Shadowboxer (3 page)

Still I said nothing. What could I say?

‘You change your attitude or pick a different business. This ain’t no sport, not no more. We are in show business. That means putting on a show. Tommy Zhang is huge. He’s starting up a new fight circuit give those criminals in Las Vegas a run for their money. It’s going to be big, and it’s going be clean.’

He was referring to the underworld connections of Cage Federation, the biggest fight organization in the country. Some people said the whole business was corrupt and based on backdoor dealing. Of course some people would say that about boxing, too. I didn’t care. I just wanted a little piece of it, a chance to do something with my life.

‘Come on, Mr. B,’ I said. ‘You’re not telling me Tommy Zhang is putting up his own money? Who’s backing him, and how clean are they? He didn’t sound happy on the phone to Thailand just now.’

Mr. B waved that away. ‘Zhang got all kind of big money contacts. And he got better TV promotion. But thanks to you I got to go kiss his ass, make a fool of myself, and pray what really happened don’t get out. Or we got headlines saying: “Tommy Zhang beat up by girl.”’

Well,
I thought.
If the pants fit...

‘Everybody on our side been sworn to secrecy, but you never know what little rat might decide to cash in. Now Tommy’s gotta reschedule his photo shoot.’

I had to work so hard not to laugh. Mr. B saw my face and got really mad. ‘He can’t take pictures with a damn black eye, Jade. You’re costing me all kinds of money with your fucking childish temper!’

I winced when he dropped the f-bomb. One thing about Mr. Big is that he almost never swears. I better watch out.

I looked down at the cigarette burn in Mr. B’s carpet. If I thought about anything else, I might crack and start to cry, and no way was that going to happen. No way.

‘I am so close to giving up on you. Anybody else, they’d be gone already, and I would tell Tommy he can press charges.’

I said nothing. Mr. B’s tone changed. ‘You know you are like my daughter.’ I felt my cheeks getting hot. ‘Your mom and Linda are best friends. Your mom came to me when you got in trouble with the police. I took you on. I talked to your school to take you back, I helped you get that job you need. Me and Linda got our differences, but we promised your mother we would look out for you when she went to the Dominican Republic. Your mom didn’t want to leave you here. She let you stay because of
me
.’

‘And because Malu moved in to my house,’ I added. ‘You kept me so I could train.’

‘Exactly. You’re talented, only a year away from turning pro. But you’re not eighteen yet. You got to listen to us, Jade. Me, your mom, your cousin Malu, all of us are your family. If you don’t listen we can’t help you.’

He was expecting me to look at him or say something. I was still concentrating on the cigarette burn.

‘Jade?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered, finally, without looking at him. ‘I’m really sorry. I didn’t think.’

I felt my throat tighten as I let myself think about what this gym meant to me. My future here, all my hard work, my dreams of a pro title... I blinked back tears, refocusing on the carpet. Nothing can get through to you if you focus your attention on something very specific and refuse to let go. Nothing.

‘You ruined the deal,’ Mr. B. said. ‘Tommy Zhang won’t do business now. If I keep you, he’ll find a way to hurt me. If I get rid of you and somebody offers you money to talk, and then the whole thing comes out.’

‘I wouldn’t! I wouldn’t talk, I swear—’

‘You’re just a kid. You don’t know this business.
Cage
will find out. Somebody will find out. I got Khari wiping out all the memory cards. But Tommy Zhang hates us now.’

‘He might change his mind,’ I said. ‘He must be worried, what if somebody finds out he got beat up so easy? If he stops doing business with you, he has to tell people why. There’s the show. His lawyers will want to know. What’s he gonna say? There must be a way to make it right. What can I do? Can I apologize? Send flowers? Should I grovel? What can I do, Mr. B?’

Mr B snorted. ‘What can you do? I don’t know. Leave the country?’

He threw up his hands dramatically and spun around to turn his back on me. His elbow bumped into the gecko statue he kept on his shrine. I saw it start to fall. Before I even knew what I was doing, I’d lunged across the room and caught it.

He turned around and looked at me, astonished. Hell, I’m fast. I’m not bragging, but I got the reflexes of a fighter pilot.

I held the statue out to him.

‘OK,’ I said, giving him my biggest, cutest smile.

He didn’t take the statue. He just looked at it, then at me. His face crunched up like he thought I was playing some trick on him.

‘What you mean, OK?’

Good question. What did I mean? Think fast, Barrera.

‘Um... don’t you want your lucky gecko back?’

He took the gecko and nervously replaced it on the shelf. He made sure it lined up just right next to the incense holder. Then an idea flashed across my mind.

‘OK, I’ll leave the country,’ I said. Actually, it wasn’t even like I said it. I was totally talking out of my ass. Yeah, my ass must have said it. And the words came spilling out so easy they almost sounded plausible. ‘How long should I go for? Two weeks? Three weeks? Until it blows over and the shows are under way and everybody’s focusing on something else?’

Mr. Big rolled his eyes. He didn’t believe I was serious.

‘A month? My last exam is on Thursday. After that I could go stay with my Nana in the Dominican Republic, but you know she’s sick. And I wouldn’t be able to train there.’

When I said it I realized how much I was missing my mom. And how sad I was that Nana was dying and I’d never see her again unless I went out there...

Mr. B shook his head. He looked at the gecko. I knew I had him now. I saved his gecko. Or did he have another motive?

‘Thailand,’ he said suddenly, narrowing his eyes. ‘You go anywhere, you go there. No age restrictions. You can fight pro there. Then we find out how tough you really are.’

This wasn’t what I had in mind, but I nodded, still letting my ass do the talking. ‘I’ll ask my mom. Only thing is, I don’t have airfare.’

‘I buy the ticket. You go in my cousin’s camp. You train. That’s it. No beach, no party. You train. And you fight.’

‘Got it, boss,’ my ass said. ‘When?’

He shook his head. Went to his laptop and started looking up flights. Was he serious?

‘You got a passport?’

‘I think I know where it is...’

‘Your exam is Thursday? You leave Thursday night,’ he said. ‘Cheap ticket on standby. Until then I don’t want to see you. Give me your phone.’

‘My
phone?
’

‘You don’t talk to media, you don’t talk to nobody.’

‘Not even my mom?’

‘Leave her to me.’

I thought for a second. If he didn’t tell my mom what I’d done, he was saving my life. Because she would flip out in an epic way. But me going to Thailand,
alone?
There was no way she was saying yes to that. She still holds my hand crossing the street to ShopRite.

‘You don’t need this in Bangkok. What you gonna do, play games on there? Twitter? No. This is serious. No distractions.’

‘Mr. B, please, not the phone...’ But I said it weakly.

‘You put up your hood and go out the back door. You don’t say goodbye to nobody. You go to school, take your test, act normal until Thursday. I set it up with Coat.’

‘Coat?’

‘My cousin. He coaches, like me. Small gym, some good fighters. He’s Cake’s trainer, you know?’

‘Isn’t he the guy who doesn’t want Americans in his gym?’

‘That’s him.’ He handed me a printout. ‘Your flight. Go home. Call me later.’

He reached in his desk and pulled out some Tiger Balm, spreading it on his forehead and closing his eyes.

‘Thanks, Mr. B. I promise I won’t let you down this time.’

He kept his eyes closed. ‘I got a feeling you will, and I’m making a big mistake, but I got a soft spot for you, Jade. Now leave me. I got lot of brown-nosing to do and I hate that.’

I was leaking tears when I closed the door behind me. It always makes me feel worse when people are forgiving, and I guess Mr. B knew that. If somebody had belted me in the head, I would have been able to deal with it. The ‘straighten up your act and by the way here’s a cookie’ approach totally threw me.

I took a deep breath and filled my mind with images of the good Jade I would become. The dedicated, sportsmanlike Jade. The non-vengeful, smiling, tolerant Jade. Helping old ladies cross the street. Turning the other cheek. Getting splashed on by buses and not swearing and kicking the bus. The New Jade. She would be me. Starting right now.

Khari intercepted me just outside the locker room. He grabbed my arm and pulled me against him, held me steady. Ooh, is he nice? In the next couple of seconds I flashed a mini-movie starring me and him on the mat. We’re working on grappling, but then it all turns horny. Images of Eva walking in on us, turning even paler than she already is, and Khari saying, ‘Sorry, Eva, but Jade’s all the woman I need.’ Images of Eva then shooting herself in the head with a pair of sixguns and in a final, glorious picture, me and Khari are lying on the mat, arms and legs all mixed up, drinking Gatorade while Eva’s blood pools under the weight rack.

So much for the good Jade.

Unfortunately, Khari wasn’t cooperating with my fantasy because when he leaned down to murmur in my ear, instead of offering to work naked submissions with me, he just said,

‘Whatever else happens, I just wanted to tell you that was a sweet left hook, you know what I’m saying? Sweet. I’m gonna remember that one, girl.’ Then he let me go, put his finger to his lips, and walked away slow—OMG what an ass!

‘Thanks,’ I whispered, forgetting all about the New Jade.

Damn.

The Forest

‘F
ASTER,
M
YA,
’ M
R
Richard gasped. ‘I can’t stay here long.’

Mya’s muscles burned with the effort of dragging the injured man. Beside her, Mr. Richard did nothing to help. The altitude had set him gasping for breath from the moment Mya’s meditation had brought them to the forest. In the outer world it was rainy season, but everything was different here. Sometimes when Mya came to the immortal forest she found lush mangroves, sometimes bamboo jungle. Today it was cold and the air was thin. Trees spiked the blue sky, ending in the snowfields of the Himalayas. There were fir needles under her slippered feet.

The young man’s skin was fever-hot in the cold air. His face was bloody, clothes slathered in mud. Johnny and the boys had already beaten him into a stupor, and then Mr. Richard had injected the night orchid extract into his neck. The night orchid grew in the immortal forest, and Mr. Richard used small amounts of it himself to cross the border between worlds. A big enough dose would send a person into the forest even without a guide—but it was a poison. Without the antidote they could not return to the living world.

When the needle went in, Mya had expected the young man to disappear. But he didn’t.

Something in the young reporter had resisted.

That was why Mya had to bring him here herself. Now she tugged on his filthy arms. He was skinny but tall, a dead weight. His head lolled back, long hair falling away from his handsome face. There was foam in the corners of his mouth and his eyes were half-open, unfocused.

He needs a doctor,
she thought.

But he was dangerous. Johnny had said so when he brought the unconscious man to Mr. Richard’s house. Mya had been cleaning the tiny room that passed for a lab when Johnny carried the man and dumped him on the covered porch.

‘We caught him spying, sir,’ Johnny had told Mr. Richard in English. ‘Sending pictures of the house back to a paper in London. He was Marco’s translator but he didn’t give up when we took care of Marco.’

Then he had handed Mr. Richard a silver phone, saying, ‘It’s password-protected.’

‘You disappoint me,’ Mr Richard had said. ‘If you knew there was a translator why didn’t you remove him?’

Mr Richard’s voice was soft and sweet. He trembled when he moved, and his body was weak. He had a long, sticklike nose and crooked yellow teeth. He had brown spots all over his pink skin and a few strands of white hair on his head. The old Englishman didn’t look as though he could harm an insect, let alone an overfed American ex-soldier like Johnny. But Johnny was as afraid of Mr. Richard as the servants were.

‘We have been looking for him, sir,’ Johnny had assured Mr. Richard, pacing up and down the covered porch of the stilt house and glancing out into the trees in the twitchy, slightly-paranoid way he had. ‘You want him to disappear? There’s always the river.’

‘No. Bodies have a way of washing up. He must go where Marco and the others went. There must be no evidence left behind.’

Mya scrubbed a beaker with assiduous attention. After only two years in Thailand, she understood both Thai and English but spoke both languages only haltingly. She didn’t let Mr. Richard know how much she understood because English was the language he used for speaking his secrets.

She had learned her first words of Thai from Som, the monk who had come to the prison camp and offered to sneak Mya and some other children across the river to Thailand—for a better life, Som said. Som had told Mya’s parents she would be safe in Thailand, for there was a kind Englishman who ran an orphanage there, a good Buddhist. Mr. Richard wouldn’t mind if Mya ‘travelled’ in meditation. He would see that she was cared for until the violence in Myanmar was over.

Mya could still see the look on her mother’s face. ‘Work hard and pray we will see each other again, but don’t disappear,’ her mother had said. ‘You know what I mean. Don’t go to your forest. It’s dangerous.’

Forbidding Mya to go to the forest was like forbidding a fish to swim. The forest called her. Her mind would merge with the trees and plants that were nearby, and then she would simply slip over the edge of
this
world and into
that
one—she’d wander for hours among immortal animals and unreal flowers beneath great, brooding trees. ‘I don’t know what’s worse,’ her mother would say, exasperated. ‘The way you disappear when you are supposed to be watching Thiri, or the fact that you see ghosts and they don’t frighten you.’