“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 packet 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 thoughtfor 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.