone and passion that the young
player had shown in throwing himself wholeheartedly into his efforts to beat
the system, but in that moment, the only thing he saw was a frightened,
depressed teenager.  “Am I right?”

“I don’t even
know if I’m going to play.”  Not knowing Agostini’s starting roster made
everything more uncertain for him.

“All I can tell
you is that so far, no decision has been made on that score,” Braidi said,
showing his cards.  “And even if the odds are against you, it is still within
your power to shape your destiny.  It all depends on you.”  He smiled
affectionately at him.  “You are a smart kid, incredibly talented, but even if
your skills are greater than the size of a soccer field, you will never do
anything better in your life than play this game.”  He looked at him the way a
father looks at his son.  “In life, everyone should do what he does best, and
you have been given this lucky chance.  Don’t throw it away!”  Carlo, for his
own part, had already informed the higher-ups of
San Carlo
that he had
no intention of accepting the loan of his promising young player to Sicily, and
that he had every intention of renewing his contract with
San Carlo
at
the end of the year, choosing to remain quiet on the boy’s personal motivations
for wanting to remain.  He had done what he could, and now Matteo’s destiny was
in the hands of the general manager and the executive board.

And so, the
silvery moon that evening found everyone in his or her proper place: Matteo was
still awake, standing at the window of his room at the
Visconti
complex,
while Marika, snuggled under her heavy comforter, was reading the thirty-ninth
and final chapter of
Breaking Dawn
, which she had picked up after months
of being abandoned in a drawer to pay for the sins of the one who had given it
to her.  Just a few pages were left to reveal the ending between Edward and
Bella when her cell phone rang.  With great calm, she finished the sentence she
was reading before reaching for the device.  “Who can that be at this hour?”
she muttered, glancing at the alarm clock on her bedside table.  There was no
caller-ID.  “Hello?” she answered softly.