by Cara Nelson
“No, he said you were cocky even for a fighter,” Zoe said, playing with the fringe at the end of the scarf.
“Is that supposed to be an insult?”
“I think that’s how he intended it.”
“Don’t you think a little arrogance would serve you well in the ring? You can’t second guess yourself in a fight.”
“Wait, so are real men arrogant, too, cowboy?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“How annoying is it, on a scale of one to five, when I talk about your cowboy man code?”
“About a two, two and a half.”
“So it doesn’t make you go blind and deaf with rage?”
“Not really, no. You’re feisty. It’s like me being cocky—it’s what helped you survive.”
“I didn’t get beat up when I was a kid. I just had four older brothers.”
“Did they give you a hard time?”
“Yeah, every day. But they always had my back, too.”
“Same with me and Kyle,” he said.
“Kyle was nice to me yesterday. I mean, he tried to flirt with me, but he answered my questions and he wasn’t a jerk about it. I’d like to make sure he’s okay. Can I stick around with you for a while?” Zoe said. They walked into the hospital parking lot.
“If you want.”
“I want,” she said, meaning everything.
They walked side by side into the ER entrance. She took a chair and he went to the desk to ask about Kyle. Soon he was in the chair beside her, staring at his hands.
“Did they tell you anything?”
“No. The nurse said, ‘oh the boxer? The doctor hasn’t seen him yet.’ Like the fact he’s a fighter made him less—”
“I know you have a chip on your shoulder about this, but maybe she meant ‘boxer’ the way you’d say ‘the lawyer’ or ‘the clown’ or whatever distinction you make to tell the thousands of patients apart,” she said.
“I know you have a devil’s advocate thing going on here, but the way she said it was like it was a bad thing. Like ‘the junkie’ or ‘the bum’. Not at all like ‘the lawyer’.”
“Oh. Want some coffee?”
“Sure.”
They went to the machine and he plugged in quarters. Soon they were the proud owners of sugary sludge in paper cups. Zoe cradled hers in both hands while Aaron winced at either the blazing temperature or the taste and drank his down. She sat in the waiting room while he paced, seemingly unable to be still. The headline ticker droned on the television above them. Zoe leaned her head on her hand, beginning to nod off after a while. When Aaron was finally called back to see his brother, Zoe was asleep in her plastic chair.
Kyle sat up on the table drinking water. His nose was bandaged and his eyes were swelling, but there was no other visible damage.
“Hey,” Kyle said.
“Hey. How you feel?”
“Like someone knucked me in the nose,” He chuckled wryly. “Poor bastard didn’t even hit me in a very effective spot when he had his advantage. It hurt like fuck, but he didn’t even go for the forearm or anyplace good.”
“That poor bastard could have killed you if he’d had the sense to go for your temple or your spine,” Aaron said.
Aaron felt his jaw tighten, his pulse kick up. He gritted his teeth against it, fighting it down.
“Aw, I’m okay. You didn’t have to come all the way down here. Go have a beer, drink one for me,” Kyle said.
“You could have died,” Aaron said faintly. “Haven’t we done this long enough now? There’s got to be a line of work where we can make money without getting the shit kicked out of us.” His voice turned pleading.
“And creep away from prizefighting because some sissy little punk pulled out the knuckle dusters on me? Like I lost my nerve and don’t have the balls to go back in the ring? No way!” Kyle said vehemently, half rising from the table.
“This isn’t the only way to live. Life is cheap in the ring. Fighters get concussions, get serious injuries all the time. Think about Ma, how she’d going to react to this. She’s already weak—”
“Don’t you think part of why I’m doing this is for her? They denied her disability application, Aaron. She’s on welfare. She can’t get on the transplant list until she has a recommendation from two specialists. On the medical card, she’ll be waiting forever to get an appointment. No one even wants to take aid patients anymore. If I can win big a couple of times, she’ll have the care she needs and a shot at getting better,” Kyle said.
“I want that, too. I just know her and she’d never be happy, never accept that help if it came from risking your life,”
“Come on, kid. You and me been risking our lives since junior high. That’s just being a man.”
Aaron nodded his assent and went back to the waiting room. Zoe was still asleep. She looked little in his long scarf, her knees drawn up to her chest in the hard plastic chair.
“Come on, kid,” he said, “I’ll walk you home.”
Zoe stirred and rubbed at her eyes, making a smear of eyeliner on her cheek. “Sorry, is it late? How’s Kyle?”
“Broken nose. He’ll be pretty swollen for a few days but he’ll live,”
“I have to go back to the club. My stuff is there, and I need to get the stick out of the camera so I can do some editing.”
“If I know Neil, he’ll want the ugliest, goriest footage kept in, so don’t get squeamish and cut the part with the knucks. Kyle won’t mind.”
“In that case, it’s too bad I was so horrified that I turned off the camera when you jumped in the ring. Otherwise I could have included shots of one of Neil’s boys brutally beating his brother’s opponent.”
“He was a dirty fighter.”
“Yeah, well now he’s in the hospital. Does that help Kyle?”
“No, but he’d do the same for me. We can’t let rule breakers get away with it. It’s a danger to us all.”
“I’d say probably that fighting with other men on a daily basis is a danger to you as well,” she said, stretching and following him to the door. “But I’m always a little strident when I first wake up. Don’t mind me. I just noticed a certain inconsistency in your attitude toward risk in general.”
“Fine, give me my scarf back,” he said.
“Wait, were you just being playful?”
“Yes. I was teasing you. Why?”
“Because that is another contradictory thing you’re doing that confuses me. I can’t peg you as a pugilistic knuckle-dragging caveman because you gave me your scarf and you’re walking me home. I can’t peg you as mindless, because although I disagree with your definition of masculinity, you’re pretty consistent with it, and it appears you’ve considered it seriously, despite its essential flaws. I’m, well, I’m befuddled,” she said, gesturing expansively.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever actually heard someone say the word ‘befuddled’.”
“I like weird old words; it’s because I read weird old books,” She shrugged.
“I don’t read.”
“You’re like, illiterate?”
“No, I can read. I just don’t, really, very often. My mom used to tell me to read more…she always had one of those Reader’s Digest books from the library by the bed when I was growing up. I never got into it, though.”
“Okay,” she said, wondering what the appropriate comment was.
“I wish I’d done more of that when I was a kid. Read some Harry Potter and shit like that, but it would’ve got me beat up on the bus.”
“Rough bus,” she observed.
“Rough everything,” he said.
“So what’s your goal, in the whole prizefighting thing? Is it like, you want to accrue a certain amount of winnings before you go do something else? Or are you waiting until you age out or can’t fight any more?”
“I don’t know. I guess I want to make enough money to help my mom and maybe get a better place to live. I’m pretty sure the guy in the room above mine makes meth. What
about you? What’s your goal?”
“Oh, that’s easy. I want to keep this video job long enough to pay off my credit card debt. Then I want to find a good used car, preferably in red, and buy it with my improved credit rating so I can quit taking the bus, which invariably smells like piss. After I get the car, I’m going to look for a job in online copyediting. I like to edit and criticize, and that way I could work from home instead of in a fight club.”
“So you need a car to be able to work from home? I notice a certain inconsistency in your goals,” he countered.
“Okay, so I haven’t thought it through that much yet, but I’m not doing fight videos forever. It’s too…seedy. It’s like one rung up from porn filmed in people’s garages. If I keep this up, next thing you know I’ll be balancing my camera on a stepladder while I tilt the Coleman lantern to get the shadow off some amateur’s naked ass.”
“You must watch some really low budget stuff,” he said.
“I don’t want to be a cautionary tale. I’d like to end up editing a literary journal or anthologies or something. I’ll need to get my MFA to do that, and I can’t actually afford another degree right now.”
“You greatly increase your chance of becoming a cautionary tale if you hang out in the back alley of Swagger.”
“I wasn’t hanging out. It was a job interview, and for some sadistic reason, Neil texted me to come in the back way.”
“Oh, he was trying to catch me out. He did that to see if you’d walk in on me with the ring girl.”
“What would that accomplish?”
“I’d get another demerit. In his system, when you break the rules, you get a demerit in your file. Once you have three demerits, he can garnish a higher percentage of your winnings. See, the bouts themselves have sponsors but not the fighters, so sponsors put up the prize money and the house takes a percentage. But if you’re not in good standing with Neil, he skims more as punishment.”
“That seems unethical. Is there not a union or anything?”
“We don’t have a labor union or anything…there’s no credibility in what we are, it’s like there’s no way to ensure fair treatment. I know Neil doesn’t like me but he can’t afford to cut me loose…I bring in crowds and I win fights. But he can tighten the reins, make me feel the pinch when I go against him.”
“That’s bullshit. So were you with the ring bunny?”
“No, she went home with Kyle. Otherwise, I would’ve been.”
“In the locker room?”
“Yeah. Why so shocked?”
“The locker room just…smells bad. It seems unsavory.”
“That’s what I was going for. Unsavory,” he said.
“I’m glad you went out the back door. Whatever you were doing before that, not my business, unsavory or otherwise. I should just thank you and drop the subject.”
“You’re not filming in the locker room anytime soon, are you?”
“Don’t plan on it, why? Should I check for a green scarf on the doorknob to signal that you’re entertaining?”
“Nah, I’ll just station someone at the door to stop you from coming in with a camera. Unless you’re bringing the stepladder and the lantern to make me a YouTube star.”
“No thanks,” Zoe said, “Anyway, if you need to get back to the hospital with Kyle, I can take it from here. Thanks for walking me back. It was…interesting,” She said, unlooping his scarf from her shoulders and handing it back to him.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
“Okay,” he said.
Zoe dashed into the club and retrieved her purse, the camera card and shrugged on her coat, reveling in its warmth. She stepped outside to find Aaron leaning on a lamppost, smoking a cigarette.
“Is that your best Brando?”
“Nah, I was going for Steve McQueen. Guess I failed.”
“What are you still doing here?”
“Walking you back. You told me you don’t have a car. This is, what did you call it, an unsavory neighborhood.”
“Is this what men do, too?”
“Yeah.”
He offered her a drag off his cigarette, but she shook her head.
“I don’t smoke. Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to do that? It’ll give you lung cancer.”
“If I listened to my mother, I wouldn’t be living this life,” he said. “I’d probably be a priest.”
“No offense, but I think you’d be a sucky priest.”
“Let’s just say poverty and chastity ain’t my scene.”
“What about obedience?”
“So I’m three for three on that one. I don’t qualify.”
“Neither would I. Neither would most people, I imagine.”
They walked on in silence. Zoe counted their footfalls on the sidewalk, her eyes following the burning tip of his cigarette on its arc into the gutter. She was at a loss for words, which didn’t happen to her very often. Up until a few hours ago, she’d never said a dozen words to the man. Now they’d spent hours talking about some pretty personal things and she felt awkward, and also like she wanted to kiss him really hard for about half an hour to see if it made her feel better. She was pretty sure it would.
“Does Kyle have to stay overnight in the hospital?”
“Yeah, I’ll go get him in the morning. No reason to worry my ma.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Not really.”
“Does it sound incredibly weird and offensive to say I’ve had a nice time with you tonight?”
“Yes, it’s incredibly weird that you had fun going to the ER with me after my brother got his face beat in.”
“I thought so. Under the circumstances, I probably shouldn’t have said anything. Now you probably think I’m a ring bunny and I’m trying to get into your pants.”
“Are you?”
“No! I’m not. I mean, I’m a woman and I see how you have an appeal, but I don’t get involved with people I work with. Plus you get beat up for a living and I wouldn’t be comfortable with that. Not that it matters, because we’re not, I mean, I’m not—“
“Relax, Zoe,” he said with a crooked grin, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Don’t hurt yourself panicking like that. I know when a woman is trying to seduce me, and I don’t get that vibe from you at all.”
“At all? Like not even a little? Is it the sweater? ‘Cause I bought it to be baggy and to keep from getting unwanted attention.”
“Far be it from me to give you unwanted attention.”
“So it’s not the sweater, I mean, it’s me isn’t it? I talk too much. And I have a big ass. I know it.”
“You don’t have a big ass but I’m beginning to wonder if you might have a compulsive thing where you blurt out whatever you’re thinking. Confession would be a total waste of time for you, because you don’t seem like you hold much inside.”
“Oh, I’ve always been like that. So you don’t think my ass is big? It’s really round. I like that the sweater comes down over it.”
Aaron laughed aloud, a rich baritone laugh that made her feel inexplicably happy that she’d been joking about her own ass. He looped an arm around her shoulder.
“I never had any friends who were girls before. This could be entertaining, working with you. It was nice that you went along to see if Kyle was okay.”
“I was really just going to try to keep you from leaping on the Cambridge guy’s gurney and strangling him or something. I thought maybe having me tag along would calm you down.”
“It did. You distracted me with the gladiator stuff and waited with me. I didn’t expect you to come to the ER with me, some boxer you don’t even know—”
“Are you trying rather inarticulately to tell me you had a nice time tonight?” she teased.
“I guess so,” He dropped his arm from her shoulders and put his hands back in his pockets, head down a little against the cold wind. “Feels like it’s going to be a bitch of a winter,”
“Are we talking about the weather now?”
“What are we supposed to talk about?”
“I don’t know. What’s your favorite color?”
“Gray.”
“Gray? Gray is not a color,” she protested.
“Why, what’s yours? Pink?”
“Red. Like my imaginary car I intend to buy, obviously.”
“I thought maybe it was navy blue, like your ugly sweater.”
“Okay, in the last twenty-four hours I have got about sick of hearing people critique my wardrobe. It’s a warm sweater, and it covers my ass, and I’m wearing it. So there.” Zoe stuck her tongue out at him and he held back a bark of laughter, clearing his throat to cover it.
“Turn left up here at the corner,” she said.
“Stop,” he answered.
Zoe halted and turned to look at him. In the haze of the streetlight, she could see the frosty cloud of his breath, the deep green of his eyes glinting catlike in the gloom, the sheer bulk of him seeming to loom over her.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m done being your friend.”
“Are you, like, breaking up with me?”
“You could say that. I’m not much on being friends with women. What’d we last? Two blocks? I don’t want to be your friend anymore.”
His voice was low, and she felt desire coil low in her belly at just his words, at just the brush of his shadow moving across her skin as he closed the distance between them. She felt the heat rolling off his body, saw her own fingers reach up and knot in the front of his jacket to pull him closer.
“Aaron,” she said, feeling a little breathless.
“Hey, a girl who remembers my name,”
His mouth curved into a slight smile as his lips brushed hers, tentatively, coaxingly at first. As soon as she parted her lips for him, the sensuous push of his tongue into her mouth rocked her nearly off her feet. She clutched his shirt, thinking as her eyes dropped shut that this was easily the hottest kiss of her life. Her whole body was tingling with warmth, with zings of desire. His hand kneaded the back of her neck, his other hand at her hip holding her steady.
He kissed her so long that she felt wanton, with a languorous kind of yearning that took its time. His thumb trailed down her throat, and she felt a delicious shiver at the touch. Aaron lifted his head at last and smiled. She tried to compose her expression, knowing that her damp lips were parted, wanting more. She closed her mouth with effort and tucked her hair behind her ears, resuming her walking pace.
