Playing for Pizza Read online

  “Shut up.”

  “And besides, I was groping Maddalena.”

  “You were not, because I watched every move.”

  “Jealous?”

  “Extremely.” She shoved a spoonful of pistachio between his lips and said, without a smile, “Do you hear me, Reek? I am insanely jealous.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  And with that they passed another little milestone, took another step together. From flirting, to casual sex, to a more intense variety. From quick e-mails to much longer chats by phone. From a long-distance romance to playing house. From an uncertain near future to one that just might be shared. And now an agreement on exclusivity. Monogamy. All sealed with a mouthful of pistachio gelato.

  · · ·

  Coach Russo was fed up with all the Super Bowl talk. Friday night he yelled at his team that if they didn’t get serious about Bologna, a team they had lost to, by the way, they would not be playing the Super Bowl. One game at a time, you idiots.

  And he yelled again on Saturday as they sped through a light workout, one that Nino and Franco demanded they have. Every player showed up, most of them an hour early.

  At ten the following morning, they left for Bologna by bus. They had a light lunch of sandwiches at a cafeteria on the edge of town, and at 1:30 the Panthers got off the bus and walked across the best football field in Italy.

  Bologna has half a million people and a lot of fans of American football. The Warriors have a long tradition of good teams, active youth leagues, and solid owners, and their field (likewise an old rugby pitch) has been upgraded to football specs and is carefully maintained. Before the rise of Bergamo, Bologna dominated the league.

  Two charter buses filled with Parma fans arrived after the team and made a rowdy entrance into the stadium. Before long, the two sides were engaged in a rousing shouting match. Banners went up. Rick noticed one on the Bologna side that read: “Cook the Goat.”

  According to Livvy, Bologna was famous for its food and, not surprisingly, claimed to have the best cuisine in all of Italy. Perhaps goat was a regional specialty.

  In their first meeting, Trey Colby had caught three touchdown passes in the first quarter. By halftime he had four, then his career ended early in the third quarter. Ray Montrose, a tailback who’d played at Rutgers and had easily won the regular-season rushing title at 228 yards a game, romped around and through the Panther defense for three touchdowns and 200 yards. Bologna won 35–34.

  Since then the Panthers had not lost, nor had they played in a close game. Nor did Rick expect one today. Bologna was a one-man team—all Montrose. The quarterback was the typical small-college type—tough but a step slow and erratic even in the short game. The third American was a safety from Dartmouth who had been pitifully unable to cover Trey. And Trey was neither as quick nor as fast as Fabrizio.

  The game would be exciting and high scoring, and Rick wanted the ball first. But the Warriors won the toss, and when the teams lined up for the opening kick, the stands were full and rocking. The return man was a tiny Italian. Rick had noticed on tape that he often held the ball low, away from his body, a no-no that would keep him on every bench in America. “Strip the ball!” Sam had screamed a thousand times during the week. “If number 8 takes the kick, strip the damned ball.”

  But first they had to catch him. As number 8 slashed across midfield, he could smell goal line. The ball came away from his gut as he took it in his right hand. Silvio, the pint-size linebacker with great speed, caught him from the side, and jerked his right arm almost out of its socket, and the ball began rolling on the ground. A Panther recovered it. Montrose would have to wait.

  On the first play, Rick faked to Franco on a dive, then pump-faked to Fabrizio on a five and out. The corner, sniffing an early and dramatic interception, took the bait, and when Fabrizio spun upfield, he was wide open for a long second. Rick threw the ball much too hard, but Fabrizio knew what was coming. He took it with his fingers, absorbed it with his upper body, then clutched it just as the safety closed in for the kill. But the safety never caught him. Fabrizio spun again, hit the afterburners, and was soon strutting across the goal line. Seven–zip.

  To further prolong the entrance of Mr. Montrose, Sam called for an onside kick. They had practiced it dozens of times in the past week. Filippo, their big-footed kicker, nicked the top of the ball perfectly, and it bounced crazily across midfield. Franco and Pietro thundered behind it, not to touch it but to annihilate the nearest two Warriors. They flattened two confused boys who’d been drifting back for the wedge then changed gears and were going timidly for the kick. Giancarlo somersaulted over the pile and landed on the ball. Three plays later, Fabrizio was back in the end zone.

  Montrose finally got the ball on a first and ten from the 31. The pitch to the tailback was as predictable as a sunrise, and Sam sent everybody but the free safety, just in case. A massive gang tackle ensued, but Montrose still managed to gain three. Then five, and four, and three again. His runs were short, his yardage fought for against a swarming defense. On a third and one, Bologna finally tried something creative. Sam called another blitz, and when the quarterback yanked the ball out of Montrose’s belly and looked for a receiver, he found one all alone, dancing down the far sideline, waving his arms and screaming because there wasn’t a Panther within twenty yards of him. The pass was long and high, and when the receiver caught up to it at the ten-yard line, the home fans stood and cheered. Both hands grabbed the ball, then both hands let it slip away, painfully, slowly, as if in suspended motion. The receiver lunged for the prize of gold as it bobbled too far from his fingertips, then fell flat on his face at the five-yard line and slapped the grass.

  You could almost hear him cry.

  The punter averaged twenty-eight yards a kick and managed to lower this by shanking one at his own fans. Rick sprinted the offense onto the field, and with no huddle ran three straight plays to Fabrizio—a slant across the middle for twelve yards, a curl for eleven, and a post for thirty-four yards and the third touchdown in the first four minutes of the game.

  Bologna didn’t panic and abandon its game plan. Montrose got the ball on every play, and on every play Sam blitzed at least nine defenders. The result was a slugfest as the offense methodically punched the ball down the field. When Montrose scored from three yards out, the first quarter expired.

  The second quarter was more of the same. Rick and his offense scored easily, while Montrose and his ground it out. At the half, the Panthers led 38–13, and Sam struggled for something to complain about. Montrose had two touchdowns on twenty-one carries and almost two hundred yards, but who cared?

  Sam lectured them with the usual coach-speak about second-half collapses, but it was a lame performance. The truth was that Sam had never seen a team, at any level, coalesce so beautifully and effortlessly after such a lousy start. To be certain, his quarterback was a fish out of water, and Fabrizio was not just good but great and worth every penny of his eight hundred euros a month. But the Panthers had stepped up to another level. Franco and Giancarlo ran with authority and daring. Nino, Paolo the Aggie, and Giorgio fired off the ball and seldom missed a block. Rick was rarely sacked or even pressured. And the defense, with Pietro clogging the middle and Silvio blitzing with total abandon, had become a frenzy of gang-tacklers, swarming around the ball on every play like a pack of dogs.

  From somewhere, probably from the presence of their quarterback, the Panthers had obtained a cocky self-assurance that coaches dream about. They had the swagger now. This was their season and they would not lose again.

  They scored on the opening drive of the second half without throwing a pass. Giancarlo zipped wide left and wide right while Franco thundered through the pit. The drive ate six minutes, and with the score 45–13 Montrose and company jogged onto the field with a sense of defeat. He didn’t quit, but after thirty carries he lost a step. After thirty-five, he had his fourth touchdown, but the mighty Warriors were too far behind. The final was 51–27.<
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  Chapter

  28

  In the early hours of Monday morning, Livvy hopped out of bed, turned on a light, and announced, “We’re going to Venice.”

  “No,” came the response from under the pillow.

  “Yes. You’ve never been. Venice is my favorite city.”

  “So was Rome and Florence and Siena.”

  “Get up, lover boy. I’m showing you Venice.”

  “No. I’m too sore.”

  “What a wimp. I’m going to Venice to find me a real man, a soccer player.”

  “Let’s go back to sleep.”

  “Nope. I’m leaving. I guess I’ll take the train.”

  “Send me a postcard.”

  She slapped him across the rump and headed for the shower. An hour later the Fiat was loaded and Rick was hauling back coffee and croissants from his neighborhood bar. Coach Russo had canceled practice until Friday. The Super Bowl, like its American imitator, took two weeks to prepare for.

  To no one’s surprise, the opponent was Bergamo.

  Outside the city, away from the morning traffic, Livvy began with the history of Venice, and, mercifully, hit only the high points for the first two thousand years. Rick listened with his hand on her knees as she went on about how and why the city was built on mud banks in tidal areas and floods all the time. She referred to her guidebooks occasionally, but much of it came from memory. She had been there twice in the past year, for long weekends. The first time she was with a gaggle of students, which inspired her to return a month later by herself.

  “And the streets are rivers?” Rick asked, more than a little concerned about the Fiat and where it might get parked.

  “Better known as canals. There are no cars, only boats.”

  “Those little boats are called?”

  “Gondolas.”

  “Gondolas. I saw a movie once where this couple went for a ride in a gondola and the little captain—”

  “Gondolier.”

  “Whatever, but he kept singing real loud and they couldn’t get him to shut up. Pretty funny. It was a comedy.”

  “That’s for the tourists.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  “Venice is the most unique city in the world, Rick. I want you to love it.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I will. Wonder if they have a football team.”

  “There’s no mention of one in the guidebooks.” Her phone was off and she seemed unconcerned about events back home. Rick knew her parents were furious and making threats, but there was much more to the saga than she had so far divulged. Livvy could turn it off like a switch, and when she buried herself in the history and art and culture of Italy, she was once again a student thrilled with her subject and anxious to share it.

  They stopped for lunch outside the city of Padua. An hour later they found a commercial lot for tourists with cars and parked the Fiat for twenty euros a day. In Mestre, they caught a ferry, and their adventure on the water began. The ferry rocked as it was loaded, then lunged across the Venetian lagoon. Livvy clutched him along the top rail and watched with great anticipation as Venice drew closer. Soon, they were entering the Grand Canal and boats were everywhere—private water taxis, small barges laden with produce and goods, the carabiniere wagon with police insignia, a vaporetto loaded with tourists, fishing boats, other ferries, and, finally, gondolas by the dozen. The murky water lapped at the front steps of elegant palazzi built door-to-door. The campanile at Piazza San Marco loomed high in the distance.

  Rick couldn’t help but notice the domes of dozens of old churches, and he had a sinking feeling he would become familiar with most of them.

  They exited at a ferry stop near the Gritti Palace. On the boardwalk, she said, “This is the only bad part of Venice. We have to roll our luggage to the hotel.” And roll they did, down the crowded streets, over the narrow footbridges, through alleys cut off from the sun. She had warned him to pack light, though her bag was still twice as large as his.

  The hotel was a quaint little guesthouse tucked away from the tourists. The owner, Signora Stella, was a spry woman in her seventies who worked the front desk and pretended to remember Livvy from four months back. She put them in a corner room, tight quarters but a nice view of the skyline—cathedrals all around—and also a full bath, which, as Livvy explained, was not always the case in these tiny hotels in Italy. The bed rattled as Rick stretched out, and this concerned him briefly. She was not in the mood, not with Venice lying before them and so much to see. He couldn’t even negotiate a nap.

  · · ·

  He did manage, however, to negotiate a truce. His limit would be two cathedrals/palaces per day. After that she was on her own. They wandered over to Piazza San Marco, the first stop for all visitors, and spent the first hour at a sidewalk café sipping drinks and watching large waves of students and tourists drift around the magnificent square. It had been built four hundred years earlier, when Venice was a rich and powerful city-state, she was saying. The Doge’s Palace occupied one corner, a huge fortress that had been protecting Venice for at least seven hundred years. The church, or basilica, was vast and attracted the biggest crowds.

  She left to buy tickets, and Rick called Sam. The coach was watching the tape of yesterday’s game between Bergamo and Milan, the usual Monday afternoon chore for any coach prepping for the Super Bowl.

  “Where are you?” Sam demanded.

  “Venice.”

  “With that young girl?”

  “She’s twenty-one, Coach. And, yes, she’s close by.”

  “Bergamo was impressive, no fumbles, only two penalties. Won by three touchdowns. They seem much better now that the streak is off their backs.”

  “And Maschi?”

  “Brilliant. He knocked out their quarterback in the third quarter.”

  “I’ve been knocked out before. I suspect they’ll put the two Americans on Fabrizio and pound him. Could be a long day for the boy. There goes the passing game. Maschi can shut down the run.”

  “Thank God for the punting game,” Sam sneered. “You got a plan?”

  “I got a plan.”

  “Mind sharing it with me so I can sleep tonight?”

  “No, it’s not finished yet. A couple more days in Venice and I’ll have the kinks worked out.”

  “Let’s meet Thursday afternoon and work on it.”

  “Sure, Coach.”

  Rick and Livvy trudged through the basilica of San Marco, shoulder to shoulder with some Dutch tourists, their guide prattling on in any language requested. After an hour, Rick bolted. He drank a beer in the fading sun at a café and waited patiently for Livvy.

  They strolled through central Venice and crossed the Rialto Bridge without buying anything. For the daughter of a rich doctor, she was behaving frugally. Tiny hotels, cheap meals, trains, and ferries, an apparent concern with what things cost. She insisted on paying for half of everything, or at least offering. Rick told her more than once that he was certainly not wealthy nor was he highly paid, but he refused to worry about money. And he refused to let her pay for much.

  Their metal-framed bed rocked halfway across the room during a late-night session, enough noise to prompt Signora Stella to whisper something discreetly to Livvy during breakfast the next morning.

  “What did she say?” Rick asked when Stella disappeared.

  Livvy, suddenly blushing, leaned in and whispered, “We made too much noise last night. There were complaints.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Too bad. We can’t stop.”

  “Atta girl.”

  “She doesn’t think we should, but she might move us to another room, one with a heavier bed.”

  “I love a challenge.”

  · · ·

  Long boulevards do not exist in Venice. The streets are narrow, and they twist and curl with the canals and cross them with a variety of bridges. Someone once counted 400 bridges in the city, and by late Wednesday Rick was certain he had used them all.

 
He was parked under an umbrella at a sidewalk café, puffing languidly on a Cuban cigar and sipping Campari and ice, waiting for Livvy to polish off another cathedral, this one known as the church of San Fantin. He wasn’t tired of her, just the opposite. Her energy and curiosity inspired him to use his brain. She was a delightful companion, easy to please and eager to do whatever looked like fun. He was still waiting for a glimpse of the pampered rich kid, the self-absorbed sorority queen. Maybe it didn’t exist.

  Nor was he tired of Venice. In fact, he was enchanted by the city and its endless nooks and dead ends and hidden piazzas. The seafood was incredible, and he was thoroughly enjoying this break from pasta. He’d seen enough cathedrals and palazzi and museums, but his interest in the city’s art and history had been piqued.

  Rick was a football player, though, and there was one game remaining. It was a game he had to win to justify his presence, his existence, and his cost, meager as it was. Money aside, he had once been an NFL quarterback, and if he couldn’t put together an offense