by Claire Adams
“Well, talk to her again,” Jana says, grabbing her keys off the counter and heading toward the door. “I’m running late.”
“It’s just that that stuff’s expensive,” I tell her before releasing her into the night, “and it’s the only thing I’ve found that’ll work for me year-round.”
“Just buy her some of that milk-free, whey-free, hazelnut chocolate spread she likes,” Jana says. “I’ve got to go. Do you want me to bring anything back for you?”
“Only if he’s an easy millionaire who doesn’t believe in prenups,” I tell her.
“I’ll keep my eyes peeled, but you know I’ve got first dibs on that shit, so you’d better hope he has a friend for you,” she responds, walking to the door, but stopping before she opens it. “You two did it, right?” she asks.
“Me and Mason?” I ask. “No. We never even kissed.”
“Might wanna let the guy throw you one before you stop answering his calls for good,” she says. “There’s a reason he’s so popular and you, sweet, kinda prudish roommate of mine, deserve a nice night.”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” I laugh and Jana’s out the door.
I pull out my phone and check my messages. There aren’t any from Mason.
This whole thing is a little strange.
I wasn’t even interested in him at first; I was just trying to do to Jana what she’s been doing to me for the last five years. Mason and I started to hit it off at Sherry’s, but after he took me to that fight, that was supposed to be it.
After hearing Jana going on and on about him, though, I can’t help thinking I should have given him another chance.
It’s probably moot, anyway. He’s probably already moved onto someone more enthusiastic about his hobby.
Besides, he and Jana used to be a thing. I give her a lot of grief because most of the time she’s somewhere in the neighborhood of intolerable, but, for the moment at least, I’m choosing to believe there’s more to our friendship than proximity over time. Whether her feelings for Mason are nothing more than sexual or there’s more to it than that, it’s probably not a good idea that I try too hard to be too involved with my roommate’s former beau.
Then again, she did give me her blessing. Maybe she didn’t put it in those exact terms, but I seem to remember something like that.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and find the number. My thumb hovers over the screen for five seconds, then ten. Really, I just don’t know enough about Mason to have anything like the confidence to make a firm decision about him either way.
The fighting is never going to be my cup of tea, but maybe Jana’s right: Maybe there is something more to him than all that. It certainly seemed like there was when we were at Sherry’s.
I press the button and the line starts to ring.
“Yeah?” the voice answers.
“Hey, Mason,” I say. “It’s Ash. You wanna get together and talk?”
Good god that sounded lame.
“Ash?” he asks.
Yep. He’s already forgotten about me.
“Never mind,” I tell him. “I think you just answered my question.”
“I’ve got a few,” he says.
“What?” I ask.
“Questions,” he says. “You just took off that night and I haven’t been able to get ahold of you. I figured the fighting was just too much for you.”
“It was,” I tell him, “but I’ve come to understand that that’s not necessarily all there is to you…” I’m butchering this. I’m absolutely butchering this.
“Yeah…?” he responds.
Why is this so weird?
“I just thought, if you want, I could explain why I just left that night, or maybe you could explain why you’re so into the fighting,” I tell him. “Not that you owe me an explanation,” I add. “You know what? I shouldn’t have called. Sorry to bother you.”
“Hold on,” he says.
“What?” I ask, just wanting this to be over already.
“Just take a breath,” he says. “Relax. Go to your peaceful, quiet place a second.”
“My peaceful, quiet place?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Mason responds. “It’s a meditation thing. Just put your mind on the most relaxing and beautiful surroundings you can imagine. It helps calm the nerves.”
I’m not sure if I’m actually supposed to do that or not, so I just don’t say anything in response.
“Ash?” he asks. “You still there?”
“Yeah,” I answer.
“We can talk if you want,” he says. “But I’ve gotta tell you, I’m not a huge fan of the way you just took off and then ignored me. You can be a pretty cool person,” he says, “but I’m not really in the mood to be jerked around. So, if you’d like a few minutes to really consider whether or not you really want to talk, I think that might be a good plan.”
“Someone values their personal time,” I scoff, not sure what else to say.
“Personal time’s important,” he says. “If you’re interested in seeing where things can go with us, I’m all for that. We seem to get each other pretty easily, and I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty rare for me. At the same time, though, if what I do is too much for you or you just aren’t that interested, I think we both need to respect that and not drag this out. What do you think?”
What do I think?
“The man-whore thing,” I say, “is that true?”
“It’s an exaggeration,” he says, “but I have had a pretty active social life. I don’t think I’m a man-whore though, and honestly, I’d prefer if we could drop the term.”
“Okay,” I answer and then there’s protracted silence.
After a minute, the sound of Mason’s voice startles me. “Ash?” he asks.
“Yeah?” I return.
“I don’t know if you’re thinking things through or what,” he says, “but I do have some stuff to do right now, so if we could—”
“You want to get together this weekend?” I ask and immediately, I’m clenching my fists, mouthing the word “crap” over and over again.
We do connect, that much is true, but can I really deal with the fighting?
“Sure,” he says nonchalantly. “What’d you have in mind?”
I guess we’re going to find out.
Chapter Five
That Sense of Belonging
Mason
I’m a little sore coming up to the door of my modest abode.
Manny, my fight trainer, and I have bit hitting it a little extra hard since I told him about the tournament. He even filled in a few missing details.
According to Manny, the prize money is all going to be donated by a former underground fighter turned MMA pro as his way of giving back to the community that served as his launching pad.
Manny doesn’t know who the mysterious donor might be and, frankly, the whole thing sounds like the kind of answer someone gives when they don’t know the real one, but it’s a nice story, if nothing else.
I guess it really doesn’t matter if Manny’s version of things is true or not. It’s just as possible that someone stands to make money from taping the fights and posting them online. Nobody seems to know directly who went to Madison and set the whole thing up, but the tournament’s existence is real enough.
Today, I got the call.
I vaguely recognized the voice on the other end of the phone, but only the way someone recognizes the sound of traffic around their home. I can’t think of a name that would match the voice or a face to go with it, but it didn’t matter.
“Hello, is this Mason Ellis?” the man asked.
“Yeah, who’s this?” I answered.
“Do you know why I’m calling?” he asked.
It wasn’t until he asked that question that I figured it out.
“Yeah,” I said.
“You’re first match is in a week, featherweight. We’ll call again with directions to the location. Don’t talk about this to anyone you haven’t seen at a
fight,” the man said finally and hung up the phone.
The whole thing seemed really shady. It was pretty cool.
Now, though, I’m tired and I’m sore and I just want to open my front door, walk to my couch, fall down and not move for about a week.
It looks like someone else beat me to it.
My brother, Chris, isn’t so much lying on the couch as he is draped over it. From the smell of him, even standing ten feet away, I’d say he’s more passed out than he is asleep.
I could really do without this right now, but I’m not going to wake him to kick him out. This isn’t the first time he’s shown up inside my home without announcement or invitation.
He does this whenever he gets in trouble, and as sick of it as I am, I’m not going to make any kind of headway with him while he’s still drunk. To that end, I set my things down gently by the door, which I close, being sure to turn the knob before it can latch and possibly wake Chris.
I slip off my shoes and I’m holding my breath as I try to sneak past the couch toward my bedroom door at the far end of the living room.
Behind me, there’s a piercing noise in the form of my phone’s ringtone, and I’m shuffling as fast as my socks will allow back toward my gym bag. I open it and find my phone, quickly muting it.
Ash is calling.
Chris stirs a little, and I’m holding my breath again as I return to my feet to get a better look at him.
He stirred, but he’s still asleep, so I head toward the kitchen and out to the back porch before I look down at my phone again and answer the call.
“Hey, Ash,” I say, closing the back door behind me.
“Hey,” she says. “I had a lot of fun last night. I was wondering if you want to maybe get together and do something.”
“Starbright driving you crazy again?” I ask. I’ve actually been hoping to meet Jana’s mom, mainly due to Ash’s vivid and outlandish descriptions of the woman. Ash, on the other hand, doesn’t think it’s such a great idea.
“Am I that transparent?” she asks.
“I’d love to see you,” I tell her, “but I don’t think tonight’s the best night for it. I just came home and found my brother passed out on the couch. I think he’s going through a bit of a thing right now, and I just need to make sure he’s not in any kind of serious trouble, you know?”
“I didn’t even know you had a brother,” Ash says.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “He’s the older one, I’m the wiser one.”
“What a terrifying proposition,” she says. “You sure you don’t want me to come over? Maybe I can help.”
“That’s sweet of you,” I tell her, but hesitate as I hear the back door opening behind me. I turn to find Chris stumbling out with an already-lit cigarette in his mouth. “But it looks like he’s awake and I’m going to have to let you go.”
“Okay,” she says. “Let me know how it goes.”
“Yeah,” I tell her. “Have a good night.”
I hang up the phone.
“Hey, Chris,” I say, taking a step toward my brother. “How are you feeling?”
He responds by pulling his lighter out of his pocket and trying to light his still-lit cigarette and tripping over a lawn chair. I can’t say he catches himself, exactly, but he does a fair job of minimizing the damage of the fall on his way down.
I walk over to him and crouch down beside him.
“You should get back inside,” I tell him. “Sleep it off. We’ll talk in the morning.”
He grunts and gets back to his feet, only to sit on the lawn chair he just fell over.
“Can you hear me?” I ask him.
“Suuure thing, brotha man,” he slurs.
Things weren’t that easy for Chris and me growing up, and we’ve both chosen to deal with it in our own ways. For Chris, it’s coming up with new and ridiculous ways to separate average people from their money.
I get that we’re both on the wrong side of things, legally, but the only people who get hurt because of what I do get hurt because they chose to put themselves in a match. It’s anyone’s guess how long it takes some of the people Chris swindles to figure out what’s happened to them.
I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t be so judgmental. Still, that would be a lot easier if he didn’t keep showing up like this.
“What happened this time?” I ask him. “Nobody followed you here, did they?”
“It was jus’ a biiig mis–misunderstanding,” he says.
Of course it was.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen my brother. I’d even begun to entertain hopes that he’d cleaned up his act, but there he sits, swaying a little in an invisible breeze.
“How long are you here?” I ask.
The question seems to confound Chris in some deep, possibly existential way, and he just stares up at me without answering.
“Whatever,” I tell him. “Let’s get you to bed. We can talk about everything in the morning.”
“Nooo,” Chris says, far too loudly for the time of night. “I wanna stay up and hang out with my little bro—”
There’s no easy way to tell if he was going to say “brother” or leave it at “bro,” as Chris is now leaning over the side of his lawn chair, vomiting.
“That’s just spectacular,” I tell him. “Really, it’s great of you to drop in and make yourself at home.” I sigh. “How many times are we going to do this, huh?” I ask.
Chris looks up at me and opens his mouth, taking a quick breath in as if he’s about to say something, but quickly returns his head over the side of the lawn chair to make sure there isn’t anything left to throw up.
I make my way over to the faucet just outside the back door and I grab the end of the hose attached to it before turning the faucet on.
“You’re probably going to want to move if you don’t want to get soaked and have to sleep outside,” I tell him.
He doesn’t react at first, but after I give him a quick spray with the hose, he moves quickly enough, though he only makes it to the lawn chair I’ve just abandoned to clean up after him. If ever there was a clearer living metaphor for my relationship to my brother than this single moment, I’ve never seen it.
After I get the concrete cleaned, I set the hose back down and turn off the faucet.
“Feeling any better?” I ask him.
“I feeel great,” he tells me. “Hey bro?” he says.
“What?” I respond.
“Got anything to drink? I’m havvinng a rough night,” he says.
It’s a testament to my incredible self-control that I’ve never beaten the crap out of my brother.
* * *
Morning comes and I’m sitting in the kitchen with my coffee, just waiting to see which version of my brother greets me today.
I like to think Chris is a decent guy if you look past all the cons and swindles, the pyramid schemes and the fake lottery tickets. There’s also that fake ID scam he ran a few years back, but his computer guy had trouble with simple math and often ended up making people younger on their ID than they were in real life.
Under all that, I like to think his heart is in the right place. I like to think it, but that doesn’t mean I’m naïve enough to believe it.
“Hey bro,” Chris says, coming into the kitchen. “I think I remember throwing up on your back porch last night. Did I?”
“Yeah,” I tell him.
“Sorry,” he says. “I guess I got a little carried away.”
I’m waiting for the sales pitch.
He’s taking his time, though, slowly walking past me toward the coffee maker. “Where do you keep your mugs?” he asks.
“Top cabinet to the left of the stove,” I tell him. “How long are you planning to stay here this time?”
“Straight to business, huh?” he says, reaching into the cupboard and pulling down a mug.
Chris is what I’d look like if I stopped going to the gym and started going to the bar, plus a few years. My shoulders are broader, and I’
m a few inches taller at 5’9”, but we’ve both got the same dirty blond hair and the same perma-smirk on our mouths from years of listening to parents make promises we knew they’d never keep.
Every time he shows up, I keep telling myself that I’ve got to keep going along with it, that I should kick him out or call the cops or something. I can never bring myself to do it.
When we were younger, though, he really looked out for me.
Coming from the particularly dysfunctional background that I do, I was an easy target for some of the larger kids in class. For years, though, Chris always had my back. I still got the crap kicked out of me on a pretty regular basis, but Chris took a lot of punches so I wouldn’t have to.
After he dropped out and moved out, though, I had to learn how to take care of myself, hence…
“We can’t keep doing this,” I tell him. “You’re my brother, but I think I’ve been more than patient—”
“I know, I know,” he says, waving me off as he walks back over to the coffee maker and fills his mug. “We’ll talk. Just let me get some coffee in me, otherwise I can’t be held accountable for whatever unintelligible nonsense comes out of my mouth.”
He replaces the carafe on the hotplate and takes a big whiff of his coffee.
“All right,” he says before taking a sip, “let’s discuss the terms of my provisional residency.”
I have a feeling he’s going to be here for a while.
Chapter Six
Driving the Train
Ash
Mason’s been hiding something.
Ever since that night I called and he said his brother was passed out on his couch, Mason tenses up whenever I so much as bring up the notion of going over to his place. Maybe it’s something to do with his brother or maybe his brother’s not even there. Either way, he’s been going to increasing lengths to keep us from ending up there.
Present moment, Mason and I are taking what he pitched as “a long walk through the city.” It sounded great until we got out here and I remembered how old, ugly and run down so much of this town is.
