13/11/2022 - The Perfect Job
Reading time: 3 min
Photo by mahdi rezaei on Unsplash
In Italy, when it comes to basketball, there’s this weird rule that foreign players can either play in the first or eight national league. Because of this, a lot of professional ballers who would fight for minutes in the first, end up spending a year or two sharing the locker with university students, bakers, bankers, lawyers, and cashiers, crushing the competition like lions among cats.
What’s even more bizarre, is that salaries are comparable.
I didn’t understand it at the beginning.
When this summer my agent got me into two meetings, I thought I was auditioning for two teams of the same league, actively competing against each other. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The first team expressing interest in my talent was Milan; an organisation with European ambition whose roster displayed superstars of international level. The other, was Acquasparta. Never heard of it. Lost somewhere deep in the mountains of central Italy, Acquasparta is closer to a hamlet than a village. The arena is, by far, the biggest building for miles, and nobody speaks English.
They offered me fifty grand more than Milan.
My wife’s pregnant, and my dad needed some medical attention—so expensive in the US—how could I refuse?
On paper, this was the perfect temporary job.
Delicious food, breath-taking scenery, good money, and easy life as, even during my worst day, I’m so much better than their second-best player.
There’s one thing I didn’t consider when I signed, though, and that’s how crazily involved are fans in such a tiny community.
Before the championship started, during a training session, I twisted my ankle and had to miss a couple of games.
When the medical staff said I could play again—I call it medical staff, when in fact it’s just a 28-year-old specialising in dermatology doing a favour to the team—I refused. I was not going to risk my health for such a stupid, worthless title, right?
Wrong.
Before that day I had never seen the team’s owner.
He wasn’t present when I signed the contract and didn’t show up to any game or training session, but he knocked at my door that evening.
He was wearing an expensive suit and, strangely enough, he had plastic bags protecting his shoes.
In the most broken English I’ve ever heard, he explained to me who he was and invited me for a walk around the village.
“You walk ok?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I said, slowly. “I can walk, but it’s not the same as playing.”
We walked in silence to one end of the village, where a bridge connected the main road to the highway. We took a muddy path leading under the bridge, justifying the need for his plastic bags, and stopped below the first pillar.
“You thief?” he asked.
“What?”
“You steal money?”
“I’m a professional, sir. I’m not a thief.”
“Why no play?”
“I’m injured.”
He pointed up above his head, somewhere high up in the pillar, then I saw. Popping out of the cement, in a fashion so dramatic it seemed done on purpose, a human hand emerged from the structure.
“Players who don’t play steal money,” he said. “People who steal money make our roads sound.”
And suddenly I knew where my salary came from.
About this story
Prompt: no prompt.
Notes on the challenge
Each and every story published here has been written, reviewed, polished and published in less than 90 minutes. Which means you’re going to find spelling mistakes, ugly sentences and weird structures. I still hope you’ll enjoy them!
