by Jeremy Brown
“Yeah? How’s that?”
Rubin put his elbows on the table and lowered his voice. “We never know when a Coluna is going to happen. We only see the aftermath, when the gutters at the base of the Axila da Serpente are full of blood. This time, with you, we know. Carrasco wants his Pomba Gira. As soon as they grab you, the Coluna begins.”
“I’m still waiting for the part where you help me not get killed.”
“All of Carrasco’s men will be armed with fists, chains, pipes, clubs, ready to smash your bones.”
“You could have skipped that, but go on.”
“My team and I will be armed with rifles and shotguns and grenades.” He pulled the salt shaker away from the center of the table. It became Carrasco’s mountain, the Axila da Serpente. Rubin pointed at the base. “And we will be positioned right behind you, as close as we can get to his territory without alerting him. When you begin the Coluna, we sweep in and catch up to you going up the mountain. You just take cover, sit tight, and we will come to you. Then we go past, and we kill—or arrest, whatever—all of Carrasco’s people. When we find Carrasco and Malhar, I have a feeling they won’t want to be arrested. This is for the best. If he really is Exu, he belongs in the spirit world anyway.”
He tipped the salt shaker over.
“The Axila da Serpente is no more. You and Marcela are safe.”
He sat back, ready for admiration.
“I’m starting at the top,” I said.
“You’re what?”
I set the shaker upright, tapped the lid. “Carrasco wants me to start here. Symbolic, he said, of me trying to escape Exu rather than join him.”
Rubin frowned at the salt for half a minute. “This is even better.”
“I guess I’m still stupid, because I’m not seeing ‘better.’”
“We will come up behind them. All of Carrasco’s men will be focused uphill. We will take them by complete surprise. Can you survive until we get to you?”
“I’m going to survive way past that. Whether you get to me or not.”
He slapped the table. “Is it confidence or idiocy? I can’t tell!”
“Just don’t shoot me by accident.”
“I make no promises.”
Rubin stuck his hand out.
I shook it.
His trigger finger was calloused.
11
It was nearly dark by the time Gil showed up at the hotel. I was sprawled on the bed watching a show about fútbol stadium construction. If Gil noticed the multiple used towels and lingering Marcela echoes, he didn’t mention it.
He dropped his duffel on the structurally intact bed. “Well, that was a fun day.”
“Is Antonio still mad?”
“Mad isn’t the right word. Boiling? Maybe seething.” Gil stepped to the window to check the view. “He said he isn’t going to talk to the police about the Carrasco thing. Doesn’t want to ask any favors on your behalf. But you have that detective guy looking after you for the Aviso fight, so we’re set there. And you’re done with that favela bullshit anyway. Right?”
“Right.”
He wasn’t looking at me and my wince of shame didn’t seep into the tone.
Gil said, “I thought he’d forgotten about it, as offended as he is over what you said to him.”
“Ah, man. I’m sorry.”
He turned and pointed at me. “Hey. You can’t be right and sorry unless you’re married. And you’re right about the plan they have for Jairo, so no more apologizing.” He dropped onto the bed and pulled his shoes off. “I just wish we’d come down here a month ago, hell, a week. Enough time to do something about it.”
“We don’t need time. All Jairo has to do is fight instead of listen.”
“No, what he has to do is ignore everything his Arcoverde jiu jitsu grandmaster father told him leading up to his international MMA debut, in his home city, with the mystique and legendary status of his family on the line. Usually takes more than two days.”
“Is he pissed?”
“He’s . . . confused. Almost timid. It’s weird. I’ve never seen him like this.”
We watched a giant crane swing a block of concrete into place and set it down like a baby.
I said, “Are we welcome at the estate?”
“I am.”
“So why are you here?”
“Woody, you’re my fighter.”
“Yeah, and Antonio is your mentor.”
He nodded, hands on his thighs. “The day always comes when the student challenges the teacher. I guess that’s today. I had a choice. Keep my mouth shut and let him be wrong, or speak up and let him be offended. Jairo deserves the latter. And Antonio needs it.”
“Will he get over it?”
Gil shrugged.
I said, “So when will the day come when I challenge you, teacher?”
He stood up. “You challenge me every goddam day. It’s a miracle I haven’t thrown you off the Hoover Dam yet.”
He walked past the foot of the bed on the way to the bathroom and tossed one of his shoes onto my chest. The odor rolled over my face. I wretched and slapped the shoe into the far corner.
“Jesus, that smells like stale buttered popcorn and expensive cheese.”
He started the shower. Before he shut the door he said, “And this room smells like athletic sex. Next time Marcela comes here, open a window.”
I called Marcela while Gil cleaned up.
“I miss you.”
She laughed. “You just saw me. A lot of me.”
“Not enough. Are you at the academy?”
“Yes, we are about to leave.”
“I need to talk to Jairo. Face to face.”
“Mm, Uncle Antonio won’t like that.”
“I figured. That’s why I’m calling you.”
“Oh, how nice.”
“One of the reasons I’m calling you. Can you get Jairo out of the house, meet me for dinner?”
“No,” she said. “The family is getting together tonight.”
“Again?”
“I mean the rest of the family.”
“There are more?” I said.
“Why do you want to meet with Jairo?”
“I need to talk to him about his fight with Preston.”
“Didn’t you already do that? It’s why my uncle’s jaw is shut like a clam.”
“What about breakfast tomorrow?”
She paused. “I have an early class to teach. I can bring him with me and drop him off with you.”
“I don’t want you to get on your uncle’s bad side.”
“That will never happen. He will know you talked me into it, and he will hate you more.”
“Sounds about right.”
“I have to go now.”
“Be safe.”
“Dream about me,” she said.
“Always.”
I did dream about her. Sort of.
I was at the base of a mountain of red candles, some of them lit. Marcela was at the top. She crouched and turned in a circle, getting ready to fight something I couldn’t see. I climbed, the candles shifting and swallowing my hands and feet.
Aviso was there, watching me and shaking his head. “Come on. Let’s fight.”
“I have to do this first.”
“Why?”
I ignored him and kept climbing.
Marcela yelled at me, “Don’t! You’re going to ruin it!”
If I kept going, I’d erode the platform she was on and she’d tumble down.
I could get to her first.
My next burst up the slope brought the whole thing down. Red candles slid past me like lava, heavy wax clunking together.
Marcela said, “Now it won.”
She tipped into the avalanche and disappeared.
More candles caught fire. The wax dripped and pooled, formed a hard shell across the face of the mountain, sealing her in. I tore myself awake, blinking at a lingering image of my hands caked in red from trying to dig her out.
I said, “How much weight you cutting?”
“Twelve more pounds, last time I checked.” He nodded at the swath of sweat glistening on the treadmill runner. “Might be down to ten by now.”
“You got plenty of time.”
The press conference and weigh-ins weren’t until two in the afternoon.
“That’s the idea,” Kuthe said. “Don’t want to pass out on the scale like last time.”
“Or you could fight at one-seventy. Stop trying to kill yourself.”
“And start over at the back of the line? No thanks. I win this one, I’m in the top three.”
“Eddie tell you that?”
He shrugged. “It’s my best shot at a belt.”
I slapped his shoulder and left him alone. He was miserable enough without me jabbering at him. I grabbed a treadmill three over, stuck my earbuds in and started running.
Outside would have been better—maybe barefoot on the beach, see if these Brazilian fighters knew something we didn’t—but I wanted to keep my blinders on and just get some work done, blood flowing. As soon as I stepped out the door I’d be checking for Rubin, Carrasco, Eye Patch. Rabid Aviso fans who wanted to drag me into the surf and hold me under.
I pushed all of it to the side and concentrated on Aviso, the serious black and white billboard face. I shadowboxed with it. Gave it a black eye, a split lip. A nice swollen gash through the eyebrow.
Much better.
My imaginary Aviso kept zeroing in on my arm, trying to clamp on and wrench it around. Every time I smacked him with a fist, shin, elbow. Kept him off me and within the range I liked—the one where people get hurt.
I put the face back on the billboard. The female model cringed and sidled off the canvas.
Kuthe the lightweight dropped off his treadmill and shuffled toward the sauna. I checked the clock, which said I’d been running for an hour and fifteen minutes. The mantras in my ears had cycled through without notice. I felt good.
Gil was awake and dressed when I got back to the room. He said, “I checked with Eddie. He knows we can’t really go back to the academy, said we can use the arena for our training today—not the cage, one of the prep rooms—but we’ll still get our time in the cage to feel it out.”
“What a guy. I’m gonna have breakfast with Jairo. Maybe he and I can work it out, get us off Antonio’s shit list.”
Gil said, “My guess? You meddle more with his son, you’ll get us bumped up to the top slot on that list. No one’s been able to displace Diego Maradona for twenty-nine years.”
“Who?”
“Argentinean soccer player who had a rivalry with Antonio’s favorite player, Pele. He cheated in the ’86 FIFA World Cup, drove Antonio crazy.”
“Man, that guy can hold a grudge.”
“He issued a challenge to Maradona to a fight to the death.” Gil blinked a few times. “I don’t think Maradona accepted. My point is, don’t make it worse.”
“Who, me?”
Gil didn’t bother acknowledging it. “I’m going to find coffee. Let’s meet up at the arena at eleven, keep your technique sharp. And I mean it. Don’t make things harder on Jairo than they already are. Don’t make him choose between us and his father.”
“I want him to choose between winning and losing.”
Gil considered it, shook his head. “Nope. I need coffee before I can deal with this. Good luck.”
I grabbed the same table Rubin and I had used, where I could see the street through the ornamental palms and the lobby on the other side of giant windows.
The academy van swerved into the horseshoe-shaped driveway before I could ask the server if they had whey protein. The passenger door flopped open and Jairo dropped out, took a few steps to keep his balance because the van was still rolling. Marcela leaned across his empty spot to wave at me, smiling and yelling something, her seat so far forward the steering wheel was in her lap. She took off fast enough to thump the door shut, teetering the van to the exit and rolling into traffic.
I never saw a brake light.
Jairo sat down with a tight smile and dark circles under his eyes. The rest of his skin looked waxy. His bald head, typically gleaming like polished bronze, had no luster.
“Marcela’s driving,” I asked, “or do you have the flu?”
“I’m fine.”
The server appeared. I ordered six eggs, a pile of bacon, and pineapple juice. Jairo asked for a hot tea, no lemon.
“You should get more than that,” I said.
He shook his head.
“At least get the lemon. It’s really good here.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
All right, straight to business.
“Does Antonio know you’re talking to me?”
“No. And he won’t find out.”
“It’s such a scandal, why did you come?”
“Because you stepped up to help Marcela, even though it was a stupid thing to do, agreeing to fight . . . them. And you are my brother. But don’t ask me to disrespect my father. You do that, we are no longer anything. We are nothing.”
“Okay, take it easy. Is that why you’re all stressed out? What I said yesterday about your game plan?”
“No. A little. It has made me think about things I did not want to think about.”
“What things?”
“It’s bad enough to think them. To say them, even worse.”
“What could be worse that what we’ve been through?”
He wiped his beaded forehead with a napkin and stared at the table. Maybe flashing back to the cesspit we got thrown into. Nothing creates a stronger alliance than giving two warriors a common enemy. What we had to do to get out of that hole would haunt us forever. And it would bind us.
“The other night,” Jairo said. “At that place.”
“The Axila?”
“That . . . man.”
“Carrasco.”
He winced, nodded. If I wasn’t absolutely sure it was Jairo Arcoverde sitting across from me, I would have thought he might cry.
Jairo said, “I think he cursed me.”
“Since we drove away from that place,” Jairo said, “I have felt heavy. Like I am under water. Moving too slow.”
“You were moving fine when you made me run up that damn mountain yesterday.”
“You think I was pushing you, huh? Good, it’s what I wanted you to think. But I was trying to outrun whatever he did to me. What he put on me. It did not work. Even though it was dark.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There are rumors about the kind of magic he does.”
“You can say his name. Carrasco. Hangman. Exu. Asshole.”
“Please, no more.” Jairo crossed himself. “One of the curses, you ask the spirits to cling to a man’s shadow. One by one, the spirits gather. They fill your shadow, making you heavy, so heavy you can’t move. You don’t get out of bed. The shadow of your arm is so heavy you can’t feed yourself. So you grow thin, but you weigh too much to breathe.”
“And you think Carrasco put this curse on you.”
“I am dragging myself around, man. I pick my foot up, it wants to crash back to the floor. I spar with Edson and Javier, I throw a punch at their face, you know what I hit? Their stomach.” He let his fist fall in an arc, shoulder to lap. It stayed there, a limp collection of fingers. “So I tried running in the dark, with no shadow. And it didn’t work.”
“Jairo, you aren’t cursed. You’re nervous. Your first Warrior fight is tomorrow night.”
“No. I don’t get nervous for tournaments. Never have.”
“This ain’t a tournament, buddy. This is you locked in a cage with a large man seeking to destroy you. And you have a shitty game plan—w
hich might actually be a curse—and you know it. Every muscle in your body is telling you you’re walking into a disaster. Listen to them.”
He wasn’t convinced.
“Come with me,” I said.
We jumped in a cab and looped around a small body of water to get to the HSBC Arena. I checked for any sign of Rubin and his men, Carrasco and his soldiers. If any of them were around, they were better at being sneaky than I was at being perceptive.
The exterior of the arena was bright white and sparkling glass and looked like a high-end airplane hangar. It had some architectural flair: windows set at an angle to make it seem like the walls were either sinking into the ground or getting sucked toward the wide entrance doors.
The only people going in and out were arena employees, getting the place ready for the press conferences, weigh-ins, and the big show on Saturday. The lobby was plastered with Warrior banners for the event, scowling faces staring at each other across Eddie’s logo.
Jairo pointed at one and gave a tired smile. It was at least forty feet long and twenty high. On the left end was my face, looking like it was a day past evolving from cave life, giving the stink eye to Aviso on the right. His cut jaw and perfect stubble were bathed in warm light. Instead of glowering back at me he looked into the camera with a raised eyebrow and a smirk, asking everyone who passed, Can you believe this guy?
Right below it was another banner, just as big, shouting something in Portuguese. My face was on that one too. And my name.
I asked Jairo, “What does that say?”
He was still smiling. “Come to Las Vegas and train with the nasty American fighter Aaron ‘Woodshed’ Wallace at the all-new WarriorDome! Choke him! Punch him! Let your children jump on his back!”
“It does not.”
He shrugged and started toward the inner sanctum of the arena. I stared at the banner, judging if I could jump high enough to rip it down, and finally caught up to Jairo in mild defeat.
The workers smiled and waved at him, pumped fists and hollered things that sounded encouraging. When they noticed me something pulled their fists and faces down. One guy waxing the floor stopped what he was doing, glared at me, and spit on the patch he’d just finished. He blew a kiss at Jairo and went back to work, whistling something festive.