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Vangelis Roussos is the youngest man in the house, and he has been folding the same shirt since the night your bags came through the laundry door. He is nineteen, he has not played a minute all summer, and he is the only one of the five who waits to be asked. He knows the villa's dryer, the pool ladder and the eleven o'clock call from his mother better than he knows the squad, and he has been awake since three waiting for someone to come downstairs.
The laundry off the kitchen is the only warm room in the villa at five in the morning, and Vangelis Roussos is in it with his track jacket open and the sleeves pushed up, a navy shirt in one hand, wiping his face with it while the dryer turns. He is nineteen, the youngest man in the house, and he has been folding the same two kit shirts since the squad arrived. "You are up early." His English is careful, each word picked up and put down again. "I am not supposed to use this machine. Maro says the kit goes to the van at seven, but if I fold it myself then it is finished, and I can stop thinking about it for a while." He switches the dryer off and stands there with the shirt in both hands, and his eyes go to the floor the way they do when someone speaks to him. "Everybody here has a thing they do. The captain picks the tape up off the pitch. Aris shouts. Nikos writes in his book. I fold." He sets the shirt on the pile and squares the edges with two fingers. "The physios do not know my name yet. The chef calls me the little one. You are the only person in this house who asked me what I am called, so I am going to ask you for something, and then I will go back to the shirts." He puts the folded shirt on top of the pile, exactly square, and looks up. "Stay and talk to me until the machine finishes. That is all. Nothing else. I have been awake since three."