Undercard

by David Albertyn

  As his arms, legs, and core flow through combinations with Alejandro, Antoine looks past the weathered old man at the polished grey walls. I built this place, he thinks. I built the Reef.

  Marty Bloom’s children swore their father had written a new will right before his heart gave out, leaving his company to them. Bloom’s lawyer corroborated their story: Bloom decided to change his will after a private investigator hired by his children reported that Bloom’s young trophy wife was secretly a close associate of Norman Bashinsky, who everyone knew was gunning to own a casino on the Strip. This was long before Bashinsky’s casino licences in East Asia vaulted him onto the Forbes Top Five list.

  When it came time to file a lawsuit, the Bloom children and their lawyer failed to produce the revised will. Corporate espionage! Theft! they cried, yet there was no evidence of a break-in at either Bloom’s Las Vegas mansion or his lawyer’s office. And the young wife, she had copy after copy of a will naming her the inheritor of Bloom’s company, all conclusively signed in the hand of the late casino mogul.

  The lawsuit dragged on, but in the end Bashinsky gave the Blooms a peace offering, a small buyout when he took over the company — all he really cared about was the land on the Strip, and all they wanted was a payout and an end to their legal fees. Everyone walked away satisfied.

  Except for the man who handed Bashinsky an empire. His corpse was mangled by coyotes.

  The breath. Focus on the breath.

  7:18 p.m.

  If this place was a terrorist’s dream before, it’s a paradise for them now. There are crowds everywhere, the bars, clubs, shops, restaurants, blackjack tables, slot machines, poker rooms, baccarat rooms, fish tanks, elevators, escalators, passages, walkways, lobbies, bathrooms, just about every available space is taken up by people. Most of them have their eyes on the televisions that are placed strategically throughout the Reef. The undercard fights are in full swing, with a flyweight title bout ready to begin and Antoine’s match up next. Tyron wonders how he will ever find Naomi in such a flood of stylishly dressed people. Then he sees her, taller than every other woman there, and remembers that it was never difficult to spot Naomi in a crowd.

  The older guys at the Rising Star Boxing Club used to hound her about her looks: “Girl, what kind of mix could make you turn out so good?” “Girl, that’s a mix I could get into.”

  Tyron catches her eye as he makes his way through the currents of people toward her, and she pauses, and simply stares and smiles. He smiles too, surprised at how easily she can disarm him. Looking at her, for the first time in so long, he relinquishes his thoughts of terrorists and crowds, of bombs and blood, and he’s not in the desert anymore.

  She presses forward and they meet in the swell of people. In her heels, she is taller than him, like she used to be before he reached his full height of six foot two.

  “You look great,” she says.

  He shakes his head. “Come on now.”

  “What?”

  “It’s you who looks . . .” Breathtaking is the word he wants to use. While her black bangs fall to the side of her face, her hair is cut short in the back, exposing the smooth lines of her neck. “You look good,” he says, reluctant to use breathtaking on a woman who left him, a woman who chose another man, a woman who is married.

  She closes the gap between them and embraces him, and he closes his eyes as he encircles her waist with his arms and holds her tight. He catches the scent of her exposed neck, and an urge rears up inside him to bury his face against her and caress her skin with his lips.

  “Good to see you,” he says, after he has pulled away, in as plain a voice as he can manage.

  She peers into his eyes. “You okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “You look worried.”

  He tries to think of a response but in the end ignores the question and juts his head toward the sports bar, where you can both watch a host of different sports and wager on them. “Want to get a drink?”

  She nods and gives a half-smile, still staring at him like he is a mirage.

  There is nowhere to sit and barely enough room to stand, but they get drinks — her a martini, him another dark ’n’ stormy — and find a spot near one of the large TVs against the back wall. The flyweight fighters dart across the screen like characters in a video game, so fast and nimble they look unnatural, a film reel sped up.

  “Antoine’s up next,” she says, speaking loudly over the Top 40 music and the crush of so many conversations.

  “I’m nervous for him.”

  “Feels almost like it’s us about to go out there, doesn’t it?”

  “It does.” He watches the fighters, perspiring, gasping, and he feels his own blood rise. A desire comes over him to be out there, in their shoes, in the thrill of combat once more. He thought at the Olympic trials that he would never again be so nervous, and then he found a new level of fear, anticipation, and excitement when he first went into battle. But the battles kept coming, and the fear drained away. And the person he saw in the mirror was no longer his parents’ son but Captain Shaw. And that person doesn’t have a place here, in this city, in this country, in any space that isn’t a war zone. What am I going to do now? he wonders. What the fuck am I going to do now?

  Tyron wills himself back to the present, and turns from the TV to Naomi. “Antoine’s the only one still competing. Out of all of us, the only one left. You two made it the furthest. Only ones to go pro.”

  She muses on this, and a look of regret passes over her face. “You could’ve,” she says, “had you stayed with it.” She falters, realizing what she has alluded to. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have brought that up.”

  He gives a light shake of his head. “It’s fine, Naomi. It’s long in the past.” He looks up at the screen again and sips his drink. The fighters are in their corners, gulping water and catching their breath. “The truth is I never liked it as much as you and Antoine did. I didn’t have the personality for it. That killer instinct, I didn’t have it.”

  “No?”

  “Not then.”

  “And now you do?”

  Now I have it, he thinks, as the faces of the dead return to him. He clenches his jaw and pulls his gaze back into focus. Meets her look of apprehension.

  “When it’s necessary,” he says. “But I don’t like it. I don’t like dominating other people. Ultimately that’s what competing is about.”

  “But you’re a Marine.”

  “I was a Marine.”

  “Right. Still. Isn’t that —”

  “Isn’t that all about winning? Defeating the enemy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “For some. For me it was about protecting my men. Defending civilians. My parents believed that sports were beneficial but that you shouldn’t give up your life for them. There’s too much important work to be done in the world. I didn’t agree with them when they were around, but I do now.”

  “Do you miss them?” she asks.

  It’s different looking into a woman’s eyes when they are above his own. They shine like the surfaces of deep, dark pools: easy to get lost in, hard to escape. Don’t fall in, he thinks.

  “Not as much as I used to,” he says. “The Corps helped. It is a family.”

  He sees her mouth tighten, straining at its edges to pull down.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have brought that up.”

  “It’s the truth. Why be sorry? They gave you what you needed; I didn’t, it’s —” She looks at her glass, caresses the rim with a polished nail. Looks back to him. “And anyway, like you said, it’s long in the past.”

  They sip their drinks in silence and stare up at the TV. One of the flyweight fighters leaves an opening in his defence and receives a well-timed blow to the face. His head snaps back but he keeps on fighting. The ambivalence Tyron feels watching the violence con
cerns him. He is both repulsed by the brutality, by its commodification, and calmed by it.

  “What are you going to do now?” she asks.

  “Antoine hooked me up with a ticket for the fight.”

  “I meant with your life.”

  “I know. I was making a . . . I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life,” he shouts over the music and the other conversations, and he thinks that it is an embarrassing thing to say so loudly, even if no one else is listening. “I really don’t know.”

  “You’ve changed,” she says, watching his face intently. “Something’s changed.”

  “In what way?”

  She pauses, as though ensuring she understands for herself what she means before she speaks. He remembers her being reflective like this when they were younger, but she has also changed. He is surprised by how much more of a woman she looks now. She was no girl the last time he saw her: at six foot one and a pro basketball player it was hard to think of her as anything but a full-grown woman, but back then her face was rounder, softer, free of lines. He could not imagine her as a mother in those days. He can now. He thinks she is all the more beautiful for it.

  “You’re more sure of yourself,” she says.

  He laughs, which makes him think that his new drink is getting to him, but he does not mind this time around, now that he is with her. Terrorists aren’t his responsibility anymore. Or at least, they are now secondary to the wants and needs of his own life. “I’m thirty-two years old, I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life, and you think I’m more sure of myself?”

  “You’re more sure of being unsure. You never would’ve admitted to something like that back in the day.”

  He smiles at her and sees that her drink is empty. “Another one?”

  She gives a hesitant smile and then nods. He leaves her to wait in line at the bar. As he waits he checks his phone and sees that he has missed a text. Another one from Marlon. Young brother meet me at my place 6 am tmrw. And there is a second one. Please. It’s important.

  I’ll be there, Tyron writes back. He ponders whether he would come to the same decision if he was sober, and decides that he would. He likes and respects Marlon and will help him any way he can, provided it doesn’t conflict with one of his principles — like turning his back on an old friend.

  Speaking of which, he thinks, don’t forget that Naomi is Keenan’s wife.

  In that purple dress, that slip of fabric hugging her the way he would hug her, how could any man not forget that she was off limits? He arrives at a clean solution. When he returns to her with the drinks, he’ll bring up Keenan and keep bringing him up in their conversation.

  It has the opposite effect of what he intended.

  “I’m leaving him,” she says.

  “What?”

  “I wasn’t planning to tell you so soon, but it’s not exactly like we’re strangers. I’m going to leave him, Ty.”

  Leaning back, holding her drink off to one side, she looks like a movie star, all cool, casual confidence, so calm that he thinks either she is joking or she came to this decision a long time ago. “Are you serious?”

  “I stayed with him through the trial because I didn’t want to abandon him when he needed my help. But now that he’s been acquitted, I can let him go.” She turns to the side and stares off into the distance, the hint of a sad smile on her lips. “It’s funny. Had he been convicted and sent to prison I would’ve stayed with him.” She turns back to Tyron, and there are tears in her eyes. “We both escaped.”

  In that moment, Tyron realizes he had misread her behaviour: she wasn’t joking, and she wasn’t nearly as confident as she seemed; she was just better at hiding her pain. He wraps her in his arms, squeezes her against him, and cannot stop himself from kissing her on the cheek. When he lets go, she continues to hold on.

  At last she pulls away and wipes the tears from her eyes with a couple flicks of her thumb. It’s the baller in her, reclaiming control. She looks up at the screen. “This fight’s almost over.”

  Tyron follows her lead and sees that the flyweight bout is in its final round. One of the fighters has a horribly swollen eye and the other has a gash across his forehead. Nothing compared to the wounds Tyron has staunched himself.

  “I just know Antoine’s going to win,” Naomi says. “It’s incredible what he’s become.”

  She watches the screen but Tyron watches her. He pulls his fight ticket from his pocket and hands it to her. “Here. You go. You’ll have to hang with Ricky, which I’m sure he’ll prefer, but you’ll get to see Antoine live.”

  “No. It’s yours.”

  “Take it. I want you to go.”

  “Really? You don’t mind?”

  “I only got the tickets for Ricky. And you were always a better boxer than me anyway. Take it.”

  She holds the ticket tight and grins at him. “What will you do?”

  “I’ll watch the fights here and meet up with you guys when it’s over. Go. You don’t want to miss Antoine’s entrance.”

  “Thanks, Ty.” She looks down at the ticket in her hand. “It really is great to see you again.”

  He nods. “You too.”

  7:27 p.m.

  Through fluorescent-lit service tunnels, Keenan hurries from the hotel to the arena. A fight broke out in the crowd and an old man fainted; in both cases security was called to step in, requiring more guards to fill their posts. He finds a stairwell at the end of the tunnel and springs up the stairs three at a time. He is to join the detail that takes boxers to and from the ring. The next match can’t start without him.

  Keenan emerges from the grey underworkings of the casino resort, returning to Norman Bashinsky’s meticulous aquatic aesthetic. Some call the man a genius, a visionary ahead of his time. Others argue that he is a businessman so ruthless he puts the rest of the Fortune 500 CEOs to shame. Makes them look naive instead of Machiavellian. Keenan hasn’t thought much on the subject, but he does remember when, some years ago, a high-profile, purportedly corrupt Chinese bureaucrat was murdered in a Reef hotel room. It wasn’t the murder that stuck out to Keenan so much as what followed: soon after, Bashinsky received licences from the Chinese government to build several casinos in Macao. Wall Street fell in love with him after that, and as Reef Resorts stock rose, so too did Bashinsky’s personal fortune.

  Keenan passes through a security checkpoint into the interior of the stadium. A guard he met earlier in his shift is waiting for him outside the entrance to one of the dressing rooms. “We’ll move out in a few minutes,” he says to Keenan.

  Keenan nods. “Who we taking?”

  “Deco. He’s just finishing his warm-up now. We’ll get the call soon.”

  Antoine, Keenan thinks, you just can’t get rid of me today.

  Funny, though, that when they were kids it was the opposite. Keenan couldn’t get rid of Antoine. Keenan had everything set up at the Rising Star Boxing Club: his best friend, a hot girl for them to compete over, a good coach in Tony. They were rising stars, all three of them; him, Ty, and Naomi all going places. They were the best athletes at their schools, the best young boxers at the gym, and the best of friends. Then this small, quiet, intense Latino showed up.

  Keenan didn’t mind that he had to compete with Tyron for Naomi’s attention. He competed with Tyron in everything, why not the pursuit of her too? It was unfortunate, though, that he had never realized Tyron didn’t feel the same way. Had he foreseen that, the distance between them might not have grown.

  But while Keenan didn’t mind Tyron as a rival for Naomi’s attention, all it took was one look from Antoine and he wanted to smash the kid. They’d get in the ring to spar and he would pound the shit out of Antoine and feel that all had been set to rights. But Antoine would just crawl back to his feet, slink through the ropes, and be the same as ever, only bruised and bloodied. Worse yet was when Tony
Wilks would commend Antoine on how hard he worked or how much courage and toughness he showed; the way Antoine’s eyes would light up, like it was the first compliment he’d ever been paid, made Keenan want to pound him all over again.

  It wasn’t just at boxing that Keenan had to put up with the kid. It seemed that wherever he went — basketball, football, track — Antoine was always there. Thank God Tyron didn’t play tennis or Terrence Shaw would have involved his foster child in that too.

  Of course, Antoine grew on him over time. It helped that Naomi never showed any interest in him, and it was useful having a third member in their crew — fourth if Naomi was with them. Besides, Antoine did get better at just about everything, so that the three boys came to dominate not only in the ring but on the football field, the basketball court, and in the 4 × 400-metre relay. And no one who wasn’t packing heat would ever mess with the three of them when they were together. There were also things about Antoine that were amusing, like when Keenan would buy the others ice cream or freezies. Antoine would look so touched, as if Keenan had opened a vein for him. Keenan would feel magnanimous in these moments, proud that he was helping those less fortunate.

  But when the time came to choose between being magnanimous or getting rid of Antoine, Keenan chose the latter. A month before the killing of Terrence and Viola Shaw, a strange thing happened at boxing practice. First, Keenan’s father came into the gym instead of just dropping him off at the door — and even that was rare now that Keenan could drive himself. Then, he grabbed a hold of Terrence Shaw when he came in to drop off Tyron and Antoine, and took him to a corner of the gym. Tyron and Antoine were out for a warm-up run during the conversation, but since Keenan had arrived earlier, he was already inside putting on his hand wraps. The sound of his father’s raised voice made him edge closer to where they were speaking. The men were on good terms, but their relationship went no further than parents whose sons were friends. To Keenan’s knowledge, this was the first time they had ever spoken in private.