The First Whistle

At the end of her show, Emma looked into the camera and said something different from before: "Maybe Mason Carter's biggest problem is not his knee. Maybe he has to turn revenge into responsibility." In his hotel room, Mason turned off the television. New York was still loud outside the window. On distant screens, Brooks's goal and Senegal's equalizer played on repeat. Mason took out the old photograph and looked at the sentence on the back. I will score at the World Cup. After a long time, he picked up a pen and added one more line underneath it. But not for myself.