Ten feet. Baby Jesus, please—
“Salome!”
Fuck.
I looked over and breathed a sigh of relief when the reporter shouting didn’t have a camera or a cameraman with him. He was a blogger. I could have kissed him.
The first few questions were normal. How my off-season had gone. How training was going. Who I thought were going to be our biggest competitors.
It was right around the time that I was finishing his last question, preparing myself to tell him that I needed to go, when I heard the reporters I’d bypassed start chattering loudly. Again it was no big deal. The journalist’s eyes started darting to the area behind me even as I spoke, watching and waiting for his next victim. There weren’t usually reporters or journalists waiting around before practice unless it was playoff time. At least that’s what it had been like before the former German superstar showed up.
Now apparently, they all had bottle vision whenever he was nearby. And from the look on the journalist’s face when he saw his next subject, I knew who had caught his attention.
Two eyes swung from whatever the journalist was looking at behind me… to me and then back again.
A strain of dread-like anger saturated my belly when Kulti walked by, waving off the three media people that were trying to get his attention by asking questions and shoving their cameras and recording devices in his face.
He could get away with being antisocial, but I couldn’t?
“Isn’t your brother a pro too?” the journalist asked slowly.
I swallowed and forced myself to hope that this wasn’t going the way it seemed to be. And yet, I knew it was. “Yeah. He’s a center back,” or as I called him, a center bitch. “He plays for Sacramento normally, but he’s on loan to a team in Europe right now.” This was the only reason I was sure he hadn’t called me to complain about Kulti yet. Did he know? He had to. But he was cheap and wasn’t going to call until our standing phone-date every other Sunday.
The man’s eyes swung back over to me, so low-lidded I knew I was screwed. “Wasn’t his leg broken years ago?”
It was his left tibia and fibula to be exact. Just thinking about it made my own shins hurt, but I settled for a nod in reply. The less I spoke, the smaller my chances were of incriminating myself by saying something stupid. “Ten years ago.”
“Did it happen during a game?” he was asking, but we both well aware he knew the answer.
Asshole.
Did I look that dumb? I wasn’t about to let him steer me into looking like an idiot. When I was in college, they made athletes for every sport take a class in public speaking. Sure I’d barely passed, but they had taught me one thing I hadn’t forgotten: how important it was for you to keep the interview under control. “Yep. Ten years ago, he went in for a loose ball during a game against the Tigers and was hit in the leg by an opposing player.” The journalist’s eyes twitched. “He was out for six months.”
“The player got yellow-carded, didn’t he?”
And… there it was. Since when were sports bloggers sneaky little shits looking for drama when it was uncalled for?
I plastered a smile on my face, giving him this look that said yeah, I know exactly what you’re doing, dingle-berry. “Yes, but he’s perfectly fine now. It wasn’t a big deal.” Well that was a lie, but whatever. My smile grew even wider and I took a step back. Being an asshole didn’t come naturally to me. I didn’t like it, but I wasn’t about to roll onto my back and show someone my belly. Coach Gardner had already made it painfully clear to me that I needed to keep attention on the team and not Kulti, especially not Eric and Kulti. “I need to get going. You have anything else you need to ask about training, though?”
The reporter’s eyes slid over in the direction Kulti and his followers had gone. “We’re all done. Thanks.”
“Anytime.” Not.
I took another step back, snatched my bag off the ground and started walking in the direction of the field. I still had to collect the uniform they wanted us to wear for our profile shots and put it on. Someone with the organization had set up two tents on the outskirt of the field, one with long flaps to provide some modesty for changing, and the other more basic, without flaps, where the uniforms could be found.
“Sal! Come get your stuff!” someone yelled from beneath the smaller tent.
I made my way over there, looking around to see who had survived the gauntlet, aka the media, and waved at the players and staff members who made eye contact with me. There were only a few people under the uniform tent where we needed to go before our player photos—two management employees handing out uniforms, two players and three staff members.
One of the staff members was Kulti.
Poop.
Okay, I was fine.
“Good morning,” I said as I came up to the group in the tent, rubbing my hands down the front of my pants.
Poop, poop, poop, poop, poop.
A chorus of “good morning” greetings came back to me, even from the ancient demoness known as our fitness coach who was yet again standing by the former German superstar.
It was the same German super-athlete who was now only about five feet away.
I went to the Louvre once years ago, and I remember looking at the Mona Lisa after standing outside of the famous museum for hours trying to get in and being disappointed. The painting was smaller than I’d thought it would be. Honestly, it was just a painting. There was nothing about it that made it so much better than any other painting ever at least to my untrained eye. It was famous and it was old, and that was it.
Simply standing mere feet away from the man that had led his teams to championship after championship… seemed weird. It was like this was a dream, a very weird dream.
It was a dream with a man who looked better than any thirty-nine-year-old ever should.
“Casillas? It’s your turn, honey. I got your uniform right here,” one of the women working behind the tables called out to me with a smile.
I blinked and then smiled back at her, embarrassed that she caught me daydreaming. “Sorry.” Walking around the coaches, I took the plastic-wrapped bundle she handed me. “Need me to sign anything?”
She handed me a clipboard with a shake of her head. “What size shoe do you wear? I can’t read whether it’s an eight or a nine.”
“Eight,” I said, signing the area to the side of my name.
“Give me a second to find your socks.” She turned her back to me and started rifling through an organized container behind her.
“Mr. Kulti, I have you down for a medium shirt and large bottoms, does that sound right?” the other employee who wasn’t busy asked, her voice sounding a little high, a little breathless. Her hands were folded and pressed to her chest, her eyes only just barely holding that glint of nervous excitement in them.
“Yes,” was the simple answer that rumbled out deeply; his enunciation was sharp with just the slightest hint of an accent that had been watered down from living in so many different countries over the years.
I felt his tone right between my shoulder blades. I could remember hearing him talk about whatever game he’d just finished playing dozens of times. Poop, fart, hemorrhoids. Sal. Get it together.
I swallowed hard, unable to get over how different he looked. Back when I’d been a fan, he’d gone through every hair style from dyed tips to a mohawk. Now standing there, his hair was shaved short and his arms were loose at his sides, his spine rigid. A hint of his cross pattée tattoo—a cross with arms that narrowed toward the center—appeared beneath the hem of his T-shirt sleeve. It wasn’t huge from what I remembered, maybe five inches high and five across and he’d had it for a long time. When I was younger, I thought it was kind of neat. Now… meh. I liked tattoos on men, but I liked big pieces, not a collection of random little ones.
But whatever, it wasn’t like anyone was asking me for my opinion.
“Here you go, Sal, I got ‘em,” the staff member said, hanging me another sealed pa
cket out of the corner of my eye. “We’ll have the rest of your gear later.”
“All right. Thanks, Shelly.” Holding the uniform under one arm, I took another glance at Kulti, who was steadfast keeping his attention forward and fought the anticipation that pooled in my chest. My feet wouldn’t move, and my stupid eyes wouldn’t move either. At no point in my childhood had I ever really expected to be so close to this man. Never. Not once.
But after a second of standing there awkwardly, hoping for a look or possibly a word? I realized he wasn’t going to give me either. He was making a point to keep his eyes forward, lost in his own thoughts; maybe he wanted to be left alone, or might have purposely not wanted to waste his time speaking to me.
That thought went like a mortal blow straight to my chest. I felt like a preteen girl that wanted the older guy to pay attention to her when he didn’t even know she existed. The hope, the expectancy and the following disappointment sucked. It just sucked.
He wasn’t going to acknowledge me. That much was clear.
All righty, then. While I wasn’t exactly a Jenny who made friends with everyone, I liked being friendly with people. Obviously this guy wasn’t going to win a Mr. Congeniality award anytime soon, since he wouldn’t even bother looking at me standing there two feet away.
So… that didn’t sting at all. My heart didn’t feel funny either.
Then I remembered the crap with the journalist outside and the effect that kind of attention could have on me. I tried my best to keep under the radar. I just wanted to play soccer, that was it.
With another quick glance at the man who was standing, oblivious to everything around him, I took my crap and went to change. I didn’t need Reiner Kulti to talk to me. I hadn’t needed him before and I wouldn’t need him in the future.
* * *
If I thought for a second that things would get less hectic as the days passed and Kulti’s presence slowly became old news, I would have been sorely mistaken.
It didn’t.
Everyday there were at least half a dozen reporters outside of the field or headquarters. Wherever we’d be that day, they would be there. I’d scratched the skin on my neck nearly raw from how much I was scratching at it on my walks toward wherever we were meeting.
I tried to stay as far away from them as I could.
It was just like I tried to stay away from the team’s new coach.
To be fair, he made it easy. The German stayed in the corner of the universe he had dug out for himself—a lonely little corner that included him and him only. Apparently only Gardner, the mean bat known as the fitness coach and Grace got invitations every so often. He stood and watched; then he moved a little to the side and kept right on watching.
“I feel like we’re in the lion exhibit at the zoo,” Jenny whispered to me when we were taking a break during our last meeting. We were in that bathroom alone after having just sat through two hours of scheduling details, and I was on the verge of wanting to stab myself in the eye with my pen. I was restless sitting in the chair doing nothing.
My prayers had been answered when they gave us ten minutes to use the bathroom and get a drink.
I looked at her in the reflection of the bathroom mirror and made my eyes go big. I guess I wasn’t the only one who noticed the wordless man who went through the meeting with his back against the wall and his arms crossed over his chest. “It does feel like that, huh?”
She nodded like she was glum about it. “He hasn’t said anything, Sal. I mean, isn’t that weird? Even Phyllis,” the mean old fitness coach, “talks every once in a while.” She hunched her shoulders up high. “Weird.”
“Very weird,” I agreed with her. “But we can’t say—“
The door opened, and three of the newer girls on the team walked in, joking around with each other.
Jenny shot me a look in the mirror’s reflection because what was more obvious than immediately stopping a conversation when other people walked by? I might as well have the word guilty tattooed on my forehead. So I spouted out the first thing that came to mind, “—that you didn’t ask for onions on your burger without sounding like an asshole…”
One of the girls smiled at me before going into the stall, the other two ignored us.
Jenny visibly bit her lip as the newcomers went into the bathroom stalls. “Yeah, you can’t complain about that…?” She mouthed, ‘what was that’ the second they were in.
‘It was the first thing I thought of!’ I mouthed back to her with a shrug.
Jenny pinched her nostrils together as her face went red.
“I know, right?” I held my arms out at my sides in a ‘what was I supposed to say’ gesture even though she was too busy trying not to burst out laughing, to see me in the mirror. God, she was no help in our made-up conversation. “I clearly asked for no onions but whatever. I guess. It’s not like I’m allergic to them.”
By that point, Jenny had her forehead to the bathroom counter and her back was arching with repressed laughs.
I kicked her in the back of the knee lightly just as one of the toilets flushed. She looked up and I mouthed ‘stop it’ to her. Did she? No. Not even close.
Yeah, she was too far gone to keep going with the charade. One look and the other girls would see Jenny losing it over onions. God, I really was a horrible liar.
I shoved her out of the bathroom just as one of the latches turned.
* * *
“There’s a rumor going around that you’re going to be rejoining the national team soon, any word on that?”
It was the first official day of practice and my feet were itching. After nearly six months of playing soccer with friends and family, while training and conditioning on my own, I was ready.
And of course I’d gotten waved down by a writer for Training, Inc., a popular e-magazine.
So far, two questions in, it was going fine.
That still didn’t mean that I was going to open my big mouth up and tell him all my deepest secrets. Vague, Sal. Don’t ever confirm or deny anything. “I don’t think so. My ankle still isn’t back to where it needs to be, and I’m busy with other priorities.”
Okay, that wasn’t too bad.
“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”
“I’m working with youth camps.” I left out the other small parts of my life, the parts that weren’t glamorous and had nothing to do with soccer. No one wanted to hear about our miserable paychecks and how most of us had to supplement our incomes by getting second jobs. That didn’t go with the image most people had of professional players in any sport.
And no one especially wanted to hear that I did landscaping when I wasn’t busy with the Pipers. It didn’t embarrass me, not at all. I liked doing it, and I had a degree in Landscape Architecture. It wasn’t glossy or pretty, but I’d be damned if I ever let anyone give what I did a bad name. My dad had supported our family being the ‘the lawn guy’ or ‘the gardener’ and any and all other things that could put food on our table. There was no shame in hard work, he and my mom had taught me from a very early age when I had cared what other people thought. People would laugh and crack jokes when Dad would pick me up from school with a lawnmower and other tools in the back of his beat-up truck, with his goofy hat and sweat-stained clothes that had seen better decades.
But how could I ever give my dad a hard time about picking me up from school so he could take me to soccer practice? Or he’d pick me up, take me to a job or two with him, and then he’d take me to practice. He loved us and he sacrificed so that Eric and I could be on those teams with their expensive fees and uniforms. We got where we were today, because he worked his ass off.
As I got older, people just found more things to pick on me about and laugh. I’d been called a priss, stuck-up, a bitch, a lesbian and a dyke more times than I could count. All because I loved playing soccer and took it seriously.
Eventually one of my U-20 coaches pulled me aside after some of my teammates had gotten an attitude with me. I�
��d declined an invitation to go out so I could go home and get some rest. He’d said, “people are going to judge you regardless of what you do, Sal. Don’t listen to what they have to say because at the end of the day, you’re the one that has to live with your choices and where they take you. No one else is going to live your life for you.” Most times it was easier said than done, but here I was. I’d gotten what I had worked so hard for, so it hadn’t been in vain.
There were going to be a hundred parties I could go to when I was older and past my athletic prime, but I only had the first half of my life to do what I loved for a living. I’d been fortunate enough to find something that I enjoyed and that I could work toward. I wasn’t going to blow this chance I’d been given.
Sometimes though I didn’t feel like having to defend what I liked doing, or why I made sure to sleep so much, or why I didn’t eat that greasy meal that would give me indigestion on a run later or why I didn’t like to hang around smokers. This guy was one of those people I’d rather save my breath on. So I didn’t elaborate.
The blogger’s eyebrows went up to nearly his hairline. “How are your soccer camps going?”
“Great.”
“How do you feel about critics saying that the Pipers should have gotten a coach with better qualifications than Reiner Kulti?”
I knew exactly how the little sister on the Brady Bunch felt. Kulti, Kulti, Kulti. Holy shit. Honestly, part of me was surprised I wasn’t dreaming about him. But could I ever say that? Absolutely not. “I’ve been told I was too short to be a good soccer player. You can do anything you want to do as long as you care enough.” Maybe that was a bad thing to say when Kulti didn’t actually seem to care a little bit about us, but the words were already out of my mouth and I couldn’t take them back. So…
“Kulti’s notorious for being a one-man show,” he stated, matter-of-factly.
I just looked at him but didn’t say a word. If there was a way for me to answer that, I didn’t know how.
Kulti Page 5