Khari took in the state of me, whistled softly, and shrugged.
‘You better keep those shades on, Jay-D,’ Khari said, following me toward the locker rooms. ‘Jamie just told me there’s gonna be three camera crews coming later on.’
He shook his head like it was all just too decadent for him. In many ways Khari is an old-fashioned kind of guy. He can’t understand why reality shows like
Battle of the Bitches
get so much attention these days. He can’t understand why people like to see girls hitting each other, especially when some of the girls aren’t very good fighters.
I guess that’s why he dates a ring girl. She doesn’t challenge his assumptions.
‘You can have my photographers if I can have your paycheck,’ I said.
‘You’re OK. You’re the real deal,’ Khari said.
‘I screwed up bad last night,’ I said.
‘Hey,’ Khari said, ‘At least you were the one who done the stomping. At least it wasn’t your head on the mat. Now get to work.’
Here’s the truth. I’m happy in the gym. When I’m slippery as an eel with sweat, and my heart’s going
boom-boom-power
in my ears. When Cake is my pad man, chasing me around the ring and I got incoming blows to deal with and I’m struggling to counter-time him and he’s laughing at me, but I keep going anyway like my life depends on it. That’s when I’m happy. Something wakes up inside me, opens its eyes, takes a deep breath. Something says
yes. Give me some more
.
It was a good workout. I only puked once. I even got it in the bucket. Khari offered me a towel to wipe my face, which was sweet, but then Eva came over to keep her claws in her man. I reeked of puke and she reeked of Estée Lauder. Who you think Khari be picking?
When I look back on it, I know this right here is the critical moment.
It’s like, every so often, on a given day, you do something really small. Don’t mean nothing—or so you think at the time. But later on when you think about it, this tiny decision leads to everything changing. If only you’d known about this one little thing, maybe you would have done things differently.
And maybe you wouldn’t.
So, I could have held my ground and showed my confidence to Khari. Let him know I wasn’t just a kid, but a woman to be reckoned with, you know what I’m saying? But I didn’t. I let Eva spook me. I backed away from the two of them, went outside for some fresh air.
Bang
. That was it, right there. Going outside just then was my Gwyneth Paltrow
Sliding Doors
moment—or it would have been if I’d been a white girl looking for the perfect man instead of a Latina looking for the perfect takedown defense.
It was still raining. I put a stick of gum in my mouth to kill the taste of vomit and looked around. Tommy Zhang’s limo was pulled up around the side of the gym. The engine was running but I couldn’t see anybody inside except the driver, who was reading a magazine. I went and stood under the awning behind Mattress World next door.
Quinton the tomcat was already sitting there, his paws folded under him, blinking as he watched the rain. Quinton has scars all over his big-jowled head, and one of his eyes only opens halfway. He’s skinny and he limps, but he’s my furry
bambino
. He gave me a hoarse chirp and rose to meet my hand when I bent to stroke the back of his head. There were always scabs under his fur.
I started to feel better. Animals are like that. They make you feel better without even trying. I wished I could adopt Quinton, but my mom’s lease had a no-pets clause and Malu already snuck in an iguana. Anyway, it wouldn’t be fair to take him away from his natural environment.
Purring, he turned his head so I could scratch him under his jowls. The rain came down harder. Tommy’s driver shot out of the limo and ran around the back. He spread a huge umbrella, then opened a door. Tommy Zhang got out, talking on his iPhone, this time in fluent Thai. They walked towards me, the driver holding the umbrella over the star while he himself got wet.
‘Mr. Zhang needs a place to smoke a cigarette,’ the driver said, nodding at the awning. Apparently this meant I was supposed to leave. I was curious, though. I knew a little Thai because of Cake and Mr. B, and through watching endless fights on YouTube. I always hoped I could get over there to train someday. But Tommy was Chinese. Where had he learned Thai? I caught the phrases ‘foreign journalist’ and—he said this twice—‘no violence.’ Tommy sounded upset. Maybe somebody in Thailand had written a stitch-up of Tommy.
‘Get rid of that dirty animal,’ Tommy snapped in English. I stopped in the doorway and leaned back outside. The driver was making shooing motions at Quinton. Poor Quinton scurried a few feet on his belly, then stopped, ears flattening, and held his ground. He looked scared, but he wasn’t running yet.
‘Hey, take it easy,’ I said, going out. ‘That’s only Quinton. He’s the gym cat. See, he has a gold ring around his neck, like Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, get it?’
Tommy Zhang didn’t laugh. He didn’t look at me. He bent, picked up a beer bottle, and threw it at Quinton. The bottle shattered, Quinton ran, and I was pretty sure some of the pieces had hit him.
‘Hey!’ I shouted, positioning myself between Tommy Zhang and Quinton, who now shot off behind the cover of a dumpster. ‘What’s your problem? He wasn’t doing anything to you.’
‘You better go inside,’ Tommy Zhang’s driver said. He wasn’t as big as the bodyguards—they were still in the gym, I guess—but he was a lot bigger than me. ‘Mr. Zhang doesn’t want to be disturbed.’
‘Mr. Zhang already is disturbed if he abuses animals.’ I feinted moving left and then shot to the right, around the driver. He tried to grab me but he was slow and let’s face it, I’m really fast. I’ve had a lot of practice at avoiding being grabbed. I saw the door of the gym open, but it was only Eva sticking her head out to get a better phone signal.
I went up to Tommy Zhang and said, ‘What kind of man are you? Don’t you have enough money or you got to pick on some poor animal to make you feel all hard?’
‘Get this trash away from me,’ Tommy Zhang said to his driver, stepping back as if I had a disease. He held his lit cigarette poised like he was thinking about shoving it in my face.
‘No,’ I said. ‘
You
get away from
me
, bitch.’
Or something like that. The truth is, I never exactly remember what I say or do when a fight kicks off. I can only approximate. Like, for example, I can’t remember exactly what he said to me next, or whether he made the first move, or whether the driver did. I don’t know. I do know that one minute the hottest martial arts action star in Hollywood was acting like a cat-hating jerk-off and the next his nose was all splattered across his face and he was doubled over against the back door of Mattress World. Judging by the blood on my knee, I’m guessing I maybe left-hooked him first, because nobody ever sees my left hook coming. I must’ve grabbed his head and pulled it down and banged him in the face with my knee maybe two, three, eighteen times? The main thing is, his nose was good and broken and then he was one
stunned
cat-hating movie star.
I felt good.
All of a sudden there were bodyguards trying to grab me and people were yelling—Eva was videoing us with her phone—and I had to run before somebody creamed me.
I ran right into Khari’s arms.
‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ he said. ‘This is not good.’
There you go. Khari’s always real astute at pointing out the obvious.
I Let My Ass Do the Talking
S
O ME AND
Eva got hustled into Mr. B’s office behind the door with the white sparkly star and the name Bernard Jumsai stencilled under it. No biggie for me. I was used to being chewed out, detained, made to stand in line-ups. For Eva, though? Girl started to sweat and fan herself. She was worried.
‘It’s so stuffy in here,’ she said, edging away from me. There wasn’t much room in Mr. Big’s office. Most of it was taken up by the desk, a cheap metal thing piled with papers and coffee cups and somewhere under it all, a keyboard and mouse. Mr. Big had a screen that showed him the CCTV views of the gym, and of course there was his special two-way mirror. He watched us train while he was wheeling and dealing on Skype, talking with promoters all over the world for hours at a time. The office had a back entrance, too, so you were never really sure whether he was in or out—or who was with him. Mr. Big liked to keep everybody guessing.
Behind the desk was Mr. B’s shrine. In contrast to the rest of the office, the shrine was immaculate. Today there were fresh flowers and a pile of peanut M&Ms. A pair of Rangers tickets. I could never be sure whether Mr. B took his Buddhism as seriously as he seemed to, or whether he was just one of those people who want to cover all the bases. Either way, he never failed with the offerings.
There were dusty marks on the walls where pictures of Linda and the kids used to be. She’d left him two months ago for a carpet-cleaning franchise owner from Pearl River. Mr. B was upset. When I’m upset, I pound the bag until I can’t move, then eat a whole carton of cookie dough ice cream, and then get over it. But Mr. B, he bought himself a consolation Humvee.
Seemed like we were waiting forever. I went behind the desk and pulled up one of the CCTV screens. The media people were standing out front, talking on their phones.
‘Jade, what are you doing?’ Eva hissed.
I turned up the sound on camera one.
‘Yeah, his face was a mess. Looks like Khari Nkondo clocked him. Might have been a fight over this ring girl... what’s her name? Eva Skye?’
Eva gasped when she heard this.
‘Armando? Get me whatever you got on Khari Nkondo. Not just his fights, I want to know if he has a criminal record, any drug history, past issues of violence involving women... you name it.’
The guy hung up and gestured to his cameraman to follow him inside.
Another reporter, standing close to the microphone pickup, whispered,
‘Skye’s real name is Kowalski. Leonard, check her out under that name.’
I grinned at Eva, who turned pink.
‘Kowalski?’ My voice cracked with laughter. ‘Why’d you change it? It’s so much more romantic than Skye.’
She looked away. Her foot started tapping.
‘I can go over to Mattress World and interview the staff. Somebody might have gone outside for a smoke and witnessed it. And I’ll try to get the CCTV.’
Mr. B’s voice cut through them all. He appeared in shot, making grand gestures with his arms.
‘Thank you all for coming, we are so honored to have you all here today. As you may have heard, Mr. Zhang had to leave on an urgent matter. You can call his press officer. Meanwhile, I have to ask you all to go home. Mr. Zhang’s people will be clearing the building.’
Chip the Viking started herding everybody, grabbing cameras and phones as he went
. ‘Right, everybody, let’s all be cool. Nothing to see here, nothing to see. Sorry, was that your camera? Here you go.’
‘Where’s my memory card?’
‘I don’t know where the memory card is, man, you must not have loaded one before you came.’
‘Hey! Hey, that guy stole my pictures!’
‘I’m not a thief,’
said Chip in a rehearsed voice.
‘I’m a security consultant. Do you wish to consult with me?’
‘You’ll hear from our legal department,’
said the smaller man, backing away in a hurry.
‘It’s already all over Twitter, anyway. Ha!’
Me and Eva looked at each other. She was excited.
‘You think they want to interview me?’ she said. ‘They think I’m playing Khari and Tommy Zhang at the same time. Wow. I could get in
People
for that.’
‘Not so great for Khari,’ I said. ‘They all think he beat up Tommy Zhang, and he didn’t.’
‘I know.’ She fixed me with pale green eyes. ‘You did. What is wrong with you? Why you act like such a freak? Khari says you had some kind of bad childhood. Get over it.’
I felt my nostrils widen. I was about to unleash when Mr. B swaggered in.
‘Girls, girls,’ he said. ‘This place is like Ringling Brothers circus.’
He reached out and patted Eva on the shoulder.
‘You don’t talk to nobody,’ he said. ‘Understand? Not one word.’
Her face fell.
‘But Mr. B, they all want to interview me—’
Mr. B let out a grunt and held up one commanding finger. Eva seemed to shrink before his daddy act.
‘Not. One. Word. One phone call from me and you never work again in this business.’
‘But I didn’t do nothing!’ Eva protested.
‘You keep your mouth shut. Simple. You come out ahead. They offer you work, fine. They interview you for
Cage
? Fine. OK. But you say nothing about today. Nothing. Get it?’
‘I get it.’ Eva looked at me pointedly.
‘You can go, Eva. And tell Monika. No talking. To nobody.’
Looking grouchy, Eva started to go out. In the doorway she paused. Looking at me as she addressed Mr. B, she said, ‘Why you give this girl so many chances? She is not so special. And by the way, Jade, I am not ashamed of my name or my homeland.’
She shut the door. Mr. B turned to me. I gave him my detention-center stare. He shook his head, sighing.
‘Don’t you get it, Jade? You know I want to change image of fighters as thugs. I’m trying to go upmarket so I invite a high class, A-list celebrity to our gym to raise our profile on
Battle of the Bitches
, and—hello, anybody home?—this what pays rent for nobodies like you. And what you do? You embarrass me.’
‘But...’
‘But what? But he’s a jerk? But he’s fake? You think this is some kind of excuse?’
No, actually my excuse is he’s a... what’s the scientific term for cat-hater? Like
homophobe
, but for cats. There has to be a word. I’ll ask Malu later.
I said nothing. It had been a rhetorical question, anyway, because Mr. B plowed on.
‘I know Tommy Zhang is all image. I know he can’t fight. You know it. Deep down, he knows it. But we all got to keep up his front. He’s a movie star. Tommy’s career depends on image. Don’t you get that?’