CRAVING U (The Rook Café) Read Online Free PDF Page A

and I’ll ride home with
you.”
    “My cousin?” she said to herself as she
walked away.  “Since when does he call her my cousin ?”
    On the ride back, Marika noticed that
Matteo was strangely quiet.  He didn’t even make any comment about her
driving.  But she didn’t pay too much attention to it, considering how he had
been ejected from the game and had to watch his team lose on penalty kicks.

Chapter 1
    A TOP-LEVEL MEETING
     
    The agent walked
into Carlo Braidi’s private office in an elegant old building, number 31, just
around the corner from Piazza San Babila in Milan, an aging receptionist at his
side.  Hanging on the back wall, a new painting: Monet’s Le bassin aux
nymphéas , sold at a recent Christie’s auction in London for the “modest”
price of 36 million pounds.  The two men shook hands formally, then Braidi
nodded his head at the receptionist, who politely took her leave, closing the
door carefully behind her.
    As soon as the latch clicked shut, Michele
Canosi launched into their usual salutations.  “What’s shaking, you Milanese
bum?”
    Braidi replied as always, “How you doing,
you Roman lowlife?”
    They had known each other for years, but
they never showed anything but the most formal manners whenever someone else
was in the room.
    Carlo Braidi, born 1954, had for more than
ten years been the president of the youth squad and scouting director for AC
San Carlo , the Milan soccer team that had taken the world by storm the
previous year, winning the Serie B Italian soccer league and earning a place
with the big boys in Serie A this season.
    The man in front of him was Michele
Canosi, born 1958, an unscrupulous agent for many soccer players in both Serie
A and B, and a scouting consultant for various Italian and European clubs.
    Getting together always meant opening up
the Pandora’s box of old memories: glorious stories tied mostly to unsuccessful
personal sporting careers.  Both of them, in fact, after less than stellar
stints in the minor leagues of soccer, had tried their hands at managing.  It
was during a mandatory professional coaching course in Coverciano in the 1980s
that they had met and become close friends.  Rarely and unwillingly did they
actually get involved in the classroom debates about innovative soccer tactics;
for them, it was much more interesting to simply sing the praises of the Sunday
prowess of the stars of that era: Baggio, Maradona, Van Basten, and Bruno
Conti.  They were purists, and preferred old-school soccer to any recent
techniques and modules.  Throughout the ‘90s, after short and unfruitful
experiences as managers of teams in Serie C, they both decided that their lives
would continue in the world of soccer, but this time from behind a luxurious
Liberty-style mahogany desk.
    What kept them together was their burning
love for soccer, for the beautiful game, even though their respective
backgrounds kept them worlds apart.  Carlo, from the 45th parallel, came from
an upper-middle-class family of Milan.  He had graduated with honors from the
university and had been married for over 20 years to Clara, a child
psychologist who had made a certain reputation for herself in the medical world
for her writings on pervasive childhood development problems.  They had two
daughters.  He was a pensive man, calm and quiet.  He loved his job and
fulfilled his role as director of the youth squad with genuine passion, always
trying to make sure that his young charges grew as men, not only as players. 
He admired Michele for his innate soccer intuition and a certain brazenness
that was essential in their world.
    Michele Canosi, latitude 41, came from a
family of restaurateurs in Rome, from the working-class neighborhood of
Testaccio, the same area where the AS Roma Football Club had had its
legendary playing field in the ‘30s.  By nature more impulsive and intuitive
than his friend, he was in seventh heaven when he got to play hardball and
negotiate