Kulti(6)

Cue my imaginary sob.

“That sounds pretty fishy,” Jenny noted, almost sounding normal. Almost. I could already envision her pinching her nose and holding the phone away from her face as she cracked up. Asshole. “I bet he was eating brunch and looking at ads of himself online.”

“Or looking up old footage and criticizing himself.”

“Counting his collection of watches—“ He’d had a watch endorsement for as long as I could remember.

“He was probably sitting in a hyperbaric chamber reading about himself.”

“That’s a good one,” I laughed, stopping only when the phone clicked twice. A long digit number with fifty-two at the beginning flashed across the display and it only took a second for me to realize who was calling. “Hey, I need to let you go, but I’ll see you at practice on Monday; your best friend is calling.”

Jenny laughed. “Okay, tell him I said hi.”

“I will.”

“Bye, Sal.”

I rolled my eyes and smiled. “See ya. Have a safe trip,” I said, right before clicking over to answer the incoming call.

I didn’t even get a chance to say a word before the male voice on the other line said “Salomé.”

Oh God. He was being serious. It was the way he said it, more choked rather than enunciated, all Salo-meh, instead of his usual “Sal!” that burst out of his mouth like I’d broken something irreplaceable. No one ever called me by my first name, much less my dad. I think the only times he ever had were when he meant business… as in the business of him trying to kick my ass when my mom thought I did something spectacularly dumb and wanted him to do something about it. There was the time I got into a fight during a game when I was fifteen and got thrown out. He never actually went through with any sort of real punishment. His idea of discipline was chores—lots and lots of chores as he secretly praised my jab when my mom wasn’t around.

So when Dad continued by saying, “Is this a dream? Am I dreaming?” I couldn’t help but laugh.

I pulled the covers down and away from my face to speak with him. The first thing I said to him was, “No. You’re just crazy.”

He was crazy. Crazy in love, Mom joked. As a total soccer snob, my dad was like most foreigners—he wasn’t a fan of U.S. soccer if it didn’t have me or my brother in the equation. Or Reiner Kulti, also branded as ‘The King’ by his fans and ‘the Führer’ by those that hated his guts. Dad liked to say he couldn’t help liking him. Kulti was too good, too talented, and he’d played on my dad’s favorite team for most of his career, with the exception of a two-year stint he had with the Chicago Tigers at one point. So there was that, too. The man owned four different types of jerseys: the Mexican national team jersey, each club or team Eric had played for, mine, and Kulti’s. It went without saying he wore Kulti’s way more often than someone with two kids who played professional soccer should, but I didn’t take it too personally.

The three of us—my mom and little sister excluded—had spent hours on top of hours watching all of Kulti’s games. We’d record the ones we couldn’t watch in person on the VCR and later on, through DVR. I’d been young enough for the six-foot-two German national to make the biggest impact possible on my life. Sure, Eric had been playing soccer for as long as I could remember, but Kulti’s influence had been different. It had been this magnetic force that drew me to the field day after day, making me tag along with Eric every chance I got because he was the best player I knew.

It just happened that Dad had gone along on the ride with me, fueling my hero worship.

“I was sitting here eating, when your cousin runs into the house,” my parents were visiting my aunt in Mexico, “and tells me to turn on the news.”

It was coming…

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I couldn’t! We couldn’t tell anyone until it was official, and I found out right before they made me do the press conference.”

There was a pause, a choke on his end. He said something that sounded like Dios mio under his breath. In a low whisper he asked, “You did a press conference?” He couldn’t believe it.

He hadn’t seen it. Thank you, Jesus. “It went just as bad as you’re imagining it did,” I warned him.

Dad paused again, absorbing and analyzing what I was telling him. Apparently he decided to let the news of my stupidity in front of the camera go for the time being before asking, “It’s true? He’s your new coach?” He asked the question so hesitantly, so slow, if it was possible for me to love my dad even more—it wasn’t, that was a fact—I would have.