But something deep inside tells me it won’t be that easy when it comes to that girl.
Three
Ruby
“You’re back late,” Elena says to me the minute I step inside the dorm room.
The two of us are the only ones who’ve stayed in this dorm for over a week, everyone else seems to stay for three nights or so and moves on. At the moment, there are a pair of twins from Switzerland taking over one of the bunks and settling into their sleeping bags. They’re looking at me with curiosity, since I told them earlier I was going to go interview a famous footballer.
They’re also looking at me with annoyance, since it’s ten thirty at night and they’re obviously ready for sleep. The last thing they want is for me to blabber to Elena about how everything went, and believe me, I’m about to blabber.
“Want to grab a glass of wine on the patio?” I ask her.
She nods and we close the door to the dorm room behind us, leaving the Swiss twins in peace. Stopping by the communal kitchen, I grab a bottle of white wine from the fridge while Elena grabs plastic wine glasses, smiling politely at the couple from Canada who are making late night sandwiches, then we head out to the patio that lines the living area.
There’re a few people down at one end smoking, so Elena and I grab a table at the other end, and I unscrew the wine. Unlike the dorm room, the patio has a bit of a view, and the lights from the buildings and streets of Lisbon below glitter in the darkness.
“So,” Elena says, after I’ve poured her a glass. “I take it things went well? I hope so. You’ve been working more than you’ve been enjoying Lisbon.”
Ever since I told Elena my plan, she’s been watching me do nothing but research over the past week. Occasionally I’ll go out with her to a bar or a club for drinks, but honestly most of what I’ve seen of Lisbon has been internet cafes within a few blocks radius of the hostel. I’ve been watching old games online and reading up on everything I could find about Luciano Ribeiro.
Then I did a long song and dance trying to find a way to contact him. Not speaking Portuguese or understanding a word of it definitely hindered me, until I was able to surmise that his younger brother Marco was his new agent. Once I figured that out, then it was a whole bunch of Googling and calling every Marco Ribeiro my search results could find.
When I finally did get the real Marco on the phone, it took a lot of convincing that I was an actual journalist and not some super fan. He told me he’d check out my work and then call me back, and it was probably only three minutes before my cell was ringing again. The interview was on.
This afternoon I’d met Marco outside the Alcochete Training Centre, which was about 30km outside of Lisbon in the middle of nowhere, and a very expensive cab ride. I was excited and I was ready.
“It went very well. I went on a date,” I tell Elena, sipping from my glass, my eyes gazing over the city lights. Good wine is cheap here and, suffice to say, I’m addicted.
“A date?” Elena exclaims. “With the football player?”
“With his brother,” I say with a cheeky grin.
“His brother? How…”
“I told you, his brother is his agent and I met with him before the interview and we hit it off, and after the interview was over, he asked me out for dinner. He wanted to bring me to some fancy gourmet place but,” I gesture at my clothes, “I didn’t feel like I’d fit in. So we went to some cool bar somewhere and shared some plates. Like tapas, but they call them something else. Petiscos.”
“Wow,” she comments. “Look at you. Killing two birds with one stone.”
I laugh. “Not quite. I didn’t get the interview I wanted.” She gives me a quizzical look over her glass and I continue. “I mean, I interviewed Luciano but it got cut short. I suppose that was my fault, I should have gotten to the most important questions first. You know, about the game, the sport.”
Instead I started asking him all about himself. I couldn’t help it. The more research I did about Luciano Ribeiro, the more infatuated with him I became, the more I felt I could relate to him in a weird way. Perhaps it’s not the same when your mother goes to prison, leaving you with your father, but the way my father handled me was the same way his stepfather handled him. I too was sent away. My father didn’t know what to do with me on his own, especially as he traveled so much. Soccer became my babysitter.
Anyway, I wanted to know more about that side of him. It was discussed online in such a shallow way, no depth, that I thought maybe I could be the one to get him to open up. I could write about him and the game and what he means to Lisbon and his fans, but what I really wanted was to go where no other journalist had gone before, deep into his psyche.
But Luciano’s walls came and went as we talked, and just as I thought we might be making progress, his brother showed up and everything shut down. It was almost as if his personality changed the moment he stepped into the picture.
“So you went on a date with his brother?” she asks.
“He asked. And then Luciano left.”
“What is the brother’s name again?”
“Marco Ribeiro.”
Elena takes out her phone and starts Googling. “Is this him?” she asks, showing me a photo of him in
