“So why did you pick Lisbon?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. It sounds dumb, but it was closest. Then when I started reading about it, it looked like a good place to have my first step into Europe.”
“You’re right about that. It’s a pretty special place and if you like football, the games are easier to see and the fans really passionate.”
I take another sip of my coffee, feeling strangely woozy from the jet lag, despite the sunshine and heat, and yet I’m excited at the same time. Over and over again it’s occurring to me that I’m here. I made it. All that dreaming of what it would be like to set foot in Europe, in Lisbon, and now it’s happening and I’ve got so much space and time ahead of me, it’s…well, daunting.
And now, thanks to Jorge, I have a bit of purpose.
I have picked a team, Sporting.
Next thing to do will be to see if I can interview anyone from that team and put it on my blog. Of course, I’ll also go to a few games and write it up, but that comes with the job. But an interview with someone important on the team, perhaps a rising star, well, that could put my blog in the right direction. It’s all about making contacts, I know that much.
When Jorge comes back with our drinks, I ask him to stay a minute. I can tell from the way he’s looking at me that he thinks I’m hitting on him. I’m not, not really, but I don’t mind if he thinks that way. He’s pretty to look at.
“Jorge,” I say to him sweetly. “Since you’re such a big fan of Sporting, who is your favorite player? And who do you think is the one to look out for? You know, someone with potential.”
He smiles. “It would be the same person for both. Luciano Ribeiro.”
My mind quickly flicks through the players until I remember who Luciano is. He’s handsome. Hot. Often smiling. Plays centre back. Awfully fast.
“Hasn’t he been out for a while because of an injury?” I ask.
Jorge sighs despondently. “Yes. His shoulder. Since January. We had hoped he would play this season, but probably not until August. They say he is better though.”
Hmmm. If Luciano isn’t even playing right now, it’s probably easy to get an interview with him. Then I can cross that off my career bucket list, and spend a few weeks in Lisbon enjoying the games until I head up to Porto for a bit until I go to Spain.
I finally have a plan.
Two
Luciano
When I was a boy, my father used to tell me the story of the maiden who came from the sea. I don’t have that many clear memories of my father these days; I think most of them have slowly dissolved, like the smoke that lingered after his cigarette had burned out. But I do remember he’d sit me down every so often, and he’d open his book of Portuguese folk tales, and he’d read me a story or two.
The maiden that came from the sea was about a poor fisherman on the Cantabrian coast. My father described the scent of the salt air and freshly-caught fish, he described the callouses on the man’s hands, and the sense of loneliness that clung to his meager life. When the man was about to throw his line out in hopes of getting one last catch of the day, he looked out at sea and was blinded by the sun glinting off the water. Through that blinding light, he thought he saw the shape of a woman walking out of the surf. Long dark hair, a shapely figure, she glowed like an angel so much that when he closed his eyes to the brightness, he saw the image of her imprinted on the back of his eyelids.
He threw the line out anyway, hoping to catch her.
I don’t remember how the rest of the story goes, if he ever caught her or not, or what the moral of the fable was. Perhaps my father lost interest, just as he lost interest in me.
At any rate, I’m sitting in the fourth row of the stands at the training complex, staring out over the pitch when movement brings my eyes over to the aisle. The sun is low, just about to dip below the opposite side of the stadium, when I see what I think is the maiden of the sea.
I wince at the light, the shape of a woman walking toward me. Long dark hair. Small waist, wide hips. She’s backlit and glowing and I’m brought back to that fable, like being visited by an old friend from the past.
But then I pull my aviator shades down off the top of my head and the light is put at bay and the world comes into focus.
There really is a woman walking up the stairs toward me, although as she gets closer I see she’s quite young. Maybe twenty.
She staring at me with a big smile on her face, the kind of smile that might take your breath away if you’re not too careful.
“Luciano Ribeiro, right?” she says to me in an American accent. “Your brother said I’d find you here.”
I blink at her, as if in a dream. My brother, Marco, had told me I had an interview with someone from some sports magazine. I don’t really ask these days because the articles are always the same, they talk about my injury, they talk about what my next step is, and if I’ll stay with Sporting, and the answer is always: I don’t know.
The last thing I expected was to see some girl with impossibly full lips and dancing blue eyes coming toward me.
“That’s me,” I tell her, slipping into English and giving her a smile. It’s easy to smile at her. “And you are?”
“Oh, sorry,” she says, standing a few feet away and twisting her body slightly so that
