by Naomi Niles
“Yeah, there’s editing and actually landing a book deal. But I’m not even worried about that at the moment. I just need to get it finished.”
“Well, maybe you’ll have it done by the time I get back.” I rose and began lazily tossing clothes into a suitcase.
“Where are you headed?”
“The boss and I are flying down to Vegas, purely for business reasons. We have to watch an exhausting number of fights, and I sort of envy the person who can just sit at home and write.”
“Sorry!” said Ren, not very convincingly.
***
I entered the office to find Randy standing at his desk, hands clasped around the handle of a brown leather satchel. He was wearing a crisp-looking gray blazer and a rather plain blue and red tie, and he looked, if possible, even more excited than usual.
“Unfortunately, we’re probably not going to eat for a few hours after we get there,” he said as he turned out the lights. “We’ve got a weigh-in first thing when we land, and Aardman wanted to meet with me privately for a few minutes just to go over some things—”
“Why not talk with him over dinner?”
“I suppose we could do that.” He paused at the door, patting his pockets to make sure he wasn’t forgetting anything. “Do you ever get that feeling like maybe you left the stove on?”
“There’s no stove in your office.”
“I know, but I’m sure there’s something. Oh, well. I’ll probably remember once we’re in the air. If I didn’t think it would be inappropriate, I would invite Braxton and Bruce out to dinner with us.”
“Why don’t you?”
Randy smiled shyly, like a boy trying to explain why he couldn’t ask his crush out. “I’m sure they’ve already made other plans for the night, and I’m probably going to be exhausted. If we go out as a group, we’ll end up staying out half the night. Besides, I don’t think it’s prudent to cultivate an atmosphere of over-familiarity.”
“Where were you thinking about eating?”
“Oh, anywhere! You know what I’m looking forward to right now? I’m looking forward to getting on that plane and opening one of those little packets of peanuts and just eating them one by one as I stare out at the clear blue.”
But I hadn’t eaten at all that morning, and it was going to take more than a package of peanuts to fill me up. On our way through the airport, I stopped and bought one of those giant pretzels and ate it while we were sitting in the terminal waiting to board our flight.
“Some people get nervous about flying,” said Randy as we sat facing the windows through which a serene sun shone. “But I find it invigorating. It’s one of the miracles of our age that you can climb into this—this tube thing—and be transported anywhere in the world in a few hours. To me, that’s just magic. I mean, there’s no other word for it.”
“I wish I could appreciate it the way you do,” I replied. “Flying just stresses me out.”
“Well, I hope you won’t be overly stressed this weekend. We’re here on business, I know, but there’s no reason we can’t also have a little fun while we’re at it.”
And I might have enjoyed it, if it hadn’t been my second weekend in a row away from home. At some point, I would have to say no to these constant trips out of state.
Chapter Eleven
Braxton
“Do you ever get the sense that Aardman has made us his bitches?” asked Nick.
“‘Patience, Monty,’” I said, quoting The Simpsons. “‘Climb the ladder.’”
We were standing together in the gym, methodically filling up a couple of bulky duffel bags. It was Friday morning, and we’d been here since 7:00am making sure Bruce had everything he needed for the fight that night.
“I just don’t see why he couldn’t have done all this on his own,” said Nick as he placed a box of granola bars into one of the side pockets. “He’s a grown-ass man and doesn’t need us to look after him. I don’t get paid to be a nanny for some other player.”
“I suppose there are worse things we could be doing.”
Nick gave me a sideways glare. “I’m surprised you’re so calm about it.”
“Did you expect me to protest?”
“As a man who has known you for almost three years—yes, I did.”
I was silent for a moment. Undoubtedly, I would have been miffed if Carruthers had rejected me in favor of Bruce. But the fact that he was allowing me to play next week had cooled my disappointment a little. I could wait a week. I would have my moment of glory, and in the meantime, I would be practicing night and day.
By the time we had finished packing everyone’s bags, we were both sweaty and tired. This was around the time of morning when I usually went home and took a nap before making lunch and heading back, but on this particular morning, we had a plane to catch in a couple hours.
Nick tore off his shirt and stepped into the shower, allowing the water to wash over him in a fountain of mist. “You ever been to Vegas, man?” he asked.
“No, but my brother was down there last year.”
“Which one?”
“Marshall, the smart one.”
“Oh, right. Him.” Nick had never met Marshall but had developed an unfavorable impression of him based on things I had said.
“He found the whole place sort of overwhelming. I don’t know if he would ever go back. I remember him saying he loved the restaurants but didn’t care much for the hotels. The blankets were thin and made him itch, and somebody’s bass player kept him up all night.”
“Sounds awful.” Nick had never been especially fond of crowds or big cities.
“Yeah, but I’m told there’s going to be a killer after-party tomorrow night.”
“Unless the actual Killers are there, I’m not interested.”
“Suit yourself,” I said with a shrug. “You may change your mind when we get there.”
Nick had been notably averse to drinking ever since his bout of drunkenness the week before. Last night I had invited him out to a bar to celebrate Carruthers’ decision, but he excused himself on the grounds of having to go home and call his brother. Recently he had traded the whiskey for energy drinks, and it was rare for me to see him without one.
He turned off the water and stepped out of the shower with a towel around his head. “You know what I wish?”
“Hmm?”
“I wish I could sit at home tonight with one of those huge Tupperware bowls of popcorn and rainbow mini-marshmallows, binging a show on Netflix. I would watch exactly six and a half episodes before I crashed and woke up on the couch the next morning.”
“Yeah, I’d like that. I don’t think I could live the life of a rock star, having to be on the road all the time. I don’t know how they do it.”
“Sometimes I think we ask too much of our idols. Just the thought of this weekend is wearing me out, and we’ve still gotta do next weekend.” Nick shook his head. “Maybe we’re getting too old.”
“Speak for yourself!” I said with a laugh. “I’m nineteen. I probably won’t even be allowed into that after-party.”
“No, probably not, but I can always give you my ID.”
“Right, as if we looked anything alike.”
“You never know. Sometimes they don’t look too close.”
“If you don’t go to the after-party,” I asked, “what are you going to do?”
Nick sat down slowly on one of the benches, stretching his broad back. He stifled a yawn. “I don’t know. I was thinking about maybe hitting up one of the strip clubs. Vegas strip clubs are legendary.”
“Yeah? You know I’ve never actually been to a strip club.”
“Really?” Nick stared at me in surprise. “Well, now we have to go.”
The prospect was certainly tempting. My only knowledge of strip clubs came from TV, and I wasn’t really sure what strippers did other than dance and flirt with customers. “You know,” I said aloud, “there’s something so sexy about a woman who knows how to dance.”
> “I know. I had a rather massive crush on a ballerina in high school. She was a grade ahead of me and wouldn’t give me the time of day, but my friends convinced me she was into me and got me to ask her out. I walked up to her in the middle of the school cafeteria the day before homecoming and produced a huge bouquet of roses. Then, in front of everyone, and to my everlasting shame, I asked her to the dance.”
Nick had a way of telling a story, and by now I was completely drawn in. “What did she say?”
“She laughed.” He winced, still looking hurt. “I mean, she actually laughed in my face.”
“Oof. Sick burn.”
“Seriously. That’s the last thing I remember. Friends tell me I burst into tears and ran out of the cafeteria while everyone laughed and applauded.”
“God, I really hope that’s your worst memory.”
“It’s up there. I was so embarrassed I faked being ill and didn’t go back to school for a week. Anyway, I’ve told you mine, so now you have to tell me yours.”
I paused in the middle of folding up a pair of athletic shorts. “Tell you what?” I asked coldly.
“Your worst memory.”
“Ain’t happened yet,” I said tersely, my insides squirming uncomfortably.
“Yeah? You planning on doing something spectacularly awful this weekend?”
“If I do, you’ll be the first to know.” But I said no more, and in a few minutes, we had finished packing and were ready to go.
***
Vegas turned out to be every bit as overwhelming as Marshall had warned it would be. It reminded me of nothing so much as Disney World with its gaudily colored resorts, costumed buskers, and baroque hotel lobbies with mosaic glass horses. As we were walking up the stairs of the Bellagio to our room with bags in tow, a three-story hologram of a woman clad in a red bikini winked at me from the wall of the lobby and blew a seductive kiss. Somewhere in the distance, Panic! at the Disco was playing a thumping bass song.
“I take back what I said before,” said Nick. “If you get on the plane tomorrow, and I’m nowhere to be found, don’t come looking for me.”
“I’m right there with you,” I said as the hologram grinned and licked her lips.
“Do you think Coach would notice if I just slipped out tonight and went to a strip club?”
“Not if he’s sufficiently inebriated,” I replied.
The weigh-in proved to be similarly exhausting and over-the-top. Because none of my fights had ever attracted more than a few hundred people, it was easy to forget that outside Boulder, in the rest of the nation, MMA fights were still massively popular. The response here was beyond anything I’d seen before: thousands of fans had crowded into a single room—some of them plainly from out of state—just to watch fighters being weighed on a scale. My heart thrilled at the sight. Between this and the TV cameras broadcasting the event live, I was going to have the largest possible audience for my fight next weekend.
“That’s a lot of people shown up here just to watch a couple guys whale on each other,” Nick said in an awed voice.
“My mom would be horrified. She always said the health of a nation was in the popularity of its art museums and national parks.”
He threw me a perplexed look. “Explain to me again how you and her are related?”
“Trust me,” I said, “it’s as much of a mystery to me.”
“Anyway, I hope Bruce isn’t feeling the pressure too bad. I think I would piss my pants if I knew this many people would be watching me.”
“You really think so? I find it invigorating.” I caught the eye of a woman in a dark tartan skirt, who smiled shyly. “To be on TV and surrounded by women—what more could any man ask for?”
We ate a leisurely lunch at SUSHISAMBA and returned to the Bellagio about an hour later feeling sluggish and sleepy. As Nick was unlocking our door, another door opened a few doors down, and a familiar figure emerged into the hallway. It took me a moment to realize who she was, and by the time I did, she had already disappeared into the stairwell.
“… so anyway,” Nick was saying, “that’s why I refuse to eat sub sandwiches to this day, and I’ll never forgive my dad for that.”
“Did you see that?” I asked. “It was the girl, the—the president’s assistant. She’s here!”
Nick raised his brows in surprise. “You think she saw us?”
“I sort of hope not,” I said quietly. “It’d be awfully rude of her to walk off and not say anything.” But I had an unhappy feeling that was exactly what she had just done.
Chapter Twelve
Jaimie
When I awoke in a strange hotel room in Vegas on Saturday morning, my first thought was: “I have so much work to get done.”
With a feeling of panic, I rolled over in bed, not wanting to get up. But I knew that the longer I put off the assignment, the more I would have to do later that night and the next day until it became an insurmountable pile. I might as well have stayed home for all the good it would do me being here. Here I was in Vegas with a view of the Bellagio Fountains from my hotel room window, and I couldn’t even enjoy it because I had so much to do. It was like a kid going to Disney World and locking herself in a room the whole weekend because she had a science fair project due.
With a cry of despair, I rose and put on a silk bathrobe. The bathroom was expensively tiled and contained a capacious porcelain sink and a gilt-framed mirror. I washed my face and was just getting ready to step into the shower when I heard a knock on the door. It was Randy.
“Hey, good to see you’re already up.” He was wearing a handsome gray blazer with a freshly ironed blue button-down underneath it. “We’re free until six, so I was wondering, what are your plans for the day?”
“I’d love to go out,” I said, “but I can’t. I absolutely can’t. I’m buried under so much work that it’s going to take me weeks to catch up. I should have spent last weekend doing, it but we were in Florida, and now I’m so far behind.”
Seeing my panic, Randy extended an arm and gave me an affectionate pat on the shoulder. “Shhh,” he said softly and gently. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
“It’s not okay.” I was practically crying now. “If I don’t get some of this done before the fight, I’ll have to stay in, and I don’t want to do that. I probably shouldn’t even have come, and I hate it. It’s like having homework on Halloween.”
Kneading my left shoulder, he said, “I think you’re forgetting one thing.”
“What’s that?” I asked with a loud sniff.
“I’m your boss, and I decide what you have to get done this weekend. If I tell you that you can take the day off, that’s as good as an order. And what I think I would like for you to do is to put off your chores for a while and come and have breakfast with me.”
If he had caught me at a better time, I might have refused. But I was already so hungry and so desperate to get out of that room that I assented at once. “Where would you like to go?” I asked.
“I was thinking maybe the Black Bear Diner? They have the most amazing sculptures of bears all over the dining area, and their pancakes are said to be the best in Vegas.”
“Well, I don’t particularly care for bears or pancakes, but it sounds quaint and lovely. You’ll have to give me a minute so I can throw on something other than a bathrobe.”
“I’ll meet you downstairs in the lobby,” he said eagerly, and he turned and descended the stairs whistling a jaunty tune.
A few minutes later, I met him in the lobby, wearing a sleeveless red gingham blouse, a pair of dark blue jeans and lace boots. We took a cab and reached the Black Bear Diner within a few minutes. There, I ordered a plate of bacon, eggs, and strip-cut hash browns while Randy ordered a stack of sweet cream pancakes. When the waiter finally came with our order, he was so thrilled that he clapped his hands in delight. By that point, I was so hungry that I couldn’t fault him for being excited.
“Last night was really something, wasn’t it?” he a
sked after we had been eating for a few minutes in silence. “It’s kind of a rush, seeing all those people gathered together in one place. Reminds me of Woodstock.”
I couldn’t honestly say I had enjoyed it; I kept thinking about what would happen if a fire broke out, whether we would be able to reach the exits in time or if we would burn to death trying to get out.
“You were awfully quiet last night,” said Randy. “I guess it’s not really your thing, is it?”
I shook my head sadly. “The more people there are in a room, the more panicky I get. If I’m alone in a room and a couple friends come over to talk, then I’ll sit there and talk to them for an hour. But if a third person joins us, I’ll freeze up and go quiet, and if the group gets any bigger, I’ll start looking for an excuse to leave.”
“Amazing!” said Randy, in the tone of a proud parent. “It’s fascinating how different we all are. I can surmise you’re probably not looking forward to tonight’s fight, are you?”
I shook my head. I didn’t even want to talk about tonight’s fight, and I was relieved when he changed the subject.
“You know, I sometimes wonder how people can stand to work jobs that I would never be interested in.” He slathered a second slab of butter onto his plate. “Like, what makes someone want to be a doctor or dentist? I wouldn’t do that if you paid me a million dollars a year.”
I had never given the matter much thought. “I suppose there are economic incentives for taking on certain jobs.”
“Yeah, but if we all collectively decided we didn’t want to be dentists, or policemen, or firefighters? Society would cease to function. I guess it’s a good thing that not everyone is like me, but I can’t imagine being the kind of person who would want to take one of those jobs. That frame of mind is so foreign to me.”
“My mother was a sculptor,” I said, “and my father worked in a munitions factory. He had the dirtiest, most dangerous job and growing up, I was so afraid I would come home from school one day to find out he had died at work. But I looked up to my mother so much and always wanted to possess her talent. She could make the most extraordinary things with seemingly no effort. I’d give anything to be able to do that.”