CRAVING U (The Rook Café) (54 page)

“Hi Marika.”

She would have
known that deep, sensual voice anywhere, at anytime.  “Matteo?”  Her limbs
began to quiver.

“Sorry if I didn’t
call you back sooner, but
....
”  He felt he needed to apologize.

“It’s OK.”  Her
eyes became glassy and she lost her short term memory.  “It’s nice to hear your
voice.”  The conversation followed the cellular wavelengths of a time machine
that brought them back to a place where being together meant having fun,
laughing, joking, where love was a game and you learned the rules together, and
future
was just another word in the dictionary.  “Merry Christmas!”  She
had to fill the silence somehow.

“Same to you,
Marika.”  His words came naturally and spontaneously.  “How are things at home?”

“Fine,” her voice
said feebly, and the embers that had never died flared right back up again
inside her.  “I’m not seeing Federico.”  She blushed.  “I wasn’t together with
him even the last time, at the recital,” when she had had the brazenness to
tell him bluntly, “
it’s none of your business
.”

“I’m happy to
hear it.”  He smiled, and it was as if that light could reach out and kiss
her.  “I still have your birthday gift here for you.”  From a half-closed
drawer he could see the light blue Tiffany box with a white loop of ribbon
around it, too large to contain a ring, but too small to hold a book, clothes,
or stuffed animals.

“What gift?” she
stammered, embarrassed.  Her birthday had been six months ago, so long as to
make her no longer even remember the disappointment she had felt over his
absence.

“Eighteen is
still important, and must be celebrated properly!”  Matteo thought back to that
hot, humid afternoon when he entered the shop in Corso Vittorio Emanuele.  “Since
I missed your party, I absolutely have to make up for it with a present.” 
Marika couldn’t help but notice the sad, homesick note in his voice.

“No doubt the end
of June was too early for you to wish me a happy birthday, and you were
probably too busy for a phone call or a text.  Way too much work!” she said,
responding sarcastically to his display of remorse.  She hissed like a cat
imitating a snake, so as to show that it was just as deadly.  “Oh, sorry.  I
forgot that you were absent on the day they taught us about loneliness,” she
accused, “because you are the playmaker for
San Carlo
, the godlike
hottie that every girl in Orgiano and the entire country wants, friend to
everyone who adores and envies you
....
”

“Cut it out!” he
said brusquely.  “You don’t have to be some kind of outsider or freak to feel
loneliness.”

“Don’t play the
victim,” she growled.  “It doesn’t fit you.”

“Don’t judge me,
Marika.”  His voice had changed.  “You don’t know a thing about me since I left
Orgiano.”  Matteo sat down on the side of the bathtub, where he had gone so as
not to awaken his sleeping roommate.  “It’s true, I’m constantly surrounded by
people, but they mean nothing to me.”  His eyes burned with the same emotion he
had felt when he chose that steel bracelet with colored stones for her.  “And I’m
sorry that you’ve felt abandoned,” even if he had always been there for her, “but
I never left you.”

“Only because we
were never together.”  She held back the waves of tears swelling her eyes.  “How
could you leave me if
....
”

“Oh my God,
Marika, stop it!  I don’t know any other way to say it to you.”  She was too
blind to see.  “Just for once would you get past the obvious, for God’s sake?” 
He was asking her to go beyond the surface image and see herself the way he saw
her.

“
What is
there, past the obvious
?”  It was too easy to love him for her to remain
emotionless.

“Marika, are you
still on the phone?”  Her mother stuck her head inside the bedroom door.  “Say
goodnight to Carlotta, it’s late!”  She had no clue.  “Tomorrow morning you’ve
got to practice driving with your father.”  She was so serious and cold of
late.

Marika had passed
the written test: just two mistakes.  Matteo knew everything about her, as if
he had never left.  But she still had to do the driving test, and he wished it
were him who was giving her lessons.

“Just one minute
and I’ll hang up,” Marika told her mother, swallowing down a “
how can I get
past the obvious, when all I see is the obvious fact that you are never here?
”

“I’m flying to
China tomorrow with the team.”  Operation Beijing was about to take off, just
like the Airbus waiting at Fiumicino, direct to the Chinese capital.

“
Of course
!” 
The way it always was with him.  “They say you need an HD decoder to tell the
teams apart,” she joked, faking indifference and referring to the megacity’s
smog, which turned all colors and tastes into one uniform leaden gray. “Good
luck.”  It was time for goodbyes.

“Thanks.”  Matteo
smiled again, sparing her from the details of why that tournament was so
important to him.  “I’ll need it.”

The very second
Marika heard the beep that ended their conversation, she remembered why she had
called him in the first place.  “
I have to tell Loretta that I can’t help
her
.”  She sunk down underneath the covers, swindled once again by her
fears.  “
But how can I tell her without letting her know about my feelings
for him... and the disaster that binds me to him
.”

It was 12:50 pm
two days later, Beijing time, when the Airbus A330 of the Chinese national
airline landed at Terminal 3 of the Beijing Capital International Airport,
where tradition and modernity come together in a hodgepodge of skyscrapers and
sacred temples, department stores and imperial palaces, roads, roads, and more
roads to make your head spin.

This was how the Northern Capital, the pulsating heart of Chinese
identity, welcomed the soccer delegations participating in the
Wagon Cup
,
the first in a series of events organized to celebrate the recent successes of
the automotive sponsor of the tournament.

The four-team invitational featured one team each from the Italian
Serie A, the German Bundesliga, and the French Ligue 1, all of which were on
their half-season breaks.  They were joined by a squad from the Chinese Super
League, the top division in Chinese soccer.

The
Wagon Cup
had four matches scheduled: two semifinals and
two finals, one for first place, and the other for third.  The games would be a
regulation ninety minutes, without extra time.  Tie scores were to be broken
immediately following play through a penalty shootout.  All of this would be
taking place over two days in the futuristic stadium known as the Bird’s Nest
for its impressive interlacing steel structure, which had been the main stage
for the XXIX Olympics.

In the opening match, the Germans defeated the home team 3-1, while
the draw had pitted the French and Italian teams for the evening match at 6:30
pm local time, which was 11:30 am in Orgiano, New Year’s Day.  The community
room of Pederiva was a swarm of people from the area, mostly men, who had organized
a pay-per-view live showing of the match on a maxi-screen.

Marika, on the other hand, was curled up in the kitchen having
breakfast, flipping through the newspaper in search of news about the
tournament.  “The framework of the Beijing National Stadium is covered by
high-tech fire-resistant material that serves as acoustic insulation,”
explained the full-spread special on the event, which she read while munching
on cookies.  “The entire structure is covered by a protective, transparent film
that allows for external light to enter.”  She yawned sleepily, still tired
from New Year’s Eve at the
Ca’ Lounge
, thinking about when she would be
able to watch the prerecorded broadcast of the game from the comfort of her own
couch.

In the city community room, though, the maxi-screen was showing the
images of the
San Carlo
players in real time from 5,000 miles away. 
“Dad, Matteo’s not starting,” Daniele whined, seeing his brother take his place
on the bench.

In fact, Agostini had decided to play a center midfielder with a
greater defensive role, placing Matteo with the substitutes.  But one of those
unforeseeable quirks of sports, chosen at random from a deck of cards, changed
the course of the match, and probably of this story as well.

“Sub!”  After only 23 minutes of play, the head coach was forced to
make a change for a midfielder who was suffering from cramps to his right
hamstring, and he put Matteo in behind the two strikers.  Sixty-seven minutes
of play were enough for the playmaker from Orgiano to show his worth to the
almost 80,000 fans and the special commission, which would eventually award him
the honor of “man of the match” based on his performance and his fair play.

On that green rectangle, the adrenaline that had been building up
over a month of intense preparation pumped through Matteo’s body, distilling
itself down into total concentration.  The first half found both teams evenly
matched at midfield, and the heavy traffic of players didn’t allow for either
team to make any dangerous moves.  But ten minutes into the second half,
Agostini’s men were able to push the game into the French half, and from that
moment on,
San Carlo
had the upper hand, having its way at midfield, led
by its young playmaker, who would be the one to make the final assisting pass,
freeing a striker in the box who sent the ball home.  Goal.

1-0 for the team from Milan, and the
Corsairs
rightfully
earned a place in the finals of the
Wagon Cup
, where they would face the
German team coached by Franz Möller, while the home team would be playing the
French squad for third place.

“
Matteo Zovigo leads San Carlo into the finals!
”  The sports
papers all led with this story, and in the cafés throughout the Berici Hills,
no one spoke of anything else.  “
Matteo Zovigo, a young talent from Vicenza,
showed his team the way into the final match of the prestigious tournament,
scheduled to be played just hours from now.  In the semifinal yesterday,
Claudio Agostini’s Corsairs dominated the French team, capping their efforts
with a 1-0 victory provided by a goal by Meninho, putting the ball in the net
after a perfect assist from Zovigo just inches from the goal.  The French team
was unable to find a way to respond, and the white and blue playmaker came very
close to scoring a second goal.
”

“Even though he is still very young, Zovigo is the real deal and
exudes confidence, judging by the ease with which he moves through a field
filled with veterans.  He can play both as a forward and a midfielder, and
moves well in the backfield,” said a television analyst, a legend who had
played for the Italian National Team in the ‘80s.  “He blows by people with his
speed, has great vision of the field, technical skills, and he is devastating
in the box.”  The other analysts in the studio shared their own opinions about
the kid from Orgiano, some of them conflicting.  “He’s fast and versatile, but
he’s not a natural goal scorer; he’s not big enough and can’t use his head to
score.”  The debate was on.  “He’s one of the best young talents we have seen
lately, and he’s perfect for Agostini’s style of play: ball on the ground and
short, quick passes.”  “He brings flow and imagination to the attack, and he’s
the glue that holds the offense and defense together.”  The level of enthusiasm
began to rise.  “Our Serie A teams need to give more importance to their local
farm systems, learning from Spain, where they have shown their dominance even
at the youth level, and from Germany, which has put together an army of
under-25 champions.”

And the opinions would only become more exaggerated after the final
match against Möller’s eleven men and the awarding of the
Wagon Cup
trophy, inspired by the Winged Victory of Samothrace and designed for the
occasion by the automotive company that had organized the event, to
San
Carlo
.

More than 300,000 local fans had crowded into the Olympic Stadium of
Beijing over the space of those two days, and tickets for the final match had
been sold out for weeks.

In the honorary skybox, reserved for the highest representatives of
the teams and the sport, presidents, executives, and managers of the
participating clubs watched the match.  The
San Carlo
delegation was
there in full, and consisted of the AD Massimiliano Sforza, the CEO Parini, and
the owner Carlo Maria Visconti, all of whom were invited by the sponsor to
participate in the awards ceremony.  The carmaker, in fact, would soon
thereafter sign a contract making them the primary sponsor of
AC San Carlo
Milan
for the following five seasons.