Shadowboxer

by Tricia Sullivan

  First published 2014 by Ravenstone

  an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,

  Riverside House, Osney Mead,

  Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

  www.ravenstone.com

  ISBN: 978-1-84997-778-4

  Copyright 2014 Tricia Sullivan

  Cover art by Erik Mohr

  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

  In memory of my father

  Denis J. Sullivan

  who was in my corner from Day One

  and who will always be in my heart

  Tornado Weather

  SOME DAYS I can feel the tornado weather in my bones before I even get out of bed. I just know I’m going to have a fight. It’s out of my control.

  The first time I remember it happening was in seventh grade. I woke up with my angry bones on, and when Angel O’Donnell told me that my psycho dad was watching our school playground from a parked car my ears filled with a roaring. My dad wasn’t supposed to know where me and my mom were. We were supposed to be safe.

  I just stood there, my mind playing out the last time I saw my dad, down on the floor beside my mom, crying, ‘I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it.’ Me calling 911 from the bathroom, whispering into the phone.

  When I found out Angel was playing with me, I rammed her head into a row of lockers. She got five stitches and I got suspended. ‘Why you so scared of him?’ she sobbed, bleeding all over her friends. ‘You’re just like him. He should be scared of you.’

  I don’t want to be like my dad. Believe me, I try hard not to be like him. But some days when I get this weather inside me it seems no matter how I want to be good, sooner or later I’m going to let off on somebody.

  This morning I was hung over from the beer and a half Malu had pushed on me for medicinal purposes (she said) after I’d messed up last night’s qualifier match. I’d been crying most of the night, and I had a black eye. My reflection in the bathroom mirror looked like a koala minus the cute. I grabbed Malu’s biggest, darkest pair of sunglasses, threw my gym bag over my shoulder, and went out.

  It was pouring rain. The glasses fogged up and blurred with beaded water. A passing dude said, ‘Nice shades,’ and checked me out. I clamped down on myself. Not today. Besides, he had a point. I looked like an idiot.

  Tommy Zhang, on the other hand, can make shades work even in the rain. That’s because he’s a movie star.

  Tommy was getting out of his limo when I crossed the street from the bus stop to Mr. Big’s Combat Sports Emporium. There were actually two limos parked in the disabled spaces plus a black van for the camera crew. Tommy Zhang was so beautiful, I could see his cheekbones from here. He was wearing his trademark dark suit and he had a whole bunch of WWE-style bodyguards. Posterboys for nandralone.

  I’d forgotten Tommy would be here today. There would be pictures, and I’d have to hide in the locker room if I didn’t want to be in them. I thought about turning around and going home, but I don’t do running away.

  I shifted my bag on my shoulder and limped towards the gym door. I put on the limp for show. It was a trick my dad taught me. ‘You carry yourself like you no big deal,’ he’d say. ‘Let people underestimate you. Then, when they don’t expect it—bang!’ And he’d mime an uppercut.

  It’s pretty hard not to underestimate somebody my size, since I’m outweighed by your average Twinkie-eating grade-schooler, but I walk like I’m hurting anyway. Whatever else I might think about my dad, I respect what he knows about the street.

  Today I was limping a little extra because I had a mango-sized lump on the lower part of my right shin where it had connected to Kristi Lombardi’s skull in last night’s qualifier fight for Battle of the Bitches 3. The kick had knocked Kristi out, and everything would have been sweet and fine, except for my ‘problem’. After I kicked her in the head I followed her where she fell and stomped her with the same foot, just to be safe.

  The judges didn’t like that. I was out.

  It was my own fault, which pretty much just made it worse. Now all I wanted was to get in the gym, sweat, and refocus. I didn’t want to think about how Battle would be getting international coverage, or the big fight at the end of it, or the prize money, or other fighters sailing through the qualifying rounds because they had a grip on the concept of rules.

  I didn’t want to think what my mom would say when she found out I’d stomped a girl’s head into the mat.

  I just wanted to train.

  But of course on the days you really want people to leave you alone, they get all up in your face. Tommy Zhang’s bodyguards stood in front of the entrance to the gym and when I got closer, one of them blocked me off.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, head down, addressing the guy’s belt buckle. ‘I train here.’

  ‘ID?’ I could feel the bass of his voice in the bottom of my spine. He held out a hand. His fingers were about the size of my wrist.

  I snorted. ‘Do I look like I’m here to drink?’

  ‘What? You got ID or not?’

  I guess you don’t need a sense of humor to make it in the bodyguard profession. I sighed. Just inside the glass door, Tommy Zhang was on the phone speaking Cantonese. His voice was soft, and he was talking so fast I wondered whether they had to slow down his dialog scenes. I already knew they speeded up his fight sequences.

  ‘No, I don’t got no ID. I’m Jade Barrera. I train here. Who the fuck are you?’

  ‘Hey. Watch the language. You can’t come in without ID. I have to shield my client from unwanteds.’

  Tommy was laughing. He kept sniffing and throwing his head back. Must have been doing coke in the limo.

  I said, ‘Did I miss something? Last I heard, this was Mr. B’s fight club, not Tommy Zhang’s beauty salon.’

  The guard showed a white half-smile.

  ‘With that attitude, the only place you’ll be getting into this morning is a police cell,’ he said. ‘You don’t want me to be calling to complain about harassment, do you?’

  I swallowed a laugh. I was already in Mr B’s doghouse because of the disqualification. Through the dull beating noise in my head I reminded myself that I needed to not screw up again. No wise-ass comments allowed.

  ‘Sorry, man,’ I said, with an effort. ‘No offense. I’m just a little surprised. I train here every day. We get champions from Thailand and Russia and Brazil, but I never needed no ID to get in. I know Mr. Zhang is a real important star, but couldn’t you just ask Mr B? He knows me.’

  There. How much nicer could you get?

  The perfect teeth reappeared. ‘I would’ve been glad to do that if you made a respectful request in the first place. Now I need you to wait while Chip checks the contents of your bag.’

  A giant stepped forward. He had blond hair in two braids like a frigging Viking.

  ‘Oh, give me a break,’ I said. Just then Khari’s Corvette pulled up and parked. Khari got out first, then Eva. Her red hair was all done out in perfect ringlets and she had five-inch platforms on. Khari had to wait for her to get out the car, then wait again while she adjusted her hot pants and checked her hair. They came up to the door together, ring girl and MMA god. He put a possessive hand on her little bitty waist as they approached the Testosterone Wall.

  Khari they recognized with a ‘How you doing, sir,’ but Eva fumbled for her green card or whatever. A faintly panicked look came over her face; maybe she wasn’t legal, after all.

&nb
sp; Nandralone Man waved them through and Eva rushed inside nervously. Khari hung back.

  ‘Hey, Jade, everything OK?’

  ‘Man, I don’t got no driver’s license and Bruce Lee’s bodyguards have taken over the joint.’

  My heart was racing now. Khari always makes me act all stupid.

  ‘I’ll tell the boss,’ Khari said over his shoulder as he went in. ‘Don’t sweat it, baby.’

  He called me baby.

  Tommy Zhang lowered the phone from his ear. ‘Let her through,’ he snapped, waving a bossy hand to reinforce his words. ‘I know who she is.’

  That would have been all right, but then he added something else in Chinese. I couldn’t understand all of it, but a few words were familiar and not in a good way. I’d heard Hong Kong girls use them in school. I wasn’t sure of the exact translation, but I knew I was being called some kind of ugly.

  Chip the Viking moved aside and I walked in. Tommy Zhang was even better-looking in person than he was on camera. What else can I say about him? He’s supposed to be the next Bruce Lee but he’s about as dangerous as Steven Seagal—by which I mean, a twelve-year-old could probably take care of the both of them put together. He’s acrobatic and moves like a dancer, and when he looked my way he was so beautiful that a part of me wanted to go, That’s OK, be as rude as you want, let me kiss your perfect ass, but the minute you start doing shit like that it’s all over. You can never get your credibility back.

  ‘How ya doin’,’ I said to Tommy, smiling sweetly as I moved past him. ‘You were real good in Cloud Master.’ I didn’t glance at him to get his reaction, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. Cloud Master had starred Tommy Zhang’s big Hong Kong cinema rival, Lo Kuk Leung.

  I limped into the gym, smiling.

  The front end of Combat Sports Emporium looks like one of those fancy West Coast operations where they shot the first two Battle of the Bitches shows. It has a shiny new reception area decked out with trophies and a smoothie machine. On the training floor there are new weights and cardio equipment, a big mirror and clean mats. Monika and Eva were standing nervously in reception, waiting to have their Tommy Zhang DVDs autographed. On the main floor, a boxercise class made idiots of themselves to the sound of Jay-Z. Eva’s perfect butt jagged to the beat.

  I wondered if a ring girl had ever gotten knocked out in the line of duty. Like, what if somebody accidentally-on-purpose dropped her with a left hook? Hmm. There was a thought.

  I probably needed to hit something.

  Keeping my sunglasses on, I headed straight to the back room. It was always kind of dark and smelled of old sweat and leather. This was where the pros trained. We had an ancient ring and an alley of heavy bags that had been pounded so hard you couldn’t see the logos anymore. There was an open matted area for pad work and ground fighting. The boxercise music was muffled. I could hear the whipping sound of Cake jumping rope like a grasshopper on meth.

  Khari was standing outside the locker room with Jamie Bell, a journalist from The Cage who was always hanging around. They were watching Cake train for his K-1 match in Holland next month. The look on Khari’s face said, Hell, I’m glad I’m not in the same weight class as him.

  Khari took in the state of me, whistled softly, and shrugged.

  ‘You better keep those shades on, Jay-D,’ Khari said, following me toward the locker rooms. ‘Jamie just told me there’s gonna be three camera crews coming later on.’

  He shook his head like it was all just too decadent for him. In many ways Khari is an old-fashioned kind of guy. He can’t understand why reality shows like Battle of the Bitches get so much attention these days. He can’t understand why people like to see girls hitting each other, especially when some of the girls aren’t very good fighters.

  I guess that’s why he dates a ring girl. She doesn’t challenge his assumptions.

  ‘You can have my photographers if I can have your paycheck,’ I said.

  ‘You’re OK. You’re the real deal,’ Khari said.

  ‘I screwed up bad last night,’ I said.

  ‘Hey,’ Khari said, ‘At least you were the one who done the stomping. At least it wasn’t your head on the mat. Now get to work.’

  Here’s the truth. I’m happy in the gym. When I’m slippery as an eel with sweat, and my heart’s going boom-boom-power in my ears. When Cake is my pad man, chasing me around the ring and I got incoming blows to deal with and I’m struggling to counter-time him and he’s laughing at me, but I keep going anyway like my life depends on it. That’s when I’m happy. Something wakes up inside me, opens its eyes, takes a deep breath. Something says yes. Give me some more.

  It was a good workout. I only puked once. I even got it in the bucket. Khari offered me a towel to wipe my face, which was sweet, but then Eva came over to keep her claws in her man. I reeked of puke and she reeked of Estée Lauder. Who you think Khari be picking?

  When I look back on it, I know this right here is the critical moment.

  It’s like, every so often, on a given day, you do something really small. Don’t mean nothing—or so you think at the time. But later on when you think about it, this tiny decision leads to everything changing. If only you’d known about this one little thing, maybe you would have done things differently.

  And maybe you wouldn’t.

  So, I could have held my ground and showed my confidence to Khari. Let him know I wasn’t just a kid, but a woman to be reckoned with, you know what I’m saying? But I didn’t. I let Eva spook me. I backed away from the two of them, went outside for some fresh air.

  Bang. That was it, right there. Going outside just then was my Gwyneth Paltrow Sliding Doors moment—or it would have been if I’d been a white girl looking for the perfect man instead of a Latina looking for the perfect takedown defense.

  It was still raining. I put a stick of gum in my mouth to kill the taste of vomit and looked around. Tommy Zhang’s limo was pulled up around the side of the gym. The engine was running but I couldn’t see anybody inside except the driver, who was reading a magazine. I went and stood under the awning behind Mattress World next door.

  Quinton the tomcat was already sitting there, his paws folded under him, blinking as he watched the rain. Quinton has scars all over his big-jowled head, and one of his eyes only opens halfway. He’s skinny and he limps, but he’s my furry bambino. He gave me a hoarse chirp and rose to meet my hand when I bent to stroke the back of his head. There were always scabs under his fur.

  I started to feel better. Animals are like that. They make you feel better without even trying. I wished I could adopt Quinton, but my mom’s lease had a no-pets clause and Malu already snuck in an iguana. Anyway, it wouldn’t be fair to take him away from his natural environment.

  Purring, he turned his head so I could scratch him under his jowls. The rain came down harder. Tommy’s driver shot out of the limo and ran around the back. He spread a huge umbrella, then opened a door. Tommy Zhang got out, talking on his iPhone, this time in fluent Thai. They walked towards me, the driver holding the umbrella over the star while he himself got wet.

  ‘Mr. Zhang needs a place to smoke a cigarette,’ the driver said, nodding at the awning. Apparently this meant I was supposed to leave. I was curious, though. I knew a little Thai because of Cake and Mr. B, and through watching endless fights on YouTube. I always hoped I could get over there to train someday. But Tommy was Chinese. Where had he learned Thai? I caught the phrases ‘foreign journalist’ and—he said this twice—‘no violence.’ Tommy sounded upset. Maybe somebody in Thailand had written a stitch-up of Tommy.

  ‘Get rid of that dirty animal,’ Tommy snapped in English. I stopped in the doorway and leaned back outside. The driver was making shooing motions at Quinton. Poor Quinton scurried a few feet on his belly, then stopped, ears flattening, and held his ground. He looked scared, but he wasn’t running yet.

  ‘Hey, take it easy,’ I said, going out. ‘That’s only Quinton. He’s the gym cat. See, he has a gold ring around his n
eck, like Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, get it?’

  Tommy Zhang didn’t laugh. He didn’t look at me. He bent, picked up a beer bottle, and threw it at Quinton. The bottle shattered, Quinton ran, and I was pretty sure some of the pieces had hit him.

  ‘Hey!’ I shouted, positioning myself between Tommy Zhang and Quinton, who now shot off behind the cover of a dumpster. ‘What’s your problem? He wasn’t doing anything to you.’

  ‘You better go inside,’ Tommy Zhang’s driver said. He wasn’t as big as the bodyguards—they were still in the gym, I guess—but he was a lot bigger than me. ‘Mr. Zhang doesn’t want to be disturbed.’

  ‘Mr. Zhang already is disturbed if he abuses animals.’ I feinted moving left and then shot to the right, around the driver. He tried to grab me but he was slow and let’s face it, I’m really fast. I’ve had a lot of practice at avoiding being grabbed. I saw the door of the gym open, but it was only Eva sticking her head out to get a better phone signal.

  I went up to Tommy Zhang and said, ‘What kind of man are you? Don’t you have enough money or you got to pick on some poor animal to make you feel all hard?’

  ‘Get this trash away from me,’ Tommy Zhang said to his driver, stepping back as if I had a disease. He held his lit cigarette poised like he was thinking about shoving it in my face.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You get away from me, bitch.’

  Or something like that. The truth is, I never exactly remember what I say or do when a fight kicks off. I can only approximate. Like, for example, I can’t remember exactly what he said to me next, or whether he made the first move, or whether the driver did. I don’t know. I do know that one minute the hottest martial arts action star in Hollywood was acting like a cat-hating jerk-off and the next his nose was all splattered across his face and he was doubled over against the back door of Mattress World. Judging by the blood on my knee, I’m guessing I maybe left-hooked him first, because nobody ever sees my left hook coming. I must’ve grabbed his head and pulled it down and banged him in the face with my knee maybe two, three, eighteen times? The main thing is, his nose was good and broken and then he was one stunned cat-hating movie star.