by A. J. Downey
“Well,” she said, pushing her empty bowl to the center of the table. “Shall we?”
“We shall,” I agreed and got up. We got dressed and carried the dishes down to the kitchen. We weren’t in a terribly big hurry to get to the gym, needing to give ourselves time to digest. So, we cleaned up the place before we left, leaving the dishwasher to run and getting laundry separated and ready to do when we got back.
She grabbed her overstuffed gym bag and I asked, “Don’t you want to empty some of that out?”
“Nope!” she declared and marched right out the door.
I laughed and shook my head.
“Okay.”
The ride over to the gym was both damp and brisk, but Claire didn’t complain. I was an all-weather, any-season rider, so it didn’t bother me. She just kept impressing me, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. She’d really pulled herself up by the bootstraps, and I couldn’t honestly be any prouder. I gave her a quick kiss and we parted ways at the locker rooms. I geared up to work out and went back out to wait for her. I had a feeling she would want to hit it hard today, as a means of compensation for her assured drop in activity level, thanks to that asshole.
I was a little surprised when she came out of the women’s locker room in short little skin-tight black workout shorts and a matching black long-sleeved workout jacket, zipped all the way up. I mean, her attire wasn’t all that surprising; what was, was the fact she had her gym bag slung across her chest. She stopped by the climbing ropes and lingered, looking at the center one critically.
“You good, Claire?” I asked, and she nodded faintly, clearly distracted.
McGowan, one of ICPD’s training officers, and the one who’d given her a little flak the day before asked her, “How about it, sweetheart? Want to give it a go?”
“Sure, I’ll give it a shot,” she said cheerfully, and I detected some mischief. “I even bet you that not only will I beat you to the top, I’ll do it with this on,” she said shaking her bag. McGowan, the arrogant prick that he could be, laughed his ass off at her. A bunch of the other guys around the gym, taking notice that some shit was about to go down, started putting up weights or hopping off machines to come watch the drama.
“Oh, Lord,” I muttered and put my hands on my hips.
“Bet you this crisp, one-hundred-dollar bill, you can’t hang with me. Not even close. Not even a little bit.” She pulled a hundred out of her pocket, and I blinked, wondering where the fuck she’d come up with that.
Laughter swept through the gathering crowd.
“Oh, you’re on, sweetheart. Easiest hundred I’ll ever make.”
“Your girl isn’t very smart, Martinez!” someone called out. I looked over, to a guy that used to work with my brother once upon a time.
“I don’t know about that, Fitch,” I said evenly.
“I do,” someone called out with surety.
“McGowan has one of the fastest times in the rope climb in the department, little girl,” someone told Claire.
She smiled carefully, stretched some, and said, “Oh, that’s nice.”
I just stood back as bets started getting placed and cellphones started coming out. McGowan let her have the center rope and went to the third one, closer to the locker rooms. He stretched, and someone stood in to officiate with an official start time, and he and Claire lined up and took positions.
I took a deep breath and let it out slow. The officer dropped his arm and shouted ‘Go!’ and ‒ holy fucking shit.
Clair gripped the rope, turned upside-down, planted the arches of her feet against the rope, and hand-over-hand, foot placed over foot to either side of that rope, she skittered up that fucker like a spider up a web, reaching the top before McGowan got half-way up.
I felt my jaw drop, and I swear, you could hear a pin drop in that gym. Someone called out, “Please tell me you got that shit recorded.”
A murmur broke out, but Claire, it seemed, wasn’t done. She had righted herself, locking her legs around the rope and holding herself aloft by just her feet while she held onto the U-bolt set in the ceiling. Her other hand, she used to rummage in her gym bag.
“What are you doing?” McGowan called up, panting and sweating, while Claire was hanging up there like a monkey, cool as a cucumber.
“You’ll see,” she called down. She pulled a connector out of the top of her bag with some cloth attached and hooked it up. “Okay, look out, guys.” She then looped the strap of her gym bag off over her head and dropped it.
A voluminous amount of cloth cascaded from the ceiling as the bag fell and struck the blue mats at our feet with a thwack. I was grinning like a madman and silently cheered her on as she transferred from the rope to the silk, holding herself aloft as she toed off her shoes, first one, then the other, to join her bag down on the floor.
She deftly twisted herself in the cloth and stood in two almost-stirrups, as she unzipped her jacket and peeled it off. It fluttered to the floor, and more phones went up to capture what she was up to. She was up there in nothing but the black little short-shorts and a matching black athletic bra, and she looked right at home.
She unfastened the climbing rope and dropped it, getting it out of her way. I went in and started gathering her things up, clearing out underneath her, kind of mesmerized by her level of skill and core strength to be doing some of what she was doing. A couple of the guys, and some female officers who had come in, stared up at her, while another joined me in coiling the climbing rope.
I don’t know what I pictured when she said she was a silk dancer, but this isn’t what I expected…
Holy shit.
16
Claire…
“Can somebody put on the radio or something?” I asked. I reveled in the feeling of the night silks against my skin. Aleksi had handed over the actual performing silks, a beautifully-dyed amalgamation of blues and purples with splatters of white dots across the material. Somehow the dying process used made the silks look like every beautiful rendition of a nebulous galaxy you’d ever seen. With the whispering flow of the material, it was quite beautiful, whether under a spotlight on a darkened stage or under the harsh fluorescent lighting of the gym now.
“Yeah, I got it. Hang on a second!” A woman I didn’t know called out from below. She jogged over to the front desk wrap, and the gym’s sound system gave a static crackle. She called out, “Any preference as to what you want?”
“Nothing too fast, otherwise I’m open!” I called back.
“How about some AWOL Nation?” she asked.
“Sail?” I asked.
“Yeah!”
“Perfect, give me two seconds.” I twisted and set myself up for a drop, hanging upside down, holding myself up and letting the blood rush to my head. I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and called out, “Hit it!”
The first notes floated out over the silent workout equipment and I could feel the onlookers below hold their collective breath. I closed my eyes, felt the beat and the first vocals hit, and I let go and threw myself into the routine.
I dropped, plummeting halfway down the silks to cheers and applause, and couldn’t help but smile. I danced, moving my body sinuously, winding it through the two hanging sheets of the night silks, twisting myself through them to the music, stretching, arching, artfully letting go and immersing myself into the act.
It was different, freestyling like this, no rigid choreography to hold me down. It had been a while since I enjoyed myself, unfettered by Night Circus company bullshit, and it felt so good. I tumbled, swinging the silks out from my hands, giving myself wings and letting myself fly, and the small crowd below went nuts, whistling and cheering.
Honestly, I couldn’t care about the lot of them. I only cared about one, and what he thought. I was happy to finally be able to perform for my Angel, to let him see one of the best parts of me, after only seeing some of the worst lately.
I tucked and spun, rolled and stretched, displayed every bit of my athleticism and fl
exibility, and felt my confidence rise with every gasp, clap, and cheer.
Fuck Milo Sarkisyan and his bullshit unreachable standards. I had met or exceeded every one of them, but I didn’t have to anymore. There was no point in me chasing the impossible. I knew I was good. One of the, if not the best to have held my position at the Night Circus, and the Night Circus wasn’t the end-all of be-all’s when it came to this type of performance, either. I had money, I had my name, and I would figure it out.
I did a final drop, the silks pulling tight around my hips as I flung out my arms and arched, looking up and straight into the eyes of the man who loved me as the last notes of the song faded over the gym’s sound system. I crooked a finger at Angel to ‘Come here’ and he obliged, walking up to me casually and kissing me as I hung, suspended from the ceiling, wrapped in the comfort and freedom of my trade.
Everyone around us was going nuts, the applause loud; the ear-splitting whistles louder, and the cheering bolstering my confidence and spirits even more.
“That was amazing,” he whispered.
I laughed and said, “That was just me going off the top of my head, I’m just getting started.”
He laughed softly and let me go. I looked past him and straightened into a more vertical position, and asked the man who’d asked if I thought I could hang with them yesterday, “So, I ask you again, do you think you can hang with me?”
He laughed and hung his head, his hands on his hips, and then reached into one of the cargo pockets of his sweats. He opened up his wallet and handed me five twenties.
“You win, girly,” he said, and I tucked the money into my sports bra.
I winked at him. “A pleasure doing business with you.”
He laughed a little and I reached up, hand over hand, climbing back to the top. The woman who had set the music asked, “Do you want another song?”
I smiled down at her and said, “Not right now, thanks. I think, if it’s alright, I’m just going to practice a few tricks and call it a day.”
“You do you, just put the climbing rope back up when you’re done,” the man I’d won the money off of called.
“Sure.”
“Babe, I’m going to get some cardio in,” Angel called up.
“Okay! I love you.”
He laughed. “I love you, too.” He bowed his head and shook it, grinning, before heading over to one of the stair-climbers across the big room.
“How much core strength does that even take?” I heard one of the other guys ask, and I laughed, answering even though the question had been rhetorical.
“A lot.”
“I wanna learn how to do it!” one of the female officers declared.
“It’s not too hard to start; it’s actually surprisingly easy,” I said, hanging upside down. “Here, come here, I’ll show you a couple of things.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, come on over here.”
She walked over, her short blonde ponytail bobbing, and I slid down the silks.
“First off, there’s a lot more going on with your legs than you’d expect. It’s easier climbing the silks than it is rope, watch me.” I pulled myself just off the ground with my arms and layered one foot on the bottom, then, trapping the silk between the top of it and the bottom of my other foot, I stood.
“You can just almost stand here forever and just use the silk for balance so you don’t go ass-over-teakettle.” To make my point, I gently leaned into the silks and took my hands away, braced against the silks with my shoulder.
“Cool.”
“Come on, you try…”
I spent the rest of my time transitioning from the joy of doing to the joy of helping others do.
I hadn’t realized that McGowan was not only a part-time training officer, but was also one of five officers on the verge of retirement who owned the gym. He approached me as I was getting ready to put his climbing rope back up.
“Gotta say,” he began, “you schooled me, but good, little girl.”
I smiled to myself and said, “Sorry, you did kind of make it pretty easy for me.”
“I did, I did,” he said laughing. “I’ll own it. Sometimes the good ol’ boys club mentality gets the better of me.”
I respected him for that. He itched the side of his face, which was scruffy with a few days’ growth. I mean, picture a bald-headed Sam Elliot, fit and aging gracefully. That was this guy.
I was securing the climbing rope by tying the bottom of one of my silks around it so I could climb to the top and haul it up after me when he drifted closer.
“You ever put a mind to teaching this stuff for real? Like some actual classes?” he asked.
“I mean, I could instruct, but my heart is really in performing, why do you ask?”
“I’m about to retire and a cop’s pension isn’t what it used to be in today’s market. This place is supposed to supplement mine and my partner’s income, but there are four of us and the plan was to keep this a cop’s gym for as long as possible, but lately we been getting too close to not making it with just cops comin’ here and paying their dues.”
“Ah, is that why you opened it up to family?”
“Yeah. We’re probably going to open it up to the public, too, here, soon. Unless…”
“Unless?”
“Well, we been talkin’ setting up specialized classes. Like CrossFit and, well, something like what you do could be a thing, too. We got some back rooms that are just being used as storage, collecting dust and the like. We could clean them out and you’d have your own space to practice whenever you like.”
“In exchange for teaching some classes?”
“Well, yeah, but you’d be paid for those, too. Nothing like a salary, but we could maybe work something out on a per-class basis.” I thought about it. “Think you might be interested?” he asked.
“I could be,” I said. “I mean, it would just be a part-time thing, right?”
“Right. I’d need to talk to my partners, of course, before we could solidify anything.”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “Let me know what they say. I’d be down.”
He grinned, “Okay then. I’ll let you know. Let me get your information.”
I gave him my phone number and email.
“Yeah, let me know,” I said, and hoisted myself up the silks. It took effort, but I prided myself on making it look effortless. Angel had stood by silently, smiling to himself and I think he was as excited as I was about the prospect of not having to leave, that there might be money to be made with my craft while staying right here.
I put back up what I’d taken down and with a heavy sigh, clung to the less-forgiving rope and unhooked my silks. I looked down and Angel was there, gathering the bottoms of the silks into my bag. I hooked the top of them into my waistband and worked my way down the rope at a sedate pace so that he could gather them up, and by the time I hit the floor, all I had to do was drop the connections on the top until next time.
“Let’s go shopping and let’s get home,” he said, hooking an arm around my shoulders and pulling me into his side. He kissed my temple and I nodded, bending to grab my shoes and jacket and walking with him towards the locker rooms.
Between the sex last night and the small performance, and the freedom to do what I wanted today, I was more relaxed than I had been in a long time.
I’d needed this.
17
Angel…
When we returned home from the gym and our shopping excursion, she had an email waiting for her from the Night Circus telling her to basically stand by while they investigated the situation, and that they would get back to her as soon as possible. She said she’d give them until the end of the week, before she contacted them again if she hadn’t heard from them. I figured that was fair.
In the meantime, I still had to work, which was where I was. That night was a total shit-show.
“Whoa, we got a ped’s case. Fuck me and this city, this is gonna be bad.”
I frow
ned and looked over from the driver’s seat at Johnson, who was tapping around on the tablet, accepting the call. Tina came over the radio.
“Dispatch 641.” I picked up the mic and depressed the talk button.
“641, Dispatch go ahead.”
“Álpha 641 you have priority one traffic for a 34-S, male approximately two years old, the scene is Code 4.”
“Copy that, Dispatch. Alpha 641 en route.” I hung up the mic, flipped the lights and siren and mashed down on the accelerator, kicking it into high gear.
A 34-S was a gunshot victim, Code 4 meant the scene was secured by ICPD. I was dreading this one.
“Who the fuck shoots a two-year-old, man?”
I shook my head. “You know how it goes. These bangers just start spraying bullets and don’t give a fuck who they hit.”
That was senseless violence that, at least, still made some kind of sense.
What we rolled up on, though? That was evil in its purest form.
“What the fuck is this?” Johnson asked, just as confused as I was.
“I don’t know…” I trailed off.
There was a car parked, the driver’s door hanging open, just chilling in the middle of the road, cop cars surrounding it, a regular blue-and-white-light disco party lighting up the night sky, strobing over the nearby buildings.
I got out of the truck and made eye contact with Poe. He shook his head and my heart sank. We weren’t here to save anybody. We were here to put the call in for an official TOD, or Time of Death.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It’s bad, bro. I’m so sorry it’s you…” he said.
“Where?” I demanded.
“Still in his car seat.” Poe fell into step beside me. “His mom stopped at a gas station over on Morley and 21st. She got out of the car and was headed around to pump her gas when this fool jumps in and takes off, her baby boy asleep in his car seat. Dude pulls a drive-by, kid wakes up and starts screaming, so he shoots the baby in the face.”
