Shadowboxer (16 page)

Luck had helped Mr. Richard find ways to open the forest into specific places across the world. This allowed Mr. Richard to interact with other magicians. Luck had carried drugs and escorted children through these places. And he had trained other children to enter the forest—but eventually they outgrew the ability to travel here.

‘We’re expendable,’ Luck told her. ‘That’s how we ended up here. Some were thrown away by their owners for whatever reason. Some were dumped by Mr. Richard when we outlived our usefulness. He had me train my own successor. Then when I couldn’t come here anymore through meditation, they overdosed me with night orchid to send me here. I couldn’t escape.’

‘That’s evil.’

‘The night orchid poison is very painful. Your body disappears from the real world and you die here. Animals eat your body, but if the immortals don’t want your spirit then your ghost gets stuck in the trees. Mr. Richard and his gang are clever. There’s no evidence of a crime. No one can stop them because of this.’

‘Not even the immortals?’

‘I don’t know,’ Luck said. ‘No immortal came for me. My body rotted. I’m stuck here.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Mya said wearily.

‘It’s my karma. I took many children through the forest for Mr. Richard, and they suffered because of me. So I’m stuck here now. I can’t move on.’

Mya watched him keenly.

‘That’s why you’re helping me? You want to gain merit.’

The ghost nodded. ‘My betrayal of others holds me back.’

Mya swallowed against a painfully tight throat.

‘I betrayed others, too,’ she whispered. ‘He told me they were going to be adopted by new families. I thought they were lucky.’

‘He always says that.’

‘What will happen to them?’

‘It depends where they go. They might be adopted, but some clients are perverts. Mr. Richard is very well-connected. He’s rich, but he doesn’t care about money. He cares about power. He likes having power over the people who buy children.’

Mya felt sick.

‘What am I going to do?’

‘You could keep feeding them,’ Luck said. ‘They come closer to the human world when they eat human food, speak human languages. You can remind them of who they were.’

‘What good is that?’

‘I don’t know. But they are hungry.’

Mya shivered.

‘Mr. Richard is making a new drug,’ she said. ‘He says he will pour his spirit into me.’

‘He has been working on that for years. He thinks he can escape the wheel of reincarnation by taking over the body of a child, so he can have power even over his own death. I’ve seen two boys and a girl die when he tried to possess their bodies.’

Mya looked around. The leaves and flowers were lush today, as though the immortal world were advertising its beauty that surpassed all beauty on earth. Mya decided that being a ghost here would be preferable to being possessed by Mr. Richard.

‘Imagine it,’ said Luck, a little gleefully. ‘Imagine him in your bones and fingertips, imagine his breathing in your lungs, imagine your hands are his hands now... Mya, how close do you think he is to finding a medicine that will really let him do this?’

She swallowed.

‘I think he probably has one by now,’ she whispered.

Friendship Donuts

I
KNEW
I hadn’t fooled Perez, but I had to stop worrying about police and giant animals that ate people’s arms because Mario Diaz was on the mat. Like a lot of Brazilian coaches, Mario might be easygoing, slouching around murmuring suggestions in a really low-key way, but there was nothing low-key about the work. Nothing takes it out of you like ground fighting, and I hadn’t done any for months. I had to work harder to make my moves stick. I trained with Dedalus and Cake, who are smaller guys but not small enough if you’re me. I had to think my way around their moves in a way that’s totally different from thinking on your feet, and Mario made it harder by restricting me to certain finishes during a given run. He’d call a given submission for each of us—say, ‘ankle lock’ for me and ‘triangle choke’ for Dedalus—and even if Dedalus offered me an arm bar on a plate, I couldn’t take it. I had to go for the ankle, all the while stopping him from getting me in the choke. I learned about a dozen ways to get an ankle lock, though, so that was good.

After my water break Khari came over to talk to me, but I made myself just flash him a smile and walk on by.
Jai yen
, baby. I went straight to the sit-up bench and started in with my conditioning work. I was used to this by now. In Thailand we’d done all our push-ups, sit-ups and neck exercises at the end of a hard day. If this had been Bangkok, my training day would be only half over, but this was America, and Mr. B had scheduled a photo session for me this afternoon. I had to get my training done, take a shower, and change into clean fightwear by 2 pm. So I crammed in as much as I could. Two weeks is not a lot of time to get ready for somebody like Gretchen.

While I was doing incline sit-ups I could hear Mr. B talking to someone on his headset.

‘I know Jade’s no Gina Carano. How many girls who look like Gina want to fight? Gretchen’s not bad-looking but she no Jennifer Lawrence either, so why you worry?’

Oh, no. He was probably talking to a sponsor about me. It was the looks thing again. Same old same old. How come nobody cares what Fedor or Tito or Wanderlei look like? How come women fighters have to also look good? Ever since Gina Carano had proved you didn’t have to look like a dog to fight like one, promoters had been looking for the next Gina all over the place. When Cris Santos beat Gina I thought the pro game would open up for women, but sometimes it was just the same old bullshit. Promoters thought viewers just wanted a wet t-shirt contest, and most viewers weren’t arguing. It pissed me off... wait, I’m supposed to keep that in the ring.
Jai yen
, Jade.

I was dreading the photo shoot. There was nobody to help me with my hair, and I was probably going to come out looking like George of the Jungle.

I finished my sit-ups and started doing kipping pull-ups. I was suffering through my second set when Monika appeared in my peripheral vision. She held a Tupperware box in both hands at chest height, like she was making a ceremonial offering, and she was smiling at me.

I dropped to the ground.

‘Sorry,’ Monika giggled. ‘I am not meaning to interrupt. I want to give you this.’

I scowled. ‘What is it?’

‘We make donuts,’ she said. ‘They are called pączki. For you. My sister and I, we are such fans for you. We want to support girl power in cage.’

I felt my eyes widen and my lips twist. Fans? I flashed the thought that the donuts were poisoned. Eva might not know the exact content of my fantasies about Khari—like, she probably didn’t know how many times she’d died a bloody death in my mind so that he could be with me—but she had to know we weren’t friends.

‘I don’t know what to say.’ I didn’t take the box. Monika was so put together, standing there with her perfect boobs rising and falling with every breath, her perfect nails gripping the Tupperware, her spotless white capris and her windswept brown hair. She seemed to glimmer, and I felt more than ever like a human version of Quinton the tomcat.

‘Please, take them,’ she said, extending the box to me. ‘We make special for you. We are excellent bakers! I promise! One day soon we open our own bakery, maybe in West New York. Serve all kinds of cake.’

‘Really?’ I took the box. Monika giggled and tossed her hair. She put her hand across her swelling chest like she was pledging allegiance to the flag. ‘I am so admiring of you, Jade. I never have courage to get in cage like you. The woman power, we all stick together, we can do anything! I really believe is true.’

‘You’re opening a bakery?’

‘Oh, yes, it is our dream since we were little. I bake, Eva does account books. She loves to bake but she never eats, you know.’

I grunted. No kidding.

‘All our working is to raise money so we start the business. I go to school part time to become pastry chef, and Eva saves everything. We are going to buy the two family house and have many babies, help each other with business. Woman power!’

‘Many babies... does Khari know about this?’ I tried to picture Khari with his arm around a heavily pregnant Eva... ugh.

‘Oh, Khari, he is so sweet! He is loving my cheesecake. We don’t tell him our plans, he is not so bright, you know?’

I found myself smiling. I don’t even know why.

She said, ‘You look so skinny after Thailand, a little treat not hurt you. Anything else you need, I can help you in any way, you just let me know, OK? You are not alone, we all a team here.’

She actually reached out and patted my arm. I don’t know what happened. In spite of myself, I was kind of starting to warm up to her. A little.

‘Actually,’ I heard myself say. ‘There is one thing...’

‘Just tell me! I can help you?’

‘It’s just, I got this photo shoot, and I look like I got hit by a truck...’

‘No you don’t! Come on. You get in shower, I go get my makeup bag. Everything will be OK. I am the hair genius.’

Perez came in while I was getting my picture taken. Monika had done my hair in cornrows, how it would be the night I fought Gretchen, and she’d also plucked my eyebrows, given me a facial, and put some subtle makeup on. My dark circles were hidden. She had trouble restraining herself from glamming me up, but I told her I had to look like a fighter. Still, I was wearing more makeup than I remembered having on since I dated Dmitri the car thief. And I have to admit, I looked pretty good. For me.

Malu texted me twice, once to ask me to pack her a bag and bring it to Mandino’s, where her Grandpa Harris would pick me up and take me back to her grandparents’ place in Teaneck. And again to say she’d forgotten Coltrane’s iguana food when she’d taken him to Teaneck, so could I pack that too?

I didn’t blame her for not wanting to stay in the apartment now. It had been agreed nobody would tell my mom, because she had enough on her plate with Nana. But it made everyone uptight and guilty. I felt terrible. Even though it wasn’t my fault. I mean, it was more my fault than it was Malu’s. Seemed like I was always bringing my problems on the family, and they never complained, and that made it worse.

I’d pack her bag, but I had no intention of going to Teaneck.

They made me stand in these dorky poses for the shoot, holding my hands up like I was fighting even though I don’t stand that way in the ring. I tried not to look at Perez while this was happening. He watched the shoot for a few minutes, but he didn’t stay. He spoke with Mr. B in the office for a while, and then he must have gone out back because I didn’t see him after that. This made me nervous. It’s like when you know there’s a spider in the room but you don’t know where. He was bound to give me a grilling. It was just a matter of when and where.

After the photographers left Mr. B cornered me. I expected him to start in with the whole ‘why you not stay out of trouble with law’ schtick, but he just said, ‘Jade, you can finish interview before you go.’

‘Interview?’

He meant that reporter, Shea, who showed up behind Mr. B. He must have been eating better because he actually had dimples when he smiled at me.

‘I’ve got plenty of time. I’ll go with you wherever you’re going? Then I don’t need to take up too much of your time.’

Mr. B put his arm around my shoulders. ‘Oh, Jade got plenty of time! Go ahead, you crazy kids. Jade, see you tomorrow. I got Mario coming ten o’clock, so don’t be late.’

I didn’t want to bring the reporter back to my place, but I had to get a bag packed for Malu and get up to Mandino’s before my shift started.

On the bus Shea said, ‘You looked good in the shoot.’

I snorted. Then I remembered I was supposed to be professional, so I mumbled, ‘Thanks.’

‘Have you worked out your strategy against Van Der Hoef?’

Of course not. I hadn’t had time.

‘Yeah, we’ve got our game plan but I’m not going to talk to you about the specifics because Gretchen might be reading.’

‘Oh, come on, you can tell me something. I understand she’s highly effective on the ground. What’s your feeling about that?’

I laughed, trying to sound light-hearted. ‘You heard Mr. B. We’ve got Mario Diaz taking care of that aspect. Mario is Brazil’s finest ground specialist.’

I sounded so fake. I just couldn’t get into this interview. There was something too intense about this Shea guy. I mean, I never get interviewed. Why would some British newspaper want to talk to me, unless it was another ‘ugly girl vs. pretty girl’ article? But Gretchen isn’t really pretty any more than I am. We’re both just regular-looking.

‘Is this a bad time?’ Shea said. ‘Your trainer was eager to have you do this interview, but I get the sense I’m imposing. Maybe I could take you to lunch tomorrow?’

‘I’m training all day tomorrow,’ I said. Then I realized I was stonewalling him again and Mr. B wasn’t going to like it. So I said, ‘It’s OK, we can do it now. I’m just a little preoccupied. I’m rushing to get to work, so why don’t you come up and we’ll do the interview now?’

‘Can’t I take you for a meal? Make it more pleasant for you?’

I looked away. He had nice eyes.

‘I can’t, sorry.’

‘You can’t eat?’

‘I’m in training? For the fight? My diet is strictly controlled.’

‘Oh, yes, of course.’ He glanced at the box of Monika’s donuts on my lap. A wonderful smell wafted from it.

‘Oh, these. Monika gave them to me. You want one?’ He did look hungry. Maybe that was why he wanted to take me to lunch.

We got off the bus with Shea munching a donut, and a child in a red Chinese-style dress got off after us. She looked scruffy and almost as intense as Shea. I noticed her staring fixedly at us and I almost offered her a donut, too, but when she met my eye she turned and went quickly away in the other direction.

We walked up to my building. A police car was parked just down the hill. My heart began to thump. I opened the front door, listened, but heard nothing, so I hurried Shea through the lobby and up the stairs.