by Leslie North
Henry leaned against the store front, head down, when Caliban and the woman drew close. Her voice stirred something in his gut. It was matter-of-fact, but soft, like the edges had been smoothed and buffed by the time her words reached Henry’s ears.
Take care of yourself.
I’ll bring your favorite soup on Thursday. I promise.
I love you.
Her declaration, this stranger, was like the first pull of coffee on a frigid morning—a warm path all the way to the core. It fed him, not only because he knew Caliban had that, but because Caliban had something Henry did not. Henry stared at the sizeable crack in the sidewalk, not daring to look up, but unable to stop himself.
Two events collided then with the singular, simultaneous ability to tilt Henry’s world on its axis: her words—Mom says hello—three words so ordinary, so casual the way they floated on her goodbye; and her pivot to full-frontal recognition and a bush of curly red hair corralled beneath a knitted cap and tumbling down her jacket front.
Miss Kavanaugh.
Fuck.
Henry dropped his head and turned toward the store front. In the glass reflection, he watched the woman pause, her face angled his direction, before she continued down the street.
Caliban went back to picking through the garbage.
5
From a distance, at least the distance from the gym’s entrance to the octagonal black cage at the center, Maggie watched him. Henry Lorenz. Two-time, middleweight MMA champion, two and three years ago. She had looked him up on the internet, watched videos of him taking down his opponents faster than they could blink, focused on the sculpted lines of his perfect body, then cleared them from her phone’s history because they felt like dirty little secrets.
The door was unlocked; her boot soles were padded, rubber, silent.
He worked with a boy she’d never seen before. The kid was blindfolded. Henry didn’t know she was there.
“To quiet the mind, we have to turn down the volume of what we see, what we hear. Focus on the sound of my voice. Got it?”
The kid nodded.
“Good. Shuffle.”
The boy’s feet began a slow, controlled rhythm against the mat, hypnotizing in cadence and motion. He brought his fists up, fighter’s stance, guarding his chin.
Maggie lowered herself into a nearby chair, soundless.
“Picture yourself as a vessel,” said Henry, “A moving tub of liquid, clear on the outside, sloshing around on the inside. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” echoed the boy.
“Now picture your skin a clear container, changing color, fogging, turning dingy with all that comes at you in a day—expectations, worry, blame, fear, regret, judgments, all of it. It soaks in through the membranes and colors everything inside. Blues and dark reds and greys, a swirling mass, some mixing, some staying tough. Your body’s sloshing it around, churning it from the inside, but it can’t stay that way for long or it’ll turn thick. Got that image?”
“Yes, sir.”
Maggie blinked back her surprise at the respectful term.
“There’s a drain, man. In your heel,” said Henry. “An opening over which you have total control. Open it and all that muck drains out. You’re left with nothing but a clean vessel again. That’s what you do before a match. Prep your mind as well as your body. You can’t be your best with all that negativity clouding you. You can’t see what’s coming at you—sights and sounds and tastes and smells—when there’s so much darkness.”
Maggie was right there, along for the ride. She had made her own vessel on the wave of Henry’s low, rumbling, hypnotic voice. But her bag slid forward and into a free weight with three enormous black plates at both ends, tumbling the contents of her bag across the floor and whipping around the attentions of both cage occupants.
She was pretty sure she heard a curse slip between the cage wires.
Slow to react, almost as if he had lured her into a slumbering state, she knelt to the concrete surface and made sloppy grabs at her stuff—used tissues, keys, the blown-glass worry stone her mom bought her in Taos, her prescription bottle of anxiety pills, epoxy glue for Roosevelt’s project, her rosary made from pressed rose petals, and—perhaps most embarrassing of all—lipstick. She and vanity had a thing. On again, off again.
Then he was there. Henry. Seeing the spilled contents of her life, handling the scraps of her life, one by one, returning them to her bag. She felt exposed. He could have easily made a smart-ass comment about her brush, clogged with hair, or the printout she had made regarding his title fight. He didn’t, but he read the headline. She was sure of it by the way his lips flirted with humor.
She wanted to turn and run. Sometimes it was exhausting, always being the one to stand up and fight. Sometimes, she wanted the luxury of submission. But she had come for his help, and here he was, kneeling before her, giving it so freely.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.” She gathered the last of her items from his grasp and stood, repositioning and fastening her bag closed.
Henry glanced toward the octagon. “Weight machines, Jalen.”
“Yes, sir,” the boy answered. He hopped out of the cage and made his way to the far end of the gym.
“What you said in there—”
“You were listening?”
“Is that what you do? Before…”
“Before I beat the snot out of someone?” Henry grabbed a rolled-up towel from a nearby shelf and draped it over one shoulder, his side glance snagging her the way it always seemed to. “Your words not mine. And no. Not anymore. Rituals like putting on gloves replace these things. But these kids have no rituals. Not yet, at least.”
“And your goal is to create these rituals? To make them all fighters?”
“Not so different from your goals, I’d say.” He set to work, stacking mats in a corner by the window. The play of his back muscles as he lifted and rearranged them derailed her ability to follow the conversation with her usual distance. Instead, she padded behind him lamely. Like, like…a ring bunny. Ugh.
“How do you figure that?”
“You’re as much of a fighter as anyone here. Doing what you do. Against odds that most people would turn away from.”
“The difference being that my fight changes lives. Makes a difference.”
He straightened to his full, glorious height and leveled her with the same stare he had used on the photographer in the article. The I’m-coming-for-you look that never failed to heat the nerve endings at the back of her thighs each time she glanced at the paper.
“We should stop now,” he said. “Preserve those fantasies you carry around in your little purse.”
She wasn’t sure if she was more offended at the term little purse or the idea that he believed himself to be some fantasy in every woman’s mind. Granted, the article with a full-color photo of him in his tight competition shorts was more than circumstantial evidence that she found him visually appealing, but she made no decision without proper research. Certainly not the decision to form a pact with the enemy.
Right. The point of why she came.
“Did Roosevelt tell you he’s a finalist in the bridge competition?”
“Nope.”
“Final judging takes place in New York City. Columbia University.”
Henry resumed stacking mats. She glanced out the windows at the day’s waning pink and yellow horizon to stay focused.
“He has less than one week to complete a scale model, and he isn’t close. Then there’s his college prep classes and this rough patch he’s hit with calculus.” She paused, trying not to choke on the next words out of her mouth. “I need your help.”
His large-scale activity slowed to a small-scale trickle. Mostly a blink. More than one. “I’m sorry…I know I misheard you. Did you just say you need my help?”
“Yes.” Gah. He wasn’t going to make this easy.
“You need the help of a—wait, w
hat did you call me?”
Maggie shrugged. “Champ?” Not a lie. She had said that.
“Right. Right after you called me a testosteroned oaf and a Neanderthal.”
“We got off on the wrong foot.”
“That what you call it?” Finished with the mats, he removed a weight plate the size of body armor from a barbell and slid it onto a corner holder like it was a plastic Frisbee. His voice didn’t even manufacture a grunt of effort.
“Look, this wasn’t easy, coming here. It goes against everything I believe, everything I am. But Roosevelt is special, and I know you see it, too. He thinks highly of you. I won’t change my opinion about your sport, but maybe if we work together instead of at cross-purposes…”
“What are you suggesting?”
“An alliance—just until I can get him through this competition. I haven’t seen him in three days, and his grades are slipping. I’m sure he’s back at home. If we go over there together, tell him we worked out an arrangement where he can come here and focus on his academics and the bridge competition, he’ll listen. I’m sure when I explain what’s at stake to his stepfather—”
“Have you met the guy?”
“No.”
“He’s a bastard and a half. More than a little unhinged.”
She wanted to do something, help Henry in some way, but the plates were Iron Man-sized. Empty barbells she could handle. She picked up the disinfectant spray and the towel from where he’d set them and commandeered his next barbell. He handed it over, but he didn’t look pleased.
“We can do this the legal way—get a grant of temporary custody based on everything he’s told me that goes on in that house—but that takes time he doesn’t have. This week is, quite possibly, the most important in this young man’s life. The difference between building bridges and living beneath them.”
“Everything is so black and white with you. Not everyone has to get an Ivy League education to be important in this life. Anyone who contributes something to society has worth.” They weren’t finished with the free weights, but Henry paced off to pair gloves on a shelf beneath the window. “He’s seventeen. Soon to be eighteen. Isn’t it about time he figures out what he wants?”
“Did you have everything figured out at seventeen? We all need someone in our lives who can look further down the road, people who know what’s at stake, people who believe in us until we can believe in ourselves.” She set down the clean bar and rag and pulled the paper from her bag. She unfolded the article to the back page—a photo of him and his trainer, Solomon Douglas, after his title fight. “I know you had that someone.”
Henry stared out the window, mismatched gloves forgotten in his hands. “I help these kids the only way I know how. They come to me. That’s how it works. It’s about choices. I can’t be going to their houses, getting tangled up in their lives.
“I guess it’s a good thing Solomon Douglas didn’t feel the same way.”
Maggie rolled up the article, perched it inside a hole in the octagon cage, and turned to go. She was nearly to the door when she heard his voice.
“Wait.”
That he stopped her ignited more in her than she cared to admit. Her body felt electric, like a live wire that longed to be grounded by someone who knew about vessels and angry swirls of regret and expectations.
“Two conditions. First, I go over there alone. I don’t need you pulling your high-and-mighty attitude and making things worse.”
“And second?”
“Once the week is up, you don’t come in here anymore.”
His request was a punch to the chest. Or what she imagined that would feel like. The ricochet through the ribs, the imbalance, the vague sense of nausea that seemed to come out of nowhere. Her opinions had always kept others at a distance. Her parents had always justified it, saying that disrupting the status quo led to a greater fulfillment than the acceptance of others. But courage was lonely.
She adjusted her bag. “Agreed.”
The boy, Jalen, breezed by and bid Henry goodbye.
Then they were alone. The moment stretched, uncomfortable. He, cleaning and straightening. She, standing.
He paused. “Was there something else?”
An apology lingered on her tongue. For calling him a Neanderthal. For judging him before she realized that he cared about Roosevelt as much as she did. For bringing an eclipse into his eyes at the mention of Solomon Douglas. Words of contrition crowded her mouth and slowed her breaths, but here, in this place, Henry Lorenz was so very strong that he made her feel weak just by his proximity. And weakness, her mother told her, was an advocate’s worst foe.
Maggie shook her head. “Goodnight.”
She didn’t wait for a response.
Roosevelt lived in a 1920’s shotgun-style house that still held clues that it had once been a home. A rose bush near the porch snarled and tangled its way to the roof, but old pink blooms persevered near the rotting soil. The peeling mailbox still sported a few petals of hand-painted daisies and an identity of the family, the R and E of The Wares all that remained. A waist-high chain link fence and gate once corralled young children away from the chaos of the streets. All the touches of a woman.
Henry knew this because the same thing had happened to his home, a couple of neighborhoods away and a decade removed. In Roosevelt’s case, the mother had died—under somewhat questionable circumstances. In Henry’s case, the woman decided it simply wasn’t in her to raise a child.
He stopped outside the metal gate. A child’s delightful cries pealed through the twilight. Somewhere, he heard Roosevelt laugh and another giggling squeal from a girl. The two rounded the corner of the house, Roosevelt in hot pursuit of Layla, the little stepsister he had mentioned. The rollicking chase stalled when Roosevelt noticed Henry.
Layla circled back through the knee-high weeds and clutched at her older brother’s leg.
“What are you doing here?” said Roosevelt.
“Haven’t seen you in a few days. Kinda miss you yammering on about boring shit like bridges on my morning run.”
The kid flashed a smile, the gleaming kind that showed his teeth and dimples, but it was only a flash. He straightened and sobered.
“Miss Kavanaugh sent you, didn’t she?”
“She stopped by the gym.”
“Man, she doesn’t give up.”
“Isn’t that the idea? That she’s there when everyone else has given up?”
“She wants things. Things I can’t even get my head around.”
“Then tell her.”
“She thinks I’ll be someone important someday. Calls me things like scholar and book man. Nobody calls me those things but my mother.” Layla snagged the hem of Roosevelt’s muscle shirt. He absently scooped her into his arms and set her on his hip as if he’d performed the motion a thousand times. “She doesn’t understand the way it is. Not like you.”
Layla’s eyes grew big and round, trying to engage Henry. The moment he made a face at her, she giggled and buried her cheeks against her brother’s neck. Her laughter was like a tiny, soiled rose in an apocalyptic landscape.
“You here watching Layla alone?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’s your stepdad?”
Roosevelt shrugged.
Henry nodded. He couldn’t decide how to approach getting Roosevelt back. Throw Kavanaugh under the bus or tell Roosevelt the truth, that training him wasn’t just about a possible fight contract—he was that good, nearly unprecedented in his mental game—but about the absolutely fucking selfish part of Henry that used Roosevelt to fill the empty void since Sol had died? He got it now—everything Sol tried to tell him in his last days about what Henry had done for him after Irma died. Fighting was a lonely sport—nothing but cockroaches around you when the lights came up, always keeping people close enough to punch but far away enough to never feel the push-back. Ultimately, he went for the one thing that drove him all those years ago.
“I got some interest fro
m Marvin Vitalis. He trained me for the finals two years ago. Said he’s looking to add a featherweight with a good head to his lineup. I talked you up.”
“Aw, man, no way!” Henry doubted Kavanaugh’s scholarship would have hit Roosevelt the same way. He set his sister down—to much protest—and stalked the front yard, his body as loose and fast as his chatter. “Vi-tal’s a legend. You think I’m good enough to impress him? My timing, man. It’s still too slow.”
“I can’t promise you anything solid, Roosevelt. But if you want to catch his attention, you gotta work for it. That means the discipline and dedication of someone worthy of Vitalis. And on the condition that you do everything Miss Kavanaugh asks. Bridge and all.”
The excitement drained as surely as if Roosevelt had been cracked glass and had drained out all hope into the dingy earth.
“My stepdad, man. Putting all this pressure on me to pull in some money, take up where he can’t anymore. What happens to Layla?”
Immediately, Henry’s mind jumped to Kavanaugh. The gym wasn’t a place for a little girl—she could get hurt—but that didn’t mean someone couldn’t be with her with two of them there to tag-team. One week, right? Henry could do anything for one week.
“Bring her. Just make sure you’re there.”
“Make sure he’s where?”
The voice behind Henry sloshed low, challenging. Henry’s reflexes acted on the one-two combination of Roosevelt’s widened eyes and the impatient prompt from behind. His stance went wide, arms away from his body, fists loose. He turned to face the man.
Behind him, Roosevelt hurried Layla inside the house, despite her protests to retrieve a ball she’d misplaced.
“You deaf, motherfucker? Make sure he’s where?”
It was dark. The nearest streetlight was out, probably target practice for gangs. If the sorry excuse for a father knew he had just called Lawless Lorenz a motherfucker, he would have bent over and kissed his own drunken ass goodbye. Henry’s gaze trailed to the guy’s hands—the hands always gave away intent. A black leather band threaded through a metal golden eagle charm snagged his attention. Guy could afford gaudy fucking jewelry but his kids went hungry most nights?