On the Rocks

by Mia Gold

  A moment later the girl peeked around the corner of the counter. Ruby winked again and was treated to a giggle and a shy smile. The girl looked about eight.

  Summoning her courage, the girl rounded the corner and stared at Ruby, who realized that she must have looked like an alien straight off a spaceship in this neighborhood.

  The girl had on a tattered one-piece dress that might have been white once, but was now merely a patchwork of stains. Madame Lawrence saw her, grunted, and fussed about her little cooking area for a moment. Then she reached over the counter and handed the girl a roll generously covered in butter.

  “Go on, now,” she told the girl. “This lady is a magnet for trouble and you don’t want to catch nothing.”

  A magnet for trouble, that’s the truth.

  Ruby smiled at the girl, who returned her smile with a wave before darting out the door. Ruby felt a tug of loss.

  “She yours?” Ruby asked her hostess.

  “She’s nobody’s.”

  Ruby blinked. “She’s an orphan?”

  “With her parents, she might as well be. Drink your tea and don’t worry about other people’s troubles.”

  “I wish I couldn’t. Isn’t there an orphanage or something for her?”

  Madame Lawrence snorted. “Nobody in government gives a damn about people like her. The best I can do is keep her from going downhill.”

  Her tone struck Ruby as odd. She said this not like it was a metaphor, but a geographical fact.

  Then she remembered. As the taxi had been approaching the Maze, they had been going downhill. Was that where that girl might end up? At that age?

  Ruby shuddered.

  Here I am worrying about my life, but there’s always someone worse off.

  But what can I do? Madame Lawrence is right. I have enough on my plate as it is. I shouldn’t be worrying about other people’s troubles.

  But if everyone only worries about their own troubles, then eight-year-old girls will end up going down the hill.

  She drank the rest of her tea, brooding over that sweet face.

  At last she stood. “Thanks for everything. I need to get going.”

  Madame Lawrence gave he a concerned look. “You want me to call you a taxi, a licensed one that will get you where you’re going without giving you a punch in the face?”

  “No, I can walk.”

  “Ain’t nowhere within walking distance you want to go, girl.”

  “You’re right about that,” Ruby sighed, hurrying out the door before Madame Lawrence found out her plans and talked her out of them.

  The little girl sat outside on the cracked curb, eating her roll and clutching it as if someone might take it away from her.

  Ruby paused. The girl gave her a grin full of crumbs. Ruby winked back at her, glanced downhill, then went back inside.

  “Second thoughts?” Madame Lawrence asked.

  “Plenty, but I’m still going.” Ruby handed her fifty dollars. “Make sure she eats this week.”

  Pride flushed through Ruby’s being, for the first time in far too long.

  Madame Lawrence took the money and tucked it in her bosom. “And next week?”

  Her pride washed away like a sandcastle hit by a tropical storm.

  And the week after that?

  Ruby realized she was throwing stones at the tide.

  “I don’t know,” Ruby admitted. “First I need to make it to next week.”

  Ruby ducked out of the shop, nodded to the girl, and hurried down the street. She did not dare look back.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Ruby could see why this place was called the Maze. The cheap tenements that had constituted Madame Lawrence’s neighborhood gave way to a chaotic tumble of shacks filling a great bowl of a valley into which Ruby descended. There were no streetlights here, for there were no streets, only spaces between the shacks that could barely even be called alleys. Alleys were something planned, and these little lanes were just the space left over after the denizens of this place had built their feeble shelters.

  There was light, though. Bonfires burned in yards or right in the middle of the alleys, and from metal barrels flickered fires that gave off toxic fumes that told how the locals got rid of their trash.

  A few electric lights shone here and there, powered by electricity coming through a spider’s web of wires strung on the tops of sticks driven into the ground, hanging so low she could have jumped up and grabbed them. Ruby figured the juice must have been stolen from lines in the slum she had just left, the slum that now appeared to her a respectable neighborhood.

  People filled the alleys. No one looked well fed. No one looked happy. Those who passed her by shuffled along as if they had accepted defeat a long time ago, or stumbled and reeled from drink and drugs. Some sat outside their shacks on wooden crates or broken lawn chairs, talking to each other in low tones. There was none of the loud, open laughter you got everywhere else in the Bahamas.

  Every eye was on her. The faces showed a range of emotions—surprise, mostly, and suspicion. Others gave her long, measuring looks. Some were inscrutable. Those were the ones she took care to watch. Ruby’s senses kicked into high alert, even more than when she had been in the ring. Then she had only faced one opponent standing right in front of her. Here she faced an entire neighborhood all around her.

  No way Richard could have made it through here without half the neighborhood remembering him. She felt tempted to go up to some of these people and show them the photo, but why should they cooperate? Why answer questions from an outsider that might involve the police? She had the feeling that the police never came here except to bust heads.

  But how had Richard made it through this neighborhood to get to the fights?

  Someone plucked at her pocket. Her hand shot down to grab whoever it was, her head turning to see.

  A child, no older than six, had been trying to pick her pocket.

  He turned his palm up. “Something, madam.”

  Ruby didn’t reply, feeling relieved she had looked before she had lashed out.

  The child was barefoot, and wore nothing but a grubby T-shirt. Within seconds he was joined by another child, also with his hand out, and another.

  One bold little girl darted out of the shadows and tried to put a hand in Ruby’s pocket. Like the boy, she had spotted which pocket had Ruby’s wallet. The eyes of a pro. Ruby hooked her thumb into her pocket so they couldn’t get in without her noticing, and was soon having to use her other hand to bat away a flurry of tiny hands trying to get into her other pockets.

  “Please, madam. Something.”

  “Sweets. One dollar.”

  “Please, madam.”

  Ruby felt ill. All of these kids looked malnourished, some obviously sick. An infected eye leaking fluid. A twisted arm from a fracture that never got splinted. Strange, lumpy growths on a girl’s neck.

  They pawed at her, begging and attempting to rob her at the same time. Ruby’s gut twisted. She felt the urge to toss all her money at them, but knew that if she pulled out her wallet she’d be mobbed.

  “Sorry, I can’t help,” she whispered, not able to look at them. The adults in the alley only watched.

  Unsure where she was going, Ruby headed further downhill into the lower depths of the valley. She came to a flatter, more open area, which during the day she supposed acted as some sort of market. It made a step on the side of the slope, and from there she could look out over the shacks and the circle of begging children to the bottom of the valley. There she noticed a couple of larger concrete buildings like warehouses and an open field crowded with parked cars. Electric lights shed a harsh white illumination on the warehouse, probably powered by generators.

  That must be it.

  She chose an alley that looked like it headed more or less in the right direction, and continued down the slope, still hemmed in by the begging children.

  Even though she headed there with the hope that it was where the blood sports were taking place
, where men faced off in illegal and sometimes fatal fights, she looked at it as a sign of civilization, something not ragged or decayed. A place with lights and people and rituals she understood.

  Her pace slowed. The kids pressed all around her, tripping her up. Little hands pawed at her, tried to force their way into the pocket with her wallet, or stretched up at her face, palms up.

  And suddenly they vanished. The kids scattered, disappearing into a hundred shadows. Most of the adults faded away too, leaving only a couple of old crones who cackled, leering at her.

  Three young men blocked the alley.

  The one on the right stood nearly seven feet, his bare torso an obsidian Greek statue. The man in the middle looked tiny next to him, although he was a full six feet and muscular. He swayed from side to side, eyes red and hooded under dreadlocks, the zipper to his pants open to reveal stained underwear. The machete in his hands was held in a white-knuckled grip. The man on the right was a bit shorter, wearing a muscle shirt with a huge picture of Bob Marley. A dark stain of what looked like dried blood was spattered over the singer’s peaceful face. He flicked a butterfly knife open and closed, the clack of metal on metal now the only sounds in the alley. Rat a tat tat. Rat a tat tat.

  Ruby got into a fighting stance.

  “WHAT DAFUCK YOU DOIN’ HERE?” the big one bellowed. In a shack nearby, a woman wailed.

  “I’m here for the fights,” Ruby said.

  “DA FIGHTS? YOU WANNA FIGHT?”

  The man in the Bob Marley shirt grinned and flicked his butterfly knife.

  Rat a tat tat. Rat a tat tat.

  Ruby took a deep breath, glanced left and right to find no threats and no help coming from those directions, and said, “The betting fights. The blood sports.”

  This time it was Bob Marley who replied. “You here to bet? Let’s see your money.”

  Rat a tat tat. Rat a tat tat.

  “I’m not here to bet. I’m here to fight.”

  Maybe that will get me enough respect to avoid tangling with these guys. Maybe fighters get free passage.

  The giant let out a belting laugh. The stoner in the middle, showing he was aware for the first time, let out a stupid guffaw. Bob Marley looked her up and down.

  “Why didn’t you come in on the road? Someone gut your car?”

  “I came on foot.”

  That got more laughter from the giant and the stoner.

  Bob Marley raised a hand to silence them and got ignored.

  “You with the King?” he asked over their laughter.

  “Maybe,” Ruby replied, having no idea who the King was.

  “You got a pass?” Bob Marley asked.

  Ruby cocked her head. “You’re the smart one, aren’t you? You’re figuring that robbing and raping me might not be as profitable as taking me to the fights. You’re figuring that it might be worth your while.”

  Rat a tat tat. Rat a tat tat. “Sounds like you got it all figured out. And how you gonna make it worth my while?”

  “First you got to take me to the fights. Get me through the Maze safely.”

  Bob Marley glanced at the larger of his two companions and grinned. “It ain’t up to me.”

  The man mountain rubbed the front of his pants and stepped forward.

  “GIVE US THA MONEY AND THEN WE DO THA THANG.”

  Whatever he was going to say next got cut off short when Ruby dodged to the right, putting him between her and his two companions. He reacted remarkably fast, swinging an arm like an oak branch at her head.

  Ruby ducked, the fist missing by inches, and lashed out a kick at the side of his knee. It bent the wrong way with a sickening crunch of bone and tendons.

  No one, no matter how big and strong, could remain standing after that.

  As the man fell, Ruby grabbed a wooden crate that someone had been sitting on until a minute before and crashed it down on his head, the wood splintering.

  She stood, about to finish him off, when the machete man charged at her, his weapon cutting down, ready to chop her up like a piece of meat at a butcher’s shop.

  Ruby grabbed his arm, twisted to put him off balance, and rammed an elbow into his ribs, feeling disappointed when she did not hear them crack. He let out a grunt but otherwise seemed unhurt.

  Bob Marley dove in, butterfly knife at the ready, and Ruby kept twisting the machete man to use him as a shield.

  Bob Marley ducked back just in time not to stick his friend, so Ruby helped him out by shoving the machete man at him. A pained cry told her she got what she intended, the slice of Bob Marley’s knife cutting through the man’s drug haze.

  Movement to her right. Ruby spared a moment to kick the big man in the face as he tried to rise on his one good leg, then moved to the left as Bob Marley untangled himself from his friend, who fell to his knees.

  Now there was only one left standing. Ruby preferred those odds.

  Bob Marley advanced with his butterfly knife at the ready, weaving it back and forth, changing the motion and the rhythm to keep Ruby uncertain.

  “The deal’s still on,” Ruby told him. This guy looked more dangerous than the other two combined.

  “You made me stab Shivers. It’s gone way past deal making.”

  He lashed out, fast and nimble as a fencer. Ruby just barely had time to dart back.

  He did not let her rest, dancing forward, his knife a deadly blur. The blade seemed everywhere at once. It was only a matter of time before it cut her.

  Can’t defeat the odds? Dad always used to say. Then change the odds.

  Ruby feinted right, then dodged left, tearing through a curtain covering the doorway of a shack.

  She spun, yanking the curtain off its thin rod, and tried to whip it in Bob Marley’s face.

  That didn’t go too well. It was still half wrapped around her body. While she managed to get it off her, she only hit him in the chest. Bob Marley advanced on her.

  She had just enough time to bat a rickety wardrobe standing next to the doorway across the entrance before she had to draw back to avoid the knife. She turned to look for a back way out or some sort of weapon.

  And came face to face with a teenaged girl holding a baby.

  The look of terror on the girl’s face was infectious. Now Ruby was scared not only for herself, but for this poor girl she had just yanked into her drama.

  Ruby whirled back to face the thug at the door, who was just stepping over the fallen wardrobe, jabbing his knife before him to fend off any attacks Ruby might try.

  Her senses, razor sharp, picked up the sizzle of grease and the scent of something cooking. She spun to her right, hoping the stove would be in reach. She’d be dead if it wasn’t.

  It was. A little iron stove, probably burning wood and trash, had a filthy skillet on top cooking something. Ruby didn’t care what and she didn’t have time to look anyway. She grabbed the skillet and tossed the contents in Bob Marley’s face.

  He brought up his hands and turned his face just in time to avoid being blinded, but screamed as the hot grease spattered on the bare skin of his cheek, neck, and arm. Ruby followed up by bringing the edge of the pan down on his knife arm, eliciting another scream and making him drop his weapon.

  Ruby dropped the pan too. The handle was piping hot. She lashed out with her unburned hand, clocking Bob Marley on the side of the head. He staggered back, tripping over the upturned wardrobe and landing hard on the earth outside.

  Ruby leapt after him, ducking to avoid the low top of the doorway, and landed feet first on his chest. Bob Marley let out a big oof. Ruby glanced around. Besides the two old women, who still cackled as if this was the best entertainment of their lives, the only other people visible were the seven-foot monster with the twisted knee and the machete man who had gone into some sort of shivering fit from the mixture of drugs and pain. He was on his knees, looking like he was having a convulsion.

  Strange, Ruby thought. That cut isn’t so deep.

  Of more danger was the man monster she�
��d crippled, who was dragging himself along, headed for the machete.

  They say you should never kick a man when he’s down. There’s an exception if the man is going for a machete.

  A quick kick to the back of the head put him out for a while.

  She bent over Bob Marley, whose groans told her he was conscious, and patted him down. No other weapons. Nothing in his pockets but a small bundle of dirty banknotes. Ruby took those and held them out to the teenaged mother, who stood in the doorway of her hovel.

  “No!” she screamed, disappearing back inside.

  Foolish of me, Ruby thought. If she takes that money, she dies.

  She shoved the roll back in the guy’s pocket and hauled him to his feet.

  “You,” she said, punctuating her word with a quick jab to his stomach. “You’re going to take me to the fights.”

  The thug in the Bob Marley shirt started screaming words his musical hero never used in his songs. Another jab to the stomach cut that off.

  “You’re taking me to the fights or I’m breaking your fingers one by one.”

  Ruby hoped he wouldn’t call her bluff. While she’d cause all sorts of mayhem in self-defense, she couldn’t torture someone, not even someone like him.

  Bob Marley paused. Silently she urged him to make the right decision. After getting burned by cooking oil and seeing his friend’s knee bend the wrong way, maybe he would.

  He surveyed the carnage around him, then glared at Ruby. She could practically hear the wheels turning in his head.

  “Fine. It’s your funeral,” he grumbled.

  Ruby nodded, relieved. “I knew you were the smart one.”

  “You got what you wanted, girl, but I’m warning you. You’re getting into more trouble than you just got out of.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Ruby had been right about where the fights were being held. Bob Marley led her to the well-lit old warehouse at the bottom of the valley. After the smoky fires and dim lights of the rest of the Maze, the floodlights lining the crumbling concrete roof were blinding. The rumble of a generator filled the air.