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The hotel is too nice for this.
That’s the first thing Cristiano thinks, which is stupid, because he has spent the better part of twenty years in hotels too nice for things. Hotels too nice for sleeping badly. Hotels too nice for screaming down the phone at agents and managers and women who cried in careful, expensive lingerie. Hotels too nice for losing finals, winning finals, waking up with his body already hurting before the season had even properly started.
Still.
This one is too nice for Kaká to be cheating on his wife in.
Not cheating, technically. Cristiano has been informed of this distinction. More than once.
It is not cheating, Kaká had said the first time, like he was explaining a refereeing decision. She knows there are things in my life I do not talk about.
Cristiano had laughed so hard he’d had to sit down.
Things in my life.
That was what he was. A thing. A private clause. A little box in a contract no one ever read aloud.
They are somewhere on the Amalfi Coast because Kaká likes places with churches and sea cliffs and clean white linen, places where he can look like a retired footballer who has found peace instead of a man who arrives every few months with a wedding ring on his finger and Cristiano Ronaldo’s name saved under something insulting in his phone.
The first time Cristiano saw the contact name, he had almost thrown the phone into the pool.
For the first time in his life he had been known as José. Not even Ronaldo, which would have been cowardly but at least accurate in a way.
José was nothing.
José was the man who fixed the sink. José was the driver. José was a name Kaká could say in front of his wife without the air changing shape.
- Who is José?
- An old friend.
- From where?
- Football.
Everyone was from football. That was the beautiful thing about having lived inside one of the most famous professions in the world. You could explain away almost anyone. A former teammate, an old physio, someone from the federation, someone from a charity match in São Paulo whose name no one had any reason to remember.
Cristiano Ronaldo, apparently, could be made forgettable with two syllables and a contact photo of nothing at all.
Now they sit on a terrace overlooking the water, Cristiano with an espresso he does not want and Kaká with tea because of course he drinks tea now, because he is thirty-something and married and serene and apparently allergic to doing anything that might make Cristiano’s life less humiliating.
Kaká has his sunglasses pushed up into his hair. There is more grey there than Cristiano remembers from the last time, or maybe he remembers it perfectly and has simply been pretending not to.
His wedding ring flashes when he lifts the cup.
Cristiano looks at it, then looks away.
Then he looks back, because he is a disciplined man in every area of life except this one.
“So,” Cristiano says.
Kaká looks at him.
Good. He knows the tone. He should know the tone because Cristiano has been using it on him for the past fucking five years.
“Cristiano,” Kaká says.
“What?”
“Whatever you are about to say.”
Cristiano smiles. “You don’t know what I’m about to say.”
“I usually do.”
That annoys him, because it is true.
Cristiano leans back in his chair, one ankle over his knee, shirt open at the throat because he still looks good and because if he has to suffer then at least everyone else should have to look at him while he does it.
“Where does your wife think you are?”
“At a charity meeting in Milan.”
Cristiano laughs once. “Charity.”
“It is a real meeting.”
“Of course it is.”
“It was yesterday.”
“Very efficient of you.” Cristiano looks out at the sea. It is offensively blue. “Business and adultery in one trip.”
Kaká says nothing for a moment.
“Does she ask?” Cristiano asks.
Kaká exhales once. “Do not.”
“Does she ask who you see after these meetings?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“No.”
“Smart woman.”
Kaká looks at him then, finally. His face is still gentle, which makes Cristiano want to put his fist through the glass table.
“She is not your enemy.”
“No. That would imply she knows me.”
Kaká closes his eyes.
Ah, Cristiano thinks, pleased and miserable. There.
“She knows I have a past,” Kaká says.
Cristiano barks a laugh.
“A past.”
“Yes.”
“I am not your past.”
“No,” Kaká says quietly. “You are not.”
“Does she know my real name?”
Kaká goes still while Cristiano looks at him sharply.
“Oh,” he says. “She does.”
Kaká does not answer.
“What does she think?”
“Cristiano.”
“No, come on. I’m interested.” He leans forward. “What does your wife think of Cristiano Ronaldo?”
Kaká’s mouth tightens.
“She thinks you are important to me.”
**
It starts happening like this: five years after playing together for the last time, there is a charity match in Lisbon.
There is always a charity match, or a testimonial, or some reunion dinner with too many cameras and too many men pretending their knees do not hurt when they stand up from the table. Football is very sentimental about men it has almost finished using.
That is the whole story, really.
Kaká is there in a dark suit, thinner than Cristiano remembers and somehow softer, which is unfair because Cristiano has worked very hard to look like time is something that happens to other people. Kaká smiles at him from across a room full of retired men and sponsors and children in oversized shirts, and Cristiano feels, absurdly, like someone has put a hand through his ribs and found the old machinery still running.
They hug for the cameras.
Nothing happens.
That is the first lie.
Nothing happens, except Kaká’s hand stays at the back of his neck for a second too long. Nothing happens, except Cristiano hears him say Cris for the first time in years and has to turn his face away because apparently his body is still stupid in all the original places. Nothing happens, except after the dinner Kaká finds him on a balcony with a glass he does not remember picking up, and says, very quietly, “You are difficult to find alone.”
Cristiano says, “I’m famous.”
Kaká laughs.
Cristiano thinks, OH FUCK –
Kaká is married by then – and not only once, fucking twice. Everyone knows this. It is one of the clean facts about him, like his faith, his children, and his polite interviews.
Cristiano knows too.
He looks at the ring that first night and says something cruel about it, obviously. He cannot remember what, only that Kaká looked down at his own hand like the ring had spoken first.
Then Kaká says, “I am very happy to see you again.”
At first they are normal, at least that’s what Cristiano thought. Congratulations - How are you - Did you see the match - You look well. Then Kaká is in Madrid for a foundation board meeting. Then Cristiano is in Orlando for a sponsor thing. Then there is a hotel bar in London where they sit too close and talk about everything except their own lives.
Then, after, Kaká is lying on the edge of the bed with one hand over his face, wedding ring still on because neither of them had thought to make the sin aesthetically consistent before committing it.
“You should take it off,” Cristiano says.
Kaká lowers his hand.
For a second, he looks exactly like a man Cristiano could ruin. Then the expression is gone, tucked away behind all that practiced gentleness.
“Cristiano.”
“What?”
“You know what this is.”
Cristiano laughs because the alternative is asking, Do I?
But somewhere deep down inside of him is thinking: maybe I do know what this is.
**
So what happens just happens, and it keeps happening. At first, Cristiano tries to be normal about it.
This lasts eleven days. Eleven days after London, Kaká sends him a picture of something, honestly Cristiano doesn’t even remember what that is. A pitch, maybe.
Cristiano stares at it in the backseat of a car while his assistant explains something about a sponsorship appearance he is absolutely not listening to. He types three different responses and deletes all of them because every version makes him sound not like himself.
Finally he writes, Pitch looks like shit, dude.
Kaká replies, You have become very poetic.
After that, it becomes a thing.
Not an affair. Cristiano refuses the word affair on the grounds that it sounds middle-aged and pathetic and makes him think of businessmen in bad suits getting caught by hotel security cameras. This is not that. This is not anything. This is two men with history and complicated schedules occasionally ending up in the same city with an evening free and a long list of things they are not going to discuss.
Madrid. London. Lisbon again, because apparently God enjoys a callback. A hotel in Turin. A room in Paris.
The rules appear gradually: No photos. No public dinners unless there is a reason for them to be seen together. No hotels where either of them has stayed with family. No calls after ten if Kaká is home. No messages on Sundays unless it is urgent, and nothing is ever urgent, obviously, because Cristiano is not dying. He is only becoming deranged in several beautiful cities, enjoying his life, apparently.
It has also become that Kaká books most of the rooms because he insists, which makes Cristiano want to throw up the first time he heard him say that, because he can buy that fucking hotel. He can buy the hotel, the cliff under the hotel, the water in front of the hotel, probably the tiny little Italian town attached to the hotel if he gets bored enough and his lawyers are feeling theatrical.
Money is not the point. Money has almost never been the point, which is one of the few useful things Cristiano has learned from having too much of it.
Cristiano remembers saying, that first time, “Do you think I can’t book a room?”
Kaká looks at him over the rim of his glass.
“No,” Kaká says. “Of course not.”
“Then why?”
“It is easier if I do it.”
Whatever. He thinks, at least he’s not the one starting all this bullshit between themselves.
**
They never stay together for more than a weekend.
They get back from the terrace just after four, sun still hard and white against the water. Kaká uses the side entrance and Cristiano follows him through a corridor that smells like lemons and polished stone, slightly annoyed by the fact that he will remember this.
And somehow he remembers a lot of things: The hotel in Turin with the ugly green curtains. The room in Paris with the useless balcony. The place in Madrid where the air conditioning sounded like an animal dying in the wall. The suite in Lisbon where Kaká had ordered room service before Cristiano arrived, grilled fish and water and fruit, like Cristiano was not a grown man capable of feeding himself, like Cristiano had not just played ninety minutes on a bad ankle a day ago. He remembers so many things, and all of them makes him angry, but maybe also something worse. Something old. What he had felt, before they got back to seeing each other like this, long ago in Madrid. That kind of bad. That makes him worried, just slightly, that he may regress into something he does not want to go back to, something he has spent years cutting out of himself.
He tells Kaká to take off his rings when they start kissing, right as they get inside the room. This is the first time Cristiano says it out loud.
Kaká’s mouth is still close to his. His hand is on Cristiano’s waist, warm through the thin fabric of his shirt. For a second, he looks almost confused, which is ridiculous because they have done this enough times now that confusion is either vanity or cruelty.
Then he understands. Of course he understands.
“Cristiano,” he says.
“No.”
Kaká breathes out.
Cristiano smiles, mean and already a little ruined. “You know what this is.”
Kaká looks at him for a long moment, then slowly takes off the wedding ring, then his watch, then the other ring on his right hand. Cristiano does not know what the other ring is for because he has never asked, and he does not care either.
“There,” Kaká says.
Cristiano looks at the rings. Then at him.
“You want me to say thank you?”
“No.”
“You look like you do.”
Kaká’s face closes slightly.
Good, Cristiano thinks.
Then, immediately: Don’t.
That is the rhythm of this. Good, no. Hurt him, don’t. Make him pay, forgive him before he can.
Cristiano steps closer.
“You will put them back on tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
“For breakfast?”
Kaká’s eyes flick toward the desk. “Before I leave.”
“Because the driver might see?”
“No.”
“Because God might?”
Kaká’s mouth tightens. “Cristiano.”
“Because you need to remember who you are?”
Kaká looks at him then, and for one second all the practiced gentleness is gone.
“I do remember,” he says. “I remember it even right now.”
Cristiano goes quiet.
The sea moves outside the window, bright and careless. Somewhere below, people are laughing by the pool. Someone is having a normal vacation. Someone is probably being loved badly but legally, which Cristiano imagines must be very restful.
He almost says it out loud, but Kaká is still looking at him, all that practiced gentleness stripped back into something more tired, more bare, and Cristiano hates him a little for it.
“Come here,” Kaká says.
Cristiano laughs. “Bossy.”
“You like it.”
“Careful,” Cristiano says. “You almost sound like you know me.”
Kaká’s mouth moves. Not quite a smile.
“I do know you.”
That makes Cristiano angry. But it also does something else, something old and humiliating, the Madrid-bad thing, the thing he thought he had cut out of himself five years ago. It moves under his ribs, alive and stupid, and Cristiano decides he would rather kiss Kaká than think about it.
Forgetting. Remembering. Wanting. Hating. Kaká’s mouth on his. Kaká’s hands, bare now, no metal, at his face, his shoulder, the back of his neck. Cristiano saying something mean enough to make Kaká’s breath catch and then pulling him closer before either of them can decide whether it hurt.
Cristiano knows the rings are still on the table without looking. Wedding ring. Watch. Other ring. Waiting there with the calm confidence of things that know they will be picked up again. Objects are cruel like that. They do not hope. They do not bargain. They simply sit there, certain of the ending.
There is Kaká’s shirt half-open beneath his hands. There is the white noise of the sea outside. There is the ugly little pleasure of hearing Kaká say his name like he should not be allowed to say it and cannot help himself anyway.
Cris.
Cristiano presses him harder against the bed just to shut him up.
It does not work.
Kaká says it again, softer this time, and Cristiano has to close his eyes because for one stupid second it feels like being fucking young, like standing on a pitch under white lights with his whole life still ahead of him and Kaká’s hand on the back of his neck, before any of them had learned what things cost.
They lie together afterward, Cristiano plays with Kaká’s bare hand for a bit. He turns Kaká’s hand over in his own, thumb dragging once across the pale band of skin where the wedding ring usually sits. It is faint, almost nothing. But he presses his thumb there again.
“You will put them back on tomorrow,” he says stupidly.
Kaká’s eyes close briefly.
“Yes.”
Cristiano nods.
“Good,” he says.
Kaká opens his eyes. “Is it?”
“No.”
Kaká looks down.
For a moment, Cristiano thinks he has finally done it. Gone too far. Found the place even Kaká’s guilt cannot survive.
Then Kaká reaches for him. Kaká takes his hand carefully, like Cristiano is something breakable, which is ridiculous. Cristiano has been kicked, tackled, booed, worshipped, operated on, rebuilt, and photographed from every unflattering angle known to modern journalism. He is not breakable.
Kaká lifts his hand and presses his mouth to Cristiano’s knuckles.
Cristiano looks away first. He always looks away first when Kaká becomes impossible to hate. There is nothing for it.
That is what he understands now, with Kaká’s mouth against his hand and Kaká’s ring waiting patiently on the table and Kaká’s real life already gathering itself outside the room.
There is nothing to solve.
Kaká will go home in the morning. Cristiano will take the later car. The staff will change the sheets. The terrace will be reset for strangers.
Cristiano will become Cristiano again.
Maybe José soon enough, depending on when they see each other next.
He gets this. That is all. A weekend when schedules allow. A room no one photographs. A name that can be deleted. The dark, ashamed, starving part of Kaká that still comes when Cristiano calls and looks at him like salvation is something filthy — he gets to call that his.
But that part. That ruined little chapel in Kaká where Cristiano is still the only god anyone prays to-
Fine, then.
Cristiano turns his hand under Kaká’s and lets their fingers lock.
Shut up, he tells himself.
Just—just shut up.