A Fighting Chance

by Sand, A. J.

  “Is ‘ouch’ gonna work?”

  “Nope.” She raises her hips and a pulsating burn fires down my forearm. Drew swings one of her legs around, and crushes my head between her thighs. Where the hell did she learn how to use them like this, as a weapon? With Buck? In bed? Wait, no, no, no…I don’t want to know. But the truth is Drew’s legs would be lethal even if they weren’t wrapped around my neck.

  “Now, get out of it. Don’t worry about me. If it hurts I’ll tap, but this is going to hurt you more if you don’t get out.” She winds my wrist dangerously close to a break, and I scream, my enjoyment completely wiped out.

  She doesn’t let up at all as I try to maneuver out of the hold, and she bucks against my neck as hard as she can. Ignoring the throbbing discomfort in my arm, I walk my feet back until my torso is almost parallel to the ground. Balancing on my free arm, I tuck my knees under, dive to her right, and my trapped arm pulls free. I feel her sneak attack coming, so I twist around and pin her wrists to the grass, but she manages to throw her knees up in between our bodies.

  “Gotcha.”

  “Oooh, you pinned a girl,” she teases with an eye roll. “Winner.”

  “Not just any girl!” I say. “The one I taught to hit like a badass. So, like I said…gotcha.”

  Her gaze sinks into mine, and the way she smiles at me is enough to shut out noisy, overcrowded, lively Mexico City. Drew bites her lip as she pulls one leg out, and then the other, stretching them out on the grass at either side of me. My senses hone in on her completely: the irregular rhythm of the breaths we’re exhaling right into each other’s mouths, the warmth of her wrists on my palms, and the press of her thighs against my knees. I can smell the sweat on her skin, and the scent has lust racing through me like electrical current. Her eyes bare a hunger that makes me wish for guilt, because it might be the only thing that will stop me at this point. I graze her earlobe with my lips.

  Staggered breaths pump onto my shoulder before Drew angles her head toward mine. As soon as our lips touch, my tongue slips in and glides over hers. She links our hands and reality smacks right into me then, or rather, it crushes my finger. Her ring—her engagement ring—is digging into my bones. And suddenly, so is my conscience. I can’t ignore its weight, no matter how good this feels. We’re with other people. We can’t do this.

  With the self-control of an entire convent, I crawl off her and stand up. When I spot a vendor nearby, I jog to him and buy two bottles of water. I wish I could ask him to dump his entire cooler of ice over my head. I drain my own bottle completely with the hope that the brief time away from her will bring my dick back down to zero.

  Drew’s still on the grass, and her eyes laser me when I approach. “How’d I do? Er, getting out of the arm bar?” I ask, offering my hand to help her up. Nope. My attraction doesn’t even dip down a single rung.

  “Good…um, you were good,” she whispers, sucking in her breaths like they are coming through a straw. “But let’s do it again.” This time, though, we practice putting her in holds, which makes me realize how much it sucks that I’ll be doing this with a bunch of dudes. I’m still turned on the entire time, but I focus on her ring, in my mind, because she remembers to take it off during the second round of training. We stay in Alameda Central for a few more hours, but we don’t talk about what happened between us. I want to write it off as nothing, but because of who Drew was to me—who she is to me—my mind thwarts any attempts at making the kiss inconsequential.

  During dinner, Miguel calls with news that he got word of a fight coming up in a few days. Five thousand is the payout for a win. But he has to confirm it with “his guy.” It turns out that fifty-five hundred will be the total I can make if I win three fights. Two nights later, Miguel tells us to take the metro train to Iztapalapa, a borough of Mexico City not too far from where we’re staying. It’s heavy on dilapidated housing and cracking roads, with the forgotten poor everywhere, and greenery nowhere. It’s definitely not the part of the city you’d see on tourism websites. There are women in scanty clothing idling in front of buildings and catcalling passing men, while aggressive vendors intimidate customers into buying sketchy-looking items. Iztapalapa is far more urbanized than anything I’ve seen so far, even more than the initial drive into Mexico City. It’s just swarms of people and buildings stretching on for endless miles. And all of it existing beneath a cover of smog.

  Drew clutches my hand as we move through the crowded streets, on our way to meet Miguel’s friend, Sandrine Estrada, at a popular cafetería called Dulce. We find the small diner in a neighborhood where the slums are literally crumbling in the shadows of shiny mansions and luxury condominiums. When we walk in, I spot a petite, redheaded woman at a corner booth, who has to be Sandrine, and she, too, guesses we’re there for her.

  “I’m Miguel’s guy,” she says with a laugh. She’s also a talkative thirty-something French expat who—over taquitos—explains that she came to Mexico many years ago with some idealized desire to do good in the world but discovered that there was far more money and respect in doing the bad. You wouldn’t know how much she likes the bad just from looking at her, though. She’s dressed for a country club in tan wide-leg pants, a navy blue V-neck blouse, and ice pick-sharp stilettos, but every time her cell rings, and she strolls off to the corner to have a private conversation, I’m reminded of what she really is, the middleman’s middleman: people like Miguel contact her when they’re looking for better fights because she mingles in cartel circles.

  “Did he tell you about tonight?” she says, squashing her cigarette in an ashtray.

  “Not really. I was in once he told me about the money.” The café is a noisy spot with clattering plates, loud conversations, and the incessant ding of the bell calling up orders, so we’re essentially shouting at each other not even two feet across. We could be planning a murder; though, no one would be any wiser because everyone’s shouting.

  “Ah, yes. I couldn’t get you into the five grand rounds. No one knows who you are. People weren’t going to bet on you, but after tonight, if you do well, it shouldn’t be a problem. If you do better than you did the other night, of course. I saw you fight in Guadalajara. You were trying to be noble.” Sandrine sticks another cigarette between her lips and exhales smoke out of her nose. “There is no honor in this, Jesse, and don’t bring it into those places with you. Those guys will kill you if you let them. Without hesitation or remorse or any regard for who’ll miss you. They will wear your blood like a badge of honor and dance over your lifeless body. Never forget that.” I get chills from the detached tone of her voice, and I wonder how many times she has witnessed a death in the cage. Enough for her to be impassive. And whatever number it took to get her there is almost too scary to imagine, small or large.

  “So, is this The Cull? This is real cartel stuff?” Drew asks. Unlike Sandrine, her tone is nothing but concern. If the anxiety between both of us were converted to power, no one in Iztapalapa would ever have to worry about electricity ever again.

  Drew’s question clearly surprises Sandrine because her eyes widen, and then she studies her with the tilt of her head. “Yes and no. The Cull is elite fighters only, but this is an event that funnels unknowns into The Cull, usually. It’s almost like a tryout. You survive there, and they’ll know you. The cartels also like to show off their best fighters at the end of the night. El Sindicato and the Ortiz-Peña Cartel organized tonight, and the Durango Cartel will have fighters participating, too. I think it’s much more fun for them when they can have their guys beating the shit out of each other.”

  “Aren’t they all rivals? How do they keep the peace?” I ask.

  Her phone beeps and she only stops smoking for a moment to look at the screen. “Easy. Money. These three cartels haven’t really had a problem with each other. They’ve brokered shaky alliances, but alliances, nonetheless. And then there’s that little thing called mutually assured destruction, the threat of violence from other really violent people. If somethin
g goes wrong at a fight with all those trigger-happy men present—”

  “Everyone in there would probably die…” I say.

  “Yes,” Sandrine confirms with jarring finality in her tone as she presses away on her cell phone. “You must really need this money.” Sympathy and unasked questions bounce around in her eyes as she looks over at me. I ignore the warning pinch of a panic attack because Drew clutches my hand beneath the table.

  “Shit,” we both say.

  “Well, what do you expect?” Sandrine asks. “Those places are ticking time bombs for many reasons. All those people packed into abandoned wrecks. Add guns and money and testosterone, and it’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

  Can I bum one of those off you?” Drew asks, cocking her chin up at the cigarette, and Sandrine pulls another out of her bag to hand to her. I see someone still has her vice, too.

  “We have to go now.” Sandrine covers the check, refusing to take my money, before she leads us outside, the acrid smell of smoke trailing her like a windblown scarf. She points out a side street where a group of children are playing in muddy run-off water. “That’s where I’m parked. They were watching it for me.” It’s a beat-down late 90’s green Camry, which I have a hard time believing a woman like her really drives. She hands the kids some pesos before we climb in, me in the front seat, Drew in the back. “If I don’t pay them to stop other people from breaking in, they do it themselves. Fucking nine year olds find time to extort you while they pretend to bake mud pies.” Sandrine veers onto the highway after we leave the residential area and join the other drivers who think we’re at NASCAR.

  “You’re taking us straight there?” Drew asks.

  “Yes. I am allowed to know the locations. I’ve earned it. You will have to find your own way back, but I’ll tell Miguel where you’ll be.” On the way, she explains how the cartel fights work: with sponsored fighters, the losing cartel pays the winners, and the winning cartel also gets the money from audience admission to the fight and from the gambling, but all organizers pay out when an unsponsored fighter wins.

  The landscape transitions to a dense industrial zone with blocks of gray buildings whizzing by in a blur, and a few dizzying turns later, we slow down in a dark commercial district. She parks in a dusty lot in front of a large decrepit building with a name I can’t make out because so many letters are missing from the rusty sign. The surrounding foliage has completely overtaken the place, forming a jungle at the front.

  “It used to be a very popular mercado, I hear,” Sandrine says, waving her hand like she’s really a tour guide. “One of the biggest ones servicing this area, with produce and seafood…all kinds of stuff, but it was never repaired after the ’85 quake…” It’s not hard to envision the deteriorating structure in front of me as a functioning place teeming with people. I know firsthand how a single event can change the expected course of something. Sometimes for the better. Sometimes for the worst.

  I instinctively grab Drew’s hand as we follow Sandrine down a cracked sidewalk to the back entrance. “I don’t like this…” she whispers to me, drowning out Sandrine’s voice. “For something like this to be going on in a major part of Mexico City, it tells me that the people who should care don’t. I’m guessing somebody in the government gets very nice bribes to ignore the illegal use of this place. It’s really gonna be anything goes here.”

  “You don’t think I should do it? You want us to leave?”

  “The answers to those questions don’t really matter, do they?”

  “…structural damage for it to re-open, and no one will ever fix it, so the cartels have put it to good use, I suppose,” Sandrine continues. At the back, the walls are covered in gang graffiti, and the two busted out windows look like empty eye sockets. Other than our footsteps, the only sound out here is the light breeze winding through the trees.

  “Better than it becoming a cathouse, I say,” Sandrine adds as she leads us to a propped-open door, but we stop right at the threshold. “Listen, this isn’t the crowd you saw in Guadalajara. In my opinion, that’s one of the tamest ones you’ll see. Here, Tabasco, Veracruz…the fights, the people, the fighters…they’re ten times worse. If you win tonight, you three get in Miguel’s car and leave as quickly as you can with that money.” The entire time Sandrine is talking, Drew’s boring into me with I-told-you-so eyes. “Actually, I’ll talk to my friend, Raúl. He’ll deliver your winnings to me, and you can tell me how to get it to you or wherever you need it to go. You shouldn’t walk out of here with money. No filming on your cell phones, either. Some prominent people who shouldn’t be here come anyway, and they don’t want to be seen here. Filming is a great way to get killed.”

  Inside, the dirty walls hold hints of what used to be: faded paintings of giant fruits and vegetables, and a diagram of the market’s layout. Overturned vendor carts and broken stands are piled in a corner. The air reeks of moldy dampness and somehow still stinks of fish, too. The main entrance to the interior has a steel roll-up gate in front of it, and after Sandrine’s phone chimes, the gate goes up, revealing a husky guy with a gun at his waist. He’s all scowl and scars. Behind him, a chorus of garbled voices pours out, the whole place suddenly awakening with noise. I know it means I’m closer to having to fight, but it’s better than the dead quiet from before. The man—bearded, with tattoos right below his hooded eyes—glares at first, but he smiles the instant he sees Sandrine, and soon they are happily chatting in Spanish.

  “Whoa, she’s, like, the Ali Baba of illegal fights,” Drew jokes, and when I snicker, the man’s gaze shifts to her for a moment longer than I’m comfortable with, so I pull her against me, folding my arms over her waist. It startles her and she turns to face me. She slides my hands off her but she doesn’t drop them. Even in the dim lighting, I can see how clouded her face is with her thoughts. “So, um, have you talked to Lydia since your fight?”

  “No, she’s not answering my calls.”

  “Well, when you get her…the thing at the park…” Drew gulps down when she pauses. “Are you going to tell her about it? ‘Cause I didn’t plan on saying anything to Buck. It was a five second…thing. And it was a mistake.”

  “Yeah, exactly,” I breathe out, but her words skewer my heart, making sadness drip from the wound and into my bloodstream. What happened may not have been right, but it definitely wasn’t a mistake.

  She sighs and bites her lip. “I don’t think you should throw away Europe, and Alabama, and whatever future you guys have planned over it, okay?”

  “Well, things are kind of strained between us right now…but that’s not why I kiss you, though—”

  “I kissed you, Jess,” she presses. We’re calling it a kiss now. We’re giving it a name. It’s not a ‘thing’ anymore. And suddenly my heart doesn’t hurt as much. “It was my fault—”

  “Are you two ready?” Sandrine asks as she pecks the man on both cheeks, and we’re ushered inside before we can continue our conversation. Sandrine remains on the other side of the gate, though.

  “You’re not staying?” I ask.

  “Cage. Blood. Machismo on steroids, sometimes literally. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, right?” She shrugs, not even giving us another look as she strolls back the way we came. I forgot we’re just a business deal to her, lambs led off to the slaughter. “Good luck. I’m sure Miguel will be in touch if tonight goes as planned. Remember everything I said.”

  But it’s Drew’s voice in my head as I dominate my fights, my muscles recalling everything we practiced. The first guy moves at about my speed and we’re pretty evenly paired, but after the first round, Drew points out that he’s weak in close hand-to-hand combat. I take him down easily with a few shattering hits to his core. The second is a TKO. The last guy is probably the toughest because I’m so worn out. I take on a lot of blows to the chest and back, but once I get him in a submission hold, he’s trapped.

  I have to hand it to the cartels for the way they set up these events. The place looks
exactly like the one in Guadalajara—large cages, bookie table, armed guards—but the entire enormous space in the mercado is being used. While the fights are going on, people are selling food and water, and prostitutes are even setting up dates. There are three cages, and it’s essentially a conveyor belt of fighters being pumped through, leaving the mats saturated with blood until they’re nearly maroon. The fights here are excessively brutal. Lots more eye gouges. Multiple stompings. And so many head wounds. Violence is art here, like in the old George A. Romero Dawn of the Dead films.

  Sandrine is right about the difference in the fans, too. They’re much rowdier, completely crammed in here, and people are pushing and shoving every chance they get; there are no tourists in this place. The fans circle the cages, shouting shit at the fighters. Security is probably corrupt cops and cartel enforcers, but they all seem more interested in the fight results than anyone’s safety. I’m wary of Drew being out in the electrified horde, but I’m trusting Miguel to get her out if something goes down. We’re all walking on the edge of chaos, knowing that it won’t take much to fall over.

  After I clean up with a water bottle in a filthy bathroom, I go out into the crowd to find my friends. People stop to congratulate me in broken English and to show me how much money they’ve won because of me. Even a few guys I’m pretty sure are cartel come up to me. Until I met Francisco Acevedo and Ramón Vega, I had always pictured cartel members as guys in ski masks waving AKs and machetes while shouting death threats into a camera in YouTube videos. But these guys are off the pages of menswear catalogs. I know there are minions who have to wield those weapons and do the dirty work, but tonight, everyone’s in a suit.

  I find Drew and Miguel near the middle cage, the main event one, and they have a great vantage point for the fight that’s going to close out the night. After Miguel shakes my hand, Drew jumps into my arms, hugging me like she hasn’t seen me in a while.

  “Whoa...what’s this for?” I ask, laughing. I’m not complaining, though.