by Jeremy Brown
And it worked. I said I was going to knock him the fuck out.
Which I did.
But that didn’t make Kevin less of a weasel. He waved.
I examined the scars on my knuckles. No new ones since the last one.
Eddie pointed the two guys into a corner, turned and held his arms out to me and Gil.
“My guys. You enjoying the culture? Shit, don’t get up or anything, say hello. You want to be in the promo we’re shooting?”
“Here?” Gil said.
“Yeah, doing a pre-fight bit on the Arcoverdes, the history, all that. I want some shots of you guys training with Antonio and Jairo, show Warrior’s roots run deep here, really tap into our respect for the lineage.” He sniffed and shook his head at the ceiling. “This lighting is trash. Hey Philip.”
The one who wasn’t Kevin turned.
Eddie twirled a finger at the room. “You guys can fix this, yeah?”
Philip nodded.
Gil said, “Antonio is okay with this?”
“It’s his boy’s debut—he gets it. Whether he likes it or not, shit, who can tell?”
“I can,” Gil said. He went to Antonio. They leaned their heads together, the words just for them.
Eddie said to me, “Anybody recognize you yet?”
“I haven’t been out.”
“Don’t. These fans, man, they see the guy who’s fighting Aviso out on the street, they’ll get a few shots in just to help him. Soften you up.”
I nodded. After the mess with Burch and Vanessa and Shuko was over, Eddie and I had agreed not to mention it. But it was in the room with us.
“Hey, I got something for you, we get back to Vegas.”
“Yeah,” I said. “A number-one contender fight.”
“Careful. You beat Aviso, we’ll talk about that.”
“I beat him, there’s nothing to talk about. Because you already said it will happen.”
Eddie waved that away. “Listen. What I have, it’s win or lose. We’re almost done with the WarriorDome.”
“I thought that name was a joke.”
“It’s WarriorDome. Or WarriorPlex. I haven’t decided.”
“I know what a dome is. The hell is a plex?”
“It’s short for complex,” Eddie said.
“Huh. Like Napoleon.”
He took a deep breath. “Anyway. It’s not just for fighters. The gyms and equipment will be available to the public. We’re gonna have classes. I want you to train there.”
I waited for it to make sense.
“You train there for your fights,” Eddie said. “People can watch, see how hard you work.”
“And what our strategy is.”
“Oh, the master plan of getting hit in the face and hitting the other guy in the face? Relax, I’m fucking with you. All the black box shit you and Gil do, keep it behind closed doors at Gil’s place, whatever. Okay? Fair enough?”
“I just come there and train?”
“Yeah,” Eddie said. “You and a bunch of other fighters. The fans get to shoot video, pictures, buy T-shirts for you to sign.”
“It kinda sounds like a zoo.”
“It’s exactly like a zoo. But gorillas don’t give autographs, do they? Oh, and you’ll teach classes.”
“What classes?”
“The shit you’re good at. Some Muay Thai, kickboxing, submission defense—not offense, for chrissake. How to bleed all over the place. Not really, don’t fucking bleed during the classes. Seriously, don’t.”
“And these are fighters taking the classes. Guys who want to compete.”
Eddie nodded. “Maybe, yeah.”
“Maybe.”
“Our marketing is targeting tourists and visiting celebrities, bachelorette parties. That kind of demographic.”
“You want me to teach a bunch of soccer moms how to fight?”
He held up a finger, pulled the phone out and made a call. “Hey, start work on pulling the soccer mom demo into the Dome. The Plex, whatever. And look at hockey and football moms too—maybe we can showcase a lower concussion rate. Yeah. Later.”
Without breaking stride he said to me, “You don’t teach them how to fight. You show them how fun MMA is. Get a good sweat going, make them feel like they’re real Warriors.”
“With a capital W.”
He grinned. “Always.”
“I’ll pass.”
“You can’t. Your contract stipulates mandatory participation in promotional activities, to be determined at the discretion of Warrior, Inc. That’s a direct quote, by the way. And this is a promotional activity, as determined by me.”
I thought about the guy on the street with the eye patch and grenade launcher. Carrasco’s man. Eddie could give him lessons on how to say “Go fuck yourself” with a smile.
“And there’s no swearing in the WarriorDome. Everybody will have a camera going, we don’t want that shit all over the internet. So when you’re in there teaching or training, keep it clean.”
“Eddie, I even swear when I’m stretching.”
“Not in the WarriorDome. Plex. Which one sounds better?”
“The one that doesn’t include me.”
“You’ll be great. Hey, we’ll get some shots of a bunch of cute party girls choking you out, put them up on the strip.” He pulled the phone out again, had it pressed to his ear and said over his shoulder, “And good luck on Saturday. I talked to Aviso before I came here. He’s ready.”
7
Eddie and his guys left, satisfied they’d be able to get what they needed when they came back to shoot the next day. Antonio and Gil were tinkering with the angle of Jairo’s elbow when he applied a guillotine choke from the mount. Edson was calm, flat on his back and trying to breathe through clenched teeth while Jairo stretched his neck.
I stood behind them for a while before offering, “Why don’t you release the choke and put that elbow in his eye socket?”
They all looked at me.
“Smash him a few times, maybe open his face up. He hates life and rolls over, now you have his back. Easier to choke him from there, you still want to.”
Nobody said anything.
“Not you, Edson. On Saturday, against Preston.”
Gil said, “He’s getting the choke easily, Woody.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“We’re refining it.”
Antonio shook his head and turned back to Jairo. I took my hint with me into the bathroom and dried off as much as possible, changed into jeans and a T-shirt and went downstairs.
Marcela was teaching a class of little kids how to fall and roll, tumble around and get back to their feet. She was flushed and laughing, crawling around to help them tuck their heads and slap the green mats. A few parents beamed from the white perimeter.
Marcela saw me. Her smile grew and she glanced at the clock: quarter to nine. She said, “Fifteen minutes,” then growled when one of the kids jumped on her back and tried to get a tiny arm around her neck for a rear naked choke. She shook twice to get him off, tapped even though he was choking her shoulder.
I made my way around the edge while she got them lined up at one end and demonstrated how to shrimp across the floor. Five seconds in, they were kicking each other in the back and cackling. Marcela darted around straightening some of them out before they shrimped out of the room.
Give me this class over Antonio’s any day.
I slipped through the front door to get a breeze on my face. It was fully dark outside, one orange streetlight buzzing over the narrow road. People walked on both sides, heads up and smiling, nobody in a hurry. Some waved to each other and stopped to chat, sharing food and drink.
I smelled something frying and heard tinny music playing somewhere close. A man hooted and whistled. In Vegas I wouldn’t have noticed any of it, but the smells were sharper, the air heavier, the music faster, all of it alien and preventing me from relaxing.
And I needed to relax.
I put my earbuds in and
listened to a series of phrases and mantras I’d added to my playlist before the flight to Rio. Male and female voices saying things I wanted to understand. The voices repeated them, as if they knew I needed extra guidance.
The words skimmed across the surface tension but couldn’t sink in. I was wound up about Antonio, Eddie, Aviso, Carrasco. I couldn’t see how to get Marcela to come home with me. Standing there staring at my reflection in the van’s windows, I figured my best plan was to whip Aviso on Saturday night without using a scrap of Arcoverde jiu jitsu, wink at Antonio, stuff Marcela in my suitcase and tell Eddie I’d be at the WarriorDome on Monday to teach a class called Stubborn Victories: The Best Kind.
As for Carrasco and his followers, they could burn candles and eat all the sacrificed chicken they wanted—they weren’t getting my queen. Not if she was in Vegas with me.
I just had to get her there.
I was bashing my head against the relaxation wall so hard I almost missed the movement behind me in the reflection.
Eye Patch stepped out from the shadows with his hand inside the duffel bag.
“I’m alone,” Eye Patch said. He grinned but his hand stayed inside the bag.
“So what?”
“I just want you to know, I’m like you. Out here all alone, no trouble.”
“Your English is better than before.”
He nodded. “Thank you, I been working on it.”
“You still have a machine gun in that bag?”
“What’s a machine gun?”
“The English comes and goes, huh?”
“I guess so.”
We stood a few yards apart, people walking past but not between. I said, “What do you want?”
“To see if you gonna try something.”
“Like what?”
He shrugged. “Something stupid.”
“Oh, that’s guaranteed. But you’ll only see the first part. The rest, they’ll tell you about at the hospital.”
That really made him smile. “You think so?”
“How’d you lose that eye?”
“Bullet.”
“Shame. A little to the left, I’d be having a much better time right now. You take it for Carrasco?”
“Yes.”
“He’s worth getting shot in the face?”
His grin dropped. “You don’t get it—he is the one who shot me. Right before, he told me I would not die. And he was right.”
“You let him shoot you. In the head.”
“It was what Exu wanted.”
“Can I try?”
He smiled again. “Exu does not want that. Exu wants the woman.”
“You say Exu, you mean Carrasco?”
“He goes by many names.”
“Well, all of them will stay away from Marcela. Get it?”
“I told him about you.”
“Good.”
“He wants you to come see him.”
“Not interested,” I said.
Eye Patch shrugged, looked at the academy entrance. “Okay. So one night, maybe now, I walk past the door and open it up.”
He lifted his hand out of the bag, a fat grenade in his palm.
“I toss this inside and close the door, keep walking. Exu gets the woman on the other side of death, where you can’t help her, huh?”
He waited for me to try something stupid.
I fought it, barely won.
He said, “I think you leave here and come to the bottom of the Axila da Serpente instead.”
“Just me?”
“Bring whoever you want. It’s a party, man.”
He turned and walked away.
I knew the Axila da Serpente was east. If I hit salt water, I’d gone too far.
I also knew asking directions to the Armpit of the Snake would get me unwelcome attention, considering Eddie’s warning about the citizens of Rio being ready and willing to start my fight against Aviso a few days early.
Taxis were all around, but I knew how that could go too. Years back I ran close security for a guy from Chicago who flew into Vegas a few times a year to sit across tables from people, work things out. The last time he made the trip, he skipped the security detail and told an airport cabbie to take him to a corner in the northeast part of the city.
Problem was, the cabbie knew who owned that corner, a Chechen named Lugo, and his cousin’s boyfriend was at war with the guy. So he drove Mr. Chicago to the boyfriend’s and they made a ransom call to Lugo, who said something along the lines of “Fuck Mr. Chicago and the two of you,” and they composted Mr. Chicago in a pit in the desert.
No taxis for me.
That’s why I pulled Jairo aside in the small room at the bottom of the stairs, enough racket on the green mats to cover our conversation. I told him about Eye Patch’s threat and invitation. The veins on his head pulsed accordingly.
“I just need you to get me there,” I said.
“Why, so we can never see or hear from you again? Man, it’s not happening.”
“Then keep the front door locked at all times. Put two armed guards on the sidewalk and one on the roof. And replace the windows with concrete blocks.”
He shook his head. “They know better. Everybody knows better. You don’t come after my family. You don’t come after the Arcoverdes. Maybe you talk about it, but you don’t do it.”
“Okay, so Carrasco’s men know better. That’s why four of them stood between us and the academy door with bags of guns.”
“You go see him, what are you going to say?”
“‘Find another queen.’ Marcela is coming to Vegas with me.”
He took a step back. “She is? When?”
“Sunday, the day after the fight.”
“She didn’t say this to us.”
“Well, she’s still figuring things out.”
“What things?”
“Just about all of them. She hasn’t agreed to come with me yet.”
He ran a huge hand over his scalp. “Of course not, why would she leave here? She has us, she has this.” He flung the hand at the training room.
Marcela knelt in front of the kids, all of them sitting back on their little feet. She bowed and they mimicked, glancing at each other to make sure they were doing it right. When she dismissed them they sprang and rolled into chaos, tugging Marcela’s gi for goodbye hugs and running to their parents.
“She doesn’t have me,” I said. “And I don’t have her. And some lunatic who thinks he’s a god is sending men with grenades to scare her into being with him. I need to see this guy, Jairo. I need to see if he’s a real threat. Because if he is, and she won’t come home with me . . . I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Jairo watched Marcela, nodded. “Maybe I need to see him too. No, maybe he needs to see me. See why no one comes after the Arcoverdes.”
“Hey, just take me there. That’s all I need.”
He put a finger under my chin. “I don’t care what you need. Come or don’t. Carrasco wants to talk about Marcela, he can talk to me.”
“That’s nice of you,” she said.
Jairo and I turned. She stood there with her gi top folded over her arm, wearing a skin-tight rash guard soaked with sweat. She stepped into the room, took her time examining both of us.
“You are going to see him?”
“I am,” I said.
“We are,” Jairo said.
She wiped her face with the sleeve of her gi. She seemed to be working very hard to remain patient. “Why?”
I said, “One of his men was outside. Carrasco wants to talk.”
“About me?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jairo said. “I’m going, I’ll straighten him out. You don’t have to go to Vegas to be safe.”
Marcela’s eyes flashed onto me. “So this is what happens when you speak for me.”
“No, I—”
“I let you two fools go to Carrasco, suddenly I’m married to him and have to live in a garbage pile. What’s worse,
that or Las Vegas? Tell me.”
Jairo put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, we—”
She knocked the hand away and shoved me with both hands, knocking me back a few feet. “Nobody speaks for me. And nobody goes to see Carrasco. He wants to talk, let him talk to the spirits.”
Jairo said, “We don’t go and they put a grenade through the door, what then?”
Marcela frowned. “What grenade?”
I didn’t want to tell her. I knew what her response would be.
She squared up with me. “Woody. Just like nobody speaks for me, nobody controls what comes into my ears.”
“The guy with the eye patch. He said if I don’t talk to Carrasco, maybe he tosses a grenade in here while you’re teaching a class.”
“Of the children?”
“That was the feeling I got.”
From the moment we’d met, I’d had a talent for getting her frustrated, riled up. This was a level of fury I’d never seen, let alone caused. For one thing, she couldn’t talk. She turned and pushed through the door to the women’s locker room.
Jairo looked like he’d been startled awake. “Oh man. She’s being silly.”
“She is? I just asked you for a ride. Now look.”
“Yes, now we all go. Maybe you won’t be killed.”
I shook my head. “Arcoverdes.”
His chest puffed.
Five minutes later Marcela came out in jeans and a light jacket, her dark hair shiny from the shower. “Let’s go.”
The van ride to the Axila da Serpente was quiet. I sat in the back with Marcela, my hand on her knee. She wouldn’t look at me, but she didn’t break any of my fingers either.
Small victories.
We’d told Gil and Antonio we were going to check out the arena, maybe drive along the coast and walk on the beach.
Gil had thought about it. “I don’t think you can get into any trouble doing that. But I’ll probably look back on that statement and laugh, laugh, laugh.”