Bowl even. What a load of rubbish.”
Danny slept for most of the flight from London to New York.
He got off the plane in the United States of America to walk around the airport and get used to the idea of being somewhere not called England. It looked a lot like London, which surprised him—he’d expected something a little brighter and shinier, something that made a greater case for the inevitability of capitalism and the unstoppable progress of the West. But it was as grungy and unkempt as England, more or less the same as what he’d left, except for a handwritten sign in a cafeteria line that said IT IS NOT RUDE TO CUT IN FRONT OF SLOW CUSTOMERS. It was the most American thing Danny had ever seen. He had never considered the idea of rudeness being relative. Can you just make a sign that says something isn’t rude, when it most surely is? If one made a sign declaring that separating the knee end of a young man’s tibia from its foot end wasn’t a foul, would the sign make the statement true? But Danny wasn’t one to dwell on life’s little puzzles for too long, and besides, he was living inside one of life’s big puzzles now.
On the flight to Portland, Danny was drawn into a conversation with a man who assured Danny that he didn’t know anything about soccer. “It’s basically hockey, right? Without the ice or the skates I mean,” said the man, laughing. Danny wanted to say no, it’s nothing like hockey—Danny knew almost nothing about hockey—but he reconsidered and said, “Yes, it’s a bit like hockey.”
The man said, “Well, sure it is. Two goals, two teams, a point for every score. Nothing terribly exotic about that. Do you use sticks in soccer? No? Well, anyway, hockey’s exciting as hell. I like hockey.”
Danny nodded, sure that the first American he had ever met had a worse understanding of football than he had before they had met.
Then the man said, “Who do you play for?”
Danny had only had one answer for this question in his whole life, so he began to say, “East Southw—” but caught himself and said, “The Revolution City Roses. In Oregon. Wait a minute...that didn’t sound quite right—”
The man said, “Revolution City? I don’t think so. Portland’s the Rose City. Rose City Revolution sounds more like it. That sounds like it could be the name of a soccer team. I’ve never heard of them, but it sounds like a soccer team.”
Danny said, “Yes, yes—Rose City Revolution. That’s right.”
The man asked if the Rose City Revolution was in the same league as the Giganticos: “I just read about them in the Sporting Times. First soccer article I’ve ever read. I guess this Brazilian is supposed to be the best player in the world? Here to convert us all to soccer? I don’t know, man—Americans don’t go in too much for foreign stuff. I’m sorry, I’m sure it’s a great game, and if this Brazilian character, whatever his name is, ever ends up on TV, I suppose I’ll watch for a while, but how am I going to get excited if it’s two to one and he only gets the ball for a few seconds at a time? And he’s only, what, five-foot-six? How’s a little man like that supposed to be the best athlete in the world? How’s he going to compete with someone your size? You’re huge. He doesn’t sound like much of a Gigantico to me. You ever played against him?”
Danny had not played in the World Cup or in Brazil, so he said, “No.”
The man humphed. “Well, are you going to now? Play against all those foreign stars I’ve never heard of? Is there going to be a big Revolution-Gigantico face-off?”
“We are in the same league, yes,” Danny said. Danny told the man about the great German, Dutch, Argentinean, and Italian players who had migrated to the Giganticos, and he had the sudden realization that in one afternoon against the Giganticos he would accumulate the played-against CV of a man who’d qualified for two or three World Cups.
But Danny could see the man losing interest. Too many Jürgens, Johanns, and Diegos for his Sporting Times–infused brain, and the man finally just said, “Well, listen, Danny, that’s just great. Real nice. Have a great time in our country. Try and catch a baseball game while you’re here. Wonderful sport.”
Danny almost told the man he was also here to help fight Communism, just to get his interest back, but he thought better of it and was instantly happy—and relieved—to have the conversation over and done with.
Danny looked out the window and saw a perfect white Alpine mountain cast against a sky of deep East Southwich blue. The snow-capped peak startled him. Entirely too close for his taste. No one else in the plane seemed much concerned about it at all, even as a sight to behold, but Danny couldn’t take his eyes off it. He had the idea that he could leap right down upon it and ski to its base, if he knew anything about skiing. It was right there. Right bloody there—a good three times as high as anything in all of England.
“My sweet lord,” Danny said to himself.
Soon the plane began its descent into a river valley of astonishing green. The place had a primeval, slightly overgrown quality about it. Danny could imagine thatched roofs appearing in what few clearings there were, surrounded by mythic beasts and humans wearing skins and furs. He pictured giants riding dragons, knights astride unicorns fully engaged in fierce swordplay—but he couldn’t spot anything that might pass for urban America circa 1976. Rolling hills, trees, a thick and slow brown river—and yet the pilot announced that they were, indeed, descending into Portland International Airport. International? Danny thought. What do they even mean by that around here?
The closer they got, the more he got the idea that twentieth-century life might be happening in this mysterious land after all. A congregation of houseboats appeared on the near shore; he made out fishermen in their small boats in the river’s middle, a railroad line hugging its bank. Low buildings sprawled across vast parking lots. Every car he could make out from here appeared to be a pickup truck or a lorry of some kind. This wasn’t one of those places where you lowered yourself from the sky into a city. This was one of those places you snuck into by hovering low over a deep wood. And then there it was, just like that, the airport. “Bloody ’ell,” Danny said to himself.
The man next to him stirred in his seat and said, “What’s that?”
I guess I didn’t say that to myself, Danny thought, and then said, “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
The man said, “Well, OK then. Welcome to Portland. Good luck with everything, kid.”
“Bloody ’ell,” Danny said again.
“That’s what I thought you said.”
A representative of the club met Danny at the airport, holding a sign that said DANNY HOOPER. Three had told Danny this would happen. He had imagined maybe a squat, swarthy man from Cloppingshire, some old drinking companion of Graham Broome’s. But it wasn’t a squat, swarthy man from Cloppingshire. Sent to greet Danny was a girl, a woman, maybe twenty-five years of age, possessed of a radiant hippie-disco quality that didn’t exist in Greater East Southwich. Her hair was delicately feathered and carefully frosted, and she wore a blue plaid flannel shirt unbuttoned over a gray T-shirt that read PROPERTY OF ROSE CITY REVOLUTION PRO SOCCER.
Danny couldn’t locate anything in her being that seemed even remotely English. Her fantastically blue denim widelegs had a black-and-white soccer ball patch just above her right knee, and she wore bright yellow trainers. If Danny had met her in a pub or a club, he wouldn’t have known whether to ask her to dance or go camping, and Danny had never been camping. She was the most American sight he had ever beheld.
He wished he had some means to capture for posterity the fact that this female held, in her American hands, a piece of paper with the words “DANNY HOOPER” written upon it. She smiled in the most wonderful American way, and so Danny walked over to her and said, “Hello. I’m Hooper.”
“Well, of course you are,” she said. “Wonderful to meet you. We’re so