“Sorry, mate, but we’re going to let you cool down a few more minutes.”
The tall officer said it almost apologetic. He had looked into the case from Marco and had calmly gone over the consequences of public intoxication. His voice was calm and reminiscent of a veteran teacher, with the pace of someone who is used to explaining stuff to a difficult audience. Somewhere in the middle of his explanation, the officer pointed out that he had now been in custody for 24 hours and…
Marco had flipped. He had missed a full day of rugby, three games and now he remained stuck here. ‘I must get to the stadium right now!’ he had yelled so loud that a colleague of the officer, a man with puffy cheeks but a more no-nonsense approach had joined the guard.
“How wasted is he that it isn’t out of his system by now? Probably a fan who is not used to-“
“I’m not a fan,” Marco cried, “I’m a player! A player! Look at my shirt, number eight, Vairetti!”
“These don’t look very professional,” the puffy one remarked to his longer coworker.
Frustrated and angered, seeing the clock countdown to the crucial fixture against Bollonich, Marco grabbed the plate on which a meal had been served and frisbeed it through his cell. He regretted it straight away, but realized that he had lost the sympathy of both now. Or not?
“Look, just calm down a little. You won’t get out of here immediately now, the chief is quite a stick in the mud about respect by the inmates but… See, from this angle, you can see the screen, I’ll turn on the rugby match and you can follow your squad,” Tall explained as soon as Puffy was out the door.
True to his word, the officer switched the channel and so, Marco Vairetti had to watch the remaining ten Swordfishes walk on the field – without him. It wasn’t the biggest shock.
Just before kick-off, his eye fell on the lad who joined Bottarelli up front. It could have been a regular rugby player, but for the sevens game, he was far too bulky. The shirt that stretched around his belly had a dark black number ‘eight’ on the back and above it ‘VAIRETTI’. The officer turned around as after two minutes and two tries for Bollonich, the mysterious number eight got subbed off again – Vairetti’s jaw still was hanging near the ground.
“I’ld pick a different player to be a fan of, mate.”
Only fourteen minutes played and they were all knackered. Elejamie was in it to win it, it seemed, and steamrolled over San Ortelio with ease. The quarterfinal against Pratapgadh was just around the corner and the atmosphere dropped below zero. Hunched, all remaining players sat together in the dressing room – Baffi sporting a large bandage over his leg.
“What about…” Baffi tried.
“Yeah, don’t” Daniele snarked, “your plan with your brother was bad enough. You could have mentioned he never played sevens before.”
In the silence, a short sob could be heard in the corner. Simone. A powerful player, one of our best, and now he looked like a tormented puppy.
“What’s the matter?” his nephew asked, putting an arm around him.
“My… My foot.”
Simone Di Basco took off his shoe and it uncovered a soaked, blood-red sock. As Daniele Carcano carefully helped him to remove the textile, it became visible that one of the toes was smacked to pieces.
“Jezus, Simone, how long have you been running around on that?”
“Some… somewhere in the opening minutes against Elejamie. I just got under his studs and…” Di Basco turned his head away from the mess.
“You…” Carcano hesitated a second, realizing this left him with eight players only, but then he looked at the mess that once was a human toe, “you can’t play like this.”
‘We’re gonna need a miracle’, resounded in his head.
At last, the pier came in sight. Ercole looked above, thanking the gods for the clouds which hung over the strait.
He did feel a bit tired, thou.
After arriving in Colk, he had wandered the docks for a while. Initially, most passerby’s looked a bit funny at him – his sweaty shirt and bewildered stare didn’t do him well, in terms of a look. But when the lights died down, most simply ignored him. Unwillingly, he had stepped into the red light district of town, where people were trained to let the other one be. Until… A marvelous woman – or at least, so did the dim street lights tell him – approached him.
“Hi there, handsome rugger, can I interest you in…” she smiled, before bending over and whispering something in his ear.
It was as if her words, slowly but surely, put the wheels in motion in his head.
Six.
He had looked for the sixth city, but it was the city of the six, with six letters. Of course! Without much ado, he thanked the lady for ‘lighting up his world’ (as he called it), jumped into the boat and started peddling. Somewhere halfway on the way back, he had realized that he once again had forgotten about the Sealink – but then again, if you’ve crossed it once in a rowboat, you can do it twice. Now he was closing in on the harbor, where a large clock hanging by the wall told him it was half past one. And for the first time in a long while, Ercole Pagnin thought about rugby.
Hm. Maybe I should swing by the stadium first, see if they need my help?
