CRAVING U (The Rook Café) (47 page)

“She isn’t, actually.”  He helped her
brush the dirt from her hands.  “Are you hurt?”

“Are you kidding me?”  She pushed him
away, concerned about her friend.  “I’ve got eyes, you know.  I saw what she
did.”

“I’m sure you did.”  Federico sat down,
his eyes on the furrow that she had left in the pebble walkway.  “All I’m
saying is that you were looking in the wrong direction.”

“Excuse me?”  Her voice sounded unsure as
she swayed back and forth.

“It’s not me that Eve is in love with.” 
Federico was being serious, and spoke in a formal, strict tone of voice.

“And so who’s she in love with?”

He looked at her.

Marika’s face became a mask where all
movement was forbidden.

“Does that bother you?”  He didn’t remove
his eyes from hers, and noticed that she was growing pale.

“No.”  Her voice was flat.

“If you could only see your face.”  He
pulled her close, seeing the trepidation in her gaze.

“It’s just that....”  Marika held tightly
to him to defend herself from things she didn’t understand.  “I never knew it.”

“That’s not the only thing you don’t know.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”  She shook
him hard.

“Nothing.”  He embraced her again.  “Now
is not the time.”

“Come on, go ahead and tell me that I
screwed up!”  Marika slid from his arms.  “That I’m always screwing up.”

“I didn’t mean anything, everything’s all
right.”  He wouldn’t let her go and stroked her hair lovingly.  “Everything’s
fine.”

“Is that the reason why you two split up
last year?” she stammered, pulling herself closer to his body.

“No.”  Federico pulled her forehead
against his mouth, brushing his lips against her skin.  “We had already broken
up when she told me about these new emotions.”

“But that
is
the reason why she
broke up with you.”  Marika’s head was starting to clear and she wanted to know
exactly how things had been between the two of them before she made any other
mistakes.

“I was the one to break up with her.  She
was never anything more than a friend, though a special one.”  Hugging each
other, motionless, they savored that moment in front of the portico, a legacy
from the great days of Venice, while the sun went down behind the hills.  “We
never had a real relationship.  We hooked up in London while we were there
together.  My parents had just split up and she understood what I was going
through.”  Marika pulled her arms from where they were folded against his chest
and wrapped them around his back .  “We got loaded every night, though nothing
too hard.  Then the music, the city, the band did the rest.”

“But a while ago, she told me that you
were the only guy she had ever loved.”

“Could be.”  He lifted her chin gently so
as to look into her eyes.  “But not the way that I could be in love with you.”

She pulled her eyes away in order to not
face what had just happened between them, and noticed that Eve was sitting on
the steps of an old chapel deeper within the park grounds.  “I have to go. 
Sorry.”

“You’re leaving me?”  His voice shook.

“No,” she said, smiling angelically as she
recognized his fears. “I just want to speak with her.”

Federico nodded, and let her go.

Marika walked up the short path with a
single thought in her head: 
Eve is still Eve, and nothing could ever change
that
. “Hey!”  She sat down next to her.

“Hey.”  Eve couldn’t even look her in the
face, as if she were guilty of something.  “He told you.”

“Yeah.”

“And so?” she sighed.

“So what?”  Marika rocked back and forth,
gently knocking against her.

“And so now you’ll run off, or in the best
of hypotheses you’ll just avoid me like I had some kind of disease.”  Her voice
sounded bitter and desperate.

“I’ll do nothing of the sort.”  She felt
deeply saddened by the thought of the frustrations and disappointments that her
friend must have lived through over the years.  “This doesn’t change anything
for me.”

“But you aren’t in love with me.”

“I care so much about you, really!” 
Marika hugged her, though Eve’s arms hung limp at her sides.  “But we can’t
have any more scenes like this.”  She laid her head on Eve’s shoulder. 
“Because even if I didn’t love Matteo with my whole being, and I wasn’t so
confused about the bond between me and Federico, I would still have to follow
my own nature.  Which is exactly what you are doing.”

“What do you see in those neanderthals,
anyway?”  She raised her head.

“What can I say?”  She shrugged.  “They’re
hot!”

They burst into laughter and began making
fun of one another, until Eve made a bitter observation.  “Did you notice where
we’re sitting?”  She slapped the palm of her hand against the stone steps of
the little church.  “I’m a heretic... I shouldn’t even be here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!”  Marika stood up
and looked her sternly in the eyes.  “Heresy is a man-made creation.”  Created
by ignorance and fear of things people don’t understand.  It has nothing to do
with God!  “You know, He loves you, just the same way that He loves me.”  She
sat down on her heels in front of Eve.  “Maybe He even loves you a little bit
more.”  Because she still needed Him in order to survive in this decadent
world.

Tears had blurred their vision by the time
Federico reached them.  “It is said that God knows how to write straight even
on crooked lines.”  He smiled, hugging them both to him.

“Are you calling me a crooked line, you
poser?”  Eve gave him the finger.

“We’re all crooked lines,” he whispered,
embracing her tenderly.  “That’s why He is able to write on us; otherwise the
history of the world would just be a bunch of blank pages of an unwritten book.” 
Federico was truly an amazing guy – sweet, intelligent, sensitive – and Eve was
lucky to have him by her side.

Marika would have liked him to love her
like that – the way he loved Eve – because that is the way Marika felt about
him, since her heart was already betrothed to another.

“Anyway,” she pointed out, “although I don’t
owe either of you any explanation, I’m still not a hundred percent sure about
what I like and what I don’t.”  Eve was suffocating under their affection,
submerged by that uniquely simple and true friendship.  “I’m still a bit
confused.”  She wiggled free.  “Would you both get off of me, you’re so clingy!”

But neither of them did as she asked, and
it was that way for the rest of the summer as well, past the astrological
season of the lion, which concluded with the monumental living chess game on
the marble board in front of the Castle of Marostica.  They watched it
comfortably from their seats, which Federico had reserved months earlier,
enchanted by the parade of archers, squires, flag bearers, the Lord, his court
of nobles, Lionora (secretly in love with one of the two knights), her faithful
nurse, ladies and courtiers, heralds and army captains, falconers, pages,
servant girls, gentlemen and burghers, the soldiers adorned with the insignia
of the black and the white with king and queen, rooks and bishops, and the
Lords of Angarano and of Vallonara who ordered the moves of the pieces on the
board.

It was the second weekend of September:
university classes had not yet begun for the new freshmen, like Federico and
Carlotta; Eve had used up her vacation days weeks ago; the
S in S
had
not taken the stage at the Jammin’ Festival; Dario was getting his feet wet as
a new hotel manager; the school year at Pellico High would be starting on
Monday; Serie A had already gotten well underway; and the youth squad league
had its first match that very weekend.

Marika and Federico had not once mentioned
the kiss.  She hoped that it had just been a moment of weakness on his part,
and he was afraid to bring it up, knowing that there could never be another,
not even if she
had
been willing to kiss him back in that wonderful,
unforgettable moment.  He knew that she would never love him the way she loved
that other guy from her past, and who remained stubbornly stuck to her present
in her every heartbeat.

And as it goes in every love triangle,
from
Guinevere and Lancelot
to
Twilight
, from Dostoevsky’s
White
Nights
to
The Vampire Diaries
, it is always the heart that wins out,
and then it’s checkmate!

And so, the fortified Lower Castle was
illuminated under a display of fireworks that lit up the night sky with a
thousand colors in celebration of the winner and his bride in love.

ECLIPSED HEARTS

The days had
started to become chillier, and every rain shower was a reminder that summer
was over.  Farmers plowed their fields, and in the hills, in between rows of
grapes vines, olive trees, and fig trees, they harvested wheat, and the air was
pungent with the familiar smell of graphite mixed with the taste of grapes, the
spicy notes of raspberries, and the winey fragrance of red berries.

It was harvest time in the Vendramini
vineyard as well: it had been decades since the traditional method of stomping
the grapes with bare feet had been replaced by modern wine making machinery
that removed the stems, gently pressed the grapes, separated the must, and
regulated the temperature in the tanks, but quality control for each of these
stages was still personally monitored by one adult member of the family, thanks
to a system of organic farming, low yields, and manual harvesting of the grape
bunches into wooden crates.

It was also the time of entrance exams to
the university departments.  Carlotta had registered at the University of
Verona for the degree program in Languages and Cultures for Tourism and
International Trade, perhaps with an eye toward a future working for the hotel
chain owned by Dario’s family, while Federico had entered the Department of
Literature and Philosophy at the University of Padua, specializing in Arts,
Music, and Entertainment.

“Open your books to page 288.”  That’s how
her senior year began at Pellico High on that Wednesday morning, with a
critique of bourgeois economics and the problematics of alienation.  First
period: PHILOSOPHY!... An icy shower after the warm summer!  Marika had a tough
time keeping up with the boring Mr. De Luca and his reading of Marxist thought,
even if the slogan “
From
e
ach according to his ability, to each
according to his needs
,” a warning to a wasteful, nepotistic, lazy, and
egotistical society, had momentarily inflamed her heart.  Hungry for justice,
equality, and freedom without party bias, and enamored with those who struggled
to make it real, her version of politics could be boiled down to a single word:
democracy.

And so why hadn’t she felt free to choose
when she had been asked to do so, when that boy who she loved more than anyone
else in the world, standing there in front of her, had asked nothing more than
for her to exchange his love?

She had spent the entire summer asking
herself that question without finding an answer, aside from blaming her own
personal insecurities.  Matteo had kissed her and, incredible but true, he even
wanted to do it again.  And he wanted to be with her so much that he would have
turned his back on
San Carlo
and Serie A just for her if she had asked
him.  All he wanted in return was that she trust him: what was that, after all,
compared to what he was offering?  But that fear of living, which she had so
baldly accused him of, was now her own greatest sin.

“Vendramini!”  The teacher tried to get
her attention, while Gloria poked her from behind to wake her up.   “
Hey,
Marika
!”  Once again she would be sitting behind her for an entire year.  “
You
awake
?”  The teacher raised his eyes to the heavens, resigned and puffing
out his cheeks.  “Vendramini, would you please begin reading from page 296?”

“Yes.”  Marika hurriedly flipped through
the pages of her book.  “OK, I found it.”

“About time,” the teacher said, bored and
impatient and thumping his fingers against his desk.  “Come on now, don’t  be
shy!”

“For Marx, unlike Hegel and Feuerbach,
alienation was a concrete fact of a socio-economic nature, which can only be
overcome by....”  And while her eyes scrolled through the philosophy book, the
only image that occupied her mind was that of Matteo living it up at the beach
with a steady diet of B-grade television actresses and movie extras, drinking
fruit-flavored cocktails straight from their opened lips.

In reality, though, Matteo had already
been practicing with the youth squad for weeks.  He felt as if soccer was the
only thing he had left, and he was giving his all to make the team.  Beretta
didn’t think he could do it.  His talents and capabilities didn’t fit into the
classic mold of soccer lineups – a 4-4-2 that didn’t admit variations like the
rhombus or Christmas tree formations which required the vision of a playmaker
in order to work – that required only deep passes to the tall forwards in the
middle, man-to-man coverage, and only the slightest modernization of a zone
defense in the backfield.  He had seen very few minutes of action in the
preseason friendlies, and even then he was always placed on the right wing,
where he played very well despite not being used to the position.  Matteo had
been born to play the midfield, but he was learning quickly what do to at the
wings, whether right or left.  But for the head coach, he remained a tactical
enigma, someone to keep on the bench or to make use of as a defending
midfielder when need be.

And nothing was any different on that
mid-September morning.  “Zovigo, get backfield!” Beretta howled from the
sideline during a practice match against the Serie A team.  “You have to cover
more of the center of the field.”  What a waste; a soccer player of his talent
and class, so effortless and instinctive, given the role of perpetual
benchwarmer!

San Carlo
was a relatively young
professional organization with a group of energetic, intelligent executives,
led by an ambitious ownership that was on the rise in the international
economic world.  The team’s number one sponsor was a luxury car brand which had
just made its delivery of the official vehicles for this season: more than 50
vehicles for the team, the management, and the coaching staff.

Matteo had adapted easily to his new
living quarters in the residence at the
San Carlo
sports center, while
the younger players of the team were all housed at a boarding school.  The
accommodations of the youth squad players from out of town was in fact in the
same structure as the rooms for foreign players, right next to the two-story
building that housed the Serie A team.  The first floor had an entry hall with
a café and tables for breakfast, the kitchen and two dining rooms, the executive
offices and the briefing room, not to mention the hang-out room and a press
room large enough to host all of the journalists who were invited to the press
conferences given by the coaches, management, and players of the
white and
blue
.  Pão was still his roommate, and everything they needed was right
inside that single building.  Ninho, on the other hand, flush with money after
signing a monstrous contract for a guy his age, had bought a house in Milan – a
loft in the very center of town – and stayed at the
Visconti
only for
the obligatory pre-game retreats.

On the very first day of their season,
Matteo had played only the final fifteen minutes of the match, but he managed
to impress the scouts even in that brief period of time.  Braidi was always breathing
down Beretta’s neck to play Matteo regularly, pushing him to use him in his
natural role as playmaker, while Canosi had negotiated a preliminary contract
for him with the club before the practice retreat in Val Seriana.  He was bound
to the team for the length of the season and under certain conditions for a
corresponding compensation of 18,000 euros annually, to which bonuses for
performance and/or promotions to the Serie A team would eventually be added.

After the contract, it was time for his official
club transfer: a formal act that was completed with the simple signing of a
series of pre-printed forms from the Italian Soccer Federation.  From that
moment on, he was a
white and blue
athlete, subject to all standards and
norms.  The possibility of him signing his first professional contract was
therefore put off until the end of this season, subject to the regulation that
required him to have turned nineteen in the year preceding the beginning of the
new soccer season.

“Try putting Zovigo in at the tip of the
diamond in a diamond formation!”  Braidi, ever present at practice sessions,
gave tactical instructions to Beretta , which was within his rights based upon
his position within the club.  “You’re stuck in archaic models.   You aren’t
looking toward the future of the game,” he criticized.  “For a club like ours,
the goal of the youth section must absolutely be to prepare our young players
for moving up to the Serie A team.  Don’t forget that, Achille!”

“You should get to know him,” added Salvatore
Olderico, the technical assistant and shining light both for the coaches and
the kids, and who had been with the
Corsairs
for years.  “I’ve spent
some time with him and I swear he’s a unique element, both as a player and as a
person.”  The assistant coach next to him nodded his agreement.

“I don’t have anything against the guy. 
These are simply tactical choices,” the head coach responded, while Matteo,
wearing the number 16 of a substitute, put on his usual show on the playing
field: sprinting with the ball, dribbling through tight spaces, ball fakes, leg
fakes, quick direction changes and rabonas, crossing his striking leg behind
his supporting leg to escape a trap or fire the ball into the net.

“He’s got God-given talent,” mentioned
another executive from the youth section.  “He instinctively knows what to do,
and he’s always one step ahead of everyone else mentally.  And it looks like
the ball is glued to his feet.”

“It seems like he can place the ball
wherever he wants,” the assistant coach continued, watching Matteo score
another astonishing goal with spectacular skill: perfect coordination as he
struck the ball with his right foot mid-flight, leaving no chance for the
goalkeeper from the Serie A team.  “And he never misses the net.”

“He’s ambidextrous, he plays with
imagination, but also with sound fundamentals.  And when he’s not bringing the
ball up from midfield, he sits in the hole behind the striker to take advantage
of flank play,” concluded Olderico, visibly impressed.  “He is an intelligent
player who knows how to play the game, and he could be a difference maker in
matches.”  He looked directly  at Beretta.  “You can’t cut him, Achille!”

“OK, OK,” the coach replied gruffly, letting
himself be convinced by what he had heard.  “On Saturday I’ll put out a 4-3-3
and I’ll place him in the hole behind the forwards.”  He climbed the steps of
the practice stadium to fetch a ball that had been sent into the seats as his
staff congratulated themselves on his decision.

“Sorry, Coach.  I fired off a bazooka
shot.”  Amedeo, right winger for the Serie A team, born in Rome and joining the
club after an impressive soccer upbringing in the capital, just like Riccardo,
the left midfielder, had sent the ball flying all the way into the trees.  “I
got all tangled up with Lord Fullback here,” he added, pointing at Pão.  Little
did he know that he had just coined the nickname that would follow the
Brazilian defender for the rest of his career.

It hadn’t taken much for the youngest
players of the two teams to become friends, mixing up the cadets and the
professionals, current champions and future.  Their circle of friends had grown
to include, after Matteo and Pão, Sergio – a central midfielder of the youth
squad who had been moving up through the
white and blue
ranks since he
was a boy – and naturally Ninho, who had become one of the most coddled new
acquisitions of the team, and who brought along with him from the Serie A club
Amedeo, Riccardo, and
Frullo
from Friuli, real name Bregant, who was the
starting keeper.

“OK guys, that’s it for today!”  Coach
whistled the end of practice.  “Everyone head to the showers except for whoever
has to practice their free kicks.”

While the rest of his teammates entered
the locker room and the coaches positioned the wall mannequins on the field,
Matteo took the back of the line of the group of set piece specialists so as to
study their techniques while he awaited his turn.  Though he still wasn’t
completely consistent, he placed the ball well both from close and long
distances, beating even the most experienced of goalies.  From 16 to 30 yards,
he practiced hitting the ball with the inside of his foot so as to make it bend
around the barrier of opposing players, while from 30 to 40 yards he hit it
straight on so as to give it power and speed.

The next few weeks were crucial – between
official matches, lactic acid training, mobility exercises, and repetitions – for
Matteo’s favorable reputation among the staff and management of the team.  He
was playing regularly with the youth squad, though not yet as a starter,
usually as a outside forward or in his usual playmaker role.  In the first four
matches he had scored three goals, and sent an infinite number of assists to the
strikers inside the box, bringing himself even to the attention of the staff of
the Under-20 Italian National Team, which was looking for new players for the “4
Nations” tournament being held that year.

No one at
San Carlo
held any
reserves about his talent any more, and the odds of him making the move up were
quickly becoming better and better.  Then, just little over a month into the
season, a call from above decided that it was time to turn up the heat.

“Agostini took a good look at him during
the last practice match.”  Braidi, who had always instinctively bet on Matteo
regardless of his background or the tactical decisions of the coach, was with
Beretta on the field for last-minute Friday preparations before the match on
Saturday, when he gave him the news of his meeting with the higher-ups.  “Let’s
give him a shot in Serie A!”  The head coach of the top team of
San Carlo
,
Claudio Agostini, had brought ten different players up into the big leagues
from the youth squad over the past three seasons, all with excellent results.  “He
wants Matteo to practice with them.”