Learning to Lose (3 page)

Lorenzo didn’t consider his crime something cold, something calculated. It wasn’t what he intended to do. But when he was taken by surprise by the car’s headlights, when he raised the garage door and hid behind the barbecue grill wrapped in its green cover, he already knew what was going to happen. He didn’t hesitate.

Lorenzo had brought a machete. When he bought it, just in case, he was thinking more about the dog than about Paco. Even though he knew it was a friendly dog, who barked at first
but then was thrilled to have visitors. But that dog could have since died and been replaced by a different one, a really violent one. So the dog had justified the machete. But when Lorenzo extended his hand and grabbed the handle at the bottom of the sports bag, he knew the machete had always been meant for Paco. He remembered being in the mountaineering store, feeling the sharpened blade. What had he been thinking of then?

Afterward, Lorenzo followed his established plan. After changing in his car, he sprinkled gasoline over his clothes and the boots two sizes too big. He left them burning in the dumpster at an out-of-the-way construction site, but anyone could have seen the flames, even though it was on the other side of the city, and made a connection between the man who started the fire and the murder. They would describe Lorenzo as a stocky man in his forties, bald, yes, they’d say bald, who drives an old red car, and if they were someone who knew about makes, they could even specify it, an Opel Astra. The time that it would take for them to put the evidence together is the time that Lorenzo took cover between the sheets, with an aching forearm from the night before. He still hadn’t seen the intense bruises that his friend Paco’s fingers had left on his forearms, a sign of the struggle. When he sees the oval-shaped marks as big as coins, he’ll recognize the physical stamp a man leaves as he’s trying to cling to the life slipping away from him. The telephone rings again. Like a threat hanging in the air.

Ariel is the kind of person who never could’ve imagined himself crying in an airport. As moving as he finds other people’s tears in those bastions of farewells and reunions, he had been convinced that embarrassment would keep him from ever shedding them himself. Now he’s glad that he’s wearing sunglasses, since his eyes are flooded.

The head of security for the soccer club, Ormazábal, told him to ask for Ángel Rubio, the airport commissioner. The officer at passport control heard his boss’s name spoken and looked up. He recognized Ariel behind his sunglasses and let him pass with a complicit smile. So Ariel was able to accompany his brother to the boarding gate. At that time of night, on a Saturday, the airport was quiet. At check-in, he had been struck by the sight of his brother’s suitcase, metal, enormous, covered with stickers, dragged along by the conveyer belt. The suitcase, the same suitcase that had arrived with them a month and a half earlier. It was leaving. And Ariel was being left behind in this city he still hasn’t conquered, in an enormous house where he would only be greeted by the echo of his older brother Charlie.

Charlie was the noise and the euphoria, the ruckus, the decisions, the temperament, the voice. In Buenos Aires, when the murmuring about some Spanish team’s interest in him went from rumor to reality, Ariel didn’t hesitate for a second. You’ll come with me, Charlie. His brother was evasive. I’ve got my life here. My wife, two kids, I’m not a guardian, a babysitter, a chaperone. He never said yes, but during the negotiations there was talk of plane tickets for both of them, three trips for two per
season, the house where they would live, the day they would arrive, their best interests.

At the Ezeiza airport, when Charlie’s two children hugged him good-bye, Ariel felt selfish. He needed his brother to go with him, to have him close, someone who could solve everyday matters. But he also knew he was doing Charlie a favor. He was suffocating in Buenos Aires, work and family life were crushing him, as he used to say. Although he heard him comforting the boys, don’t worry, it’s Uncle Ariel who’s leaving, I’ll be back real soon, he knew that Charlie was glad to escape, that he longed for Madrid. He was dragging his older brother along because he knew that he was enjoying the adventure. Ariel’s soccer career had always been an experience Charlie lived vicariously, even more so since his brother had become a professional player.

They left their parents behind, he with his job as a municipal engineer and she acting tough, although she quit the act the day they left and warned, I’m not going to the airport, I’ve got to protect this heart. Their father did come, remaining on the other side of security, holding tight to his two grandsons’ chests and with Charlie’s wife at his back. She was crying. She might be losing a husband, thought Ariel then. But their old man wasn’t crying. He was witnessing, with a mix of pride and tension, his son Ariel leap into adult life.

They knew other players who left Argentina to try their luck in Europe traveled with an entourage. Family members, nannies, and friends became professionals in the business of creating an intimate circle. Fair-weather friends, as “Dragon” Colosio would say, the kind who disappear when a storm blows in. Club and cabaret friends who manage to make closing hour
less abysmal. One had to protect oneself from the void, from the unknown. When Ariel suggested he come to Madrid, his father had answered him, don’t be like those morons who let the people around them burn up their cash and their life. Take this chance to get to know another country and face up to it like you should, for yourself. When he found out Charlie was going with Ariel, he just shrugged his shoulders.

With Charlie by his side, Ariel could close his eyes on the plane and sleep for most of the flight, his brother restlessly nearby, watching all the movies at once on the channels of his screen, asking for another beer when he still had half of one left, speaking loudly, flirting with the flight attendant, So are all the chicks in Spain as pretty as you? He radiated the confidence of an older brother, the same confidence he’d had when he had taken four-year-old Ariel by the hand and walked him to the Admiral Curiel Preschool on the first day. When they stepped onto the run-down playground, Charlie said, if anyone touches you or gives you any shit, get their name and tell me later. Don’t you get into it with anyone, okay?

Ariel felt like that same kid on the first day of school when he landed at Barajas Airport on a soupy summer day in July and found himself cornered by a troupe of photographers and television cameras shooting questions at him about his expectations, his favorite position to play, what he knew about Spanish fans, and the supposed controversy surrounding his jersey, that Dani Vilar didn’t want to give him the number seven. Charlie guided him toward the exit with a lopsided smile, repeating, there’ll be plenty of chances for questions, gentlemen, plenty of chances. Then he met up with the club’s representative, the first time he had seen Ormazábal, and said authoritatively, where
the hell is the car? He was the same brother who, at ten years old, had convinced Ariel on his fifth birthday that he would always be twice his age, just as he was then. When you’re ten, I’ll be twenty, and when you’re fifty, I’ll be a hundred. And even when math denied that forced logic, Ariel had never doubted his brother was always twice what he was, in everything.

But now Charlie was leaving. That’s why Ariel hadn’t taken off his sunglasses, even in the VIP room where they waited for boarding to start. He didn’t want anyone bothering him for an autograph, but he also wasn’t sure he’d be able to hold back his tears, even though his brother was downplaying the separation. It’s time for me to be getting back. It’s a bit sooner than I had thought, sure, but these things happen.

Charlie reviewed with Ariel all the things that were organized and in order. The house rented by the club, on the outskirts of town, in an exclusive housing development where there were retired politicians, successful entrepreneurs, a couple of television stars, a place where a soccer player didn’t turn anyone’s head. Emilia and Luciano were the couple who took care of the house. He did the gardening and repaired anything that needed fixing; she cleaned and cooked. They both disappeared at three in the afternoon. When Ariel apologized one morning for the living room table filled with empty beer bottles, ashes, and butts left by Charlie, Emilia told him not to worry. These past two years we had a British executive and, honestly, I’ve never met anyone so disgusting. Suffice to say that Luciano had to repaint the walls and even change the toilet bowl lids. And this guy was the head of a multinational company that makes cleaning products. But then, the shoemaker’s children often run barefoot.

Emilia, Charlie told him, will treat you like a son. You’ve already seen how she cooks. The car issue was solved twelve hours after their arrival in Madrid. The club had offers from all the manufacturers, and Charlie chose a platinum Porsche Carrera after visiting the dealership with the publicity manager’s assistant. Charlie’s response to Ariel’s hesitations was categorical: it’s a bold car, to make it clear to everyone that you’ve come to be seen. On this team, you have to earn your spot even in the stadium parking lot. And if you get tired of it, you’ll just switch, the brands are all dying to have soccer players drive their cars. At the airport, Charlie warns him, now don’t go changing your car for a SUV, I know how you can be. Only moms drive that kind of car here, to feel more protected in their little tanks.

In the club, there were no more mysteries to be revealed. Ariel knows the staffers who are useful to him. The president was a man who had earned his stripes in the construction business, but he now presided over a true empire of private protection, with more than a hundred thousand employees: a manufacturer of armored cars, trucks for transporting money, alarms, reinforced steel doors. He wasn’t interested in soccer unless he was getting insulted in the stands; then he was irascible, unpredictable, and childish in his reactions. He was unappealing, slightly hunchbacked, with graying hair; the players called him “the mother from
Psycho.”
In the first training sessions, he had come down to the field to greet the players, and when he shook the hand of the captain, Amílcar, a veteran Brazilian player who had become a nationalized Spaniard, the president said, are you still here? I thought you’d retired by now. Even though he was serious, everyone laughed at the joke. He compared his business success with game philosophy. I want my team to have the
best defense in the league, no one should steal the ball from us. During Ariel’s official presentation, before the ridiculous tradition of showing him to the television cameras kicking around the ball alone on the field in his jersey, the president spoke to the journalists. I’m still determined to sign defenders, to have a team as safe as a fort, and they told me the Argentinians are good kickers and they work their tails off on the field. Ariel found himself forced to laugh and joke around with the journalists. They always told me that the best defense is a good offense, without knowing for sure if the club owner was aware that he’d just signed a left winger.

It was the sports director who was really in charge, a former player for the team, a center back whose mantelpiece, they said, boasted several tibias, quite a few fibulas, and even the femur of some opponents hunted on the playing field. His career in the team’s offices was based on opposite tactics: he was a devious and inscrutable negotiator. They still called him by his nickname as a player, Pujalte, and when Ariel asked what his real name was, he answered, forget about it, everybody calls me Pujalte, it’s simpler.

The coach, on the other hand, had never been a great player. He had made a name for himself on a modest team that had been promoted to the Second Division. He lowered his head almost imperceptibly around Pujalte, who spoke to him with an almost physical authority, challenging him with his experienced past as a player. His name was José Luis Requero and he practiced laboratory soccer, preferring the chalkboard to the grass. His laptop was filled with statistics, and he always had a delicate, shy young man nearby, some relative of the president, who spent his time recording and editing games in order to correct
the team’s errors or prepare for confrontations with rivals. Requero claimed to use group psychology. He gave long tactical talks based on jottings from the notebook he always carried with him, and when some journalist suggested he was starting to be known as “the professor,” he smiled with open pleasure. It was his second season with the club, after a discreet year without titles. The first day of training, he introduced them to his associates, including a physical trainer with two assistants who looked almost exactly like him; the masseurs; the head equipment man with his small troupe; and the goalkeeper coach, a former goalie born in Eibar with pre-Neanderthal features. Then he gave every staff member a copy of the book
Shared Success
, written by two young American entrepreneurs, which opened with a maxim: “When you celebrate a triumph, don’t forget that you would have never achieved anything without the help of those around you.” Just a few days into the preseason, the book was already the object of widespread mockery in the locker room, particularly because of a sentence pulled from page twenty-six that they claimed was charged with hidden homosexual content: “a man and another man by his side are much more than two men.” Yeah, sure, two big faggots, summed up the fullback Luis Lastra to the delight of his audience.

Ariel had worked with different coaches since he had been signed, at seventeen, to San Lorenzo. Up until that point, he had been a player with just one teacher, Sinbad Colosio, who ran a soccer school near the old Gasómetro where hundreds of players had trained for a small team that played in the Fifth Division. He had invited Ariel to join them at twelve years old, after seeing him play in a city championship. He always said to Charlie, the only way to get anything out of your brother’s left
leg is to keep him away from the professional teams for a while. Save him from this country’s sick obsession with finding a new Maradona. Ariel had him as technical director for five years, and it was with him that he became a soccer player. In Buenos Aires you have to get to the big leagues in a submarine, because here the expectations kill you as fast as a dagger, Ariel heard him say on one occasion.