M.I.A.

by Lizzie Swale

  Dan noticed this and thought that maybe it was WW nursing some kind of injury: favoring a foot, or trying to hide a shoulder. But after a few fights of seeing it in WW’s face Dan realized it was just the look of a very seasoned fighter settling in for the long haul of the match. WW was like a tank at times, but at other he was moving at, and through, opponents at a speed that amazed Dan. There was a lot to WW, Dan realized, much more than whatever sob story his team was selling to get asses in the seats of the arena.

  As Dan got up to get a drink after watching several hours of tape his phone chimed. He looked at it and didn’t recognize the number. The text asked him how he was doing and said something else that Dan didn’t even bother to read at all. Instead he just texted back an inquiry about the other person’s identity and headed to the fridge.

  He’d forgotten to buy beer before heading home, then he remembered that he hadn’t forgotten at all, that beer was something that Sam had said that he needed to stay away from if he wanted to have a chance against the Russian Bear, as some of media had taken to calling WW. Dan regretted that decision now. He didn’t smoke weed—as a rule he didn’t put anything in his lungs that might slow him down in a fight—so there was really no other way for him to unwind.

  Dan sat back down in front of his computer, and older model he’d been gifted by his father that Dan had never had the heart to throw out, and saw his phone. The person had responded, and it was Sam. She was wondering how the evening was going for Dan, and if he needed any help breaking down the video.

  This stuff is way more complex than I thought it would be. Dan texted her.

  I thought it might be. Sam texted back

  They talked for a while about MMA, and then talked about other things. It was strange, almost, to Dan that he was thinking of Sam as his equal, maybe even his superior, and she was a female. It made Dan wonder if he’d really been one of those people that didn’t realize they had a couched prejudice inside of them. He’d never really thought about it in terms of fighting before, maybe that’s why it was so strange. But at the same time he’d never really been forced to confront femininity before like he was now. There was no way around the fact that Sam was a woman, and she was clearly running the show. And not only that, but she was doing it with style and grace.

  It made Dan wonder, as he watched WW smash people and texted Sam, if he would have been as cool as her if he would have been if he’d been in her place—some MMA guy walking into the gym and being like “teach me.” She could have been a dick about it; she could have humiliated him, told him he had to clean the bathrooms or some shit like that. Because that was how it went sometimes with trainers, you really had to earn their respect before they would work with you.

  Maybe Sam had respected him before he’d walked through the door. It was something that he never asked her, and probably never would ask. But he couldn’t help but wonder if she’d seen him fight on television, and if so, what she had thought. If she’d looked down at his somewhat sloppy fighting style, or if she had seen potential far greater than what was going on.

  Sam ended their texting conversation by telling Dan that she was headed to bed and how she looked forward to working with him the next day. Dan found himself texting back something polite even though deep down he still begrudged the fact that he’d had to seek help for something that he’d been doing his entire life. But then he thought of how WW was working with a bunch of trainers, how WW was watching the film with them too, not just working bags with them. And how WW might have already out worked him.

  Dan shook the thought from his mind as he pushed his seat back from the desk and shut down the computer. He was ready for the next day, even though he felt tired and alone. Sam would want to run drills all day tomorrow. It wasn’t that she didn’t think that he could do them, it was how obvious that he could but didn’t. The irony of the whole situation dawned on Dan slowly, much the same way a soft blush hue will color the sky when the sun settles into the horizon for dusk so Dan’s mind was illuminated. It wasn’t some thunderclap realization—he didn’t really realize it until he woke up to drive to the gym the next morning.

  Then it hit him: Sam was the only woman in his life; and also, up to this point, she was also the most healthy female relationship he’d had. As he pulled out of his driveway he thought about his taste in woman and how it was usually much different from Sam. Usually Dan liked the curvy, super busty woman that he’d grown up seeing in magazines. But Sam wasn’t like that at all. She was slim, lithe, and she could move her hands so fast Dan’s eyes had a hard time keeping up that morning.

  The drills went fairly well, Dan thought, mostly because Sam was gracious enough to let his ego take the beating instead of his face. When Dan would be lazy, which wasn’t often, but did happen, Sam would slam in upside the head with the pad. It was more of a love tap than anything else, and Dan took it for what it was—correction. He needed to learn and grow, and sometimes that meant that things had to be shook up a little bit, that he needed to be shook up a little bit.

  Dan could tell that Sam was starting to respect him more as a fighter and as a person the more they worked together. Where at first she had acted liked he was an average fighter that wanted to review the basics when they initially squared off that morning, by the end she was running some of the most complex drills that Dan had ever done. Some of them he couldn’t keep up with, and others were the kind of drills that people couldn’t really finish unless they had done them before a few times. Dan didn’t mind messing up a little bit, though. That was what he was ultimately here to do.

  Toward the end he could tell that Sam felt let down for some reason. He tried to think back on his energy level and didn’t know why she was acting like he wasn’t putting in his all, like this was high school sports or something and he was just trying to make it to the end of the practice so he could go get high in the parking lot.

  “What’s the problem?” Dan asked her as things wound down. “You’re acting like I’m not keeping up or something.”

  “It’s not that,” Sam said. “It’s that I think you get off in your head sometimes. The most important thing about training is actually being present in the moment to participate. You can’t phone this stuff in. And yes, you are acting like this is high school football practice. You’re acting like the couch is having you run speed drills and you aren’t trying to out pace yourself.”

  Dan didn’t know what to say, and Sam didn’t give him a chance to say it as she stormed into her office and slammed the door. In the locker room he sat and looked at the floor despondently. What was he doing wrong? Why was he so hard on him? Then he started to laugh. This was exactly what he needed! This was what he came for. Dan had forgotten all about Sam’s military training. It would be wise of her to break him down and then build him back up. That was what Dan had always heard went on in the military—people came in, were broken down, then built back up to be something more than they had been before. He wasn’t sure if he liked her taking it straight to the mind games, but maybe she wasn’t at all—there was always the chance that she was being totally for real about her feelings.

  Dan laced up his street shoes and figured he was over thinking it anyway. He’d go home, have a beer if he damn well pleased, and show up tomorrow even more prepared than he had today. Last night he’d been up to late watching film. Tonight he would take it easy and get plenty of sleep so that when he woke he’d be a step ahead of the rest, and ready to take on the world.

  As he left the gym, just when Dan was ready to put the entire business of being an MMA fighter out of his mind, Sam called him into her office.

  “Are you scared?” she asked him before his ass had even had a chance to touch the seat. “Is that why you’re acting like your off in another reality in your head while I’m trying to teach you how to fight like a professional instead of some lucky school yard brawler?”

  Dan’s mouth fell open. He wasn’t sure what to say. She did have a point, he had been off in his a
lot lately. Maybe that was why he was here, that and he had finally realized that he needed to tighten up his game so he could go to the next level without having some kind of trauma in his brain. That was one thing he remembered most from watching WW fight, was that he looked confused in some moments when he should have been in complete control. Maybe he was doing the same thing to himself by getting up in his own head so much and thinking about things.

  “I’m not sure what it is,” Dan said. “I know that lately I have been struggling with my own insecurities a lot. As a fighter I mean. I guess I’ve just had to face that I’m not all that, like I thought I was. And I’m also dealing with thinking that I was ‘all that’ to begin with. So it’s kind of like a cycle that keeps repeating. But I do have to say that I’ve been putting myself into this to the utmost. There hasn’t been a time when I wasn’t trying, or when I was just ‘phoning it in,’ as you put it.”

  Sam shifted in her seat, leaning forward and glaring at him.

  “You’re actually trying to tell me that there wasn’t a time, not a single time, that you weren’t giving it your all today? Did you not feel it when I tapped you on the head? Hey, I know that I’m not yelling at you out there, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to most of the time. I just don’t think it’s productive to yell at the person I’m trying to teach because they aren’t picking up what I’m laying down.”

  Dan started to say something, but then stopped himself. He didn’t want to get in some fight about all of this while he was tired and not thinking straight. He wanted to go home and think on it and then maybe talk about it the next day.

  “Let me think about it,” Dan said. “I know that might sound like a cop out, but I want you to know that I really am trying to become a better fighter.”

  Sam leaned back in her seat and looked at the ceiling. As if for the first time Dan noticed how beautiful she looked when she was angry. It wasn’t a cuteness, either, like some guys liked to tell their girl friends when they’d get mad at them. It was a real beauty that sprung from her poise, and how she seemed to vibrate with energy while still remaining in control of herself.

  “Fine,” Sam said. “We can just forget about it. Or talk about I tomorrow or whatever. But what would really help things out was if you came here to be here and train, and didn’t worry so much about whatever doubts you carry around with you. I realize that you’re trying to break through a stagnation in your fighting ability, and that means you’ve realized at some point that you’ve failed to continue to grow. I can respect that, but what I can’t is someone acting scared of spirit while they punch a bag or run through a drill.”

  Dan nodded. He didn’t want to escalate things any further. It also wasn’t his place to tell his trainer that she was wrong in her estimation of how he’d done that day. He know if he tried to do that she would just blow up on him since it seemed like she already wanted to do that anyway.

  Dan stood, and looked around the room as if he’d set his keys down somewhere and was trying to find them. People told him that he looked that way whenever he was really trying to search for the right words. But Dan didn’t find them, so he just turned and left without saying anything else. He wondered, as he drove home, if Sam was trying to get him to quit—testing his resolve to see if he was really in it to win it, or if he was just having the fighter version of a midlife crisis.

  When he got back to his place the sun was already going down. Dan hated how the winter stole so many hours of daylight. Not that he needed it to work, like some people, but just because he took solace in a shining sun. It always uplifted his spirit to feel the sun on his face. But in the winter that just wasn’t the way things went. As Dan got out of his car and headed into his apartment complex a chill wind cut through his gym clothes and he realized that he’d forgotten to change before leaving the gym.

  Dan hated when he got shook up like this. Maybe that’s why he’d avoided going to a trainer for all these years. He cursed WW for making him realize that he wasn’t good enough to make it on his own, not if he wanted to be a real contender and not just some guy who paid the rent by legally beating people up. As he sat behind his computer and re-watched WW fight a few of his most recent matches he was sure to tune in to his footwork, and to pay special attention to all the small feints and other tactics to throw off WW’s opponent.

  As much as Dan just wanted to get drunk and not think about any of it he knew that wasn’t going to be the reality of the situation for him because he was a real fighter, a real competitor, and that meant that he was going to do what he needed to do to beat anyone in his way. Even if the anyone was as big and bad as WW.

  Before going to sleep that night Dan checked his phone to see if Sam had shot him any messages, but found it void of any messages from her, or any other human contact.

  As Dan drifted off to sleep he thought about how much he had sacrificed to MMA already, and how much further he was ready to go. He was willing to get in a ring with WW even though that meant he might day, and he was willing to train with someone who was hard on him even if it caused him some existential discomfort. But at some point he really would have to tally it all up and see what had worked out for him and what hadn’t worked out for him; what investments had brought a return, and which of them had gone bust. He just hoped that he wouldn’t fail himself before his career was really over, and that his body wouldn’t fail him during and after his career when it was normal for fighters to start to show their wear and tear.

  It was a lot to hope for, he realized as he set his alarm. It was a lot for him to think about and maybe at the end of the day he really just needed to cut the shit and be a little more open to being present in the moment. Not just there throwing punches, but there and aware in a way that he hadn’t been the last few days. There were no more excuses. Tomorrow would be day three, and by that time any decent fighter should be at least rolling steadily along with whoever they are training.

  But what if he wasn’t a decent fighter? What if, like Sam had said, he was just another school yard brawler that got lucky—until they didn’t. Would WW be the fight where instead of getting lucky he met his match, and maybe even his maker?

  As he drifted off to sleep all of these thoughts seemed to drift away from him as well, until Dan felt like he was suspended over a vast pit of nothingness, sleeping. Then, after the dream dissolved, there was nothing.

  Chapter 4

  Over the next few months Dan really did apply himself in a way that he had never done before. He was present for every punch, and didn’t flinch when sweat stung his eyes, and didn’t complain when Sam landed a slap with the pad because the fluorescent lights quick staccato flashing had confused his vision. Each week was a battle with himself, and each week he had to really gut check himself and see whether or not he really wanted to be an excellent fighter. It wasn’t something he had done since the start of his career, before he had gotten some traction and felt the benefit of being what people referred to as a charismatic fighter.

  That was something else he was having to deal with: The public’s perception of him. WW had a very PR team that was always busy putting out either some crazy story about WW, or trying to circulate doubts about Dan. It was almost enough that Dan was impressed, but one night it really got to him.

  He was up late, watching more footage. He’d gotten on an MMA forum at the behest of a friend to read a thread about the upcoming match. Usually Dan kept well away from forums before a fight because of how many people were willing to go on the internet and completely talk out of their ass, as if they had nothing better to do; but this time was different because his friend had told him that WW himself was posting, had posted a few pictures to prove his identity, and the shit he was saying was ruthless.

  When Dan got to WW’s comments he could almost feel his blood boil he got so angry. Who did this guy think he was, anyway? Or was it even WW? It very well could be some shill that his PR team was paying to throw a bunch of bullshit around the internet and see i
f they could scare up any comment from Dan himself—Dan had recently gone on record saying that he didn’t have anything even remotely close to a PR team, and now regretted it.

  Before he gave himself a chance to do anything stupid Dan shot Sam a text and asked her what she thought.

  That’s a hard one, because I know I’d be mad as well. She replied.

  They talked about it via text as Dan read more and more stupid posts from someone claiming to be WW, but could have been anyone with a few photos. Sam kept trying to reason with him but Dan kept getting angry, until finally Sam said she was coming over to hang out with him for a minute.

  Dan wasn’t sure what to think about that at all, so he didn’t say anything in response. Within the hour Sam was at his door.

  Chapter 5

  “What you need to realize is the only reason they would pull a stunt like this is to try and exhaust every avenue of fucking with you before a fight—because they are scared.”

  Sam sat across from Dan at his small table. They were in the “dining area” of Dan’s sparsely decorated and barely furnished apartment. Dan wondered what it looked like to Sam. He didn’t really have that many friends, and he definitely didn’t have a girl friend, so he didn’t invest much time or energy into his place. If he was around it more maybe it would be a priority, but at present Dan invested way too much of his time into what people referred to as the “MMA lifestyle” to be in tune with much else.