“Maybe,” he says. “It doesn’t work.”
He goes back to the table. I stand there a moment, hands flat on the counter. Something in my chest votes to follow him.
It’s outvoted.
Then I bring the bottle out and refill four glasses. Davide is teaching Damián the fitness coach’s catchphrase. I laugh where the laugh goes, and I mean it, and underneath it the want sits quietly for the rest of the evening, waiting for me to be alone. It can wait. We have an arrangement.
They leave at midnight. Damián hugs me at the door as if we’ve known each other for years.
“If the tournament ends and I end up with a kitchen in this city,” he says, “you’ll teach me the ragù. I’ll teach you nothing. It’s a bad trade, I’m aware.”
“Bring that wine man from the store. He did his job well.”
As Damián and Davide say goodbye, I press a container of ragù on Marek because in my family nobody leaves empty-handed, even a man who once left me exactly that way. He takes it and reads the lid as if there’s something written there. There isn’t.
“Eat it by tomorrow night,” I say. “It won’t keep longer.”
“It went up,” he says. “The price. I was listening.”
I nod but say nothing to that. The door closes.
Davide washes, I dry, and neither of us says anything until the last pan is on the rack.
“He watched you all night,” Davide says to the window. “Damián watched the video on my phone. Kovár watched you.”
“He’s a defender. They track movement.”
“Enzo.” He hangs the towel. “I’ve known you since we were seventeen. You served him the corner piece of focaccia without looking. You’ve never once served me the corner piece without a negotiation.”
I put the last glass away. “Go to bed, Davide.”
“Going.” He stops in his doorway. “The ragù was angry tonight. It was still the best one you’ve made here.”
I set the kitchen right. Burners off, counters wiped, the leftover sauce at the back of the fridge under a plate. Outside, a man is walking to a hotel carrying my ragù in a plastic container, and the next match is coming whether I sleep or not.
I check the front door before going to bed. Locked.
I check it again anyway.
The line held tonight. This time it held out loud. But even I can see how easy it was to hold the line when there were witnesses. Now I just have to keep being the man who said it, for as long as that takes. I don’t let myself count how long I think it will take.
Chapter 6: Marek
There is Naples in my minibar.
It sits behind the water bottles nobody drinks, a plastic container of six-hour ragù, and every time the little fridge light comes on it looks at me. He told me it wouldn’t keep longer than a day.
Novotný finds it before breakfast, because Novotný audits the minibar the way customs audits a nervous man.
“There’s pasta in our fridge. Real pasta. Where does a man get real pasta in a hotel?”
“A dinner. Damián brought me along.”
“Damián’s been here as long as us and he’s already getting invited to dinners?”
“He’s likable. It’s a known problem with him.” I take the container out of his hand and put it back. “Touch it again and I’ll tell Polášek you’ve been taking his protein shakes.”
He withdraws backward with his hands visible.
