by Matt Rogers
More nods.
‘Just three,’ he said. ‘Don’t get carried away. This isn’t a test of your cardio. We’re obviously new here and we’re not familiar with what level these sessions are at. We’re also not here to ruffle feathers. I hope you’ve all left your egos at the door. It’s the fastest way to improve, and if you’re not here to improve then I don’t know why you’d bother showing up. Now, I’m Will, and my buddy here is Jason. We may critique you but it’s because we want everything done with perfect technique. If you have perfect technique, you make perfect decisions, and you win fights. For the next forty-five minutes we might not be very nice to you. But at the end of it you’ll be better. Does anyone have a problem with anything I just said?’
Everyone shook their heads, and Slater didn’t think he was imagining the increased enthusiasm. His words had been music to their ears, so they all seemed to be here for the right reasons. Even Carter Coombs looked more attentive.
King said, ‘Sprawls. Go.’
They matched themselves up with each other, and King and Slater watched closely, assessing technique. There were slight inefficiencies but for the most part everyone carried themselves with purpose, putting all their athletic abilities into their actions.
The “sprawl” motion prevents a takedown, stops your opponent from getting you to the ground. When they shoot in for your legs you slide your feet back and lean forward with your hips, put all your bodyweight on the back of their neck, keep their head down. It makes the takedown completion impossible if you time it right.
‘Good,’ Slater called out as the students wrapped up their demonstration. ‘Clean. But just for this session I want you to make it messy.’
Confused looks.
Slater manhandled King into position as a crash test dummy, facing him. ‘This is MMA,’ he explained, raising his voice so everyone could hear. ‘Your sole objective is to make your opponent want no part of the contest. They should be looking for a way out, sucking wind, drowning in their own fatigue. So get your hands involved. Restrict airways. Rub palms on faces. Anything to make them hate their lives, anything to make them quit. You want them so desperate for oxygen they’ll tap out just for a breather. Like so…’
King sensed his cue and shot in for a lazy takedown, which still seemed faster than any of the students’ efforts. Slater slid his feet back, leaned forward at the hips, and used them to push the back of King’s neck down, squashing his face into the mat. Then, as he was adjusting his position, he slapped King in the ear, used his other hand to force the back of the neck further down, rubbing it hard against the mat. When King tried to scoot his hips back to escape, Slater leaned harder onto him, pulled his leg out to disrupt his balance, bucked at the hips to slam King’s forehead into the mat. The whole time he kept using both hands to shove King’s face this way and that, cutting off his breathing, making it messy and ugly and dirty.
When the demonstration was over King was red-faced, exhausted.
Slater said, ‘Messy. You’re fighters. So make life hell for whoever’s across from you. Either that or don’t try at all.’
He figured, when he looked over at Booth, the man would be irate. It was certainly more than Booth would’ve expected from new faces who he assumed would be tentative to coach a class, careful not to tread on any toes. Slater had jumped right in the deep end with his own unique take. It wasn’t exactly a formulaic drill that an unconfident coach would assign.
But the students took to it immediately, embracing the associated discomfort in the way a true fighter should.
And when Slater looked over his shoulder, Booth was grinning beside the reception desk.
27
Alexis was a freight train with no brakes and she didn’t want it any other way.
Before she could second-guess herself, allow for all those ripples of doubt, she got out of the cab and beelined for the skyscraper. The lobby was triple the size of Mary’s building in Santa Clara, all marble and chandeliers. The reception desk along the wall looked like a spaceship, sleek and modern, all hard edges and odd angles. Four concierges sat behind it but Alexis didn’t look their way, just lifted her dormant phone to her ear and said, ‘I don’t care what the board says. I’m telling you it’ll be another three weeks. What part of that don’t you understand?’
They weren’t about to interrupt a work dispute to say hello to the woman whose side profile looked an awful lot like Mary Böhm, so Alexis made it to the elevators uninterrupted. She tucked her phone away, the ruse no longer necessary. Building staff couldn’t stop her now unless they got physical and they sure as hell weren’t going to take such drastic measures.
A man walked up beside her, almost shoulder-to-shoulder, facing the elevators. ‘She got you in on Saturdays too? Must really be the final hour.’
Alexis weighed up trying to ignore him, then turned and got a look. He was her height, a thin Asian man with stooped shoulders, his blue dress shirt tucked into navy slacks. Open at the collar. He had a fraternal smile on his face when they made eye contact — fellow colleagues sharing complaints about a tyrant boss — but when he got a good look at her he blinked, then looked away, embarrassed. ‘Oh. Sorry. Thought you were…’
He trailed off.
She didn’t say anything.
The elevator opened and they both stepped inside the cab. He scanned his employee tag and hit the button for the eighteenth floor. She nodded a silent agreement and stepped back, away from the panel. The doors whispered closed.
‘Sorry,’ he said, stuttering a touch on the last syllable. ‘Are you…?’
She flashed her hand out and touched Mary’s tag to the scanner, which lit up green and uttered a soft electronic beep. She whisked it back out of sight, hoping it hadn’t been visible long enough for the guy to recognise Mary’s photo.
He said, ‘Oh. Are you—?’
‘Heidi doesn’t want me talking to employees.’ She hoped mention of the head honcho would keep his mouth shut.
‘Right,’ he said, facing forward. A slight stomach drop indicated they were ascending. The numbers on the panel flashed upward. 1, 2, 3, 4…
He couldn’t resist a second glance at her, from head to toe. ‘Those clothes…’
‘What?’ she snapped.
He wanted to say, They’re Mary’s. He didn’t. He shook his head as if snapping himself out of an illusion and turned his attention back to the closed doors.
They covered the final stretch of the climb in silence and when the doors whispered open she hustled out first. She was forced to get the lay of the land in real-time, on the move. Thankfully it wasn’t complicated. The whole floor was one giant elongated space leading to a terrace. The desks and partitions were clustered into four departments, separated by dozens of feet each. It didn’t take much brainpower to understand the goal of the set-up: minimising communication between groups of employees. If the marketing team couldn’t lean over and find out how well the engineering and chemistry teams were actually progressing, they’d be more inclined to believe Heidi’s claims that she had a functioning product.
Rumours would nevertheless spread, but it’d be easier to stamp out disloyalty, make sure everyone kept their mouths shut.
The grid of departments formed a narrow stretch along each side that ran all the way down to the end. On the left-hand side it branched off into a series of private offices. Scanning the floor, Alexis counted at least twenty heads bent over desks. She imagined there’d be twice or three times that number on weekdays. The quiet murmur of frantic productivity permeated the space. Only a couple of people looked up at the new arrivals, but by then she had her head down, hustling along the corridor to the private office at the end of the row.
The door was closed.
She tried the handle.
Unlocked.
She opened it and walked straight in, cutting off a pair of old white men, one of whom was mid-speech. Their backs were to her, so she couldn’t make out features, but behind the desk Heidi Wate
rs watched her enter with flaming eyes. Alexis knew from the media she was twenty-nine, but she looked mid-twenties at the latest, and gorgeous, but her model-like features were offset by the hawkish stare.
‘What do you think you’re—?’ she started, then she stopped as she registered small differences in appearance. ‘Wait, who are you?’
The old men looked over their shoulders. Both were carbon copies of one another: close-cropped grey hair, intense eyes, mouths set hard in thin lines. Board members, most likely. Alexis only glanced briefly at them, then met Heidi’s gaze. ‘You thought I was someone else, right?’
Heidi said nothing but her eyes shifted.
General irritation turned to ice-cold realisation.
Alexis said, ‘Did you get a call yet about a couple of your staff?’
Ice-cold realisation turned to a general look of psychopathy.
Heidi addressed the men. ‘I’m going to need a minute.’
‘Heidi,’ one of them started, ‘we can’t keep delaying—’
‘No, Frank,’ she said, smouldering. ‘Vote to remove me, I don’t care. I need to run this company, and I need a minute. Go get a coffee. I won’t be long.’
The one who’d spoken seemed amicable, but the other looked back over his shoulder and affixed an equally cold stare on Alexis. ‘You can go.’
Heidi said, ‘John. I said out.’
John whipped back to face forward. ‘I’m not gonna be pushed around by some pompous wonder-kid—’
Frank laid a heavy hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Not here. Coffee.’
John shrugged it off. ‘Get the fuck off me—’
‘John. Coffee.’
John bristled a beat, then stood up and did a button on his jacket, connecting the break point. He turned and walked out, brushing Alexis’ shoulder on the way out. He paused to stare at her. ‘Who the fuck are you anyway?’
Heidi said, ‘Out.’
He walked away, and Frank followed wordlessly. Alexis shut the door behind them.
Heidi let quiet envelop the insulated office. ‘So what is this?’
Alexis lowered herself into John’s seat. ‘We’re going to talk.’
28
Practice wrapped with intervals on the assault bike, after which hand wraps and shin pads came off and budding professional fighters collapsed in sweaty and exhausted heaps.
A kid King had noticed halfway through the session sat down in one corner of the mats, away from everyone else. He had hollow eyes and a stoic determination. He put his back to the padded wall that was used for wrestling drills, and closed his eyes. He kept his back straight and measured his breathing: in through the nose, out through the mouth.
King walked over and sat down beside him without a sound. He waited patiently for the kid to finish meditating. All the while he studied him.
He realised “kid” was the wrong word. The young man had to be twenty, only with boyish features. There was strong athletic development in his frame. Corded forearms and calves, plenty of hip dexterity, a poise with which he sat and meditated, even when he thought no one was watching. He had potential. Frankie might make a competent professional out of him. Unfortunately, in this world, you had to be truly elite to make any money.
As with most worlds.
The young man opened his eyes and registered a large shape beside him. He jolted. When he recognised King he relaxed. ‘Hey, man. Didn’t realise you were there.’
King’s expression didn’t change. ‘You got your breathing under control fast.’
‘Learned it from one of my favourite fighters.’
The young man glanced at the mat in front of his crossed legs. A touch of shame, embarrassment.
King said, ‘What’s your name?’
‘Danny. It was Jason, right?’
‘It was. You can talk to me, Danny. Tell me about the breathing.’
Only a small encouragement, but it made a world of difference. Like the validation he’d always been waiting for. ‘Um, yeah, so it’s something I read about and decided to give it a try. Most fighters gas themselves out with this tough-guy routine they think they need to use. Mean-mugging between rounds, staying on their feet, puffing their chest out.’
‘Like Carter Coombs,’ King muttered.
Danny half-smirked. Coombs sat on the other side of the warehouse under the mezzanine floor, surrounded by punching bags, unspooling his wraps. He was physically spent, having pushed himself to literal failure during the initial drills. His recovery had failed him during the final rounds. He was athletically gifted and tough as nails, but an inability to pace himself would hold him back.
Looking over at Coombs, Danny seemed uneasy, but he kept talking. ‘Really, you want to do anything to get your heart rate down, no matter how stupid that makes you look. At least, that’s what I heard…’
He trailed off, embarrassed again. King figured he didn’t talk to people much. He had ideas, and lots of them, but he lived mostly in his own head.
King could relate.
He said, ‘You had a fight?’
Danny shook his head. ‘Training for my first.’
‘How long’s it been?’
‘I started a year ago. I got real potential, I know it. Everyone tells me. But I wanna do this right. I’ve got some…mental hurdles to overcome.’
King allowed a respectable silence, then said, ‘Tell me.’
‘You’ll think it’s dumb.’
‘No I won’t.’
‘I get nerves, man.’
‘That’s normal.’
‘No, but…’ He sighed, stared at his feet. ‘They ruin me. All the training goes out the window on hard sparring days. It’s not even my technique. That holds up. But I gas out. I feel my heart beating so hard in my chest and it’s all I can focus on and by the end of the first round my hands are down at my waist. It’s like an adrenaline dump that I get every single time. I hear all this talk: “More rounds, more rounds, more rounds.” Frankie says I just need more exposure, need to get used to the feeling. But I’ve done the rounds. I’ve done hundreds of rounds. And it’s like it’s getting worse. I’m not getting used to it. It’s like it started as something inconvenient, but now it’s my whole world…’
‘That’s how anxiety works.’
‘I know, but…’
King gestured to Danny’s cross-legged position. ‘That’s what the meditation’s about, right? You’ll try anything to reach that peace everyone talks about. Calm in the chaos.’
Danny nodded. ‘I haven’t found it yet. Not even close. And it’s like…’ He exhaled. ‘The more I try to find it, the harder it gets.’
King knew all about that. ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Huh?’
King gestured to the gym, the sweaty mats, the flecks of blood that were yet to be wiped and disinfected. ‘Slaving away in here. Punching and kicking and wrestling other men until you maybe get good enough to get paid for it. There’s millions of easier jobs.’
‘Easier jobs that don’t go anywhere,’ Danny said. ‘With this, I can be something…maybe. But I’m starting to doubt that.’
‘Where you from?’
‘Trailer park way out past Fresno. I, uh…got kicked out. A year ago. I been living with Frankie ever since, in a trailer he got up the back of his yard. He took me in.’
‘Parents kicked you out?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why?’
‘Told my dad I wanted to be a fighter. Like one of the ones you see on TV. He was drunk and I shouldn’t’ve said it when he was drunk. It was stupid. My mistake. He said, “How you gonna win fights against pros when you can’t win a fight against me?” and he hit me. Right in the ear. I thought my eardrum had burst and I was angry about that so I fought back. First time I’d ever done that. But I had no training back then. I was twenty pounds lighter than I am now. He gave me the worst concussion of my life and then tossed me out with all my shit. Which was only like one bag, really. I’ve never had much.’
>
‘Were you just living with him?’
‘My mom and my sister, too. But I haven’t seen them since. They didn’t say anything when he threw me out. They couldn’t.’
Danny’s revelations had come out fast. He’d been talking a mile a minute. King doubted he shared often.
King spoke slow but firm. ‘The nerves are because you’re desperate for the result. You need to succeed at this because it’s your pride, your ego, everything you’ve promised your family you’d do. If you give it your all and it’s not good enough you’ll consider yourself a complete failure. That’s where your anxiety is coming from. It’s your body’s built-in excuse. “If we shut him down before he even has the chance to compete fairly, then he’ll never have to deal with the possibility that he just wasn’t good enough.”’
Danny stared at the floor, blinked. ‘Fuck.’
King didn’t respond.
Danny said, ‘So what’s the solution?’
‘To not care about the result.’
‘I can’t do that. If this doesn’t work…’
‘That’s exactly it,’ King said. ‘It won’t work if you need it to work. The more you want something, the less likely you are to get it. Next time you go to hard sparring, I want you to tell yourself, “I don’t give a shit.” And I want you to believe it. For once I want you to genuinely not care whether you have a good session or not. Make it a game, with zero stakes, but promise to give the game your full effort. Work as hard as you can but tell yourself over and over again, “I don’t care where this gets me.” Watch what happens.’
Danny wiped sweat off his face, furrowed his brow. Then he looked up. ‘Who are you, man?’
King climbed to his feet. ‘Just a guy who’s figured some stuff out. That’s all.’
He started to walk away.
Danny called out. ‘Jason…’
King turned.
The young man was frozen, his mouth a hard line, like there was something he was burning to say. Then King saw his brain switch gears, witnessed the shift behind his eyes.
Danny said, ‘Thank you, man. I…never really talked to anyone about this stuff.’
