Danny’s dad’s left ear twitched, indicating a desire for another round, so Danny ordered two more and then continued: “There’s an entire team of Ukrainians in Chicago I think. Or Poles. The Butchers they’re called. Butchers. You know what the chairman told me after telling me all this?”
His dad dipped his head. He had no idea what the chairman had told him.
“‘Go have a laugh, Danny. Have yourself a laugh.’”
Danny folded his arms over his big and strong body and looked at the wall behind the bar. There was an East Southwich Albion team photograph hung there, 1971–72. The blue-shirted Royals, in their post–“Let It Be” haircuts and Elvis sideburns, looked a grim bunch, not at all happy to have their picture taken that typically overcast day at the Auld Moors. Looking at it made Danny’s heart tighten. That picture, of that barely-avoided-relegation-from-the-Third-Division version of East Southwich Albion AFC, had been the last team picture of the Royals not to contain one Danny Hooper. The next year’s team would feature a young, tall, semi-bulky center back with limp hair that hung to his shoulders like a hood, toothy smile asymmetrical and eager. They called him a center half sometimes, but he was a back in every way a player could be a back. He hadn’t grown all the way into his frame—and hadn’t yet sorted that beard—but he’d made the squad on height and potential. He hadn’t gotten in more than three or four matches that season—just didn’t have the body for it yet—but it had been a glorious campaign as far as he was concerned, the culmination of his boyhood dreams (minus a trophy). He had become a Royal, a real one, had earned first-team privileges, had run out on the Auld Moors’ lousy pitch before the club’s true followers, had taken his halftime tea with men he’d watched for years. The people of East Southwich knew him now, and he knew them. He had not reached the mountaintop, had no medals, no cups, but he could see them from where he stood. East Southwich Albion was only a year or two from promotion to the Second Division, Danny could feel it—and once you’re in the Second Division, things can happen, things can happen.
But not anymore.
His father wanted to know what team he’d be playing for in the American All-Star Soccer Association, and Danny said, “The Rose City Revolution they’re called. In a place called Oregon. They’ve a decent following, says Aldy. Out on the West Coast.”
His dad’s eyes asked, Now where in blazes is Oregon?
Danny sat still for a moment, still looking at that old team photo. He said, “It’s out by California. ‘Rose City’ is a nickname. Town’s called Portland. Apparently, they’ve taken to football.”
His father and Vic the bartender, who’d drifted down to listen, were now both wordlessly asking, You’re doing what?
“Joining the great American Experiment, I guess.”
Vic said, “I’ve seen photos of those games, Danny, in magazines and the papers. Unless the Giganticos are playing, nobody goes. Nobody’s goes, me boy. Empty seats by the mile, ’orrible kits, them plastic pitches. It’s a wasteland, Danny. A football wasteland.”
The men of the East Southwich Hoopers looked at Vic as if his job was to pour the pints. Danny said, “That may be, Vic, old man, but I’ll be making twice what I’m making now, and you know what the last thing out of Aldy’s mouth was?”
Vic said he had no idea.
“Say hi to the Pearl of Brazil.”
Nobody said a word after that, and Vic turned to pour another round.
Danny opened the door to his flat and walked to the kitchen. He grabbed an empty glass from a cupboard, filled it with water, leaned back against the counter, and tipped it back. He wasn’t thirsty; he just couldn’t think of anything better to do. He wasn’t even sure what he was now. He was neither thirsty nor hungry, neither angry nor sad, neither East Southwich blue nor... anything else yet. Didn’t even know what colors the Rose City Revolution wore. He felt purposeless without his club, empty without the validation of the rest of his back line, the mad blue mob behind the goal, the misguided but well-intentioned encouragement of Aldershot Taylor.
He had no mental picture of Oregon—was it named after a shape? What could an oregon be? He had no real sense of what the American All-Star Soccer Association was all about. He knew about the Giganticos—everyone knew about the Giganticos. But other than them, all he knew was that the league was a United Nations of football misfits, a circus of decaying oldsters seeking quick end-of-career paydays and free booze, young English League castoffs trying to prove Old Blighty wrong, one-eyed goalkeepers, hordes of Eastern Europeans and overrated Latin dribblers, random job-seekers from Haiti, Kenya, Korea, Australia, the odd plucky Yank. He’d seen those pictures Vic had been on about: garish uniforms and all those empty seats, acres of them. There were those pictures, and then there were the pics of a certain beloved Brazilian. Lots of those. No empty seats in those photos.
He had only ever wanted to win a championship, a trophy, a medal of some kind, any kind. Now he was out of the FA Cup, out of the English League. (Ninety-two teams, at least twenty men per team, probably more, that’s... 1,840. Round that up to two thousand. Two thousand spots in the League, and not a one for Danny, no matter how big, no matter how strong.) And off to a league that already had its trophy spoken for by the Pearl and his Giganticos.
He was alone, still trophy-less, and confused as hell as he let his sore, bruised self drop down into one of two chairs in his kitchen. He closed his eyes.
When he opened his eyes, he was no longer alone.
“That is a glorious black eye, Mr. Hooper, if I may say so.”
What the hell? Danny thought.
“Other than that small detail,” the intruder carried on, “how are you this fine English day?”
A man sat across from Danny, right there in his kitchen. Where he had come from, Danny did not know. The man wore a black suit with a thin black tie. His suit was neither in style nor a good fit for his gaunt frame and paunchy middle. The intruder had spoken with the confidence of a fitter man in a better-fitting suit.
Well, Danny thought, might just as well have a strange man in my flat. Why not? But while his thoughts swirled, he was struck dumb.
The visitor went on, unruffled by Danny’s silence: “It’s all right, my boy. I am aware that you haven’t been speaking much lately.” He paused and took a cigarette pack from his breast pocket, dislodged one, lit it, inhaled, and kept talking, easing out a genteel cloud of smoke to swirl around his head. “Talk, talk, talk,” he said, describing a parabola in the air with his cigarette. “Everyone thinks everyone wants to hear them talk, don’t they, Danny? Annoying, really. I try not to say more than I must... got it from my father. I think I heard the admiral utter approximately one nice clear thought a week. A reticent sort, and I quite admired him for it. Ah, but listen to me, Danny. Me, of all people. Going on and on. That’s what happens when you don’t talk, Mr. Hooper—I end up rattling and prattling, don’t I?” He laughed and narrowed his eyes shrewdly at Danny: “It’s a good trick you have there.”
The man was maybe ten years older than Danny. Just early thirties, Danny thought. His face was the pasty color of the usual East Southwich sky—white with hints of blue and gray, like the exhaust from a car engine begging to die, or thin milk.
Danny thought, Well, I could strike him. That would probably be the smart thing to do. Just punch him in the nose...
And as Danny had the thought, some twitch or itch or inkling triggered something in the intruder’s training or instinct