Free Learning to Lose by David Trueba Page A

forged. Paco ran a hand along Lorenzo’s shoulders, paternal, pacifying. If you need money, I can lend you some … But Lorenzo didn’tlet him finish; he pushed Paco’s arm away roughly and lifted a fist to hit him in the face. He didn’t do it. He froze his rage in the air. And he felt that he had won for a second. He looked up toward the house and saw Teresa peering out a window in one of the rooms, amid the lace curtains. He relaxed his fist and turned around very slowly. They didn’t say anything more to each other. Lorenzo walked toward the gate. His bitterness needed time to grow, until the obsessive certainty that Paco had stolen his luck would drive him once again to that residential neighborhood and lead him to commit a crime.
    Now a killer, he watches the soccer game. There are fans who leave the stadium before the match is over to avoid the traffic, the crowded mass of people. Some of them are lucky to miss how their team is served with a definitive, last-minute goal. The Czech goalkeeper picks the ball out of the net and rapidly hands it over to a teammate. The coach orders a quick subsitution of the left winger. A recently signed Argentinian whom the crowd whistles at and heckles. Lorenzo gets up to whistle at him, too. Go home, Indian, go home, a group of kids chant. The player doesn’t run toward the touchline, and that makes the stands even madder. Run, you shitty spic, someone shouts at him. And Lalo and Óscar laugh. He’s got some nerve, why doesn’t he run off? We’re losing. The crowd’s protests relax Lorenzo, reconciling him with himself. Taking part in the general indignation is a way of escaping. And those five minutes in which the stadium pushes the local team to pull off a tie that never comes are the only five minutes he has enjoyed in the last few days.

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    Getting drunk is never the same twice. The last time, before he left Buenos Aires, had nothing to do with this one now. He wasn’t by himself. He’s just left Asador Tomás, where he had dinner with two teammates. They’re young like him, but they seem less affected by the defeat. We’ll win next time, Osorio told him. But Ariel’s twisted expression wasn’t about the loss, or not just about that. He was hurt by the whistles, the substitution, even though it was the third time in a row the coach pulled him out at the end of a game. During the match, he kept repeating to himself, I got it, it’s not so hard, gotta play one touch. When he received the ball with his back to the goal, he couldn’t find a teammate. A forward has to create the space and then run into it, Dragon used to tell him. During the whole game, Ariel couldn’t shake the fullback’s breath on his neck as he kneed him in the tailbone. Every once in a while, Ariel stuck him with his cleats and cursed his mother. The ball came to him imprecisely, it burned at his feet. Again the whistles, trying to create a play that never went well.
    Tired of waiting for the ball, Ariel dropped toward the center of the field, and the traffic jam was worthy of rush hour. If no one is where they’re supposed to be, Dragon used to say, then there’s no soccer. Legs and bodies are glued together and the ball just gets battered. What I don’t understand is why the ball doesn’t sue you, shouted Dragon in irritation when they played like that. Ariel heard the stands, felt the pressure like a physical presence. He asked for the ball even though he didn’t know what to do with it. They weren’t passes, they wereteammates passing the buck. Let somebody else lose it. And Ariel lost it.
    The restaurant didn’t charge them. Its wall was filled with portraits of famous customers, most of them soccer players, some politicians, and the king with a group of hunters. There was also a photo of the owner on his knees before the Pope in an audience at the Vatican. From one of the nearby tables come persistent glances from two girls with high breasts in tight sweaters. They’re whores,