Exposure (7 page)

I
T’S
R
IALTO’S THIRD
home game of the season. Faustino, in his seat at the front of the press section, looks up and over to his right, scanning the faces in the directors’ box. Only five minutes before the teams will emerge from the tunnel, and still no sign of Nestor Brabanta. It looks as if once again the senator will not be watching his son-in-law play. Interesting. Maybe there
is
something in the rumors. . . .
She
is there, though, leaning across the vacant seat next to hers to listen to what the Duke is saying. The PA system is blasting out one of her so-called songs that manages to be both frantic and bland at the same time. The San Lorenzo supporters — and a good many home supporters, too — are doing their best to drown it out.

Faustino adjusts the items on the ledge in front of him: his notebook, the game program, the press briefings. His comment column will not appear until Monday; around him, the hacks who have to file reports for the evening editions fiddle with cell phones plugged into their laptops. Because Faustino does not have these gadgets, the hacks feel slightly superior to him. For the very same reason, Faustino feels superior to them.

The man to his left, Mateo Campos of
El Sol,
leans nearer. “Whatcha think, Faustino? Is Dezi’s piece of ass gonna start doing the business on the field as well as off?”

Dear God,
Faustino thinks,
the man actually speaks the way he writes.

In Faustino’s considered opinion,
El Sol
is the most putrid of sores on the diseased body of the South American press. A filthy rag you might use only to clean up after a dog with a bowel complaint. Campos is its head sportswriter. According to his byline, he is
The Man Who Speaks Your Mind.
In his darker moments, Faustino fears this might be true.

“I presume you mean, do I think Otello will play well? The answer is yes. But I don’t suppose anything that actually happens on the field will have any influence on what
you
choose to write.”

Campos makes a blubbery hiss with his lips, meant to express contempt. Faustino notices that it leaves little prismatic spangles of spit on the screen of Campos’s laptop.

The fact is that, in his first five games for Rialto, Otello has scored only once — a deflected volley from a poor defensive clearance. Nor did he score in a bad-tempered friendly international against Colombia. After his first game for his new club, the general view of his performance was summed up in the headline in
El Correo
:
OTELLO FAILS TO IMPRESS
. Faustino could not argue with that. But his own view was that Rialto would have to learn how to play with Otello, rather than the other way around. In his column, Faustino had argued that Otello was simply quicker at reading the game than his teammates, and once they had learned how to give their new striker the kind of service he needed, Rialto might well be unbeatable. And, so far, his fellow commentators had tended to agree with him. Faustino had been gratified when the highly respected Milton Acuña, appearing on
Sportsview,
had said that Rialto “needed to raise their game to Otello’s standard.”

But then
El Sol
had broken ranks. The smutty rag had been obsessed, predictably, with the “sensational” marriage of Desmerelda Brabanta and Otello. As had all the “celebrity” trash mags. The snatched photos of the couple, the “interviews” with their “close friends,” the “astrological analyses” of their compatibility, the snide innuendos about her father’s supposed “shock” and “fury”: all these — and worse — were no more than you’d expect. The subtext of these stories was, of course, that the
americana
daughter of a political millionaire had bedded and married a dumb black soccer player and thus turned the world on its head and doesn’t it make you sick?

After a month the distinction between
El Sol
’s so-called news pages and the sports pages had become blurred. You didn’t have to be an expert in linguistics to spot the real meaning of the words. Mateo Campos kicked off with the headline
DIM OUTLOOK FOR RIALTO?
followed by
ANOTHER DARK AFTERNOON FOR RIALTO
and
OTELLO: FIFTY MILLION POURED INTO A BLACK HOLE?
The previous Sunday,
El Sol
’s lurid weekend supplement had a piece (by Campos) dominated by a grainy paparazzi shot of a topless Desmerelda taken on a beach two years back. The caption read:
IS THIS WHY OTELLO CAN’T KEEP HIS EYE ON THE BALL?
(Grudgingly, Faustino has to admire the use of the protective question mark in these headlines. And if he were honest with himself — which he is, sometimes — he would have to admit that his own thoughts have occasionally strayed into the same dingy and juicy territory. He had, after all, been there at the very moment when the famous couple met. He had seen the hero’s knees go weak and the tiny sunrises in her eyes. He had even been tempted to write it up: a surefire — but tasteful — eyewitness piece called something like
WHEN DEZI MET OTELLO
. But no, no. Paul Faustino has his principles. And he doesn’t need the money.)

So far, the other papers — even the down-market ones — have refused to follow
El Sol
’s lead. They have not turned on Otello like dogs in a pack. Not yet. They don’t dare to, because although Otello’s honeymoon with Desmerelda has ended, his honeymoon with the fans is still full of hope and passion. But theirs is a love that feeds on goals, and they are getting hungry. Faustino is surprised by how anxious he is for those goals to come. And how fearful he is that they won’t. He fidgets in his seat, moving as far from Mateo Campos as he can. Then the teams come onto the field.

The roar swells like a delayed bomb, and his own chest fills in response. These are the good moments when he feels as clean as a child, bathed in what he loves. Red and yellow and blue and white waves of rising bodies, clouds of glitter litter, competing blares of horns, drumming that summons up lost tribal faiths. Red and blue flares. The animal smell of something ridiculously important. For Faustino, there is nothing quite like this. Nothing that brings him closer to joy. As always, he wants to laugh.

Otello is last in the line of Rialto players to emerge, and the home crowd delays its climactic roar until he appears. And as before, Faustino thinks that this is a mistake on Otello’s part. Or maybe self-indulgence.

It’s a lousy game. As halftime approaches, the frustrated Rialto supporters maintain a ferocious chorus of whistles and jeers. Then, in the forty-third minute, Otello scores. It is a goal he manufactures single-handedly and out of nothing. He robs an over-casual San Lorenzo midfielder of the ball and evades another en route to the goal. At the eighteen-yard line, he seems to be blocked off and is forced along the edge of the box, tracked by two defenders, who cut him off from the goal. He seems to be going nowhere and has no support. The shot is therefore completely unexpected. Otello hits it on the run with the outside of his right foot; the San Lorenzo keeper, unsighted by his own players, can only turn his head to watch the ball strike the inside of his post and bulge the back of the net.

There is a silence as long as the beat of a slow heart, and then the stadium erupts. Faustino knows this because he looks across at Mateo Campos, who is typing the words
The stadium erupted when . . .

He taps Campos on the shoulder. “If I were you,” he says, “I would call that ‘doing the business.’”

Campos scowls, concentrating on his tiny keyboard.

“Actually,” Faustino says, “if I really were you, I’d probably say that ‘Dezi’s darky got lucky with an opportunistic shot.’ Want to know how to spell
opportunistic
?”

In the second half, Otello, again without support, wins three corners. Rialto’s second goal comes from the last of these. Roderigo’s kick is poor — short and too close to the near post — but Otello comes to it and wins the ball. Hustled and jostled, with his back to the goal, he somehow slides a diagonal pass to Enrique, who scores with a joyous first shot.

This assist and the earlier goal are the only telling contributions that Otello makes to the game. By the end of it, Faustino reckons, the striker must have covered six miles, harrying, going back to collect or tackle, running into space, switching from left field to right and back again. Yet the good touches he gets on the ball probably number less than a dozen. As Otello leaves the field, he turns and applauds the Rialto supporters, who howl his name appreciatively. There is, Faustino thinks, something ironic in the player’s gesture; his face, slick with sweat, wears an expression that suggests stubbornness, not triumph.

When the press box has thinned out, Faustino moves to the end of his row and sits below a
NO SMOKING
sign. He lights a cigarette and watches the crowd eddy and swirl toward the exits.

There are, he reflects, many subtle ways in which players can make a colleague look inept. There is the perfectly accurate but slightly under-hit or over-hit pass. There are the driven passes that are at groin height when they arrive. You can try to ensure that you play the ball to the victim’s weaker side, which is especially effective when he is a striker with his back to the goal and a defender is breathing down his neck. Springing the offside trap against your own man is also very good. Otello is exceedingly skilled at timing his muscular runs past or through the defensive back line. Sometimes he likes to disconcert defenses by deliberately wandering offside, only to step back into an onside position a second before the through pass is played, then turning and accelerating onto the ball.

Everyone knows these things about him, of course. Teams who like to play a flat back four — such as San Lorenzo, this afternoon — watch him with hawkish nervousness. As do assistant referees; their little flags quiver eagerly whenever he looks poised to break. And so the Rialto players use this against him. All it takes is a slight, almost imperceptible, hesitation — as if, for example, you might be correcting your balance — before the through ball is played. Just enough time, a split second, for Otello to move a pace, half a pace, offside. And up goes the flag, and the referee’s whistle is just one of ten thousand derisive noises. It happened no fewer than eleven times during the San Lorenzo game, prompting Mateo Campos to turn, smirking, to Faustino. “Whaddya say, Maestro? Still reckon he’s got — what was it you said? — ‘exquisite timing’? Or maybe he keeps that for Dezi Brabanta now, eh?”

At the time, Faustino hadn’t graced the idiot with a reply. But now he was wondering whether he should. In print. Forcefully express the view that Otello was not playing against eleven men, but against twenty-one — ten of whom were wearing the same colors as himself. That would stir things up, get a lot of attention. Win Faustino some brownie points with Carmen d’Andrade. Would it do Otello any good, though? Probably not. More likely to make things worse.

Faustino stubbed his cigarette out and got to his feet. He’d hold fire for now. Rialto would have to get over themselves sooner rather than later and start playing
with
Otello rather than
against
him. There was simply too much at stake for them not to.

P
AUL
F
AUSTINO MAY
believe that Otello’s colleagues are sabotaging his game, but Ramón Tresor, the Rialto coach,
knows
it.

Late evening. The staff and players’ parking lot at the Rialto stadium. A dozen or so vehicles are still there, sweating raindrops. They gleam in the light from the high lamps that illuminate the fenced-in compound.

RODERIGO
emerges from the unmarked door through which players and officials enter and exit the stadium. He is wearing a light-blue linen shirt beneath an expensive leather jacket and is smiling at the text message displayed on his phone. He walks toward his car
—
one of his cars
—
a bronze Lexus coupe. As he passes a big four-wheel drive, its window slides down to reveal the face of
TRESOR
.

RODERIGO:
Boss?

TRESOR:
Get in the car.

RODERIGO:
What?

TRESOR:
Get in the car. You and me are gonna have a private chat.

RODERIGO
[
holding his phone up as if it has the power to ward off evil forces
]: Um, yeah, but . . . Does it have to be now? Like, I’ve —

TRESOR:
Yeah, it does have to be now. Get in the damn car.

[
RODERIGO
gets into the car. He and
TRESOR
look at the rivulets on the windshield, not at each other.
]

TRESOR:
Actually, I shouldn’t have gotten you into the car. I should’ve made you go down on your knees in the rain and beg like a dog for your job.

RODERIGO:
What? What the hell is this?

TRESOR:
Don’t “what” me. You know
exactly
what this is. What in the name of Christ did you think you were doing out there today?

RODERIGO:
Er, winning? Like, two—nothing? Against the division favorites?

[
Now
TRESOR
does look at his captain, and his eyes are like fire inside black ice.
RODERIGO
tries not to flinch, but he does.
]

TRESOR:
And who did the business for us? Who stole the first goal and made the second? The one player out there today who worked his ass off while the rest of his team behaved like moody schoolgirls. Wanna tell me who that was?

[
RODERIGO
doesn’t answer. Instead he leans back in the four-by-four’s big seat and stretches his legs out.
]

RODERIGO:
Oh, right. I get it. Someone upstairs had a word with you, Ramón. That right? What is it, a change of policy? How’s that work? Brabanta come to terms with Otello sleeping with his daughter all of a sudden? Vice President Lazar realize having a black superstar on his team gets him a fat slice of the liberal vote? Like, “Hey, we’re not right wing or racist; look how we spent fifty million on a black socialist from the North.”

TRESOR:
What
is
all this crap? I’m running a soccer team. Politics’s got nothing to do with it.

RODERIGO:
Really. Listen, I know you’re from Spain, Ramón, but Jesus. Wise up. Soccer
is
politics in this country, man.

[
TRESOR
puts his hands on the padded steering wheel and braces his arms as though he has brought the machine to an emergency halt on a wet mountain road. He lets out his breath.
]

TRESOR:
All right. But it’s time to stop. You’ve made your protest. Okay. But today,
today,
the way you sold Otello short was just
embarrassing,
man. And he won us the game. So, enough. It stops right now. We’re six games in, and that’s enough.

RODERIGO
[
after a longish pause
]: Fifty million, less, could’ve got us Saja and maybe Pozner. Best two defenders in the country. Both itching for a transfer. And we’d still’ve had Montano. You know, it pisses us all off, the way these things are done.

TRESOR:
Oh, c’mon, get over it, Jaco, for Chrissake. You’ve got maybe the best striker in South America playing in front of you. Any team in the world would give their eyeteeth for him. And you’re not giving him anything because you’re sulking about Luis Montano. Who is a great kid. I liked him. But for God’s sake, there’s no comparison.

RODERIGO:
You’re dead right there, boss. Absolutely right. There’s no comparison. Luis was one of us. Comes up from the youth academy, signs for Rialto at the age of thirteen or something, his whole damn neighborhood turns out to watch him play for the Juniors. He’s out there selling programs when he’s not picked, comes to every practice on offer, makes his first team appearance age seventeen, scores in his first cup game. Name straight on the team sheet for two seasons, and then, hey! Sold up the river to the Deep North. In part exchange. How the hell d’you think he feels about that, man?

TRESOR:
Christ, Jaco, listen to yourself. I’m running a soccer team, not some kinda charity. No one’s indispensable. Not even you.

RODERIGO:
And what the hell is that supposed to mean?

TRESOR:
I’ll tell you exactly what that’s supposed to mean. When we signed Otello, we put the best striker in the business together with the best provider in the business. That being you. The combination that won the Copa América, right? And is it working? No, it damn well isn’t. Because you’re making sure it’s not. And you think you’re being so smart, don’t you? Huh? Making it look like Otello is a pace behind the game, all of that. And yeah, certain lunkheads like that Campos guy are buying it, putting it in their papers and so forth. But you’re gonna have to wake up, Jaco, because sooner or later certain people, people who matter, are gonna start asking how come Roderigo’s game has gone off, that he can’t distribute the ball like he used to. How come Otello has to steal goals out of nothing, not getting any service from you? Right? And when that starts to happen, I might just park your sorry ass on the bench. Or maybe even leave you at home, watching the game on TV.

RODERIGO:
Oh, yeah?

TRESOR:
Yeah.

RODERIGO:
You can’t drop me, and you know it.

TRESOR:
I don’t know any such damn thing. Like I said, no one’s indispensable. And my job’s on the line every game we play. So you and the other guys stop this game right now, okay? If you don’t, I might just have to go to the board and say, “Jaco Roderigo’s not doing the business. Let’s sell the son of a bitch and buy someone who can.” Someone like Beckham, who can play the ball. And he knows at least seven words of Spanish. Those being, “Here’s the ball. Go score a goal.”

RODERIGO:
Screw you, Ramón.

TRESOR:
Jaco, you ever say that to me again, your career is finished.

RODERIGO:
I’m getting out of the car now.

TRESOR:
Okay. Go ahead. I’m kinda tired myself. But before you go, one last thing. I won’t be at the training ground on Tuesday. And what you’re gonna do is have a quiet word with the other guys and tell them it’s over, right? That you play with Otello or you don’t play at all. I think it would be nicer coming from you rather than me, don’t you?

Two weeks later, Paul Faustino writes:

One–nothing against Porto may not seem a resounding victory, but yesterday Rialto at last looked like a coherent team. Much of the credit for this must go to Jaco Roderigo, who seems to have shaken off his post-cup indolence and woken up to the possibilities presented to his side by having Otello leading the attack.

The move that led to the goal was without doubt one of the most elegant I have ever seen. It began, inauspiciously, with a forced back pass to the Rialto keeper, Gabriel. Instead of hoofing the ball clear, Gabriel, with two attackers bearing down on him, played a calm pass out to Airto. The back, finding space yawning in front of him, made twenty-five yards before laying the ball off to Roderigo. Two weeks ago, the Rialto captain would have held the ball or played a square pass, but on this occasion he turned beautifully away from one challenge, beat off another, and then fed the ball out to Enrique, who had run wide to the right.

Otello, making an expertly timed run (as always) seemed surprised that Roderigo had moved up to support him, and when Enrique’s cross came in, Otello took it superbly on his chest, dummied his marker, and rolled the ball to his captain. Roderigo, twenty yards out, had every right to make a shot, and the Porto defense expected it. As they rushed to close him down, Roderigo lifted the ball with the outside of his left foot — his weaker foot, as we all know — into the only vacant spot inside the Porto penalty area. Given that Otello has hardly received a decent pass from Roderigo this season, it seems unlikely that he could have been expecting such a ball, yet he moved onto it with extraordinary speed.

Most strikers would have gone for a full-blooded volley to the near post. That is certainly what the Porto keeper expected, and so he was left helpless when Otello’s almost gentle side-footed shot curved past him into the bottom left corner of the net. Nonpartisan lovers of the game will want to see this incisive attack as a promise of things to come and hope that Rialto has at last recognized the enormous potential that their new signing has brought to the club.

There are certain things that Faustino chooses not to mention. Such as, when Otello turned away after scoring the goal, the first of his teammates to embrace him was the only other black Rialto player, Airto. Such as, there was a significant hesitation before Roderigo and others joined in the congratulations, and Roderigo’s way of doing so was to ruffle Otello’s hair briefly in the way that old ladies touch the heads of small children. Nor does Faustino record the fact that immediately after the goal, he looked up at the directors’ box (from which Nestor Brabanta was again conspicuously absent) and saw, as he expected, Desmerelda doing her arms-high celebration samba to the obvious pleasure of the men surrounding her. But two rows below Desmerelda, Diego Mendosa sat with his arms folded, his face like a grim idol carved from stone. And that
was
interesting.