by Lily Zante
“She’s a journalist, and she’s been hanging around the gym. Going to be there up until the fight.”
“When did she start?”
“Over a week ago.”
“And this is the first time you mention it?” Nina smirks. “Are you hiding something from me, Elias?”
This time I grab a couple of thin and crispy fries from Nina’s plate. “She wants my story.”
Nina’s neck stretches like a giraffe’s and she takes a good look. I can feel Harper staring back, because Nina’s stare is so pointed. She makes it so obvious.
“Can you not do that?” I hiss.
“She smiled at me.”
I rub my forehead in irritation. The last thing I want is for Miss Busybody to come over, but Nina does it again. She smiles in Harper’s direction. I don’t dare turn to look. “Stop staring,” I hiss again.
Nina makes a face, like she always does when she doesn’t want to do something.
I can tell what she’s thinking and I shoot that idea down immediately. “She’s not my type, and girls are off limits to me for now.”
“She’s been at your gym and she’s writing your story, and you didn’t think to mention it to me,” she states. “What are you hiding?”
“Nothing.”
“What’s she writing? A book about you?”
I shake my head and snort. “Something for the local paper. Some long-ass piece on me.”
“About time, too.”
“The fight is a hot story. Whether Garrison wins or I win is a moot point. But, we both know I’m going to win.”
“Of course you’re going to win. This belt has your name written all over it. Maybe I’ll look into a journalism course next time,” says Nina, as if the idea suddenly appeals to her. “But what if I don’t like it?”
“You’re way too overqualified to be working as a waitress. Why don’t you try to get a job using whatever it is you’ve learned at night school?”
“Because employers want experience.”
One day, she’s not going to need to work at all, because I’m going to take care of her, but since I can’t do that right now, I keep my mouth shut.
“I should go,” says Nina, wiping her mouth on her napkin. “My lunchbreak ended twelve minutes ago.”
“Hey.” I hear Harper’s voice over my left shoulder and I stiffen and stare at Nina. This is her fault. I’m usually receptive to people coming up to me, even when I’m eating or talking to someone. It’s started to happen more and more recently, and I don’t mind, but I have an aversion to Harper interrupting me. I don’t know why it is I loathe her so much. I sense it’s because she’s nosing around in my business, and wants to know about the stuff I want to forget.
“Hi,” says Nina, perking up as if she’s my PR person. “I’m Nina, Elias’s sister.”
“Oh, you’re the sister?” Harper lets out a little laugh and moves so that she’s standing in the middle of us. “I noticed we kept catching one another’s eye.”
“Elias says you’re doing a story on him,” Nina answers.
“I’m supposed to be,” Miss Busybody replies, “but I can’t seem to get him to talk to me.”
“He takes some getting used to,” Nina tells her. “I wouldn’t take it personally.”
The ginger-haired dude stands beside Harper and looks at me as if he isn’t sure what to say.
“I’m Gerry.” He has the audacity to stick out his hand. Thank fuck I’m not eating anymore; I’m always wary of shaking people’s hands because I never know where they’ve been. But I take this guy’s hand and shake it, because it’s the right thing to do and because Nina would only tell me off afterwards if I was rude.
It’s awkward, because I don’t want to talk, and Nina isn’t going to say much, and Harper and her friend are waiting for us to lead the conversation and we’re not going to. It takes a few more seconds for the awkwardness to ratchet up to another level, and then Harper says, “bye, nice meeting you,” and she and her date shuffle out the door.
I assume he’s her date.
“That was strange,” Nina comments.
“I don’t know what to say around her. She’s writing an article on me and it makes me want to avoid her even more.”
Nina pats my hand. “Lighten up, Elias. You’re famous now, in Chicago at least, and in a few weeks’ time you’ll be famous everywhere.”
I smile. Nina has so much faith in me. “I’m starting to get recognized,” I tell her, wanting to switch the subject.
“Everyone in here knows you. Frankie uses you to drum up more business.”
I groan inwardly.
“Your friend looked uncomfortable just now.”
“If you think she looked uncomfortable, you should have seen her in the—” I stop mid-sentence. I want to tell her how uncomfortable Harper was the other day when I stripped right down, but I don’t, not only because it’s not something Nina would find funny, but because, she’s my sister, and I can’t tell her stuff like that.
She fixes me with a stern look. “What did you do?”
“Nothing. I didn’t do anything.”
“Two denials. Confess, Elias. What did you do?”
I clasp my hands together. “She says I haven’t been helpful. I haven’t been forthcoming with answers.”
“Understandable.” Nina has her demons too about our childhood years. Like me, she wants to forget.
“I don’t like her sticking her nose in where it’s not wanted.”
“She’s trying to do her job, Elias, like we all are.”
I pick up my bottle of water and drink from it, not because I’m thirsty, but because she’s right and I don’t want to accept that fact. And then, just as I knew she would, she elaborates, in case I missed her point. “How do you think I feel when someone’s being lousy to me? When they don’t give good tips, or don’t tip at all? Or when someone complains about the food I’ve given them, and then I have to be the go-between for them and the chef?”
I place my bottle down slowly, seeing that she’s on her soapbox now. She’s my sister, and though she’s only a year older than me, she’s always looked after me. We got left alone at home a lot, usually by our mom, since our dad didn’t figure in our life much. He flitted in and out like a flea. I don’t remember either of them much, and Nina doesn’t either, but our aunt, my mom’s sister, used to tell us things about them, and that’s how we know.
Nina and I have had our fair share of adventures, but she’s always looked after me the way any decent mother would have.
“I hear you,” I say, and I wish she’d stop already. “But she doesn’t need to work, and I don’t know why she does.”
“Elias! That’s sexist, I’m disgusted.”
I try not to roll my eyes. Ernesto told me all about Harper and how she went to some fancy college, and how she lives in Lakeview, one of the most expensive parts of Chicago.
The princess and I are worlds apart.
“I don’t mean it like that.”
“Then how do you mean it?”
“She knows nothing about boxing, and she’s messing with my head by being around. I have the most important fight of my life coming up, and I can’t mess up, and I have this airhead of a woman—”
“How do you know she’s an airhead? She got that job because she deserves it. She’s trying to do her best, so don’t be a jerk and get in her way.”
I swallow. I don’t think Garrison’s punch would sting as much as my sister’s reprimands.
“She didn’t get where she is on her own. Her parents helped her.”
“Good for her,” my sister cries. “It means she has parents who care, and who want a better life for her, and parents who have money,” she adds, as an afterthought.
“It’s an accident of birth and she got lucky,” I say with bitterness.
We fall silent then, because we often ponder about this very point. We had none of those things. We didn’t even have the basics; food, or a goodnight hug and
kiss, or story time. I see that shit on TV all the time, in sitcoms and in those Hallmark movies that my last girlfriend used to binge watch so much. Those are fairytale families with fairytale happy endings, and they are bullshit.
We talk about the accident of birth a lot, me and Nina. We pretend how different things might have been if we had been born to nice parents, parents who cared, who were together and lived in a nice suburban house, and made nice suburban meals, and who did our homework with us.
“And it’s an accident of birth that Harper is where she is. She can’t help that, so be nice to her, Elias.”
“Okay,” I reply, begrudgingly. But all the same, I can’t help but think how different our lives would have been. I probably wouldn’t have become a boxer then. There wouldn’t have been any anger inside me.
“Promise?”
“I’ll try.” I frown at her. “Since when did she become your best friend?”
Chapter Eight
ELI
* * *
I’m in the ring sparring with Santos when I notice Princess walk in. This is something recent, me noticing her around, or maybe I’m not as good at shutting her out. I blame it on the diner incident. I feel as if I’ve been forced to be nice to her, and nice in my case is to acknowledge her.
Santos and I finish our session, and I take off my headgear and gloves, and see Harper looking my way. We lock gazes at the same time, and I nod in acknowledgment. I still have Nina’s words in my head, about being nice to Harper, and letting her get on with her job. This time, I decide to go over to her.
“I can answer any questions you might have,” I say. She looks up at me, and I see the surprise flickering across her eyes. They’re dark green, I notice, for the first time.
“That’s good. Great.” She moves her papers out of the way and looks around, presumably to see if there’s a chair for me. Of course, I’d grab my own chair, but that’s not the point. This isn’t about to happen now. I have errands to run.
“Not now,” I tell her. “When I get back. I have a few things to take care of in town.”
Disappointment washes over her, and it’s so easy to see. She doesn’t hide her emotions. Probably because she never had to. “When?”
“Maybe in an hour.”
She scratches her neck, seems to consider this. “I have a meeting with my boss.”
I frown, unsure as to why she thinks I need to know that.
“Mind if I come with you?” she asks.
I don’t suppose I have a choice. “I need to take a shower,” I tell her, and then, because I can, because I know it gets her all ruffled up, I say, “You’re welcome to interview me in the locker room again.”
Her cheeks start to turn pink, and I walk away feeling pretty pleased with myself because I was responsible for that.
Not long after, we’re in the cab together. She’s up against one side of the car, and I’m at the other, and her handbag lies between us. It’s a big expensive-looking one, with an ugly-as-fuck shiny gold buckle.
“So,” she says, tilting her body slightly to face me. But then her cell phone goes off, and she looks at it, and then apologizes before answering it.
It sounds as if she’s talking to her old man. I don’t even remember ever having a conversation with my old man. I have no early memories of him, or what he looked like. I vaguely remember my mom, but it’s more of an essence I have about her, rather than a picture in my head.
I know what my parents look like because of the few photos my aunt showed us.
To hear Harper’s conversation is like wickedly eavesdropping on something alien. It sounds as if her dad’s pissed that he hasn’t seen her. She sounds as if she’s trying to get off the phone.
Eventually she manages it. “Sorry, that was my dad.”
“I figured.”
“So,” she says, starting again. “What made you go into boxing?”
“Survival, and making sure people stayed away from me.”
“You don’t need to put on a pair of boxing gloves to do that,” she says, and tries to shift back slightly only she can’t because she’s already pressed up against the car door.
“Do I scare you?” I want to know. I already know I have some effect on her.
“It’s not that you scare me. I just don’t find you easy to approach,” she replies.
I’m not trying to scare her. People like her aren’t the ones I need to scare off.
The thing is, I’m not comfortable with this interview taking place anyway, and least of all in a cab. The last thing I want is for the taxi driver to go and spill my private stuff everywhere. Harper’s going to write and publish it anyway, and Lou wants me to cooperate, and Nina wants me to be nice, but Princess doesn’t need to know all of my business. I’m already cautious and watch what I tell her, and to that extent I can control what goes out there, but my story is not for others to know. Or Nina. It would break her heart.
“You were a troublemaker at school?” she asks.
“Aren’t most boys?” I throw back, but then I remember she must have gone to a really preppy school, and her idea of troublemakers is probably different than mine.
“But you’re not like most boys,” she replies, as if she’s trying to dig for answers. I hate that she’s digging, so I don’t reply.
“Why do I feel as if our conversations never get anywhere?” she says finally, when silence fills the air. I can hear the exasperation in her voice.
“What is it that you want to know?”
“I want to know what makes you tick, what makes you climb into the ring and hit so hard.”
“You want to know a lot of things.”
“You’re an interesting guy.”
“You think so?”
“Not me, personally,” she replies quickly.
I stare at her, because any talk about personal stuff, with me looking at her like that, is going to make her blush. I wait for it, and sure enough, she blushes. “Not you personally?” I question.
“I have no interest in boxing, or in you, Mr. Cardoza.”
This makes me chuckle. “Mr. Cardoza, is it now?” She’s desperate to put some distance between me and her. I find her discomfort amusing. “What happened to Eli?” I ask, making her blush a little more.
“This proves my point. I’m no better off, information-wise, than before. We go around and around in circles. My interest in you is purely work-related, Eli,” she emphasizes. “It’s for the article, and frankly, right now, the stuff I have on you is what I can get from the internet. I was hoping for more, but you seem to be a busy man who does his best to avoid me.”
“I have a fight coming up, in case you hadn’t noticed, and I don’t have a dad to bail me out when times get hard.”
She presses her lips together as if this pisses her off. Is it Daddy issues or rich-girl issues that she has? I can’t tell.
“Tell me about Grampton House,” she says. The request makes my insides sink.
Luckily, I’m near where I need to be to get out. I tap the cab driver on the shoulder. “Hey, man, can you pull over? I need to get out.”
“Already?” She looks disappointed. I can see why. I hardly gave her anything.
“I’ve got things to take care of at the bank.”
Her lips pinch together and she doesn’t look happy at all. “Is this all it’s going to be?” she asks, as I get ready to climb out.
“How much do I owe you?” I ask, pulling out my wallet.
“Don’t worry about the cost. I’ve got this.”
“You sure?”
She shakes her head, as if she’s still pissed off at me.
“Could I get your autograph?” the cab driver asks. I’m secretly thrilled that he’s recognized me. It’s a new experience, and it’s happened a few times lately, but each time it takes me back and I have to almost pinch myself to know that it is real.
“Sure you can,” I say. He whips out a grubby little notepad and shoves it in my face.
“W
hat’s your name?”
“Al.”
I scribble a short message to Al, and pass the notebook back to him. His face lights up. “You show Garrison what you’re made of,” he says, holding up his fist.
“I plan to.”
“Good luck, man.”
“Thanks.”
I glance over at the back, and see Harper’s tight face. “Where are you going?” I ask, out of curiosity.
“To see my boss, and to tell him that I have nothing on you. No story, no nothing. He’s not going to be happy.”
I remember Nina’s words. Even if she’s a preppy Princess, I guess she has a job to do. “Why don’t you call me when you’re done?” I ask, surprising myself.
“For what?”
“We can talk later,” I offer.
Her face perks up. “What’s your number?” She pulls out her phone. I tell her, and she taps it in and then I hear my cell phone go off. “Oh,” she says in a tone that indicates surprise. “It’s the right number.”
“Did you think I’d give you the wrong number?” I ask her, pulling out my phone to check.
“Right now, I wouldn’t put anything past you.”
She really doesn’t trust me, and this makes me smile. It’s not that I like being such a pain in the butt, but when it comes to girls like Harper, it’s more fun. “Maybe I’ll surprise you and give you a call in a couple of hours,” I tell her.
“I’ll wait and see.”
I grin as I walk away. She doesn’t trust me at all.
Chapter Nine
HARPER
* * *
“I can’t get inside his head.”
“I’m not asking you to have sex with him,” Merv shoots back. I don’t like the way he throws that into the conversation. The ‘Perv’ tag is justified, and I cross my legs and clasp my hands together on my lap.
“He’s closed off. Doesn’t want to talk much.”
“You’re supposed to be a journalist. It’s your job to get him to talk.”
Merv’s angry face stares back at me, and I’m at a loss for what to say. I’d been dreading this meeting all day, and my queasy stomach is evidence of that.