One Final Gift

"I don't want to leave you alone. I'll wait until yours comes," Argueta replied.

He followed her onto the C4, and that was that.

She had been busing tables at a Bennigan's in Rockville, but Argueta told her he didn't want her to work anymore.

"He said he was man enough to take care of me and our son," Banegas says, in Spanish.

In recent months they had decided to get married, she says. She has three other children whom she had left in Honduras when she came here in 2000, and whom Argueta was helping to support by sending money and gifts.

He decorated the apartment with photos of his soccer teammates. He played in two leagues. He asked Banegas to wash his uniforms extra carefully, by hand. Sometimes he would come home with his feet so swollen that he said it was time to hang up his cleats. But by the next weekend, he'd be eager to play again.

"He used to say, 'I'm going to die playing,' " Banegas says.

The evening he died, after coming home from the tournament, he said he was cold. Banegas heated some juice in the microwave. Then he seemed fine, playing with Kevin. Suddenly his body became tense and he gasped for air. He fell, unconscious. The paramedics tried to shock his heart to life. He never revived. The official cause of death is pending, according to the medical examiner's office.

The day before, his 44th birthday, Banegas had snapped a cellphone photo of father and son in funny birthday hats, and made it the background screen on her phone. Now, when Kevin hears the phone ring, he sees the picture and exclaims that "Poppi" is calling. The other day, he darted into a crowd of men in soccer uniforms, inquiring, "Poppi? Poppi?" and "Oh-ka? Oh-ka?" which is how he says "Oscar."

"Poppi went to Heaven," his mother tells him. "He was taken to God, and he's not going to come back."

But Kevin doesn't quite seem to believe it.

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