Kulti

by Mariana Zapata

  So he didn’t want anyone to know where he lived. That wasn’t surprising, but I let it drop. “Let’s go.”

  Kulti had a bag waiting in his nearly empty living room and followed out after me, setting the alarm and locking the door. The Audi he’d been riding around in was parked in the driveway when I peeked through the wrought-iron fence that sectioned off the back part of his house.

  “So none of your neighbors know you live here?” I asked again once we’d gotten inside the car.

  “No. I leave the house before they do and get back before.”

  “What do you do for groceries?” I was really curious about that. “Order them online?”

  “I walk. It’s three blocks away.”

  All this walking and riding around in cars he didn’t drive, and all these mentions of a suspended license from people that got paid to investigate things… I gave Kulti a curious look but didn’t dig in too deeply. So what? Maybe the signs were all there, but it wasn’t my business to ask, the same way I didn’t want to talk about Amber and her dumbass husband.

  “I guess I don’t understand how no one has recognized you. I mean, your face is on a billboard off the freeway by my house,” I told him, shaking my head. Then again, I’d seen his face hundreds of times on my walls. I could probably do an ink blot test and find him.

  “People don’t pay attention. I wear a hat, and the only people that speak to me are the elderly in the motorized scooters who need assistance reaching something.”

  Glancing over my shoulder, I shot him a smile. “I don’t know how you do it, honestly. We have fans but it’s different. The only people that wear my jersey are my parents and brother. I don’t like being the center of attention, so it works for me.”

  His head moved so that he could look out the window. His voice was so serious, so distant; it made me look at him longer than necessary. “I’ve had enough attention in my life, I don’t miss it.”

  That was why he lived in this neighborhood and wore a hat to the grocery store.

  I guess you figure that some people have it all. Why wouldn’t they? Looks, money, fame. What else would they need? A friend? Companionship? Something to take the boredom away?

  Personally I knew hundreds of people, yet I was only really close to seven. They were all people that I’d known for a long time, but out of those seven I was confident that five would still be in my life even after soccer.

  I eyed Kulti again and repressed a sigh. Feeling bad for him hadn’t been part of the plan.

  * * *

  “Close enough?” I grunted.

  Kulti pressed into me even more. “No.”

  He was backing me into a corner, defender and striker at the same time, to keep me from stealing the ball from him. Somewhat rough and playing like I was just a smaller man, by not avoiding the full body contact that came so naturally in soccer, he crowded me, he held me back. And I fought for every inch I made it forward, having to tap into my short bursts of speed to try and out-trick him.

  It didn’t really work.

  With him on me, I only managed to get my feet on the ball about four times during our game, and each time he made me lose it out of bounds or stole it away. It was aggravating and exhilarating at the same time, especially when I ran after him and tried guarding against his big-ass body.

  Playing with someone bigger, faster and more talented than you are, isn’t exactly an ideal situation, but I tried and in the end, Kulti won, one to zero, nailing a clean shot right between the two goals we’d made out of sticks and empty water bottles we’d found in my backseat.

  Freaking pumpernickel.

  “Again?”

  Hands on my hips, I took a few deep breaths in through my nose and nodded at the man standing in front of me, breathing just as hard. There weren’t very many people at the park we’d gone to about twenty minutes from Kulti’s house, but there were more than there’d been when we first arrived.

  Against my better judgment, I said, “One more.”

  We went for it.

  We both might have been more tired than we’d been when we started, but it didn’t matter. Kulti was on me from the second I got the ball, constantly less than a foot away. He was definitely slowing down, and I used it to my advantage. I was just as tired as he was, our game the day before had drained me, but he was thirteen years older than me and didn’t train as hard. And I was almost as fast as he was.

  “Slowing down?” I panted as I tried to fake him out and make a run to the left.

  He grunted, raw and rough. “Quit talking and play.”

  Yeah, he was definitely pooped.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a few people sitting along the edge of the small field we were on, watching. But it was right then that Kulti snuck his foot into my path to try and trip me.

  “You ass,” I hissed, just barely missing him.

  He used me being distracted and pissed, to steal the ball.

  In the end I took it back when I summoned the last bit of energy I was willing to spend, and really put in the effort to power toward the goal, scoring. I threw my hands up in the air and stuck my tongue out at The King. “I win.” Yeah, I totally wasn’t being professional or mature about it.

  Just to rub it in even more, our audience on the edge of the field began clapping.

  Someone wasn’t amused. I’d actually say he looked a little pissed.

  I liked it.

  “Oye! Muchacha! Es el Aleman?” someone from the field yelled.

  “Callate tonto!” someone else replied, telling the guy asking to shut up.

  I eyed the sore loser in front of me, not knowing what to do. Now that I got a better look at the people on the sidelines, they were all Latinos, in their late twenties and older. The German didn’t say anything with his eyes or his body language.

  “Amiga! Es Kulti?”

  There were only about six of them…

  I looked at Kulti again but the only thing he did was shrug, damn it.

  “Si es,” I admitted. “Pero no le digan a nadie.”

  The group erupted. “No chinges!” No shit was right.

  The next thing I knew they were on their feet, hands on their heads, losing their minds. The guys went up to the German, speaking quick Spanish and watching him like they had never seen anything like him before.

  It wasn’t until I heard the first one who had spoken, say, “No me digas!” that I heard Kulti reply in perfect Spanish, explaining that he was real and not a ghost, “No soy fantasma.”

  The guys lost it again. “You speak Spanish!” one of them exclaimed in the same language.

  The German shrugged and gave them an easy smile.

  For the next couple of minutes, I watched as the strange men blasted off several questions, and they were answered in an accent that rivaled mine.

  I’m not going to lie, not even a little bit. Besides a big butt, I had a thing for guys that spoke different languages. While Reiner Kulti was every bit as impressive of a male specimen as you could get physically, the way he spoke Spanish multiplied his attractiveness by about thirty percent.

  Okay, thirty percent minimum.

  But it wasn’t like I could or would think about that too much. He was my coach.

  And I was his friend. Or something like that.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The first sign that something was off was when I spotted the three people on the edge of the field halfway through Pipers practice two days later. Two of them I recognized from the team’s office staff, and the other person, carrying a kit, was a stranger. It was only on rare occasions that management showed up during training, if there were photographers on the field or if there was an exhibition game going on, but never without a reason.

  The second sign that something was up was when they approached Gardner. It was the way he reacted to whatever they were telling him that had me a little worried. He looked annoyed and possibly outraged. Easygoing and calm ninety-nine-percent-of-the-time-Gardner, angered?
<
br />   Yeah. No.

  Then the clapping started. The meeting of palm on palm that paused our warm-up. “Ladies, we’re taking it easy today.”

  Easy?

  Apprehension rippled down my spine.

  “Apparently, we’re doing a round of drug testing today. It’s nothing to worry about. As most of you know, you are subject to random drug testing throughout the season. If we can have your cooperation we can get through this quickly, and after your sample is received you’re free for the rest of the morning,” Gardner explained, frustration tracing his words.

  Random drug testing? The last time I’d been randomly drug tested had been back in college. The stipulation included in everyone’s contract was more of a blue moon-type occurrence. If they wanted to they could test you, but apart from the health exams and blood tests we took at the beginning of every season, I’d never heard of it happening.

  So, yeah, that was freaking weird.

  I had nothing to hide. The hardest drug I took was an over-the-counter painkiller and that was only in a dire situation like with my foot.

  There was no reason for me to think the testing had anything to do with me.

  Then Gardner called me into his office that afternoon.

  * * *

  “Sal, take a seat,” Gardner said from his spot behind his desk.

  I gave him an uncomfortable smile and sat down.

  Coaches just didn’t call you after practice was over, the day a random drug testing went on, and ask you to come in for a chat. They didn’t. I’d been in the middle of a nursery with Marc choosing some annuals for a project, when the call came through. I’d been shitting bricks since.

  There were only a few reasons why Gardner wouldn’t just tell me over the phone what he wanted: they were trading me, dropping me or some super-fast test had come back and found something in my urine that said I was doping.

  Me, doping. Jesus Christ.

  I wasn’t so badass or indestructible that I wasn’t on the verge of losing it. First, I didn’t want to get traded. Second, I sure as shit didn’t want to get dropped from the team; even though my contract was good for another year, you still never knew. Third, I sure as hell wasn’t ingesting anything that was remotely illegal.

  But still.

  I managed to tell Marc what was going on, and the ‘oh shit’ look he’d given me was enough.

  Taking a deep breath, I gripped my thighs and steeled myself. I might as well bite the bullet. “So, what’s going on, G?”

  He sat back, crossing his arms over his chest and smiled. “Always to the point, that’s why I like you, Sal.”

  Gardner might like me, but he wasn’t telling me what was going on. “Are you letting me go?” To my credit, I sounded calm, not at all like I was on the verge of taking a bat to his office furniture.

  A bat to his office? Dear God. I needed to tone it down.

  “No.” He reeled back. “Where the hell would you get that from?”

  “You asked me to come to your office to talk to me privately, and we had a drug test this afternoon.” I just barely kept the hello to myself.

  His eyes rolled up to the ceiling, a hand going to the back of his neck. “Damn. I didn’t think about that. I’m sorry. That’s not why I want to talk to you.”

  Yeah, that wasn’t entirely convincing.

  “I’m not worried about the results. I’m sure they’re fine, but I did ask you to come in because of the drug test. I had an interesting conversation with Sheena earlier.”

  “Okay.”

  “She told me that an email came in this weekend with your name and some pretty wild accusations on it.”

  That bitch. That fucking bitch. It didn’t take a genius to know where the email had come from. I squeezed my thighs a little tighter, controlling the rage bubbling up inside of me.

  First it was someone on the team tattling on me to Cordero, and now Amber was making crap up? I didn’t think I was a bad person. I did community service work from time to time, I mowed my elderly neighbors’ lawn for free, and I smiled at strangers. Sure sometimes I had bad thoughts about people, but it was never for any reason, though that didn’t make it any better. There were better people in the world than me, and there were sure as hell people a lot worse too. So I couldn’t help but take it a little personally that these miserable hags were taking their crap out on me.

  “Any idea where something like that would come from?”

  “Amber.” I gritted my teeth. “It was Amber. No one else would do something like this.”

  Gardner wasn’t surprised. I’d told him what happened years ago, when I’d gotten back from the last national team tournament and burst into tears in front of him. “Christ. She’s still not over that mess?”

  I couldn’t say that if I were in her shoes, I would have gotten over it either, but I liked to think that I wouldn’t go as far as she had. Actually, I knew that I wouldn’t. Only a total ass-wipe would call and make bogus allegations that could jeopardize someone’s lifetime of hard work.

  I swallowed the bitterness back, reminding myself of all the good things in my life. “Nope.”

  With a sigh, he shook his head and scratched at his neck. “In that case, I’m sorry for asking you over. I kept my eye on her during the game, but it didn’t seem like she was doing anything unusual.”

  Of course he hadn’t heard all the names she’d been calling me during the game, but whatever.

  “I’m going to give her coach a call and tell him he needs to get her under control.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine. If she does something like this again we’ll figure it out, but really, don’t worry about it.” She was a crappy person who had to live with the effects of her awful personality for the rest of her life. That was bad enough.

  Gardner’s eyebrows went up in disbelief, but he didn’t argue. “You let me know if you change your mind.”

  I nodded and stood up, ready to get out of there so that I could think of as many bad names for Amber as I could in private. “I will. Thanks for letting me know though, G. I appreciate it.”

  “Anytime.” He watched me for a second before saying, “Sal, you know you can come to me with anything, right?”

  “I know.” It was the truth. “You’re a good guy, Coach.”

  Gardner smiled as I made my way out of his office with a wave. “Rest up tonight. I need your head in the game tomorrow.”

  “You got it,” I said, closing the door behind me.

  I made it about ten feet down the hallway before an amount of anger I didn’t think I was capable of, filled my entire soul. Amber had taken away the national team from me, fine. But now she was stooping low enough to try and jeopardize my career in the WPL?

  That bitch.

  I went home and took my anger out on the bathtub with a sponge and cleaner.

  * * *

  A little more than halfway through the game the next day, I accepted the fact that I was playing like complete and total crap.

  All right, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but the point was I was playing pretty terrible. I was distracted and angry. For once in my life, I couldn’t push everything else down to focus. The maliciousness in Amber’s actions made my head want to explode. It wasn’t like she hadn’t done enough in the past to begin with either. Talking to her after the last game ended up stirring up some real resentment from me that not even my dirty bathroom could make go away. My head and my heart weren’t in it, and I was too pissed off to give a shit.

  So when my number went up on the board in red, and another girl’s number went up in green, I wasn’t totally surprised they were taking me out. I couldn’t get angry about it either. Embarrassed and resigned, yes. I’d only gotten substituted a handful of times, and it had always been for a good reason: unavoidable cramps and torn muscles. There was also that one time I got too aggressive after a player elbowed me in the kidney and hadn’t gotten caught, but Gardner took me out before I did something I might regret. But this time
there was no valid excuse for how sloppy I was playing, or how absent-minded I was today.

  It was pathetic. I knew better. I did better. I could handle more than this without blinking an eye, and I failed spectacularly.

  I slowly jogged off the field, avoiding everyone and anyone’s eyes, as I stared straight forward. Just as I was heading to the bench, the only route available was a sliver between Kulti and Gardner, a hand grabbed my wrist. Gardner wasn’t the grabbing type, so I knew before even looking over my shoulder who it was.

  Those crazy-colored eyes stared down at me from their position eight inches above mine. A furrow creased the space in the middle of his auburn eyebrows. “What the hell is going on with you?” he snapped.

  I took a sharp inhale and met his gaze directly with a single shrug. “I’m sorry.” I wasn’t going to make any excuses. There weren’t any.

  That must have pissed him off because his nostrils flared. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”

  “There’s nothing else to say. I’m playing like shit, and you’re taking me out. I get it.”

  Honest to God, if Kulti was the type of person that smacked himself in the forehead, he had the expression on his face that said he’d be doing it right then. “Get out of my face right now; I’ll deal with you later.”

  Even though I was sort of expecting his response to be similar, I still recoiled. But even as I did I bit my words back, swallowed my pride, accepted my fault and marched over to the bench. Elbows to my knees, I sat forward and watched the rest of the game, mentally kicking myself in the ass for being such an idiot.

  An hour later, our team had barely squeaked by with a 1-0 win in thanks to a ball that hit the tip of Grace’s foot just perfectly. We headed to the locker rooms and listened to the coaching staff drone on about what we did wrong, and what we really did wrong. Kulti didn’t even bother looking at me when he decided to speak, but it was obvious to me that he was referring to all my screw-ups. Normally that would have put me on edge, but I had already accepted reality. As a wrap, Gardner gave his bit of motivational advice for the next week, and we were released to get out of the locker room.