A Fighting Chance (16 page)

“
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 of
f 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
.

“I forgot how
completely nerve-wracking it can be when you do multiple fights in a night. I don’t want you to think I’m not being supportive. It’s just too hard to watch you get punched.” She hugs me again when I put her down, and she flattens her hands on my chest. “And I guess I was wrong about you. Seemed like you handled tonight well.” Drew scrutinizes my injuries, which aren’t many, at least based on the ones she can see. My ribs hurt a little and I almost rolled my ankle when I was dodging a jab, but otherwise I’m strong enough to run if I need to.

“Yeah. Followed all your tips. Quick and easy.” I didn’t panic after any of the fights, but I can’t detach myself
from those
other
old feelings—that unnerving blend of loathing and loving being in the cage, the thrill that engulfs me when all I can hear is the rumble of the cheers, and my need to feel like I’m a part of something. It has a way of saturating me, and I have a habit of just letting it.

“Jess, you’re bleeding…” She fishes napkins from Dulce out of her pocket, dabs them with water from a bottle
, and wipes my neck. “Oh…” There’s dried blood on the napkins and she quickly tosses them to the grimy floor.

“It’s not mine?” I gulp down.

“There’s no cut
there
, so I don’t think so. But you
are
cut…” she says as she presses a Band-Aid to the stinging scratch on my cheek. Her hand lingers on the spot, and a faint tug of desire has me clenching my stomach. “Hey, I was thinking, we should be tourists tomorrow and check out Mexico City.” She smiles. Damn, the girl has a piercing stare, like her eyes are always searching out beyond what you allow her to see. But that’s Drew, innately defiant and perceptive. “Radio up? Windows down? What do you say?” For a moment, as I look at her, it’s just us, and I feel our history playing out on my skin, in my heart, and in my veins. It would be so easy to fall in love with her again…if I weren’t so in love with her already.

But I remember
that we have to lose each other all over again when she leaves, so I push four years and two separate lives between us. “I gotta rest the next few days.” I pull her hand off my face. “Go with Miguel.” I tap him on the shoulder. “Think you can show Drew around Mexico City tomorrow? Hit up the museums? See some cool places?” I don’t look back at her to see the disappointment that I know is there.

Miguel reaches across me and
takes Drew’s hand. “Hell yeah. I don’t come down here much, but we can Google fun stuff.”

Suddenly the excited crowd shoves us forward, and I get a weird sense of déjà vu when the lights dim. The main event is starting. The announcer, who speaks as quickly as an auctioneer—
not that I can understand it, anyway—shouts the name of the first fighter, as the guy jogs into the cage.

“Ortiz-Peña guy
. Arturo something,” Miguel explains. Arturo is a tall man with beady eyes who’s huffing out huge breaths and slapping his palms together. The lights go off completely and people shriek. The sound is exhilarating and chilling in the dark; it is the kind of noise that floods your body with vibrations.