Playing for Pizza (16 page)

“Finally,” he said, standing and anxious to get it over with. He hoped she didn’t stall and want drinks and dinner and another night of it. “I need to go.”

“So long,” she said, then abruptly returned to the bathroom and shut the door. He heard the lock click.

How wonderful. In the hallway, he decided that she was indeed married, and she probably felt a lot guiltier than he did.

Over beer and pizza, the four amigos nursed their hangovers and compared stories. Rick, to his surprise,
found such frat boy talk silly. “Ever hear of the forty-eight-hour rule?” he asked. And before anyone could answer, he said, “It’s pretty common in pro football. No booze forty-eight hours before kickoff.”

“Kickoff is in about twenty hours,” Trey said.

“So much for that rule,” Sly said, gulping his beer.

“I say we take it easy tonight,” Rick said.

The other three nodded but did not commit. They found a half-empty discopub and threw darts for an hour as the place filled and a band tuned up in one corner. Suddenly the pub was flooded with German college students, most of them female and all of them ready for a hard night. The darts were forgotten when the dancing began.

A lot of things were forgotten.

·  ·  ·

American football was less popular in Milan than in Parma. Someone said there were 100,000 Yanks living in Milan, and evidently most hated football. A couple hundred fans showed up for the kickoff.

The Rhinos’ home was an old soccer field with a few sections of bleachers. The team had labored for years in Series B before being promoted this season. They were no match for the mighty Panthers, which made it hard to explain their twenty-point lead at half-time.

The first half was Sam’s worst nightmare. As he anticipated, the team was flat and lackadaisical, and no amount of screaming could motivate them. After four carries, Sly was on the sideline gasping and heaving.
Franco fumbled the ball away on his first and only carry. His ace quarterback seemed a bit slow, and his passes were uncatchable. Two were batted around long enough for the Rhinos’ safety to grab them. Rick fumbled one handoff, and refused to run the ball. His feet felt like bricks.

As they jogged off the field at halftime, Sam went after his quarterback. “You hungover?” he demanded, rather loudly, or at least loud enough for the rest of the team to hear. “How long you been in Milan? All weekend? You been drunk all weekend? You look like shit and you play like shit, you know that!”

“Thanks, Coach,” Rick said, still jogging. Sam stayed beside him step for step, and the Italians got out of the way.

“You’re supposed to be the leader, right?”

“Thanks, Coach.”

“And you show up all red-eyed and hungover and you can’t hit a barn with a pass. You make me sick, you know that?”

“Thanks, Coach.”

Inside the locker room, Alex Olivetto took over in Italian and it was not pretty. Many of the Panthers glared at Rick and Sly, who was gritting his teeth and fighting nausea. Trey had made no great errors in the first half, but he’d certainly done nothing spectacular. Paolo, so far, had been able to survive by hiding in the mass of humanity at the line of scrimmage.

A flashback. The hospital room in Cleveland, watching ESPN highlights and wanting to reach up to the IV bag and turn the valve so that the Vicodin could
flow freely into his bloodstream and put him out of his misery.

Where were the chemicals when he needed them? And why, exactly, did he love this game?

When Alex grew tired, Franco asked the coaches to leave the room, which they gladly did. The judge then addressed his teammates. Without raising his voice, he pleaded for a greater effort. There was plenty of time. The Rhinos were an inferior bunch.

All of this was in Italian, but Rick got the message.

The comeback began in dramatic fashion, and was over before it really started. On the second play of the second half, Sly darted through the line and raced sixty-five yards for an easy touchdown. But by the time he reached the end zone, he was done for the day. He barely made it back to the sideline before crouching behind the bench and disgorging the entire weekend’s worth of hell-raising. Rick heard it but preferred not to look.

There was a flag, and after some discussion the play was called back. Nino had yanked a linebacker’s face mask, then placed a knee in his groin. Nino was ejected, and though this fired up the Panthers, it also infuriated the Rhinos. The cursing and taunting reached a nasty level, and Rick picked the wrong time to bootleg and run. He gained fifteen yards and, to prove his determination, lowered his helmet instead of stepping out of bounds. He was slaughtered by half the Rhinos’ defense. He staggered back to the huddle and called a pass play to Fabrizio. The new center, a forty-year-old named Sandro, bobbled the
snap, the ball shot loose from the line, and Rick managed to fall on it. A large and angry tackle drilled him into the ground for good measure. On third and fourteen, he fired a pass at Fabrizio. The bullet was much too hard and hit the kid in the helmet, which he promptly removed and threw angrily at Rick as they left the field.

Fabrizio then left the field, too. He was last seen jogging toward the locker room.

With no running game and no passing game, Rick’s offense was left with few options. Franco punched the ball into the middle of the pileup over and over, quite heroically.

Late in the fourth quarter, trailing 34–0, Rick sat alone on the bench and watched the defense struggle valiantly to save face. Pietro and Silvio, the two psycho linebackers, hit like wild men and screamed at their defense to kill whoever had the ball.

If Rick had ever felt worse late in a football game, he could not remember when. He got himself benched on the last possession. “Take a break,” Sam hissed at him, and Alberto jogged to the huddle. The drive took ten plays, all on the ground, and consumed four minutes. Franco pounded into the middle, and Andreo, Sly’s replacement, swept right and left with little speed, few moves, but a gritty determination. Playing for nothing but pride, the Panthers finally scored with ten seconds to go when Franco lurched his way into the end zone. The extra point was blocked.

The bus ride home was slow and painful. Rick
was given a seat by himself and suffered alone. The coaches sat in the front and seethed. Someone with a cell phone got the news that Bergamo had beaten Naples 42–7, in Naples, and this made a bad day even worse.

Chapter

16

Mercifully, the
Gazzetta di Parma
did not mention the game. Sam read the sports page early Monday morning and for once was happy to be lost in the land of soccer. He flipped through the paper while parked on the curb outside the Hotel Palace Maria Luigia waiting for Hank and Claudelle Withers from Topeka. He’d spent last Saturday showing them the highlights of the Po valley, and now they wanted a full day seeing more.

He wished he could’ve spent Sunday with them as well, and skipped Milan.

His cell phone rang. “Hello.”

“Sam, it’s Rick.”

Sam skipped a beat, thought some terrible things, then said, “What’s up?”

“Where are you?”

“I’m a guide today. Why?”

“You gotta minute?”

“No, as I said, I’m working now.”

“Where are you?”

“Outside the Hotel Palace Maria Luigia.”

“Be there in five minutes.”

Minutes later Rick turned the corner, running
hard and sweating as if he’d been at it for an hour. Sam slowly removed himself from the car and leaned against a fender.

Rick pulled alongside, stopped on the sidewalk, took a couple of deep breaths, and said, “Nice car.” He pretended to admire the black Mercedes.

Sam had little to say, so he said, “It’s a rental.”

Another deep breath, a step closer. “Sorry about yesterday,” Rick said, eyeball-to-eyeball with his coach.

“It might be a party for you,” Sam growled. “But it’s my job.”

“You have the right to be pissed.”

“Oh thank you.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“Damned right it won’t. You show up again in bad shape and I’ll bench your ass. I’d rather lose with Alberto and a little dignity than lose with some prima donna with a hangover. You were pretty disgusting.”

“Go ahead. Unload. I got it coming.”

“You lost more than a game yesterday. You lost your team.”

“They weren’t exactly ready to play.”

“True, but don’t pass the buck. You’re the key, whether you like it or not. They feed off you, or at least they did.”

Rick watched a few cars pass, then backed away. “I’m sorry, Sam. It won’t happen again.”

“We’ll see.”

Hank and Claudelle emerged from the hotel and said good morning to their guide. “Later,” Sam hissed at Rick, then got in the car.

·  ·  ·

Gabriella’s Sunday had been as disastrous as Rick’s. In the final performance of
Otello
, she had been flat and uninspired, according to her own critique, and, evidently, according to the audience as well. She reluctantly explained things over a light lunch, and though Rick wanted to know if they had actually booed her again, he did not ask. She was cheerless and preoccupied, and Rick tried to lighten her mood by describing his pathetic game in Milan. Misery loves company, and he was certain his performance was much worse than hers.

It didn’t work. Halfway through the meal she informed him, sadly, that she was leaving in a few hours for Florence. She needed to go home, to get away from Parma and the pressure of the stage.

“You promised to stay another week,” he said, trying not to sound desperate.

“No, I must go.”

“I thought you wanted to see a football game.”

“I did, but now I don’t. I’m sorry, Rick.”

He stopped eating and tried to appear supportive, and nonchalant. But he was an easy read.

“I’m sorry,” she said, but he doubted her sincerity.

“Is it Carletto?”

“No.”

“I think it is.”

“Carletto is always there, somewhere. He’s not going away. We’ve been together too long.”

Exactly, much too long. Dump the creep and let’s
have some fun. Rick bit his tongue and decided not to beg. They had been together for seven years, and their relationship was certainly complicated. Wedging into the middle of it, or even working the edges, would get him burned. He inched his plate away and folded his hands. Her eyes were wet, but she was not crying.

She was a wreck. She had reached the point onstage where her career was teetering on the brink. Rick suspected Carletto offered more threats than support, though how could he ever know for sure?

And so it ended like most of the other quick romances he’d botched along the way. A hug on the sidewalk, an awkward kiss, a tear or two from her, good-byes, promises to call, and, finally, a fleeting wave of the hand. As he watched her disappear down the street, though, he longed to race after her and beg like a fool. He prayed she would stop, and quickly turn around, and come running back.

He walked a few blocks, trying to knock off the numbness, and when that didn’t work, he changed into running gear and jogged to Stadio Lanfranchi.

·  ·  ·

The locker room was empty, except for Matteo the trainer, who did not offer a massage. He was sufficiently pleasant, but something was missing from his usual jovial self. Matteo wanted to study sports medicine in the United States and for this reason gave Rick loads of unwanted attention. Today the kid was preoccupied and soon disappeared.

Rick stretched out on the training table, closed his
eyes, and thought about the girl. Then he thought about Sam, and his plan to catch him early before practice and, tail wagging, try once more to repair the damage. He thought about the Italians and almost dreaded the cold shoulders. But as a race, they were not prone to keep their feelings bottled up, and he figured that after a few testy encounters and harsh words they would all hug and be pals again.

“Hey, buddy,” someone whispered and jolted him from his zone. It was Sly, wearing jeans and a jacket and headed somewhere.

Rick sat up and dangled his feet off the table. “What’s up?”

“You seen Sam?”

“He’s not here yet. Where you going?”

Sly leaned on the other training table, folded his arms, frowned, and in a low voice said, “Home, Ricky, I’m headed home.”

“You’re quitting?”

“Call it whatever. We all quit at some point.”

“You can’t just walk out, Sly, after two games. Come on!”

“I’m packed and the train leaves in an hour. My lovely wife will be waiting at the airport in Denver when I get there tomorrow. I gotta go, Ricky. It’s over. I’m tired of chasing a dream that’ll never happen.”

“I think I understand that, Sly, but you’re walking out in the middle of a season. You’re leaving me with a backfield in which no one runs the forty in under five seconds, except me, and I’m not supposed to run.”

Sly was nodding, his eyes glancing around. He’d
obviously hoped to sneak in, have a few words with Sam, then sneak out. Rick wanted to choke him because the thought of handing off to Judge Franco twenty times a game was not appealing.

“I got no choice, Rick,” he said, even softer, even sadder. “My wife called this morning, pregnant and very surprised to be pregnant. She’s fed up. She wants a real husband, at home. And what am I doing over here anyway? Chasing girls in Milan like I’m still in college? We’re kidding ourselves.”

“You committed to play this season. You’re leaving us with no running game, Sly. That’s not fair.”

“Nothing’s fair.”

The decision was made, and bickering wouldn’t change anything. As Yanks, they’d been forced together in a foreign land. They had survived together and had fun doing so, but they would never be close friends.

“They’ll find somebody else,” Sly said, standing straight, ready to bolt. “They pick up players all the time.”

“During the season?”

“Sure. You watch. Sam’ll have a tailback by Sunday.”

Rick relaxed a little.

“You coming home in July?” Sly asked.

“Sure.”

“You gonna try out somewhere?”