by Wyatt, Dani
Victoria drew in a shallow breath and, like an infinite number of times before, wished beyond words that her mother was here to guide her.
No words of wisdom were to be found, not today or for as many days as she could count. With a knot in her belly and a deep anxiety clutching like a nylon rope around her heart, she made her way into the lime green and black tiled bathroom.
Victoria stared into the cracked mirror over the chipped white porcelain pedestal sink -- stained with years of rust from the perpetually dripping faucet, the eyes looking back at her stung with the deep regrets already stacked up in her short life.
With a hot shower to wash away the angst, Victoria gathered her canvas messenger bag, her ever present camera, and the black and white picture of Cameron as he stood in triumph over the fallen beast.
The strap carved a deep indent across the t-shirt emblem of the place from which she did not know how to escape her familial servitude. Another deep breath and the wind caught her hair as she made her way down Martin Ave.
Trash scurried from alleyways across the road, spinning in the whipping wind as a few cars made their way in roars and hums back and forth on the cracked cement of the street.
Victoria grabbed at her hair, cursing that she had not thrown it in to a ponytail before stepping out into the vortex that seemed to be following her. The wind flung tendrils across her face and into her eyes and mouth as she grabbed blindly at the metal handle of the gym door.
The gym was alive and moving like a biological organism when she arrived. Saturday’s were busy from 5:30 am until they closed at 2:30 am. Men liked to fight, especially on the weekends.
And fighting men didn’t seem to have anything else to do. If they were open 24 hours a day, there would be men here fighting, 24 hours a day.
Now, just to be fair, there were a few women that made their way to the bags and through the ropes now-a-days. Mostly they fought over at Tyson’s, it wasn’t quite so rugged as it was here at Southside. Roger and Larry had barely changed anything since she had started picking up towels when she was six.
There was a men’s locker room, complete with a wide open tiled expanse with eight shower heads and fifty lockers. Then, there was a ladies bathroom that had three lockers pushed into the back stall.
It wasn’t exactly a separate but equal kind of establishment.
There was a stink that never seem to fade, no matter how clean Victoria tried to keep the place. It was a combination of vinyl mats, bleach, sweat, and years and years of fighter’s funk that no cleaning solution seemed to combat fully.
It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but it also wasn’t something you could bottle and sell. It was the smell of a fighting gym and it had become as much the smell of her home as the memory of her mother’s black strap molasses cookies.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Larry snorted. He met her with narrow, red rimmed eyes as soon as she rounded the corner and he saw her from his place at the edge of a sparing round he was coaching.
“Sorry.”
Fuck off is what I should say. Why am I the one always saying ‘Sorry’?
“Get in the back and enter the checks for deposit. First of the month. I wanna know how many of these fuckin’ losers owe me money. Anyone past two months due is out. I want a list, before lunch.” Larry pointed his cane up and toward the back of the gym.
The office was piled with decades of old news articles, files, and folders filled with something that must have once seemed important.
Victoria set her coffee down on her desk, the only spot within the cinderblock gray walls with any semblance of order. She flicked on her desk lamp, adjusted the one pen and one pencil next to her accounting calculator.
Her chair squeaked, and the wheels made a sound like they were rolling over sand as she adjusted herself, grabbing the thick vinyl envelope that contained a pitiful number of checks and cash. Her computer monitor blinked to life, but she knew it would be several minutes before her decade old desktop would be ready for her.
Her eyes followed the pictures framed along the walls. Some were her own snaps of significant fights or victorious triumphs. But, most were of Cameron, both Larry and Roger standing at his side, doing everything they knew to harness and focus the fighting savant.
What am I doing?
Victoria felt a thump begin deep down inside as she looked at the pictures. The years added layers of hard muscle to the younger face that looked out from the black and whites.
But, the eyes never changed. You would think eyes the color of robin’s eggs would make you smile, but not Cameron’s. They just made you uncomfortable; you couldn’t wait to look away, like something inside him wasn’t human.
Even in black and white, those eyes followed her, looking more than haunting as the younger version of the man that floated in and out of her dreams dappled the walls of the office.
Looking over toward her humming monitor, her fingers lit for a moment on the small framed picture to the left of her phone.
It was just a quick snapshot, not even focused well. Taken with her camera phone that day Cameron showed up at the gym with two emaciated, flea infested dogs at the ends of some vinyl covered wire.
In the picture Cameron was crouched down, one dog on each side of him with a smile that lit up is face. After that day, Stoli and Samson were his almost constant companions. He nursed them back to health, tamed their fighting side and turned them into fat, over sized lap dogs.
He also made a visit back to the house where he took them leaving no doubt in the former owner’s mind what had happened to his dogs. Cameron also made sure the man understood exactly what it felt like to get your ass whipped in a dog fight.
Victoria smiled back at the image then took a deep breath and looked over the office.
Roger must have slept here. The long, navy blue sofa was stacked with white towels used as pillows and a crumpled, ever present cream colored blanket. An empty bottle of Smirnoff was in the trash can just to the side of the desk along with a crumpled white Kung Pau Palace take out container.
Victoria’s fingers tapped her password. She steadied herself for another of Roger’s berating tirades as the tarnished brass knob on the heavy windowless wooden door began to turn.
9
“Don’t. Just don’t say anything. Sit there and listen.”
Those pools of haunting blue shot at her like bullets as his massive form filled the doorway, and his fingers flicked the deadbolt shut behind him.
“You know what? I’m kind of tired of all the men in my life telling me what I should and shouldn’t be doing. So, if you don’t mind, I’m going to decide for myself what I’m doing.”
The desk chair slammed with a thunk against the long grayish metal file cabinet and Victoria swung her legs out from under the desk.
She was pissed, he could see it as her eyes turned from honey brown to hardened smoky black. It didn’t matter, he felt everything even without her words. Before his hand was on the doorknob, her energy flowed out and into him like a mist.
No one understood how it felt to be so connected with someone that their emotions intertwined with your own until you could not distinguish between the two.
An intricate knot of aversion and dark history tied them together, and it was Cameron’s only purpose in life to unwind it for her.
“Move.” She gave him the look honed over the years growing up around a gym full of cock swinging dogs. But, it didn’t work on him. She stood steady, squaring off with the man other men cowered from, her hand reaching behind him for the door handle.
“No. I’m not fucking moving. You’re going to sit your ass down and listen to me.”
“Who the hell do you think you are? We covered this yesterday, and I don’t like sequels.”
Her hair was a mess. A flicker of something like a smile pricked at the corner of Cameron’s mouth, knowing she was out of sorts and more than likely he was the primary reason. That, and the crazy wind that was howling through the metal
roof and making a soft eerie whistling above their heads.
She was bar none, the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen. Even with the way she raised one eyebrow, her lips plump and pink and set into a frown, she still stunned him like a 50,000 volt taser.
“Shut up. Sit.” He pointed her back to her chair.
“I’m fine. I’ll stand.”
At least she staying, it’s a damn start. A long fucking way from getting her under my tongue, but I’ll take what I can get.
“Fine.” Her fragrance hit him like a blood hound on the trail.
He wanted more than anything to bury his face in her hair, to run his tongue along that perfect curve that started at the nape of her neck. His focus completely lost for a moment as he imaged her taste.
“So!? What is it? Jesus, you come in here all big-man-we-gotta-talk, and now you’re just staring off into space. Are you damaged? So? What do you have to say? I have work to do.”
If she could be any sexier than usual, it was right now. Hotter than a hungry lion, her eyes cut across the space between them and stabbed at Cameron like beautiful, tiny daggers. The level of her anger was just a sure sign that she was exactly where he wanted her.
“Do you remember Ronald Wills?” Cameron turned slowly, took three steps and lowered himself onto the middle cushion of the couch, tossing the crumpled blanket behind him with a grimace.
She blinked a few times; she was thinking, he deflated her fury for a moment and without waiting for an answer, he dove in.
“He was the boy that --” Cameron started.
She cut him off.
“I know who he is.” Her voice crisp and annoyed.
“Yeah. You know who he is. Do you remember me ever being the guardian of the playground for anyone else? Huh?”
He gave her a second, she rolled her eyes but kept her mouth shut, it was a good sign.
“No, that’s because I didn’t care about anyone else. You, it was always you that I kept as close as a fucking security guard for Kim Kardashian.”
“Yeah. Except you don’t seem to know when to stop. If I remember correctly — and I do —he never made it home from school one day. They found him at the bottom of Emmet’s Quarry with a broken leg and a face that required over 50 stitches. Where I come from, that is known as a felony.”
“I gave him a choice. I only hit him three times. Once in the face, once in the gut and the third, straight up under the chin. But, he asked for the third. So, you can’t count that one. I told him, that if he gave me one punch while he stood at the edge of the wall, that would be the end. Or, he could fight me. One on one, full-on. He chose the one punch. Too bad his balance wasn’t that great.”
“He could have died. You’re lucky you only spent two weeks at county Boy’s Village for that.”
“He’s lucky he’s still able to walk and talk and fuck. I told you — I told you after that Russian in the back hall I would fucking always be watching. No one would ever get that close again. I promised you, and I’ve kept that promise. I gave him a warning, but he didn’t listen, so, he paid. Simple.”
“He didn’t hurt me. What you did was far worse that what he did to me.”
“Maybe he would have if I hadn’t stopped him. Your father had you so beat down; you barely squeaked when he flipped your dress up and — “
“STOP. What do you want? You want to walk down memory lane? Go over all the people you punished for touching me or teasing me? For getting too close to me? For whatever imaginary wrong you may have decided they inflicted upon me?”
The rose color in her cheeks had turned to deep ruby, her hands balled into tight fists, then released again, but her eyes were now unwavering — attached to Cameron’s.
“No. I want you to fucking understand what I would do for you. How I exist with you. Don’t you get it by now? I can FEEL you, Victoria. Right fucking now. You can say whatever you fucking want, but I feel you and I see you, and that is shit that doesn’t lie.”
“Okay, then. What do you feel right now?” She raised her hand, flipped up her middle finger and still, her eyes didn’t unlock from his.
“That’s a damn lie. You’ve been dancing this bullshit blame game with me since the accident. Is that what this is still? Huh? Because you and I both know, there is nothing I wouldn’t do to take it back. To change everything. You fucking know that, so why one minute you’re my right arm and the next you’re blowing me off with a flame thrower? Even before yesterday — forget about the fucking kiss for a minute. This tug of war has been going on for years. What is it? Just get it the fuck out so we can move on.”
Cameron’s chest moved up and out with each word. His fingers twitched like they always did before he stepped into the ring for a fight he wasn’t sure he was going to win.
“It was an accident. I don’t want to talk about it. That has nothing to do with this. This is about whatever that was yesterday. You and — we aren’t that.” She flung her hands toward the door. “Maybe our parents made us family for a minute, but it’s more. It’s harder than that. We’ve grown up here, in this world of fighters and win-or-lose-at-all-costs. Both our fathers barely acknowledge we exist outside of our usefulness within this alternative universe of sweat and broken noses. I don’t want this world Cam. I want out. And this — this is what you are.”
He felt like he was falling, sitting there stone still on that couch, like his body was slipping lower, down in to some darkness as he clutched at the rough stones sides trying to halt his free fall. Her eyes were the center of that well, and she had no idea what it felt like to hear her even acknowledge what had gone for so long ignored.
She felt it too, there was no doubt, cards were on the fucking table now.
No one taught him this kind of love; this abiding need to cling and hover over her until her safety and happiness were law. He was raised to be a fierce, soulless fighter. A beast man-boy without the capacity to feel anything but the desire to conquer.
He only needed to break the chains and shackles that imprisoned her. That little girl inside who barely knew the love of anyone. Emily loved her — then she was gone too soon, and there was only Roger and Larry and the nameless, faceless men that tromped through the gym day and night.
There was a light behind her eyes, something that flickered to be known, to be awakened. Cameron lived for that light, and he knew, like nothing else in his life, that it was his consummate responsibility to bring her to her true self.
It was completely clear to Cameron there was a well full of shit that needed cleaning out. There would be no moving forward without first going back.
He watched as her fingers trembled, the light pink wave of blood under skin began to rise upward on her chest, toward her neck. Her heart was pounding out the same rhythm as his own as they told a wordless story through their eyes.
That day when the glass shattered, the blood ran down Emily’s face was as alive inside them as if it was yesterday. Cameron remembered how Victoria fell utterly silent as the whooshing blades of the helicopter carried away what was left of the only other person in her life that loved her.
“I have never had a regret in my life. Except one. You know that.” Cameron said.
He fought the catch in his voice as he watched her turn away, then back to face him.
He felt the belt of that regret wrap itself around his chest, pulling tighter as her shoulders slumped. She broke their gaze to raise her eyes and stare at the brown blotches that every year spread wider across the crumbling plaster ceiling.
“Say it. Tell me it’s my fault. Tell me whatever you need to tell me. I threw that goddamned book. You grabbed my hand; she yelled at us to stop messing around. I didn’t listen; I was the one. Say it, say what you need to say, Victoria. Just fucking tell me it’s my fucking fault.” Cameron felt his voice raise with each word, neither of them able to look at the other.
“It doesn’t matter. Why do you want to bring this up now? I don’t want to talk about it. She’s dead. It h
appened. Just get out! What are you doing here!!???” She was screaming now.
The brown of her eyes sparked red. There was more; it was right there under the surface, he could feel it. That petulance that demanded to be released lest it fester until there would be no chance at redemption for either of them.
No child should see the horror they had both watched that day. Cameron remembered the bite of metallic on his tongue as blood ran over his lips. The sound of metal scraping and crunching, men calling out orders to one another as the hydraulic monster chomped at the mini-van’s metal door like a prehistoric beast with a taste for steel.
Victoria was still screaming, valiantly trying to awaken the lifeless body that hung upside down by the strap of the seatbelt.
Victoria wailed until the crimson soaked clothes that swaddled the body of what we both knew had been her mother — and for a short time, Cameron’s too — came out of the car limp in the hands of three firefighters.
“Get out. I don’t want you here. Go back to Boulder or where ever. Doesn’t matter, just not here!”
“You need me.”
“I don’t need you! That is pretty funny Cameron. She needed you. She needed you to fucking listen for once, but you never really got the hang of that did you? Of doing what you are told. Obeying the rules.”
“I was a kid, it was a mistake. You and I both know—” He stopped himself, this was her moment, he needed to take whatever blame she needed to throw at him without excuses.
“Know what? I know — “ Victoria sneered.
Her eyes were narrow, Cameron could feel the fire and depth of her anger rising up. It needed to overflow; he was strong enough to take it. She needed to say it and then be able to leave it behind.
Her eyes challenged him as she dared to let the words out. “I know if you had listened for once, she would still be here.”
And, there it was.
It hurt more than a scorpion’s sting; a bitter, dry pill they could both try to swallow and close the door on that day. He was her protector, the savior that seemed to arrive just as the moment was most dire. But, not that day — not when it really counted.
