The Entropy of Bones

by Ayize Jama-everett

  Every now and then A.C. would give me a knowing glance, like we shared some secret. When I looked over the balcony and saw his trench coat with an anarchy symbol painted on it, I could almost grasp what we had in common, but then it slipped away.

  “Chabi, you listening?” Mom’s words shocked me back to the conversation.

  Not in the slightest, I said, disappointed in myself.

  “I said despite being too skinny, you look very pretty.” And she kissed my forehead and patted my hands. If a stranger wasn’t sitting across the way, I would’ve grabbed her and held tight. Instead I let her excuse herself to the bathroom.

  “Want to see something cool?” A.C. asked with that same in-joke expression on his face.

  Sure, I said.

  “Just need one promise,” he said, standing up from the table and walking back into the kitchen proper.

  And what’s that?

  “No matter what you see, you won’t try to hit me.”

  I thought about it hard for a few seconds. You try and hurt me or my mom, I’ll swap your throat out for your balls.

  “Trust me when I say this trick puts me in more danger than you.”

  I don’t know you, how the hell am I supposed to trust you?

  “I’m trusting you to keep your word.”

  Go on then.

  A wind crossed my face despite the windows being closed. And just like that, a fluttering of my eyes, and I knew who he was. The guy who had been on the Mansai. The thief, the one I had forgotten.

  Chapter Five: A.C.’s Entropy War

  “No more drunk fights,” Narayana told me the third weekend of my senior year. We were on top of Mount Tam, using the abundant turkey vultures as target practice with bows and arrows. I was only allowed to bump their left wings. The craggy cliff bases and arid afternoon air seemed to keep all other hikers and nature nuts out of our eyeshot. Anyone who caught sight of our activities from distant hill peaks didn’t seem to mind much.

  It’s getting too easy, anyway, I said without a hint of ego. Raj grunted in agreement either with my statement or my shot that took exactly two feathers off a vulture circling fifteen feet in the air.

  “What you aim at?” he asked with genuine curiosity.

  The buzzards in the air.

  “What part of buzzards?”

  The left wings? I asked. He had told me to aim at their left wings not twenty minutes earlier.

  “What part of the left wing?”

  I paused, barely understanding the didactic teaching technique.

  The entropy of the left wing is what I should be aiming for, I told him finally, stopping my bow draw and looking at him. What passed for an educational smile crossed his face.

  “And you strike with?” Raj asked, pressing the point.

  The generativity of the bow. The part of it that creates.

  “No!” he snapped.

  Of myself! I meant myself!

  “Why?”

  Because weapons have no generativity, no entropy of their own . . .

  “What?” He heard the question I was thinking.

  Well, what would that be like? Weapons with their own entropy. I’m just saying that’s how most people think. You know, people aren’t the problem. Guns are.

  He swore in his native tongue then stomped over to a boulder about a hundred times his weight and height. It was as wide as two redwood trunks. Maybe he closed his eyes to prepare but maybe he just exhaled completely. What I know for sure is that not a second later, with one blow, he shattered that boulder. Roughly even-sized diamond shards of shale and rough granite splintered from it, making hard rain sounds as all assembled critters, turkey vultures included, dispersed. All I could think was, Beautiful.

  “People are stupid. You don’t want entropy weapon. Too much weight,” he said, dusting himself off.

  No more drunken fights didn’t put an end to my fighting. Narayana started me in the highly profitable world of underground bare-knuckle fighting. That was probably where Dale’s friend saw me. But by this point it seemed like an insult. I’d adopted Narayana’s understanding of the fist as the last tool of the precision fighter. It was the same with death. An idiot child with a gun could kill. But to maim, to inhibit with purpose—while remaining untouched—that was the true challenge. That I’d be facing off against people who’d prepared for me was good. But their aspiring mixed martial arts mindsets made the fights seem more of a hoop to jump through than a legitimate challenge.

  “Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face,” Narayana had told me a thousand times if he’d told me once. The first time was when we first started training, just after my near-rape. He sat me on the deck on the Mansai and blurted out truths in between beer burps.

  “So I either punch you in the face all time or you learn how to fight with no plan. Which you like better?”

  Guess.

  “Both good plans.” Narayana laughed. “But ok, I no punch face. Fist? Loser weapon anyway. In ring, ok, because rules are there. But real fight, fist is . . .” He began to ramble in his own language—a mix of Burmese, English, Spanglish, and god knows what else.

  Big? I offered.

  “Big and stupid. Like ox,” he said. “Big and smart good, like elephant. Elephant fight ox. Ox wife widow. Hand can be elephant, but better finger snakes, yeah?”

  Like poisoned?

  That stopped him. He looked at me for a long time before saying anything.

  “You no use poison. Poison for cowards. I no train cowards.” He knew he had no reason to be mad, and I wasn’t sure what I said, still even with his controlled breathing I could hear his anger. I thought I reminded him of the snakes on the dock but it was something older, deeper. What had he said to the snake? That he was free?

  Ok, I’m just trying to understand. Fingers like snakes, I don’t know what that means. What? Flexible? Deadly?

  “Yes. Strong, flexible, quick, unpredictable, deadly. But no poison.”

  And no fist, I said, letting him know I understood.

  “Fist is better than nothing, but the way you train, you think, later, fist is last option. Yeah?” he said, back-flipping and walking on his hands to his cooler.

  Yeah.

  My first bare-knuckle fight was an open brawl in the basement of an El Salvadoran bar in East Oakland. The size of half the block, you could find all manner of drugs, prostitution, and guns in the crowds. Blood splatter wasn’t of concern enough to clean off the mat, and I’m pretty sure there was cock-fighting going on somewhere else in the basement. Easily two hundred people stood around the square ring and all of them were screaming.

  Fifty dollars bought you in. Anyone could fight. No rounds. No breaks. Tap out, unconsciousness, or death were the only ways to get out. Two in the ring at a time and no weapons were the only rules. My first fight was against some Guatemalan ex-military with no fear and way too much energy. The holes in his shoes meant he couldn’t afford coke, so he was probably a meth head. Narayana had warned me about the possibility. The yellow-skinned fighter was mad that he had to fight some skinny pie-faced girl. In Spanish he said my whore black bitch of a mother must have wanted extra soy sauce for her fried rice and didn’t have any extra change for his crew. That was the last thing he said that night. The moron walked up to me with no guard. Salamander’s Tail—angled low back leg kick—twisted to Gryphon’s Repose—three fingered eye-nose rake upon exhalation—and the Rooster’s Defiance—all hip-driven knee strike to his solar plexus—ended the man. I’d practiced my techniques so many times against invisible enemies much larger, stronger, and better prepared than the dope fiend in front of me that my bones and muscles, made uncommonly strong and flexible by Raj’s training, barely recognized that I’d actually made significant contact. For a second, I was actually disappointed. Then something unexpected happened. The crowd went wild. They loved me. I scanned the tan-faced crowd and saw my favorite dark spot collecting his winnings and betting the next fight.

  The adoration
was intoxicating. I think it always is.

  The next one was a wrestler, mixed martial arts style. He was white and just as poor as the Guatemalan who would now have breathing problems for the rest of his life. For some reason the white guy’s ponytail offended me—who goes into a no-holds-barred fight with an easy grab?—so I wanted to beat him with it. When he tried his college wrestling takedown on me, I let him get close enough to wrap his arms around my waist, but then pushed his neck to the mat and landed three Coal’s Nails—two-fingered prolonged pressure strikes—on his neck before he could push back. Just as I was about to grab the ponytail off his defunct body, I heard the slow slide of metal against the mat. He’d hidden five minuscule shaving razors in his hair. I respected the ninja move but couldn’t abide breaking one of the only two rules so I plucked the razors out and sent them flying at the peanut gallery in his corner. The crowd loved the theatrics. Even Narayana offered a silent nod of consent.

  My third opponent landed one kick. In my defense, he tipped the scales at 280 and had obviously graduated from gladiator academy young to earn his penal Ph.D. in ass kicking. If the braids and the barely visible tats on his coal ebony skin hadn’t informed me of his pedigree, the hosts of uniquely jail-inspired rape epitaphs he hurled at me as he came marching would have.

  They also got me mad. Which made me lose my breathing and focus. So when jail muscle man pulled off an elegant leg sweep, I fell for it. And fell. I landed fast enough, well prepared for my opponent to try to make good on his threats of sodomy and mutilation, but the blow of the crowd’s gasp was harder to recover from. I even risked a glance at Narayana and saw his disappointed face. I stymied the jail man’s attempt to kick my head off but didn’t bother getting off my back. When I landed a shin kick that buckled the bruiser, half the crowd loved me again. Jail man got so frustrated he jumped in the air like a TV wrestler, trying to land an elbow. I bicycle kicked from the ground into his jaw and groin with precision even I was impressed by. It took half an hour to revive him even with the crowd going wild for me.

  By the end of the night Narayana gave me five grand, half the winnings. By the end of the month, the owners were simultaneously barring us and begging to represent me as a headliner at other spots.

  Raj would hear none of it. Staying out of the spotlight was an absolute necessity according to him. So we went through the ethnicities, Latinos, Asians, Blacks, and Whites—all the underground fighting communities. And by the time finals rolled around, I’d taken them all on. I never gave my name but me and Raj were a hard duo to miss. By the end challengers would drop out as soon as we walked into whatever dive the hardest of the hard were supposed to populate. I felt invincible.

  Promises be damned. I jumped across the table and threw all my silverware at him at the same time. Another fluttering of wind and just like on Narayana’s boat, A.C. was gone. Only not far.

  “Come on now, you promised,” he said calmly from the ground floor. He was putting on his jacket.

  Stay in the bathroom, Mom! I shouted as I jumped over the banister to be eye level with the man.

  “We’re in flux right now, Chabi . . .”

  We’re in Sausalito, dipshit. What the fuck are you doing with my mom and what the fuck were you doing on my boat? He smirked. And how do you keep doing that disappearing, forgetting thing?

  “How do you talk without moving your lips?” It took all I had to not punch him for that comment. No doubt he saw the effort it took. “Ok, ok look we’re in flux right now . . .” he said slowly, making his way to the living room porthole. Lifting the blinds, he invited me to look outside. The entire world was on a forty-five-second loop. The same waves came in, came out, the same kid dropped her ice cream at the general store, the same gull made the same screeching sound on repeat, every forty-five seconds. I looked back at A.C.

  You did this?

  “No, this always happens. Little fluxes, big fluxes, hiccups in time and space. Come on, you put your keys on your dresser one second, the next they’re gone, the one after they’re back again. If you hadn’t been paying attention for that one second, you would’ve never noticed. Time is relative and illusory.”

  Who are you?

  “They call me A.C. I live mostly in the unnoticed seconds. I’m like a . . .”

  Rectal irritant is what you are. What the hell are you doing anywhere near my mom?

  “She was the safest way to get to you. To prove I’m not a threat.”

  Prove how?

  “I’ve been in this house for hours. Your hours, not my hours. I could’ve done anything I wanted to her and you can testify that she wouldn’t have remembered it. Shit, I didn’t even have to let you see me truly. Your mom is safe. She thinks I’m a member of her church.”

  You’re not?

  “Fuck, no! I’m not even here.”

  To prove his point he moved his hand through mom’s bookshelf unhindered.

  I shook your hand.

  “Yeah and you speak. Fuck, do you even know what you are?”

  I sat down on the beige pleather couch of my youth and squeezed the bridge of my nose, hoping to stave off the inevitable headache. So what am I?

  “Liminal.”

  What the hell does that mean?

  “It means there’s normal people, like your mom. There’s people like me who train, study, barter, and bargain their way into certain skills and powers. And then there are liminal people. You and yours are born with some of the weirdest collections of gifts and curses ever assembled on this planet.”

  I’m liminal. What are you saying?

  “What, you thought you were normal?” he said, relaxing as he sat on the couch, or rather I perceived him to sit on the couch. I noticed the pleather didn’t give way to his weight. “I mean come on, you run and swim like you’re training for an ultramarathon but you never break a sweat. You’ve shredded some of the most cutthroat degenerates with an afterthought. What, you imagined you’d marry the high school football star, get fat with babies and move to the suburbs all while not moving your lips when you spoke? You are a liminal girl. In between . . .”

  In between what? I shouted.

  “That’s the problem with you and yours.” He smirked. “Never can tell what your kind is betwixt and between.”

  Everybody is always between something, asshole.

  “True that. But you liminals, your decisions matter. Where you go, so does the world.”

  Hey, shit bird, you are giving me a headache. Start making sense.

  “I’m afraid I can’t. Well, to be more honest, it doesn’t matter if I can. See, I’m not really here.”

  What. Does. That. Mean?

  “I’m riding the consciousness slipstream. Some call it the synchronistic highway.”

  Where are you riding your slipstream to?

  “To you.” Again that fucking smile. The sad thing was it was beginning to work. “There’s a time when I can be a choice for you.”

  You’re not my type.

  “Liar,” A.C. said, standing. He walked into the sunlight that was only partially blocked by the blinds. The shadows of the blinds hit the rest of the room unbroken, but not where he was standing. “Sadly, that’s not what I meant. Me and mine, well, we’re at war. And we’re losing. You could help us turn the tide. But it has to be your choice.”

  So make your pitch.

  “Can’t. You’d forget it. Byproduct of my talents, I’m afraid. Memory can’t abide me.”

  I wanted to yell bullshit, but then I remembered forgetting him twice.

  Jesus. I laughed. You can’t really touch anything and you’re infinitely forgettable. No wonder your side is losing.

  “I know, right?” He smiled again. “There are ways I could be more substantial in the here and now, but that could be just as much a weakness as a strength depending on . . .”

  On what I decide. His smiles hadn’t worked that well. A lifetime of being suspicious left me sensitive enough to know A.C. was cautious as well. This all has somet
hing to do with Narayana, doesn’t it?

  That shocked him. Then a slow grin came to his face. “He told you his real name?”

  I debated for a second, then asked him the question I wasn’t sure I wanted an answer to. What is he?

  “That answer is about ten times more complex than the question.”

  I’m going on record as hating your ass. What the fuck are you even here for?

  “Sometimes, if I’m subtle enough, light enough, just a piece of me, a scent, a phrase, something can stay behind after I’m gone and have an effect.” He seemed less substantial and more human then. Like it had all been a joke up to that point. But I saw the strain on his face as it was literally fading from sight.

  What do you want to say? I stood up, quickly moving towards him, already feeling the mist of him evaporating. His voice changed from confident and jovial to the sound of miscomprehension and wind mistaken for word, but I heard it. Just before I forgot him. “Stay close to your mother.”

  It’s not that I woke up. More I became aware that I had been doing something else, engaging in a way with something that gained less importance with each passing second. When Mom came out of the bathroom, she recognized the diminishing knowledge in both our eyes, but not the source of it.

  “Thanks for coming over, baby. It’s been nice spending time. You want some baked apples to take over with you?”

  I wandered back to the Mansai, thankful to Mom for cleaning up the crab mess I’d left. The Mansai’s deck made me minimally shaky. I didn’t eat enough. I barely acknowledged the lack of crab taste in my mouth when I saw Dale’s truck parked in my parking lot. Shotgun came out from behind the ride, hands open and at his side, walking slowly. By the time he got close enough to speak, I was annoyed at his caution.