"He might not come."
"Then you tell him I said so twice," Rosalba said, and backed out of the space.
On Monday morning, the first official day of practice, Tavo was at Corrado Park at ten to six. He sat on the curb and put on the new cleats, and they were black with a white stripe and they had no history at all, and he laced them and stamped on the asphalt and felt nothing but the ground. The old ones were beside him on the curb, in the same grocery bag they had come in three years before. He had found it folded up in the back of Rosalba's hall closet. He had not known he had kept it.
Tuli came at five fifty-eight, yawning so wide his jaw clicked, in his gloves and a hoodie and slides, carrying his cleats. He looked at the orange square on the wall and said, "That's it? That's the whole thing? A wall?"
"That's the whole thing."
"Okay," Tuli said, and went and stood under it, against the wall, with his arms spread, and Tavo started hitting balls at him, and Tuli started diving, and the sound of a large human body landing on wet grass again and again was so funny that by six-ten they were both laughing too hard to continue and had to stop.
At six-fifteen, the truck came up Corrado Avenue, slow, with the window down and the rancheras on low.
It parked crooked, half in a space. The engine shut off. For a while, nothing happened. Then the door opened and Wyn got out, in his vest and his dusty cap, with his thermos, and walked over to the curb, and looked at the new cleats on Tavo's feet, and looked at the bag beside him, and said, "Huh," and sat down.
"These are Tuli," Tavo said. "I mean. This is Tuli."
"I know who Tuli is," Wyn said. "I watched him play when he was nine. He cried when he gave up a goal." He nodded at Tuli. "You still cry?"
"Only on the inside now," Tuli said, with dignity.
"Good," Wyn said. "That's the right place for it."
Tavo picked up the bag and held it out. Wyn looked at it for a long time without taking it.