God Speed
He keeps catching sight of him in the crowd all afternoon. It isn't the jersey; the logo has changed, and Discovery's colors are different, thin blue and white, no storm-dark blue or cocked eagle's head.
It isn't the jersey, and it isn't the bike, though the steel grey curves and gleaming chrome flash under the full country sun. It's the number. A small scrap of paper safety-pinned to the other man's back, and he can barely remember a time when the number wasn't '1'. It's been six and a half years since he climbed up from the masses and stamped first place as his own. Roberto doesn't feel that old.
George appears from the crowd and solidifies by his side, bumping his shoulder into his old teammate and smiling wide and white. His space-age chic sunglasses are perched back on his head, half buried in dark curls. George is open and magnanimous in the way of people who have never doubted their own attractiveness. Roberto cannot quite imagine the big American was ever an awkward teenager, long legs and braces binding that perfect smile.
"I hope you're ready to get your ass kicked," George says with a wide grin and a hand on his back. His palm cups the delicate point of a shoulderblade, long fingers tapping the stretch of ribs. He has none of his captain's subtlety, or his talent for turning words into weapons.
"I am prepared to fight," Roberto replies simply, and George laughs, swiping hooked fingers through shorn hair as he lifts the hand from his back. He casts his eyes over the crowd and draws back a step, and it isn't necessary to look up; it's obvious who he sees.
It isn't that Lance would be angry; it's just that no one wants to let him down.
"I should get back to the team," he says, extricating George from the choice, taking the easy way out. "Give my regards to everyone."
"I will," George says, raising a hand in casual salute to someone in the distance. He turns his shaded eyes to Roberto as he melts into the crowd. "Tell Tyler I said 'hi'."
x
"...reduce wind resistance by 12%. We just got a whole shipment. They look pretty ugly, but, whatever."
"Cool," Tyler says.
"Yeah." The conversation hits a lull, and Roberto finds himself blurting out, "George said to tell you 'hi'. So...hi."
"Hi," Tyler responds automatically. His voice is clear and quick with interest. "You talked to George? Today?"
"Yes," Roberto says, "during set-up, at base camp. Their camp is right next to ours."
"Did you talk to--"
"No," Roberto says.
"Huh," Tyler says. He says, "You know he called me, a few months ago. Right after..." He fades out, lets Roberto finish the thought. He doesn't ever say the word 'suspension' out loud.
"What did he want?"
Tyler laughs over the phone, and although it is a bitter laugh, it makes Roberto smile. Tyler does not luahg much at all anymore.
"He wanted to--what was the phrase he used--extend his sympathies," Tyler says. There is a pause and a clicking sound like he's swallowing. "I told him he could extend his sympathies right up his ass."
He laughs again shakily, and Roberto is beginning to realize that Tyler is drunk. "Are you drunk?" he asks. He has seen Tyler drunk only once before. He is a small man and does not hold his liquor well.
"I think so," Tyler says in his angular Boston accent. "It's kind of hard to tell." There is another pause, the rattle of empty cans. Then, soft and urgent--"You've got to beat him, Roberto."
"Aiee, amigo," he says softly, breathing out every bit of air inside him until his lungs ache and his chest collapses in. "You know I'll try."
x
When Tyler left, the fight went on for three hours, with him and Lance calling each other every dirty thing they'd ever heard. Roberto gave notice in an e-mail. He is discovering he can be as cruel as anyone, given the right circumstances.
No one blamed him for it. Chechu tried to change his mind, but he didn't call him a dirty traitor, the way he'd attacked Tyler. At first he'd been almost disappointed, but now he understood.
They didn't think he could win. He wasn't a threat to them. Tyler was.
He could almost hear the relief 4,000 miles away in Austin when the suspension was handed down. Eliminating Tyler narrowed the competition down to three or four serious contenders, with Ullrich heading the list. And unlike Tyler, Jan would not learn from his mistakes. He would show up to the Tour d'Italia fat and out of shape, just like every year. The line one journalist had written about him in '03 was still the best Roberto had heard--million dollar talent, bargain-basement desire. He would never beat Lance because, for all the humiliation he'd suffered at the Texan's hands, he did not want it badly enough.
Tyler wanted it. He had never wanted anything more.
It was one of the things that made both a professional relationship and friendship with Lance impossible. They were too much alike. They pushed themselves past breaking, and when they worked together they pushed each other with the same demanding intensity. It made them two of the best in the world, and it made them hate each other, and themselves.
x
"Good luck," George says to him as they fine-tune their bikes in the last minutes before the first stage begins. The muscles in his back and thighs twist and roll under the pale blue and white spandex of Team Discovery's jersey, his hawk-dark eyes hidden behind the trademark sunglasses.
"Luck is for those who don't trust their own strength," Roberto says automatically, ducking George's knowing grin. He does not think of the irony of who he is quoting. Lance Armstrong, cancer survivor, who was once given a 5% chance of returning to this race, had never acknowledged the irony, either.
"God speed," Roberto says without sarcasm as George climbs onto the bike, tapping his fist briefly to the back of the big America's shoulder before he vaults the ramp and disappears down the jagged stretch of road that unfurls for hundreds of miles before them, all the way to Paris.