Undercard

by David Albertyn

  She pulls into her driveway and looks at her phone. A text from one of her personal training clients asking if she’s available Monday morning, and another from her friend Tara Haynesworth.

  Hey girl you missed a great cookout. Ty misses you! And you know he looks better than ever ;)

  Tyron. Naomi wishes she hadn’t gotten so excited when Tara told her he was coming home. She’d wanted her feelings for Ty to leave with him when he joined the damn military — of all the things he could’ve done to break them up . . . Another woman? She would’ve killed him, but at least it wouldn’t have been so unexpected. She knows she’s not ideal: too talkative, too tall, too muscular, too emotional, too much, just in general too much. She always expected him to leave her for someone else, the way girls were falling all over him wherever he went. But he never even noticed them. And what did he end up choosing over her? A pair of wars. A pair of wars over a life with her. Thanks, Ty. Nice confidence boost.

  Naomi drops the phone in her purse and heads inside. It’s a two-storey suburban house, perfect for a growing family, but empty and a little eerie for a couple on their own. At least it gives them the space to avoid each other. She walks into the kitchen, dumps her purse on the counter, and runs a glass of water from the tap. Drains half of it at once.

  So quiet, she thinks, looking over the kitchen and den, unchanged since they moved in four years ago — renovations aren’t exactly on her radar.

  She grabs her phone and punches in Tara’s name. Her girl picks up right away.

  “What’s up?”

  “Hey, what’s up with you?”

  “Just helping Auntie Trudy with the dishes. It was a great party, I wish you could’ve made it. How was your game?”

  “Well, you know, one team’s got to win, right? So why shouldn’t that team be mine?”

  Tara laughs. “Your girls dominated?”

  “Total domination. They balled out, Tara. You don’t even know. Every one of them is a baller on that team. Each and every one. I love it.”

  “They got a great coach.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Don’t play with me, girl, I know you think you the shit.”

  “Well, if the shoe fits, right?”

  For all her laughter, Naomi hasn’t escaped the gloom from the ride home. “You ever feel kind of empty,” she asks, “like after a game — or a track meet — and you say goodbye to everybody, and then everything’s just so quiet? You know what I mean? Like there’s all these people, and you’re having so much fun, and everyone’s appreciating you and you’re appreciating them. And then, you get home and you’re just alone. It’s like you’re more alone than you were before . . . before . . . I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”

  “No, I feel you,” Tara says. “I mean, I don’t feel that way myself personally, but I understand what you’re saying. If you want to be around people, you should come to the — Oh damn! I was about to invite you to the march tomorrow. My bad.”

  “Yeah, wouldn’t that be something? I don’t think Keenan would appreciate it too much. Or the people in the march, for that matter. I got to embrace my pariah status.”

  “Don’t say that. You didn’t pull that trigger. No one blames you for standing by your man.”

  Naomi appreciates Tara’s words even if she doesn’t believe them. She knows that the cloud of guilt and shame over Keenan hovers over her too.

  She sometimes feels she has two communities to call her own, and sometimes that she has none. She is too much of everything, not enough of any one thing.

  Her father is a mutt of European heritage. When Naomi was a kid, he would say to her and her brothers, “You know how many dutiful, gorgeous, petite women I could’ve married? But I wanted my kids to be heavyweights.” Warrior Wilks, as he was known in his boxing days, maxed out as a super middleweight, something that obviously bothered him. “The moment I saw your mom, I thought, there go my heavyweights.” Naomi’s mother is Dutch and Nigerian, and she stands an inch taller than Naomi’s height of six-one. “So you should thank me for your height, kids. Except for you, Derek, you got too many of my genes, sorry about that. But Drew, Naomi: I did it for you. I had to put up with your wise-cracking mama for you to turn out the way you did. But heavyweights you are.” It never seemed to occur to her father that she might not want to be a “heavyweight.”

  When he’d say this about her mother it was in jest, filled with grinning and chuckling, and Naomi didn’t think too much of it as Vivian was, and still is, a striking, beautiful woman. Her father doted on her mother with unabashed affection. And then one day, right before she quit boxing to focus exclusively on basketball, Naomi caught him outside the gym getting into a car with an attractive petite woman. When she confronted him about it, he was repentant and promised never to do it again. The second time Naomi caught him — with a different woman — she told her mother. Her parents were divorced within a year.

  “So how’s Ty?” Naomi asks.

  “Kinda different, kinda the same,” Tara says. “He’s quieter. Stiffer. He acts like he doesn’t belong here anymore. Like he’s a stranger.”

  Naomi gnaws on her lip. “Is he with you now?”

  “No, he ran off with that fool Ricky to the Reef. They’re going to try to hustle some tickets out of Antoine Deco for the fight tonight.”

  “Ty’s going to see Antoine?”

  “I’m just telling you what they told me.”

  Tyron and Antoine together again. She has difficulty imagining it. Envy cuts through her, like a scalpel grazing her heart, that they get to see each other and she doesn’t.

  “Has Ty been in touch with Antoine?”

  “You know, girl, he did just get a new phone. I can give you his number.”

  “No, don’t give it to me.”

  “I’ll text it to you. That way you got it if you need it.”

  “Please don’t. I c— I can’t. I’ll see him when I see him.”

  “All right. You do you. I’m with you.”

  “Thanks, Tara. Appreciate it.”

  “Appreciate you. But these dishes ain’t washing themselves, so I better be out.”

  “Good talking. Hope you have a good night.”

  “You too. Bye.”

  “Bye,” Naomi says, and waits for Tara to end the call before she lowers the phone.

  3:39 p.m.

  The desk clerk holds her hand over the phone’s mouthpiece, eyeing him skeptically. “What did you say your name was?”

  Tyron stares at her. This is the third time he’s had to tell her. “Tyron Shaw.”

  “I have Tyron Shaw here,” she says into the phone. “He says he’s an old friend of Mr. Deco.”

  “His foster brother,” Ricky adds.

  “His foster brother,” repeats the clerk. “Apparently. Aha. Yes, I’ll wait.” She holds the receiver to her chest. “He’s checking with Mr. Deco.”

  Ricky grins and slaps Tyron’s arm.

  “Who would ever turn you down, Ty?”

  He humours Ricky with a smile. No doubt the desk clerk was on the verge of calling security a minute ago. Tyron hadn’t wanted to play the veteran card, but Ricky played it for him. Perhaps it made some difference, and perhaps Ricky’s insistence that Tyron was Antoine’s foster brother did too.

  “Oh, is that right?” she says into the phone, with a sudden bright smile. “Yes, I’ll send him up.” She puts down the phone. “Mr. Deco says you can see him.” She gives them directions through the casino.

  Walking away, Ricky gives Tyron a wry look. “So you been an officer in the United States Marine Corps for the last eleven years and your word is only good when some bullshit, borderline celebrity vouches for you? Good to be back, huh?”

  “Yeah. Good to be back.”

  They pass through row after row of slot machines, flashing an
d chiming. Loud, bright, and disorienting. Tyron wonders why anyone would want to come here.

  “Damn, the Reef is the shit, man,” Ricky says. “They got places like this in Afghanistan?”

  Tyron favours Ricky’s smirk with a glance, but no more. He is tense. He shouldn’t be here, accosting Antoine on the day of his fight, in this clamorous, artificial space, in this city he left behind long ago. He shouldn’t be here.

  They leave the casino and enter a cavernous hallway with designer stores on either side. About thirty yards in, the carpeted floor ends and a floor of transparent glass begins, beneath which is a giant aquarium filled with crystal blue water and fish, stingrays, sharks, even turtles and jellyfish. A glass mirror runs overhead, parallel with the tank below, giving the impression that you’re both above and below water. This is what the Reef is known for, the attraction that pulls in tourists faster than any other resort on the Strip.

  Tyron’s eyes are on the crowd as much as they are on the sea creatures swimming among the purple and yellow coral beneath. “Over there, this many people in one place, you know what we’d think?”

  “What’s that?”

  Tyron clenches his jaw. “We’d think a bomb was about to go off.”

  “Must’ve been some wild shit. I couldn’t handle it, I know that. How’d you do it?”

  He looks at Ricky, then points toward a set of elevators. “Let’s move.”

  In the elevator Ricky says, “You excited to see your boy again?”

  Tyron searches within himself. The only feeling he is sure of is trepidation. “I don’t know.”

  Waiting for them on the twenty-first floor is a tall security guard with a black beard, sunglasses, and a Reef cap pulled low over his eyes. He starts the moment he sees Tyron, then turns his face as though to hide whatever surprise he felt and motions for them to follow.

  Tyron complies, staring at the pistol holstered on the man’s hip. The guard stops outside one of the doors and raises his fist to knock. He pauses, and looks over at Tyron.

  “You want help with something?” Tyron asks.

  The man takes off his sunglasses and looks at him with pale blue eyes. “It’s a fake beard, Tyron.”

  Tyron checks the thin metal name tag on the man’s chest: Davis.

  “The name’s fake too.”

  Tyron squints at the man, and then his jaw drops. “Keenan?”

  The man gives a self-conscious smile. There is no doubt. Keenan. They hesitantly embrace.

  “Damn. It’s been long,” Tyron says.

  “Another lifetime,” says Keenan.

  Tyron steps back. He stares into Keenan’s eyes. “You all right? I got back yesterday, you’re all anyone is talking about.”

  “Not now.” Emotions cross Keenan’s face in waves. He starts to speak. Freezes. Then repeats, “Not now. It’s good to see you though. I can’t remem— It’s good to see you.”

  “You remember my boy Ricky, right? We all played ball back in the day.”

  “I remember. What’s up, man?”

  Keenan holds out his hand, then drops it as Ricky keeps his at his side.

  Tyron’s face tightens. He is ready to shake some sense into Ricky, but Keenan stalls him with a look. “It’s okay. It’s a better reception than most people give me these days.”

  “How’d you end up here?”

  Keenan shrugs. “I’m off the force. Needed a new job.”

  Tyron nods toward the door, beyond which their old friend waits. “You spoken to Antoine?”

  “No,” Keenan says.

  “He doesn’t know you’re out here?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You want me to tell him?”

  Keenan thinks about it, then nods. “Sure. Tell him. Better he has some warning. We haven’t spoken in . . . over ten years. Even Naomi hasn’t spoken to him in years.”

  Naomi. Tyron feels like he’s been sucker-punched. He tries to keep his voice level. “How is Naomi?”

  “She’s good. She’s good. We’re — we’re good.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “She coaches now.”

  “I heard that. My cousin told me.”

  “Right, Tara. They’re friends.”

  “Yeah,” Tyron says, thinking that there are a thousand other things he wants to know about Naomi. Why did she retire? Does she like coaching? Have her features softened or sharpened with age? Does she still smile as easily, or laugh as effortlessly? Is her scent the same? Does she miss me? Does she think about me? Does she still love me? He takes a breath. “You guys got kids?”

  Keenan shakes his head, staring at Tyron with his sad blue eyes.

  Tyron is embarrassed at how much relief he feels. He thought he’d let her go. Realizes now that he’d just been distracted. It would take two wars to push a woman like Naomi to the back of your mind.

  “So, Antoine’s world-class now?” Tyron says, attempting to change the subject. “This for real?”

  Keenan shrugs. “I never understood Antoine back when we were kids, and I sure as hell don’t understand him now.”

  Tyron nods, remembering. He looks at the door to Antoine’s suite. “I better go in.”

  Keenan backs down the hallway. “Good luck.”

  * * *

  The door is opened by a wiry Hispanic man, black tattoos snaking up and down his neck, creeping out from beneath the sleeves of his white shirt onto the backs of his hands. He says nothing to Tyron, merely looks him and Ricky over, then steps aside, opening the door wider. Tyron glances back as he steps inside, but Keenan is gone.

  Not a room for a high roller, but the suite is spacious enough. A second Latino man, this one middle-aged and weather-beaten but also wiry and strong, gets up off a sofa and shuffles to another room, with the first man following behind. The third man in the room stands before the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out over the Vegas skyline. The red, dusty mountains visible in the distance are jagged against the deep blue of the Nevada sky.

  The man turns to them, his eyes dark, calculating.

  “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.” Antoine’s voice. Weightier than Tyron remembered.

  “Sorry to . . . sorry to show up out of nowhere.”

  Antoine says nothing, just stares at Tyron, who feels his insides shifting in preparation for action. It’s an instinct he developed while in the Middle East, a sixth sense for violence. Trouble didn’t always follow this feeling, but when it hit he was always forewarned.

  “Who’s this?” Antoine finally says.

  Ricky strides forward. “Hey man, you remember your homeboy Rick, right? We had some battles on the court back in the —”

  “I got to speak to Tyron alone,” Antoine cuts in. “You don’t mind waiting outside, right?”

  “Uh, yeah, I kind of . . .” Ricky looks over at Tyron, who nods toward the door. Ricky sucks on his teeth, looking from one to the other. “O-okay. Whatever.”

  Tyron watches as Ricky, deflated, retreats out the door.

  “I see you haven’t lost your charming disposition.”

  Antoine’s face remains impassive. “What are you doing here?”

  “Honestly? Ricky wants tickets to the fight tonight. He hassled me to hit you up. I only got back to Vegas yesterday.”

  “From protecting our foreign interests?”

  There is derision in the question. “That’s right.”

  “You still with them?”

  “The Marines?”

  “Yes. The Marines.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “How come? Got tired of killing Muslims?” With the question, Antoine’s dispassionate face breaks into a spiteful smile.

  Tyron feels himself stiffen. If he were to tell the truth, he would say yes. He was tired of killing the first time he had to do it. And he never
stopped tiring of it. “I never planned on being in the Corps for the rest of my life. It was time for something new.”

  “Which will be what? Finding another way to kill people of colour? You can be like Keenan and join the police.”

  “If you want me to leave, just say so. I didn’t come here for this.”

  “Of course you didn’t come here for this,” Antoine growls. “Of course you didn’t. You came here, after years without a word, looking for a handout. That’s what you came for.”

  Tyron exhales heavily. He isn’t used to a civilian sniping at him like this. It makes his pulse thump.

  “You’re just like everyone else I used to know. You know what they say to me, all these ghosts from my past? Ever since I got out of prison and started winning — and especially when it became clear I wasn’t going to stop winning — they all say the same thing. ‘Don’t forget me when you’re famous. Don’t forget me when you make it. Don’t forget me, don’t forget me, don’t forget me.’ And you know what I think each time I hear that? Don’t remember me when I make it. Don’t remember me. If you weren’t with me when I was homeless . . . if you weren’t with me when I was on the streets . . . if you weren’t with me in prison . . . don’t fucking remember me now. You couldn’t visit me inside, you couldn’t write me a letter, you couldn’t send me a fucking email, and I shouldn’t forget you? Don’t worry, I don’t. I don’t forget who you are. Not ever.”

  Tyron returns the cold stare levelled at him. “I don’t remember any letters from you when I was in Iraq. Or Afghanistan.”

  Antoine smiles. “Good point.”

  He takes a sudden step toward Tyron, whose muscles begin vibrating. “I always think of your parents when I see you,” Antoine says. “You look like them.”

  Tyron gives a brief nod. He struggles to find something to say. Can’t find the words to bridge the gap between them.

  “You ever wonder who killed them?”

  Tyron is so taken aback that he physically steps backward. Antoine is studying him closely now.

  “I stopped thinking about that a long time ago. Why?”