by Naomi Niles
He opened his eyes again with a look of renewed conviction. “I think if I had to refuse Braxton, I’d regret it almost immediately. And probably for a long time after that.”
Now we were finally getting somewhere. “So what do you want to do?”
In a firm tone, Randy replied, “I think we need to sign up Braxton. I want him to be on our roster for the event coming up on Saturday.”
“Okay!” I said happily. “If that’s what you want, then I’ll start filling out the paperwork. I want to make sure we have the funds available before we do anything concrete.”
“Okay, but in the meantime, I think I’ll go home tonight, pour myself a glass of whiskey, and call Aardman. I want him to know we’ve made a decision, so Braxton at least has a few days to prepare. Plus, he seemed pretty keen on this gig, and I don’t want to leave him in suspense for too much longer.”
“Mmmm, good thinking.” I licked my fingers, which were sticky with grease and fat. “I’m just about done here; do you mind if I get a refill on my soda before we go?”
“No, go right ahead.” He rose and began gathering our trash into a single pile. “And if you want to work from home for the rest of the day, you can. I know you’re tired.”
***
After I finished my work that night, I drove over to the tattoo parlor. I found Rennie standing back behind her desk, sterilizing needles in the dusky gray light.
“You ought to turn on some lights in this place,” I told her. A single ornate Victorian ceiling light hung from the ceiling, faintly illuminating a wall of exposed brick. “I can barely see two steps in front of me.”
“I like the atmosphere,” said Rennie, lighting an incense candle. “I thought you of all people would understand, being a fellow writer. How is your book coming, by the way?”
“It’s not coming at all lately,” I said in a tone of frustration. “I’ve had zero time to myself since last weekend, between flying, and going to Disney World, and seeing one MMA fight after another. I don’t have your gift of being able to churn out five thousand words on my lunch break.”
Rennie laughed. “I’m sure it doesn’t help that your boss is smitten with you.” Seeing my look of horror, she added, “You can’t pretend you haven’t noticed. He drags you with him everywhere, and you’re too naïve and polite to say no. Anyone else would’ve figured out he liked you ages ago.”
“It’s not like that,” I said, irritated. I picked up a glass tumbler off the desk and began fumbling with it nervously. “He just depends on me a lot because I have certain administrative gifts that he’s lacking.”
I spoke the words as if they had been carefully rehearsed, which they had been. I wasn’t blind to Randy’s attention, but I felt there were other and better explanations.
“Anyway,” I added, “I think if he liked me it would have been obvious when we were in Florida.”
“It’s obvious already!” cried Rennie, punctuating each word with a clap. In a lower voice, she said, “Has he given you the D yet?”
I was so surprised I nearly dropped the glass tumbler. “What? No! Of course not!” A flush of humiliation tinged my cheeks. “Why would you think that?”
Rennie shrugged. “Just a question.”
I could think of a hundred objections—he was my boss; he was old enough to be my dad—but I know she would just dismiss them all with a wave of her hand. “Is this the book you’re writing in your head?”
“I just think it’s cute. You’re like his au pair, like Jane Eyre: the kindly young woman who gives him a second chance at life and becomes his friend and helpmate.”
“Rochester was a creep, and he had a secret wife in his attic.”
“I’m not saying it’s a one-to-one parallel—for your sake, I hope it isn’t—but you do seem to be living out that archetype.”
“You and your archetypes,” I muttered with a shake of my head. “One of these days, your obsession with stories is going to get you into trouble.”
“Or it will make me rich,” said Rennie serenely. “Anyway, you need the D. I don’t care how you get it, I can guarantee it would cure your creator’s block right up.”
“You’re one to talk. Have you ever slept with a boy?” When she didn’t answer, I added, “I think it would be unwise to get involved with anyone I work with. MMA isn’t known for spitting out mature, high-functioning men.”
“But Randy, though?” She tugged on the window curtains, plunging the room into near-darkness. “He’s not like the other boys. He’s at least twenty years older, and he doesn’t even wrestle. He’s an executive, wealthy and powerful. The sort of man who goes home at the end of a long day, sits down in a padded armchair, and pours himself a glass from a decanter of aged brandy.”
“You’ve obviously given this a lot of thought.”
Through the haze of darkness, I could see Rennie’s slender silhouette shrugging. “I’m just saying you don’t want to turn down an opportunity to date someone like that. It might not work out long-term, but in the meantime, he could make it worth your while.”
Chapter Nine
Braxton
I spent the next couple days in a fog of happiness. I allowed myself to sleep in on Thursday morning, and when I awoke at around eight am, Winston lay asleep in his cushion in a patch of newly minted sunlight. I threw on a faded t-shirt and a pair of track shorts and glided into the kitchen, where I made myself a breakfast of maple-glazed bacon and baby pancakes with chocolate chips and pecans.
As I ate, it was hard to contain my excitement. My hands were unsteady, and my legs banged against the underside of the table, rattling my plate. It was a feeling akin to being in love for the first time, when the sight of the other person makes you feel warm and funny and nervous all at the same time.
For once, it seemed nothing could dampen my good spirits. I stopped at the mini-mart on the way to the gym to buy a bag of Bugles and an orange Izze, but my card was denied due to insufficient funds. “You sure about that?” I asked the cashier. “Could we maybe try it again?”
We tried it three more times, but my card was denied each time. Feeling disappointed and hungry, I thanked the cashier quietly and left the store.
When I reached the gym, all the showers were full. Resigned to waiting, I sat down on a bench at the back of the locker room.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately,” said Nick, who had his locker open and was combing his hair in front of a mirror. “You seem—I wouldn’t say calmer—but happier. Like you’ve stopped trying to wage war against the whole world.”
“Well, it feels like the world has stopped trying to grind me into submission. For a while, I was just drifting aimlessly along, not really sure where I was headed. It was very frustrating.”
“I’m sure it was. I dropped out of school for about a year in high school to become a burglar-alarm mechanic in Philly. It was the worst mistake I ever made, and I spent the whole year feeling like the world owed me something—fame or success or just recognition of my innate gifts. I’m lucky it didn’t break me. I think where a lot of men break is when they get to that point.”
“I can believe it.” I tore off my cap and ran my fingers through my thick hair. When I hadn’t showered in more than twelve hours, I began to feel filthy and stressed, and the other fighters were taking forever this morning. “I’m hoping today is the day we’ll hear back from Carruthers.”
“You still haven’t heard from him?”
“No, unless he called Coach last night. He said he was going to let me know within two or three days and it’s already been two days since the fight. I’d like to know what I’ll be doing over the weekend, so I can go ahead and prepare.”
“Well, I’m sure he and Coach have been talking. We can’t always know what’s being negotiated behind the scenes, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”
“Oh, I’m not worried. Just antsy.”
Nick nodded. “Yeah, I can tell. You look jittery, like a man who just ate a whol
e package of Pixy Stix. Your leg won’t stop shaking, and you’ve been checking the clock on your phone every thirty seconds since you came in.”
Embarrassed, I slid my phone back into my shorts pocket. The air was thick with the smell of damp tiles and body spray, and over the roar of the showers, I could hear Bruce belting one of the songs from Moana.
One of the canvas curtains opened, and Bruce stepped out with a dingy white towel wrapped around his waist. When he saw me, he raised his eyebrows in a look of mild surprise. “Coach has been looking for you. He told me to tell you if I saw you that he would be in his office.”
I turned to Nick, heart racing, wondering what this meant.
“Well, best of luck to you,” he said with a laconic shrug. “Maybe now you can stop being antsy.”
I was halfway to the door when Bruce spoke again.
“Sorry, when I said ‘you,’ I meant both you guys. Coach wanted to see you and Nick.”
This time it was Nick’s turn to look at me in bewilderment. “Any idea what for?”
A momentary look of fear flashed across Bruce’s eyes. “I’m not allowed to talk about it yet.”
This was the most mysterious thing he had said so far. With a nervous feeling, I grabbed my duffel bag and left the locker room, Nick following close behind.
We found Coach seated in his office watching an equestrian event on ESPN and greedily munching on a large jar of cashews. He muted the sound when we came in, though from time to time his eyes drifted lazily back to the TV.
“So I’ve been on the phone for the past couple nights with Carruthers,” he said, “and I think we’ve finally come to a decision.”
“Oh, yeah?” I managed to say. “What’s that?”
“We’ve decided that you and Nick are both traveling with us to Vegas this weekend. Of course, if that’s alright with you guys.”
“Yeah, of course!” I shouted without a second’s hesitation. Nick nodded eagerly, and we exchanged surprised glances, giddily grinning. This wasn’t quite what I had expected, but it was poetic, in a way, that we had both been accepted.
But my elation turned to confusion a moment later when Coach added, “The two of you will be helping Bruce prep for his big fight that night.”
Nick paused in the act of high-fiving me. “Pardon?”
“Pardon?” I said.
“I don’t think I stuttered,” said Coach, unscrewing the lid on a water bottle. “He went back and forth over the last couple days, but in the end, he was so impressed with that final fight that he asked for both you and Bruce.”
I motioned to my chest.
Coach nodded. “I almost couldn’t get him off the phone because he was so taken with you and wanted to talk about you. He was like a kid in junior high raving about his first crush.”
“That’s good, right?”
“Sure.” Coach untwisted the lid on a water bottle. “Anyway, so Bruce is on the card for this weekend in Vegas, and you’re up next week. Fight’s on Saturday, but we’ll be flying in the day before and getting back on Sunday night. That ought to give you some time to prepare.”
“And where do I fit into all this?” asked Nick.
“I’m giving you and Braxton a day or so to help Bruce prep for this upcoming fight. Then that’ll give you the whole rest of next week to prep Braxton, and I hope to God you’ll use it. I don’t want to see you screwing around, not when you’ve got an opportunity like this.”
“I won’t,” I said earnestly. “Promise.”
“Good. And in the meantime, be thinking about what you want to order when we get there. This steakhouse we’ll be eating at in Vegas, I’ve been there a couple times—they have the most amazing bacon-wrapped matzo balls you could ask for.”
“That sounds great, Coach.” At the moment I would have been fine eating anywhere. Even the cashews tasted extraordinary.
By the time we left the gym that morning, it was drizzling again. Nick suggested that we hit up the Steak Shack a few blocks up the highway, so we followed a grimy trail past thrift stores and half-empty parking lots with loose shopping carts. Overhead, crows gathered in rows on the powerlines, stark against the gray sky.
“I suppose it’s nice for you,” he said after a brief silence, kicking up a pale of damp oak leaves. “You’ve been wanting this forever.”
Sensing the disappointment in his voice, I said, “I’m sure your day will come. It’s like that teacher told me in high school: the wheel of fortune is always spinning.”
“It helps that I’ve never had the same ambitions as you.” He walked with his hands in his pockets, head bent low to the ground. “Imagine being cursed with dreams that exceeded your skills. I think that would just about the most crushing thing that could ever happen.”
“See, the lesson is to never dream.”
He reached over and gave me a warm, if slightly awkward, pat on the shoulder. “I think it works out for some people, sometimes.” But he couldn’t quite conceal the hurt in his voice.
Chapter Ten
Jaimie
When I woke up on Friday morning, I was surprised to find Rennie sleeping next to me.
Firmly but gently, I shook her awake. “Ren? Ren, sweetie. What are you doing in my bed?”
“I have a key, remember,” said Ren sleepily, and turned over on her side. She was wearing a thin silk nightie with her initials monogrammed on the back.
I tried to remember if we had gone out the night before and I had forgotten, either though drunkenness or exhaustion. But no, I had worked from home. The last thing I could remember was brewing myself a cup of tea and settling down at around nine pm to watch Bridget Jones’ Diary. I watched about twenty minutes of that before getting bored and turning on a Pandora station. I’d fallen asleep listening to Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.
“Ren, I thought you were at home working on your book last night,” I reminded her. “When you texted me, that’s where you said you were.”
“Well, I lied.” Ren threw a pillow over her head as though hoping to drown out my voice. “Do you know how much pressure it puts on you when everyone thinks you’re a genius? My family’s been asking when I’m going to finish my novel the way a normal family would ask when you’re getting married. I don’t know what to tell them.”
“But you really are brilliant,” I said with a twinge of sympathy. “You’re a much better writer than me.”
“But see, that’s what I’m talking about.” She wagged one finger in my direction. “You underrate yourself and put me on a pedestal. You’re not doing any favors for either of us.”
I supposed there was some truth in that, though by this point I had long since accepted that Ren was the more gifted writer. “How close are you to being done with your book?”
“I’m so close,” she said in frustration. “So close. I’m right at the climax, and I’m so worried I’m not going to stick the landing. And then everyone will know I was just pretending to be brilliant when all along I was a sham and a fake.”
“But you know everyone has these fears sometimes. Even the smartest, most gifted person you ever met.”
I threw on a shirt and ran into the kitchen to grab some orange juice. When I came back, Ren was still lying motionless with her head buried under the pillow.
“Here, drink this.” I set the glass down on the nightstand. “It’ll help you feel better.”
Ren raised the pillow just enough to look at it. “Pulp or no pulp?”
“Too much pulp, in my opinion.”
“Perfect.” She sat up and drained the whole glass.
“See, here’s the thing,” she said. “I’ve been reading biographies of Mozart and Paul McCartney—every genius you ever heard of had an unshakeable faith in their own genius. But I question myself, I second-guess myself, sometimes I doubt myself. So I must not be a great genius.”
“Let me see if I can follow your logic.” Sometimes talking with Ren made my head hurt. “You sometimes aren’t sure if you’re a geni
us, so you must not be.”
“Exactly,” said Ren.
“But have you considered that maybe the biographies didn’t tell the whole story? Maybe they had doubts but kept them to themselves. I’m sure Joyce and Morrissey questioned themselves just as much as you do.”
“Maybe.” Ren fell back on the bed with a sullen expression. From this angle, I could see the lace fringe of her underwear. “Sometimes I just wish I had a fellow genius I could commiserate with. It gets lonely.”
I turned away so she couldn’t see the immediate effect these words had on me. Of course, Ren had never considered me her equal as a writer—she was better at it, and she knew it—but it still hurt to hear the truth stated so plainly. I was just a mediocre talent, not even worth talking to because I could never understand the high and lonely calling of genius.
She was right in what she said; that wasn’t really the issue. The issue was that we both wanted the same thing, and only one of us had the skill and dedication necessary to make it happen. And I was going to be forever frustrated until either I abandoned my dreams or became serious about bringing them to fruition.
And even then, I would probably still be frustrated because I could practice the craft for the rest of my life and still never be as good as Ren.
When I hadn’t spoken in a while, Ren placed a cold hand on my back. “Hey, hope I didn’t upset you. I’m just thinking out loud here.”
“Well, if it’s any comfort,” I said with a sad smile, “I don’t think you have to worry about a lack of faith in yourself.”
“Maybe not.” She rubbed her eyes, which looked red and sore. “I’m probably just being dramatic because I don’t want to finish this book. Later this week, I’ll drag myself back into the coffee shop and bang out the last couple chapters.”
“And then what?”
“Then everyone in the world will love me.”
I smiled, for real this time. “I think there are a few steps in between that you’re forgetting.”