The Run of Play is a blog about
the wonder and terror of soccer.

We left the window open during a match in October 2007 and a strange wind blew into the room.

Now we walk the forgotten byways of football with a lonely tread, searching for the beautiful, the bewildering, the haunting, and the absurd.

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Trying to Decide What to Do About the Yucatan Gladius

If I help, I get fifty thousand dollars. If I don’t, I get whatever was at the tail end of the mean little ellipsis Dancer looked at me when I left the Black Duke. They don’t care if I blog about the heist, because, “The occasional butterfly-chaperoning Italian police constable aside, it’s not as if anyone reads your posts, sunshine, now, is it?”

I could use the fifty thousand dollars. And I don’t want anything bad to happen to Grigoriy. But…I don’t know. I’ve spent half the night wandering through the statue piazzas, trying to make up my mind. I tried sitting on the Spanish Steps, but they were full of kissing Barça fans, which did me no good whatsoever. So I went and sat by the Trevi Fountain for a while (from what I could tell, a place of Manchester United fans) and all that roar and glitter was just about right for my tumult.

Truffles had given me this laptop presentation that included a bunch of schematics and special searches on Google Maps, so I was able to find my way to Dr. Alan Stone’s apartment. I could see the whole scene through this big, bright window in front: this little old white-haired entomologist kind of proudly feeding rotten orange slices into a slot in this wide glass aquarium, giant butterflies in the aquarium slowly beating their wings. I don’t know if I’m a criminal at rock bottom. I can’t lie, something about those butterfly wings and that proud old careful professor went straight to my heart. Even if he was only planning to sell them for eight million dollars.

Constable Piccoletta was tromping through the place, too, with his big brass buttons and all his ribbons and giant mustache. There were officers posted at all the bookcase corners and near the volume on the stereo. All he wants to do is read my live blog, I thought. Sometimes I don’t know why I was put on this earth.

Now I’m back at the Commendatore, not sleeping, trying to think my way through this. One way or another, I have got to play this all the way to the end.  I have got to be cold, sharp, and vicious before the sun comes up tomorrow. I am determined to cover this game. I have got to save my friend and write on the Champions League.

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Trying to Decide What to Do About the Yucatan Gladius

by Vandal-prone · May 26, 2009

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