by H. T. Night
“That it will,” I agreed. “But I know what I like. And you did ask.”
Without looking at the waitress, Marcos tilted his chin toward the bar and said, “We have it.”
The waitress nodded and made her way behind the bar.
“So, tell me, Kyro. What kind of setback did you have?”
“A physical one,” I answered.
Marcos whispered to me so that no one else at the table could hear, “Are you referring to the chunk of flesh that was bitten out of your shoulder?”
I looked at Marcos, surprised. There should be no way for him to know that. So, I whispered back to him, “How did you know that?”
Marcos leaned in real close to my ear and whispered, “Let’s just say that once you become one of us, you can spot others a mile away. And in your case, I spotted you even before you knew yourself.”
He knew I was a werewolf. He also implied that he was one, too. He chose to be vague with his statement so I respected that. Perhaps when we knew each other better, we would trade details. Tonight, my wolf senses were kicking in to guard me. I would reveal only minimal details until I saw what Marcos was up to.
“A man bit me in a street fight, the night before my fight,” I said quietly. That’s about as much as I wanted to preface my story. I wanted to hear what else he knew about me. And figure out why he wanted to know more.
“You were bitten by a Carni who was in his human form, correct?” This time, Marcos’ voice was a tad louder and something told me he was just giving the illusion that we were having a secret conversation and that everybody at the table knew exactly what we were talking about.
“You knew all of that about my shoulder?” I said in my regular voice.
Now Marcos was really close again when he whispered a third time. “Yes, because it was a full moon that night. Only a dog would take a chunk out of a man’s arm in a street fight.”
Now I was sure what was happening. I knew of the hustle. I felt it when someone wanted something from me and the hairs rose slightly on the back of my neck, a cautionary response. “So, what’s all this about?” I asked.
“I’m just getting to know one of my customers and nothing more,” Marcos replied. “Regardless of how famous and wolf-like they happen to be.”
I looked Marcos in the face and calmly said, “What do you want, Fausto?” I called him by his last name, a subtle hint that I was onto his game of trying to draw me out by getting personal details. Maybe I didn’t want to spill them now. No, for sure, I didn’t.
Marcos smiled. “I’ll let you know in time. We are going to be great business partners. Tonight, let’s enjoy ourselves. We have alcohol, sport, and women. Please indulge in all of it.”
“Business partners? That was kind of a leap from just getting to know one of your customers and nothing more.” He’d slipped that in subtly but I wasn’t that drunk yet. “I’ll take you up on your alcohol. But I have a good woman at home.”
“I’ll bet you do. Bottoms up, then.” The waitress poured the Carlsberg Elephant beer in a pilsner glass and placed my double shot in front of me, too—Marcos and I clinked glasses. He made a toast in another language and everyone laughed but me, since I did not understand what he said. This time, I downed the Patrón with no chaser.
Chapter Eight
So, as the alcohol flowed more freely, the next couple of hours were filled with jokes, stories, and questions about being an MMA fighter. Everyone was calling me Kyro, and it was not the obscurity I had hoped for, considering they all knew I was also an MMA fighter. I wanted to keep Tommy and Kyro separate when I came into this world.
There was one guy who seemed especially interested in me. He asked me a lot of questions and seemed to be as genuine as a guy you could ask for. His name was Dave. He gave off a strong positive vibe. Some people have a presence that just puts a smile on your face when you talk to them. Dave was that guy. He had red hair and was mildly fit. He was a pretty good-looking guy, considering he was a male ginger. That usually doesn’t go well for the guys, but in Dave’s case, he was handsome enough.
As the night went on, Dave and I separated ourselves from the group and decided to shoot a game of pool. Most of the bar had gone home and Dave and I were pretty much by ourselves in the back room, shooting pool. I wasn’t ready to go home yet. I was waiting for my buzz to go away. Marcos had made his way to a back room where his office was located. He was probably counting the daily receipts to see what he brought in for the day. Marcos seemed like a real unpredictable guy. My gut feeling was that a guy like him, eventually, was up to no good. He smiled and led you by the collar to do things his way and at any given moment, he’d cut you off. There are a lot of characters like him in the MMA world and I did my best not to associate with them. Now that I was in the Carni world, I might not have much of a choice. He knew things about me, that, when known together, packed quite a wallop. He knew that I fought MMA and he knew that I was now a werewolf and even knew when and how it happened. I was so glad for Dave’s company. He seemed like a decent guy. Genuine.
So, while Marcos was counting up his money, and no doubt spying on me through a closed-circuit TV system, Dave and I began playing a game of pool. I racked the balls and Dave broke. He hit the white cue ball as hard as he could, and they whacked into the other balls and he made a striped ball in the side pocket.
“I guess I’m stripes,” Dave said without ego.
“You guess? I think the rules of pool are pretty clear—when you make a ball in on the break without scratching, you are either solid or stripes,” I said, laughing.
“I was trying to show some humility, Kyro,” Dave smiled.
“You’ll need to show it when you beat me,” I said, continuing to give him the business. When I like someone, I give them a hard time. So, it was apparent that I had already grown fond of Dave.
“I plan on beating you. Just promise me you won’t kick my ass when I do?”
“The only ass kicking I plan on doing is during the game. I leave my intimidation tactics for the ring.”
“You seemed to be doing a pretty good job right now with the whole talking part,” Dave said, giving it right back to me.
“Would ‘Big Red’ like to make it interesting?”
“Big Red? I haven’t been called that for years.” He patted his hair. “You shoulda seen it when I was a kid. Flaming red. Not so much anymore.”
“Okay, Medium Red. Would Medium Red like to make it interesting? Neither one of us knows anything about the other’s game. If one of us is a pool hustler, neither one of us is aware of it at the moment.”
“You think I’m Paul Newman or something?”
“By the looks of your all-Archie comic book hairdo, I hardly doubt it. But then again, that could be your move. But something tells me that I doubt you ever hustled a dime in your life. And your first name isn’t the name of a city; otherwise, I would just kiss my money goodbye.”
Dave laughed at my Teen Wolf quote. “Well, what about you?” Dave asked me directly.
“Oh, I’m a big-time hustler,” I said.
“Seriously?”
“I am, but not in pool.”
“So, what’s the point of all of this banter? Are you one of these guys that just likes to hear himself talk?” Dave asked.
“Do you want to put 50 bucks on the game?”
“Just 50?” Dave said, winking at me.
“Okay, you might be a hustler,” I laughed.
“I’ll tell you what. Let’s just play and the loser pays for the next round.”
“Sounds good to me, Dave.”
“Don’t talk. Shoot!” Dave said, sort of cribbing a line from The Good the Bad and the Ugly. I laughed because the game was on, and we were clicking with each other’s sense of pop culture humor.
The next 30 minutes were brutal. Neither Dave nor I were any good at pool. It felt like it was one of the longest that two grown men had ever played a game of pool. We were horrible. If our pool scores were golf sc
ores, we would have been dozens of strokes over par.
Finally, I shot the 8 ball into the side corner pocket, but too soon to put the game out of its misery. I wish I could say I had shot in the 8 ball on purpose, but I couldn’t even do that right.
When the game was thankfully over, I felt like I had sobered up enough to drive home. It wasn’t a medical or scientific decision, but what was a guy going to do when he lived 45 miles away? And perhaps, my inner werewolf was the designated driver.
It had been an interesting night. I knew I had just experienced the company of a number of werewolves like myself. Which ones were Carni? I didn’t know. Something told me that most of them were. I said bye to Dave and headed home.
I drove with the windows open to the brisk night, and howled a few times, just for fun. It felt amazing. I had been with my own kind, they seemed to like me and I know that we fit. I had felt their sameness to me, their werewolf counterparts just under the surface of us all. I was home at 4:00 in the morning. It seemed that I had howled myself sober on the drive, the stars in the black velvet night my welcome company on that 45-mile drive. I tried to sneak back into bed before I could accidentally wake Maya, but I wasn’t so lucky.
“Where did you go?” Maya asked, as if she had been awake the whole time. She was even still wearing her mascara. I sensed that she’d been waiting up.
“To a bar,” I answered, removing my clothes. Drinking made my temperature go up, and it was time to get naked.
Maya sat up and stared at me with a puzzled look on her face. “So, in the middle of you wanting to get back in shape, you thought it was a good move to go to a bar?”
“The bar part wasn’t a good move?”
“Please tell me what your good move was.” Maya was now being loud. Maya was never loud. Maya was never disgruntled, so this was highly unlike her. I had hit a nerve and needed to fix it pronto.
“Wow, you’re pretty pissed off,” I said. It was a horrible time and place to start calling attention to her anger, but seeing her upset was new to me.
“Why wouldn’t I be pissed off?” Maya started to talk and then stopped herself. Finally, she said, “You want to know how hard it is to not ask the obvious question here? But I love what we’ve become too much to assume something that awful. But I’m telling you, it’s taking all I have to not bring it up.”
“Maya, I didn’t go out to meet or see a girl. I swear to God. As a matter of fact, I had girls offered to me and I turned them down.”
“Girls offered to you? Where were you? In Saigon?”
“That did sound bad, didn’t it?”
“Try again, Tommy.”
“Look, I went to a werewolf bar tonight.”
“A werewolf bar? Are there such places?”
“Yes, and they’re not as discreet as you think. I went to one in Los Angeles.”
“You drove all the way to Los Angeles?”
“Yes.”
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
“It was an interesting bar. I met the owner. He seemed like a big shot. He had women at his disposal and at one point, in his admiration of me, he offered me some of his harem.”
She rolled her eyes when I said the word ‘harem.’
“Admiration for what?” Maya asked.
“Oh, didn’t I mention it? He is a fan of my MMA career. He knew my record and everything. He’d actually seen me fight. He knew my stats, Maya!”
Maya’s facial expression was one of confusion. “All right.”
“He mentioned that I could have some company if I wanted to, and I said no because I had the love of my life at home.”
“Did you really say that?”
“I might have replaced ‘love of my life’ with ‘a good woman at home.’ But I did bring you up,” I said, reassuring her.
Maya sighed and leaned her head back on her pillow. She was calming down. Thank God. She was now ready to listen and not assume the worst.
“Maya, the owner knew that during my last fight I had a werewolf gash on my shoulder.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that he knew I was a werewolf or was shortly going to become one.”
“Did he say that?”
“More or less.”
“So, what does that mean? That he knows? What is he gonna do about it?”
“I don’t know. A guy like him could use that information in many different ways.”
“Give me one way he might use it.”
“He could blackmail me.”
“Blackmail you? For what?”
“For being in MMA, and also being a werewolf.”
“But you have not fought in the ring since you became a full-fledged werewolf.”
“But, I’m going to.”
“Don’t,” Maya said plainly.
“Don’t what?” I asked.
“Don’t continue fighting if someone is going to use it to blackmail you.”
I stared at Maya and couldn’t believe how nonchalantly she said that. She knew that MMA was my life. “Look, babe, there’s no discussion there. I will never stop being a fighter.”
“Even if your life and well-being are in jeopardy because of it?”
“I can take care of myself,” I assured her.
“What about me? What about when someone kidnaps me again and uses me against you? What about that, Tommy?”
Any other time, this would be a desperate plea from a girlfriend. In Maya’s case, she had an effective argument. I had already put her in jeopardy once. She didn’t say poop about it. It was like she could forgive that once, but no way in hell would she put herself in that type of situation again.
“Look, Maya, this is becoming complicated. Just trust me. It will never come to that. And I promise that I will always protect you. No matter what happens, I’ll make sure that nothing ever happens to you again.”
“Tommy, it’s not always about you. You brought me into this life. I had to compromise myself because I love you. Don’t you think for one second that if I could have my boyfriend not be a werewolf that I would jump at that chance? I can’t change that because it is what you’ve become. I compromised a lot of my own understanding to wrap my brain around this. All I’m asking you is for you to do some compromising. You need to do it for us.”
I kissed Maya on her forehead and I held her hand over my chest. I leaned my head back and let out a good sigh of my own. Maya was my life, and it was about time that I put things into perspective. I took in a deep breath through my nose. I took in a strong scent of my Maya’s being. I had noticed it before, but the more in love I fell for this woman, the stronger her scent was. It was a combination of pheromones and perfume and it permeated more than my nose. It was a specific smell that was all her own and it went into a memory catalog of scents that werewolves collect. I loved the smell of her skin and her hair. I even loved the taste of her saliva. I was learning that smell was also connected to taste. Her smell gave me comfort and if I could have bathed in her scent, to keep her with me 24/7, I would have.
Chapter Nine
The next morning, I woke up feeling odd.
I decided I needed to talk straight with her. I wanted to fight in MMA, but I wanted her love even more. I had screwed up so many times before in other relationships. I knew I couldn’t put her in jeopardy ever again, even though I didn’t know how long I could honor this promise. I knew in my heart, I could at least honor it for the time being. Maybe she’d come back around in a few months, and relent about MMA. It seemed like Maya was more accepting of me being a werewolf than being an MMA fighter. That realization just about floored me.
Maya came out of the shower just wearing a pink towel. I always thought pink and Maya was always really a hot combination. Blonde, tan and pink are enough to make me melt from my loins on out. This was my girlfriend. Life was good.
“Babe,” I said. “Come sit next to me.” Maya knew I had something important to tell her being that I never say, “Babe, come sit ne
xt to me.” Maya waddled over to me like a cute pink penguin, and sat next to me. Damn, she smelled incredible. I don’t think I had ever been more attracted to this woman than I was at this moment.
Maya looked at me and asked, “What is it?”
“I’ll quit fighting for you,” I said plainly.
Maya looked at me and there wasn’t any joy in her expression. She knew that although I said this out loud to her, it was paining me inside to make such a statement. So, she gave me as honest of a look a woman could give her man and asked, “Are you sure?”
I nodded my head but then I said, “I don’t know.”
“So, you’re not sure?” she asked. “You’re nodding but saying something else.”
“Maya, all I’m sure of is what I feel now. It is in my core. You’re the one. You’re the woman I have longed for all of my life.” I was getting extremely emotional, so I decided to stand up and express myself. “Maya, I love you more than I love to fight. If you don’t feel safe, then I need to respect that. I can’t ask you to live in fear. It’s not fair to you. I will put off my MMA career until things are less unpredictable.”
“You’re okay with it?”
“I wouldn’t say I’m happy about it. Just… hopefully, it won’t be forever. I just want to able to revisit it at some point.”
“Of course you can, Tommy.” Maya stood up and then wrapped her arms around me. “We need to get a hold of this werewolf thing. That should be your priority. You need to assimilate into their world. If you’re also worrying about fighting, then I think you might lose yourself. Be torn between too many things: MMA, werewolf life… me.”
“You!” I said. I grabbed Maya by her waist and spun her around. When I did this, her towel flew off. I loved it when a plan came together. I tossed her on the bed and she screeched and then laughed in pleasure. I was only wearing a pair of basketball shorts. I kicked them off.
Maya and I rolled around naked on our bed. I was wrestling her lightly and I said, “If I can’t fight, I’m going to have to get out my aggression in other ways.”
“Just don’t be rough with me.”
“Am I ever?”