Shadowboxer Page 10

  There was no green thing anywhere to be seen; no way back to the forest. Only the sickly ficus plant in the office back there; but what if Kala Sriha waited for her? Nothing could make her go back there, not now.

  She cut across parking lots and side roads surrounded by gray sidewalk and rectangles of dead bright color. She had to find something that was growing. Cars passed like great, reeking animals. At last she came upon a row of scraggly bushes by the side of a building—not trees, but the closest thing to trees she had seen in this world of pavement and steel. She settled on the dirt and touched their branches. Her heart was racing.

  She smelled frying meat. On the other side of the little hedge stood a row of trash bins. Just beyond them a building with a sign she recognized loomed in brilliant yellow. She’d seen the ads on TV: smiling uniformed girls wai’ing as they passed out food in paper bags through a window to the sound of pop music. In reality the place was dull, and there was a heavy man in the service window who did not smile, and the cars that drove up to the building were huge and gleaming and their drivers didn’t smile, either.

  She remembered what Luck had said about food, and quickly broke into the topmost black bag. Nothing smelled rancid, and there was plenty of brown paper for wrapping scraps of food. She darted into the bushes with her takings and reached with all her senses into leaf, branch, and root, praying that the forest would still be there for her.

  DAYLIGHT HAD COME to the forest, lush and redolent of happier days in childhood. A warm breeze beat Mya’s face, and swarms of insects speckled the air. Instead of fir trees, bamboo was everywhere. Filtered sunlight made everything glow green.

  Kala Sriha was nowhere in evidence.

  Mya opened the paper and began to eat the scraps of meat and other unidentified food with her fingers. She wished for rice, but there had been none. She ate carefully. In the prison camp Mya’s mother had taught her children to eat and drink slowly when food was finally presented. She had taught them how to stay quiet and save their energy in the long gaps between meals. She had stroked their hair.

  Mya wrapped some of the food for later and set off to find water. Bamboo gave way to mangroves, and there were flowers she’d never seen before. Then, as she parted the huge, spatulate leaves of a plant as tall as herself, Mya came face to face with a great red bird. She gasped and drew back; the creature also recoiled and spread its enormous wings, startling a couple of monkeys and sending them screaming away into the canopy. For a moment Mya was unsure whether the bird would attack or flee. It did neither.

  Slowly it lowered its wings and turned side-on so that one emerald-green eye regarded Mya. It opened and closed its beak, and in a flash Mya understood quite clearly that it was hungry.

  She opened the paper wrappings enough to remove a scrap of bread, soggy with sweet red sauce. She extended her trembling hand, and the bird bent down and snatched the bread. Then ran.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Mya said. ‘I won’t hurt you. If you’re hungry, we can share.’

  She didn’t know how she was going to get enough food for herself, let alone another creature. The thought of returning to the gray world of Combat Sports Emporium did not appeal to her; but if they had so much food there that they could just throw it away, it would be safer for her than stealing from Mr. Richard’s kitchen.

  The bird had not gone far. When Mya made her way to a small stream for a drink, it followed her. Its gait was strange and swaying, and every so often in a flash so brief it seemed imaginary, Mya glimpsed the lower half of a slim girl in a blue sari. Just a flash, and then the red bird was clearly visible.

  When Mya bent to drink, the bird drank. Mya offered a little more and this time the creature was less skittish. Finally, when Mya lay down to rest, the bird lay down beside her. Its wing smelled like the most lovely perfume.

  Just as Mya was falling asleep, out of the bird rose the ghost of a young woman. In clear Burmese the ghost said, ‘Thank you. That is the first mortal food I’ve had in years. You make me almost feel myself again.’

  Geek Alert

  THE HARDEST THING about leaving Bangkok was saying goodbye to everyone, especially Pook. She had become like an aunt to me. She even found a nice cozy cloth travel carrier for Waldo and helped me get him in there, which was brave. I didn’t like putting him through all that, but I just couldn’t bear to leave him behind. Pook had offered to feed him, but I felt like there was this bond between us. I needed him with me and I was pretty sure he needed me, too.

  I tried not to cry on Pook at the airport.

  ‘Give my love to Cake,’ she called as she waved me off.

  I thought of Nana and my mom and stifled a sob. Airports. People leaving. Even when it’s a good thing, it hurts.

  MALU WAS MORE excited to meet Waldo than me. He didn’t feel the same about her. When we got home, he shot out of the carrier and under the sofa, glaring and hissing when I tried to coax him out.

  ‘I don’t know, Jade,’ Malu said. ‘That cat is too beautiful to be a stray. I hope you didn’t steal somebody’s pet.’

  ‘Pook and I took him to the vet and he wasn’t microchipped,’ I said. ‘He slept in my room every night for the last five weeks. I don’t know where he came from, but I couldn’t just leave him.’

  ‘What about Irene?’

  ‘I’ll figure something out. For now we’ll just keep him inside so she doesn’t see him.’

  ‘If he lives on fruit like you say he does, I’m not cleaning the litter box,’ Malu said.

  I couldn’t find any fruit so I left Waldo an offering of Fig Newtons and went to bed. My body clock was all messed up. When I woke in the middle of the night, Waldo was sleeping across the luggage I’d left on the floor. At one point I half-woke, thinking I heard a male voice from the next room. I rolled over and listened, but it must have come from outside the house because I fell asleep again. When I got up it was afternoon. Malu was gone. So was Waldo.

  I texted her.

  I didn’t see him. Thought he was under sofa. He didn’t get out when I left. I would have seen him.

  Maybe you would’ve seen him, I thought. And maybe not. Oh, Waldo.

  I started unpacking. I picked up the empty cat carrier to put it away. It felt a little on the heavy side. I upended it over the sink, expecting cat poo to topple out, but instead a phone clattered into the sink, which was thankfully empty.

  What the hell? I sure didn’t have a phone in Thailand, and I was pretty sure there hadn’t been anything but Waldo in the carrier when airport security had checked—after all, isn’t checking for stuff like that what airport security is for? I tried to find out who it belonged to, but the menus were all locked to a password, so I shrugged and dropped it in my gym bag. I’d ask Khari what to do with it. He’s good with technology.

  The plan was for me to take two days off training to recover from the fight and the jetlag. I needed the rest, but although I was around the apartment a lot, Waldo didn’t show up and I had a lot of time to worry about that.

  ‘He’ll come back,’ Malu said. ‘Everyone knows our apartment is the best place to be an animal. Right, Coltrane?’

  The iguana on her shoulder flicked his tongue in and out.

  ‘I think Waldo might eat Coltrane if we’re not careful,’ I said. ‘He was always chasing the lizards at boxing camp.’

  ‘I thought you said he was a vegetarian.’

  ‘Malu, don’t be stupid. He’s a cat.’

  ON MY FIRST day back at the gym, Khari picked me up and hugged me, then cuffed me with a couple of light shots probably just to confuse my hormones.

  ‘Mr B’s in his office finalising your contract,’ he said. ‘Tell you what, girl. You got to work it, now. I’m not letting you mess this one up.’

  Was I in culture shock, or was Khari unusually full of himself?

  I came out the locker room with my head down, all business.

  ‘What we doing?’ I grunted.

  ‘Standup, obviously.’

  ‘But I re
ally need to run through submissions. I ain’t done no groundwork in months.’

  ‘We can fix that,’ Khari said. ‘Mr. B got Mario Diaz coming in tomorrow. Dude be like Gumby, he’ll put you through the subs.’

  He put on the pads and I taped up my hands and got my gloves on. Khari got in the cage and motioned for me to join him. It was stupid. We didn’t need to train in the cage. Why was he being so stagey?

  I looked around suspiciously. Jamie Bell was talking to somebody new, a skinny guy with spiky hair. The guy was nodding like he was paying attention to what Jamie was saying, but he was actually watching us. I’d never seen him before. Geek alert, I thought. He was cute but extremely wimpy-looking. Very skinny—even by the Thai standards I was used to.

  We started off easy because I hadn’t even had time to warm up. I didn’t know why Khari was pressing me to get in the ring so quickly, but it must have something to do with the two journalists.

  The bullshit was starting up. I missed Bangkok already.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, moving in on me and making me hit going backwards. ‘Two months in Thailand. What you got? You still the bad Jade?’

  He signalled for the high round kick and I wanted to give up right there—Khari is six foot two and I’m five foot one-and-a-half. He was holding the pads way too high, and if I went for it I’d probably slip on the canvas and go down.

  Was I still the bad Jade? Hell, yeah.

  I ignored the pads and kicked him under their line, whipping my shin right into his exposed ribs. He wasn’t braced for it and he staggered back, coughing.

  ‘Ouch!’ yelled Dedalus from the floor. ‘Khari, man, don’t mess with the Jay-D.’

  I tongued my gum shield and kept going. Khari winked at me. He had done it on purpose! Was I that predictable? Now I knew for sure he was putting on a show for Jamie and his friend, and it was working. Jamie’s friend was staring openly.

  Yeah, I was back in the USA. Land of Bullshit and Opportunity. When we finished, people clapped. Jamie’s friend headed straight for us.

  Khari said, ‘I gotta talk to Jamie for a second.’

  I ducked out of the ring and went to the bag while they schmoozed. Khari is always friendly and entertaining even though he thinks Jamie’s a dweeze. Khari’s a star; all his successes just feel like the natural course of events. He’s got what it takes. It’s like an aura around him.

  Kind of the opposite of what I have. Me and my shadow.

  The bag alley was crowded and I could only get a piece of the end bag near the locker room, a battered old leather thing that had been re-stuffed god knows how many times, patched with tape, bloodstained. I started hitting it, making rhythms, working my knees mostly because of Pook’s last advice at the airport. I wondered what Pook was doing right now. It would be night in Bangkok.

  But I wasn’t going to think about Thailand. Right? I had to stop thinking about it. I was home. This was my big chance. No messing around.

  So I pounded the bag. I knew I was in bad form, but I couldn’t stop until I was exhausted. Then I walked around in circles to catch my breath, hands on my hips and head thrown back. The thump of bass made the air shudder, and I was all heartbeat and sweat. This is where I like to be. Even the sight of Eva perched on a stool watching Khari train couldn’t affect me. Eva had her new pole-dancing shoes on, the kind with four-inch heels made out of glass and wraparound straps that go halfway up your calves. She was clapping and going ‘Whoo!’ while Khari did sit-ups on the Roman chair. I don’t know how he could stand it.

  I turned away and someone was holding a towel out to me. The guy who had been with Jamie was standing there, smiling. Up close he looked young. Probably Jamie’s latest intern.

  ‘Hi, I’m Shea,’ he said. ‘Are you Jade?’

  ‘Yup,’ I said. I toweled my face so I could avoid making eye contact. He had a singsong accent. English? Not quite. Irish? Whatever. I wished he’d go away.

  ‘Maybe Khari told you, I’m doing a feature for the Independent. It’s a newspaper in London. It’s going to be part of an ongoing series about women in the martial arts. Battle of the Bitches has been airing there on Sky TV and it’s getting a lot of interest. Cage fighting is very popular right now.’

  So he wasn’t from The Cage. He was a mainstream dweeb. But way too young to be a writer. And there was something else about him. Something false.

  ‘MMA,’ I corrected, trying not to snarl. ‘But lately I’ve been fighting Muay Thai.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said smoothly, his smile deepening as he acknowledged the mistake. ‘Anyway, I was wondering if you would consent to an interview.’

  ‘Um, I don’t know,’ I said. I began to wish hard Mr. B. would get the hell out of his office and get me out of this situation. ‘I just found out about the match myself.’

  ‘Well, I watched the qualifying rounds and a lot of people thought your disqualification against Kristi was a real shame. You fought brilliantly up until then. It was clever of Mr. Zhang to invite you into the new event to show what you can do. And think of his connections in the movie industry! Maybe with Mr. Zhang’s help you’ll be the next Gina Carano.’

  That was pure bullshit. I shrugged at the flattery. ‘I only met Tommy Zhang once, Mr. Shea. He seemed pretty down to earth.’ After I flattened him.

  ‘Just Shea, please. Everybody calls me Shea.’

  He did have a great smile. The accent didn’t match the face. His skin was brown and his features were a little bit Asian. He had glossy black hair, deep-set melty eyes, and some nice metal in his right eyebrow. And those cheekbones. He had the whole sculpted-hollow thing going—although, to be honest, he looked like he needed a few cheeseburgers in him.

  I knew he was just playing me for a story. Everyone knows British journalists are manipulative. He didn’t know anything about Muay Thai; he hadn’t even mentioned Julie Kitchen, the most famous fighter in his country if not the world. He probably didn’t even know the difference between MMA and JKD.

  ‘So I hear you just returned from Thailand. Me too. How did you like it?’

  ‘It was OK,’ I grunted. ‘I got to go. I’ll see you later, all right?’

  I could feel everybody looking at me as I went into the locker room—he couldn’t follow me there. Female reporters get to go in male locker rooms, but it ain’t the other way around. The old Jade would have turned around and said to the gym at large, ‘What the fuck you looking at?’ It took a lot of willpower not to be the old Jade. It took a lot of willpower not to tell Shea where to stick it, because I knew for a fact the only real reason he wanted to talk to me was to try to draw me out about the Tommy Zhang rumors.

  Well, OK, I didn’t know it for a fact, but I deeply suspected it.

  Don’t know where my jai yen went. It’s like, I land in Newark airport and two minutes later I’m back to my old ways. There was just something about Shea. He made me feel unsure in my own skin. Like his eyes were looking into me too deep.

  I went into the locker room, grabbed a clean towel and turned on the shower. Before I could even take off my t-shirt, Mr B came charging in with his hand over his eyes and goes, ‘You get out there and talk to him or hit the road for good, get it?’

  I turned the shower off.

  ‘Sorry, boss,’ I said meekly. I told myself not to be stupid. I got hormones same as the next girl, and Shea was cute, and he got to me. Big deal.

  Shea was waiting for me in Mr. B’s office. He started laying it on with a shovel.

  ‘I don’t want to embarrass you,’ he said, and then went on to say a lot of embarrassing things. ‘Mr. B told me you’re only seventeen. He thinks you’ve got a major career ahead of you, and I’d have to agree. You have real raw energy.’

  I didn’t look at him. It was all BS, anyway. Especially with that goofy accent of his.

  ‘The look in your eye when you fight,’ he said. ‘It’s like a wild animal. It’s predatory. You remind me of Tyson when he was young.’

  I laughed. ‘You mea
n like I might bite somebody’s ear off?’

  He didn’t laugh. He said, ‘No, that was the older Tyson, after he was getting desperate. And, yeah, it’s a fine line between sport and the real thing. Some people see fighting as a sport and that’s it. Me, the way I see it, if you can’t cross that line from the game into the fight, then you aren’t for real. I’m not saying people should cross it all the time, you know what I mean? Because we live in a civilized society, naturally. But the best fighters are the ones who really know how to go there, to that place. And you’re one of them. I can see it.’

  I looked up into his brown eyes and his angular face, perfectly shaven. These weren’t his own words. These were lines he’d been fed by Jamie. This was a game. I thought, OK, so he’s messing with you. But no blood, remember?

  He held out a business card, just brushing my arm with it.

  ‘Maybe this isn’t the best time for you. Why don’t you think about it and ask Mr. B to give me a call? I’d love to do an interview. Maybe a few photographs, if that’s all right.’

  He smiled and walked away. My arm was singing where he’d touched me. I stood there with nothing to say for once in my life. Like I’d somehow lost a battle.

  Jai yen is a pain in my butt.

  Kala Sriha has a Plan

  OVER THE NEXT day or two the trash was a good source of food for Mya, and by coincidence or maybe by fate, she was just settling down in the shrubbery to find her way back to the forest when a car rolled up to the drive-through and she spotted Shea in the passenger seat.

  She froze. No. This couldn’t be. She had seen him vanish inside the black cat in Bangkok. After she had been foolish enough to give him the phone.

  Another man was driving. They had the windows down and while the other man ordered, Shea glanced around. He looked directly at Mya. She stood up, unsure whether to run.