Undercard

by David Albertyn

  Antoine never forgot that Tony let the young man return to the gym — months later, after his jaw had healed. The guy never looked at Naomi again and became one of Tony’s most committed fighters. Nevertheless, Antoine couldn’t understand that level of forgiveness.

  Tyron and Keenan didn’t like fighting Naomi. Not because she was a girl, but because they didn’t like losing, and she always won.

  Back then Naomi was almost a head taller than Tyron and Keenan, and she was head and shoulders above Antoine. She was also more beautiful than any girl Antoine had ever seen. He would challenge her to fights just to be near her, even though she’d whoop him worse than Tyron and Keenan. Looking up at her from the mat, flattened, blood running from his nose, he couldn’t help but enjoy seeing her smile.

  After practice, the boys and Naomi would go to the convenience store around the corner, and walk back slowly with the snacks they had bought, although Antoine and Tyron rarely bought anything, their pockets mostly empty. But sometimes Keenan would buy freezies or ice cream for the four of them, and then Antoine would feel that he wasn’t so alone, that he had people to support and care for him.

  All he wanted on those languid walks was to say something to Naomi that might make her laugh or smile. But his mind blanked whenever he opened his mouth, while Tyron and Keenan were suddenly wittier than ever. The only thing he ever managed to say to her was “You fought really well today” or “You were really good,” which she appreciated at first, but she looked at him strangely when he kept saying it day after day. He meant it, though. Every time he said it, he meant it.

  Eventually basketball took up too much of her time and she came less and less to the gym. The boys still saw her outside of boxing, but by then Antoine had even less to say to her. Back at the gym, he worked harder than ever.

  But before Naomi moved on to focus on basketball exclusively, and Keenan decided that tennis was his main priority, and Tyron’s track and field training took him away from the sweet science of bruising; before all that, while Antoine was still new to pugilism and not utterly immersed in it, he discovered the name of the man who had lived in the mansion he and his father had robbed. The night his father was murdered. The man’s name was Marty Bloom, and he was a casino owner. After his death, controlling interest of his company passed to his young wife, who sold it at a bargain rate to Norman Bashinsky. Bashinsky imploded the casino and built a new one over it. He called it the Reef.

  6:37 p.m.

  Tyron can’t remember the last time he saw so many people indoors. A terrorist’s dream, he thinks. But there are a lot of security personnel here too. They seem competent enough. He grimaces. Competent enough, what the fuck are you thinking? Never underestimate the innovations of extremists.

  Different desert, he warns himself. Different desert.

  Part of him enjoys being buzzed for the first time in so long, the looseness and giddiness of it. Another part is repulsed at himself for dulling his wits — he himself choosing to do this, what an insane thing — and in such a crowd. So many people packed so close together as they slowly mill toward the arena. A terrorist’s dream. Dulling his wits in a terrorist’s dream.

  “Oh shit, there’s Jennifer Lawrence,” says Ricky. “I told you there’d be some fine fucking women here.”

  You wouldn’t even need a bomb, Tyron thinks. Not even a submachine gun. People this close together, just a semi-automatic pistol and you could take out a dozen before they got to you.

  “I wonder if she plans on slumming tonight.”

  And I kept drinking and chose to dull my wits. I’m going to miss something. Fuck.

  “Sure, she’s had better. Better looking. Better in bed, probably. Famous, rich, successful. Just better men in general. But has she had funnier?”

  As vigilant as Tyron tries to be, his mind shifts back to the mermaid, Layla, who kissed him again when they were leaving the blackjack tables. She gave him her number and told him to text her when he got out of the fight. And now he is once again happy that he has the alcohol in his bloodstream, happy that it is awakening something that had been dormant in him when the lives of his men, and all those civilians who were suffering before his eyes, were of such pressing concern. How good it would be to be with a woman again. Almost too good to imagine.

  “Okay, she’s definitely had funnier — there are way too many comedians in Hollywood. But like I said, maybe she’s into slumming tonight. Maybe she’s like, ‘I want something different tonight, I want a guy who’s inferior in every way to the guys I’m normally with.’ It happens, you know, it actually does happen.”

  Tyron’s cell vibrates and his heart checks against his ribcage. The mermaid. Layla. He pulls the phone out while he continues shuffling forward through the cavernous Reef hallway, packed from one side to the other with people. The escalators to the arena are just up ahead. His eyes widen when he reads the text.

  “’Cause movie stars, they don’t actually want to be with other stars. It’s true. Stars always want to be the centre of attention. They always got to be the biggest deal in the room. Stars, if they’re with each other, they’re like . . . they’re like, competing with each other, you know. They want to be treated like idols, not rivals. That’s why so many crazy people are with shit boxes. You know what I mean? So what do you think? You think it’s possible?”

  Tyron looks at Ricky beside him for the first time in a long while. “I think you could be Jennifer Lawrence’s shit box,” he says.

  “Man,” Ricky says, shaking his head like he’s holding back tears, “that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

  Tyron motions for Ricky to follow him, then squeezes his way over to the wall, outside the flow of the crowd. When Ricky catches up to him he says, “You remember Naomi? That girl that me and —”

  “Naomi, of course, who could forget Naomi? That killer cop stole her from you.”

  “No, it wasn’t like that. Don’t say that. Don’t spread that shit either.”

  Ricky shrugs noncommittally. Tyron grabs Ricky by the shirt. “It wasn’t like that. Don’t tell people that. And stop calling Keenan a killer.”

  “Whatever. He is.”

  Tyron shakes Ricky. “I said don’t call him that. Not in front of me.”

  Security has taken notice of them. He lets Ricky go. The security guard continues eyeing Tyron but makes no other move.

  “With that kind of anger I’m pretty sure you could take out J-Law’s bodyguards. They’re big motherfuckers, but you got ’em, Ty. Then I can make my move.”

  Tyron forces a laugh, regretting his outburst. “I’m sorry, man.”

  “It’s cool. So, what about Naomi?”

  “She’s coming here. Key told her about me and Antoine. The whole crew in one place for the first time since we were in college. Maybe even before then. She’s stuck in traffic but she’ll be here soon.”

  A look of concern crosses Ricky’s face. “How you feel about seeing her?”

  Tyron tilts his head to the side in a kind of shrug. “I don’t know, man. This is one crazy day.”

  Ricky laughs. “It’s about to get crazier, cuz. What you want me to do? I’ll be your backup if that’s what you need.”

  “No, you go into the fight. Jennifer Lawrence needs someone to creep on her, right?”

  “Amen, brother. I’ll see you in there.”

  They clap hands and embrace, then Ricky joins the current again and Tyron pushes his way back out through the waves of people.

  6:44 p.m.

  Naomi is wearing lipstick. A dark red, almost purple, lipstick. She never wears lipstick, unless she’s attending a wedding or something. She was surprised she even had something like this in her meagre makeup kit, then remembered it had been a gift a couple of years ago. Putting it on, this tiny act of vanity, concerns her. It concerns her because she would not be wearing it if she were not on her
way to see Tyron. She could lie to herself, say that she put on lipstick because she’s going to the biggest party on the Strip this year and wants to fit in, but she has never cared about fitting in. At her height, how could she, except on the court. She feels guilty already, but why? Because she is wearing something most women wear every day? And yet she knows that she is not most women.

  Naomi looks out the cab window and wishes the traffic would move faster. Saturday night, fight night, she knows it’s not going to, but she wishes it would. It has been so many years, what difference does another ten or twenty minutes make?

  Her hands rest in her lap, her fingers between her thighs, and she can almost smell him. Yes, twenty minutes makes a difference. He’s back. And out of the Marines. And Antoine’s there too. A big success now, like he’d always wanted.

  She was the only one of them to visit him in prison. In that bright, bland, white visitation hall that smelled of bleach, she asked him why he had never asked her out.

  He stared at her, and then just shook his head. “I’m not in the habit of pursuing futile endeavours.”

  “You might have been surprised.”

  “No. You didn’t think of me like that.”

  And he was right, she didn’t. But she did care about him, and she was impressed by him. He never gave up. No matter how hard things got for him. That’s how she knew he would make it out of prison.

  The cab cruises forward then stops again, still a block and a half from the Reef. But of course, these are monstrous Las Vegas blocks. The casinos rise like mountains on either side of her, some flashy and sleek, others horrendously gaudy. She wonders if she should just get out and walk the rest of the way, but there is nowhere to get out on Las Vegas Boulevard except at the casino cabstands, and to walk these blocks in heels would just be ignorant.

  Heels. A six-foot-one woman in heels. My God, you are trying hard.

  But isn’t that what women are supposed to wear when they want to attract a man: lipstick and high heels and a dark purple dress with slits down the legs, rising that long, long way up her thighs?

  Not that she wants to take Tyron to bed. She just wants him to want her again, to remember what he gave up when he joined the fucking Marine Corps. “Antoine thinks you’re making a big mistake,” she’d said to him when they were twenty-one, just after the Olympic trials.

  He laughed derisively. “Antoine’s one to judge. Though I guess he does know a thing or two about making mistakes. Why are you still going down there to see him?”

  “Someone has to! Shit, Ty, we’re all he’s got. Other than those psychos he rolls with who got him locked up in the first place. And since you and Key won’t see him, it’s up to me.”

  “So what did he say,” Tyron asked, “about the Marines? Why is it a mistake?”

  “He said the U.S. military is just a means to create the conditions in which American companies can exploit the Global South.”

  “The Global South?”

  “The non-white countries of the world. And he said the Marines especially, because they’re always forward deployed. He says that what you’ll be doing is enforcing neocolonialism. You’ll be the spear tip of neocolonialism. He said the only people you’ll be serving are the corporate elite, and the only people you’ll be fighting are the poor and the marginalized.”

  Tyron looked like he was going to punch the wall. “I am so fucking sick of this guy. The self-righteousness of this lowdown criminal, to judge me — this fuck!”

  She had never seen Tyron so angry.

  “The only good thing about my parents being gone,” he said, “is that they never had to see what a degenerate Antoine has become.”

  “People run with gangs, Ty. Especially people who have no one. It’s not like he’s killed anyone.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if he has. I’ve heard some things.”

  “Rumours.”

  “Even if they are rumours, I know he didn’t get caught for half the shit he’s done. If he had, he’d be in there a damn lot longer.”

  “Regardless, he has a point about the Marines.”

  “A point? You gone mad, woman?”

  “It seems to me all he does in there is read and work out. Maybe there’s something to what he’s saying.”

  “He’s doing more than that. That crew of his won’t let him sit idle.”

  “Whatever! Forget him. I don’t want you to go. So what, you didn’t make it to the Olympics. In another four years, you will. I got drafted. I’ll support you until you go pro.”

  He looked even angrier than before. “I’m not going to be supported by you,” he said, his voice so low and cold that she knew it was over then.

  A week before, at the trials, she had been so hopeful. He would need a serious personal best if he was to have a chance of qualifying in the decathlon, but she felt he could do it. He had such incredible motivation. The Olympics, endorsements, money, a little bit of fame, and yet all his competitors had those same motivations. But he had one extra. Her. She had already told him that she would not stay with him if he joined the Corps, and he had already told her that he was joining the Corps if he didn’t qualify. Both were averse to breaking their word or changing course if they had set their minds on something. There could only be one happy outcome.

  She had always loved watching Tyron compete. In his singlet, which left his broad shoulders and much of his heavy chest bare, and in his skin-tight Lycra shorts, which showed off his sinuously carved legs, he really was a sight to behold. He looked like he was born of the folklore her mother told her as a child.

  The javelin throw was her favourite event. There was something about him running with that spear held aloft at shoulder height, picking up speed, faster and faster, a sprint now, and then stabbing his front leg into the rubberized ground, flinging his front hip backward and hurling his torso forward, the beauty of his release, his arm extending so fully, so fluidly, the javelin soaring in its tight spiral, like he was the champion on some ancient battlefield, and it was his projectile, flying further than the rest, that would draw first blood. Its whistling plunge deep into the field, pointing upright out of the grass, would give her chills.

  Usually, after two days spent watching him compete, Naomi couldn’t stop thinking about taking him to her room, to not even let him shower, just strip him naked, fling him onto the bed, and ride him. But after ten events, warm-ups and cool-downs included for each of them, he was a spent man. Tyron barely had enough strength to eat, his stores of energy depleted and then some, his meagre fat burned away, his muscles stripped for further fuel. She would have to wait a day, even two, before she could have him. Even then he was tired and dazed, but he was hard and alive, and she could pull him on top of her and feel his strength flowing into her and hers flowing back into him, and she thought of him throwing that javelin as she came.

  But on the sunny days of the Olympic trials, she felt no desire during the javelin event. She didn’t feel that she could barely control herself when she watched him in his form-fitting track gear. And she knew that this was a bad sign. For him and their relationship.

  He did end up recording a personal best, though. She could see that he was tense, but he gritted through it and pushed beyond his previous limits. The U.S. team had some real superstars that year — when don’t they in the decathlon? Tyron didn’t even make it as an alternate.

  After he completed his final event, the 1,500 metres, she wanted to go down to the edge of the track to hug him, but she was weeping so hard that she rushed to the bathroom instead and locked herself in a stall. She never forgot that she wasn’t there to give him condolences and congratulations after he had pushed himself so hard and still come up short. She was making it easier for him to go through with his decision, she knew, but she just couldn’t leave that stall. She couldn’t face anyone, crying the way she was, least of all him.

  Naomi
wipes away a couple of tears and gathers up her purse, as the cab pulls up to the entrance to the Reef.

  8

  7:17 p.m.

  Antoine focuses on his breathing during his warm-up in the dressing room. The routine is ingrained. No need to consciously engage during the planks, the rope, the squats, the stretches, the shadow boxing combinations: he can execute them mindlessly. He wants to be mindless in the lead-up to the fight, because once the bell rings . . .

  He is not looking forward to the state of extreme concentration he will have to enter. It is painful, more painful than the physical blows he will have to endure. So for now, he focuses on the breath, only the breath.

  There is one thought, though, that he cannot escape. You have to win. You have to. Tonight, it is the only option. This gnawing thought worries him. Since his release from prison, his focus has always been on process, technique, tactics — not results, not outcome. But tonight he has to win.

  He cannot shake the thought. And if his mind is on the outcome, then it cannot be on his technique, which is what matters most. Execution. People make sports complicated, but in the end it comes down to who executes better. That’s really all it is. Now, figuring out how to execute better than the best in the world — that is complicated. That is what Antoine spent his time in prison struggling to decipher. That and the odd mission for the Latin Knights.

  It would seem from his successes in the ring since his release that he has deciphered the secret, but he has yet to square off against a fighter like Kolya “Clayface” Konitsyn, the man with jaw and fists of clay. Konitsyn has never lost a fight and knocked out his last nineteen opponents. According to some, he is the future of the division. Antoine has never been knocked out. Even before he went inside, he was never knocked out.