by John Grisham
“I’ve never had a car with a clutch,” he said. “Evidently you have.”
“Driving is different here, so is parking.”
“You are superb at parking and singing.”
“Thank you.” A beautiful smile, a pause, a sip from the glass. “You’re an opera fan?”
I am now, Rick almost said. “Last night was my first, and I enjoyed it, especially when you were onstage, which wasn’t often enough.”
“You must come again.”
“When?”
“We perform Wednesday, and then Sunday is our last of the season.”
“We play in Milan on Sunday.”
“I can get you a ticket for Wednesday.”
“It’s a deal.”
The pub closed at 2:00 a.m. Rick offered to walk her home, and she easily agreed. Her hotel suite was furnished by the opera company. It was near the river, a few blocks from the Teatro Regio.
They said good night with a nod, a smile, a promise to meet the next day.
· · ·
They met for lunch, and over large salads and crepes they talked for two hours. Her schedule was not that different from his—a long night’s sleep, coffee and breakfast late in the morning, an hour or two at the gym, then an hour or two of work. When they were not performing, the cast was expected to gather and grind through another practice. Same as football. Rick got the clear impression that a struggling soprano earned more than a struggling itinerant quarterback, but not by much.
Carletto was never mentioned.
They talked about their careers. She had begun singing as a young teenager in Florence, where her mother still lived. Her father was dead. At seventeen, she began winning awards and receiving auditions. Her voice developed early, and there were big dreams. She worked hard in London and won role after role, but then nature set in, genetics became a factor, and she was struggling with the realization that her career—her voice—had reached its pinnacle.
Rick had been booed so many times it didn’t faze him. But to get booed on an opera stage seemed unusually cruel. He wanted an explanation, but he did not bring up the issue. Instead, he asked questions about Otello. If he was going to watch it again the following night, he wanted to understand everything. Otello was dissected for a long time as the lunch went on. There was no hurry.
After coffee, they went for a walk and found a gelato stand. When they finally said good-bye, Rick went straight to the gym, where he sweated like a madman for two hours and thought of nothing but Gabriella.
Chapter
15
Due to a rugby conflict, Wednesday’s practice began at 6:00 p.m, and was much worse than Monday’s. In a cold, light rain the Panthers slogged through thirty minutes of uninspired calisthenics and sprints, and when they were over, it was too wet for anything else. The team hurried back to the locker room, where Alex arranged the video and Coach Russo tried to get serious about the Milan Rhinos, an expansion team that had played the year before in the B division. For this reason alone, the Panthers had no trouble dismissing them as a viable opponent. There were jokes and cheap shots and plenty of laughs as Sam rolled the video. Finally, he switched discs and went back to their game against Naples. He began with a sequence of missed blocks by the offensive line, and before long Nino was bickering with Franco. Paolo, the Texas Aggie and left tackle, took offense at something said by Silvio, a linebacker, and the mood turned nasty. The cheap shots grew more pointed and spread around the locker room. The squabbling took on sharper tones. Alex, handling the Italian now, offered scathing critiques of just about everyone in a black jersey.
Rick sat low in his locker, enjoying the bitch session but also aware of what Sam was doing. Sam wanted trouble, infighting, emotions. Often an ugly practice or a nasty film session can be productive. The team was flat and overconfident.
When the lights came on, Sam told everyone to go home. There was little chatter as they showered and changed. Rick sneaked away from the stadium and hurried to his apartment. He changed into his finest Italian threads, and at 8:00 p.m. sharp was seated in the fifth row from the orchestra in Teatro Regio. He knew Otello now, inside and out. Gabriella had explained everything.
He endured Act 1, no Desdemona until the third scene, when she eased onto the stage and began groveling at the feet of her husband, the crazy Otello. Rick watched her carefully, and with perfect timing, as Otello wailed on about something, she glanced at the fifth row to make sure he was there. Then she began to sing, back and forth with Otello as the first act came to a close.
Rick waited for a second, maybe two, then began applauding. The hefty signora to his right was at first startled, then slowly put her hands together and followed his lead. Her husband did the same, and the light applause spread. Those inclined to boo were preempted, and suddenly the crowd en masse decided that Desdemona deserved better than what she had been receiving. Emboldened, and not one to give much of a damn anyway, Rick served up a hearty “Bravo!” A gentleman two rows back, no doubt as struck by Desdemona’s beauty as Rick, did the same. A few other enlightened souls agreed, and as the curtain fell, Gabriella stood at center stage, eyes closed, but with a slightly noticeable smile.
At 1:00 a.m., they were in the Welsh pub again, having drinks and talking opera and football. The final performance of Otello would be the following Sunday, when the Panthers were in Milan slugging it out with the Rhinos. She wanted to see a game, and Rick convinced her to stay in Parma another week.
· · ·
With Paolo the Aggie as their guide, the three Americans caught the 10:05 train for Milan Friday night, not long after the last practice of the week. The rest of the Panthers were at Polipo’s for the weekly pizza party.
The drink cart stopped at their seats, and Rick bought four beers, the first round, the first of many. Sly said he drank little, said his wife did not approve, but at that moment his wife was in Denver, very far away. She would become even more removed as the night progressed. Trey said he preferred bourbon, but could certainly handle a beer. Paolo seemed ready to drink a keg.
An hour later they were in the sprawling lights of Milan’s perimeter. Paolo claimed to know the city well, and the country boy was visibly excited about a weekend in town.
The train stopped inside the cavernous Milano Centrale, Europe’s largest train station, a place that had thoroughly intimidated Rick a month earlier when he passed through. They squeezed into a cab and headed for the hotel. Paolo had handled the details. They had decided on a decent hotel, not too expensive, in a section of town known for its nightlife. No cultural excursion into the heart of old Milan. No interest in history or art. Sly in particular had seen enough cathedrals and baptisteries and cobblestoned streets. They checked into the Hotel Johnny in the northwest section of Milan. It was a family-run albergo, with a little charm and little rooms. Double rooms—with Sly and Trey in one and Rick and Paolo in the other. The narrow beds were not far apart, and Rick wondered, as he quickly unpacked, just how cozy things might get if both roommates got lucky with the girls.
Food was a priority, at least for Paolo, though the Americans could have grabbed a sandwich on the run. He selected a place called Quattro Mori because of its fish, said he needed a break from the endless pasta and meat in Parma. They ate freshly caught pike from Lake Garda and fried perch from Lake Como, but the winner was a baked tench stuffed with bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese, and parsley. Paolo, of course, preferred a slow proper meal with wine, followed by dessert and coffee. The Americans were ready for the bars.
The first was an establishment known as a discopub, a genuine Irish pub with a long happy hour followed by wall-to-wall dancing. They arrived around 2:00 a.m., and the pub was rocking with a screeching British punk band and hundreds of young men and women gyrating wildly with the music. They drained a few beers and approached a few ladies. The language thing was quite a barrier.
The second was a pricier club with a ten-euro cover charge, but Paolo knew someone who knew someone else, and the
cover was waived. They found a table on the second level and watched the band and dance floor below. A bottle of Danish vodka arrived, with four glasses of ice, and the evening took a different turn. Rick flashed a credit card and paid for the drinks. Sly and Trey were on tight budgets, as was Paolo, though he tried not to show it. Rick, the quarterback at twenty grand a year, was happy enough to play the big shot. Paolo disappeared and returned with three women, three very attractive Italian girls willing to at least say hello to the Americans. One spoke broken English, but after a few minutes of awkward chitchat they resorted to Italian with Paolo, and the Americans were gently pushed to the sidelines.
“How do you pick up girls if they can’t speak English?” Rick asked Sly.
“My wife speaks English.”
Then Trey led one of the girls away to the dance floor. “These European girls,” Sly said, “always checking out the black dudes.”
“Must be awful.”
After an hour, the Italians moved on. The vodka was gone.
The party began sometime after 4:00 a.m. when they stepped into a packed Bavarian beer hall with a reggae band onstage. English was the dominant tongue—lots of American students and twenty-somethings. On the way back from the bar with four steins of beer, Rick found himself cornered by a group of ladies from the South, according to their drawls.
“Dallas,” one said. They were travel agents, all in their mid-thirties and probably married, though no wedding rings were visible. Rick set the beers on their table and offered them up. To hell with his teammates. There was no brotherhood. Within seconds he was dancing with Beverly, a slightly overweight redhead with beautiful skin, and when Beverly danced it was full contact. The floor was crowded, bodies bumped into bodies, and to keep close Beverly kept her hands on Rick. She hugged and hunched and groped, and between songs suggested they retire to a corner where they could be alone, away from her competition. She was a clinger, and a determined one.
There was no sign of the other Panthers.
But Rick guided her back to her table, where her fellow travel agents were assaulting all manner of men. He danced with one named Lisa from Houston whose ex-husband had run off with his law partner, and so on. She was a bore, and of the two he preferred Beverly.
Paolo popped in to check on his quarterback, and with his accented English thrilled the ladies with an amazing string of lies. He and Rick were famous rugby players from Rome who traveled the world with their team, earning millions and living life in grand style. Rick rarely lied to pick up women; it simply wasn’t necessary. But it was humorous to watch the Italian work the crowd.
Sly and Trey were gone, Paolo told Rick as he moved to another table. Left with two blondes who spoke the language, albeit with a funny accent. Probably Irish, he thought.
After the third dance, maybe the fourth, Beverly finally convinced him to leave, through a side door to avoid her friends. They walked a few blocks, completely lost, then found a cab. They groped for ten minutes in the backseat until it stopped at the Regency. Her room was on the fifth floor. As Rick pulled the curtains, he saw the first hint of dawn.
· · ·
He managed to open one eye in the early afternoon, and with it he saw red toenails and realized Bev was still asleep. He closed it and drifted away. His head felt worse the second time he awoke. She was not in the bed but in the shower, and for a few minutes he thought about his escape.
Though the disentanglement and clumsy goodbye would be over quickly, he still hated it. He always had. Was cheap sex really worth the lies on the run? “Hey, you were great, gotta go now.” “Sure, I’ll give you a call.”
How many times had he opened his eyes, tried to remember the girl’s name, tried to remember where he found her, tried to recall the details of the actual deed, the momentous occasion that got them into bed to begin with?
The shower was running. His clothes were in a pile by the door.
He suddenly felt older, not necessarily more mature, but certainly tired of the role of the bed-hopping bachelor with the golden arm. All the women had been throwaways, from the cute cheerleaders in college to this stranger in a foreign city.
The football-stud act was over. It had ended in Cleveland with his last real game.
He thought of Gabriella, then tried not to. How odd that he felt guilty lying under thin sheets listening to the water run over the body of a woman whose last name he never heard.
He quickly dressed and waited. The water stopped, and Bev walked out in a hotel bathrobe. “So you’re awake,” she said with a forced smile.
“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.