Shadowboxer Read online

  I stopped in my tracks.

  It was an Animal Planet type noise, a roaring, slavering, complicated utterance that sounded like a very large predator having a messy meal. I shrank against the hedge separating the big house from its neighbours. Through the windows of the house next door I could hear the refrain of a Lady Gaga song. Nobody inside had any idea what was going on out here. The dog in the big house continued to bark.

  The noises seemed to go on and on. Pretty soon I’d changed my mind about investigating shit further. I started edging away, trying to stay out of sight and hoping I was downwind of whatever the thing was. Then I heard footsteps and two of the men bolted past me. I could hear their ragged breathing. They were practically knocking each other over to get out of the backyard of the big house by the cliffs. It was Pierce and the Thai dude. They ran up the street and through another yard.

  I got a pretty good look as they passed. Their faces were drawn with terror, and Pierce was holding something in one hand that it took me a few seconds to recognize. It was like a prop from a horror movie. He was holding somebody’s hand, and part of the arm attached to it, dripping blood.

  When I got home, the police lights had turned my block pretty colors. I was tempted to keep walking, but it would look bad. So I went right up to the building and stopped by the front door. I could see Lt. Perez leaning on his car and talking on his radio. I waited for him to notice me.

  He took me in, squinted a little, said something into the radio and then put it down. He came over, pulling his whitest minty-fresh smile.

  ‘So, Jade, how you doing?’

  ‘I’m doin’,’ I answered, smiling fakely back in an ‘aw shucks’ kind of way. ‘Is it safe to go in there now?’

  ‘Where you been?’ he said seriously. ‘Your cousin’s worried about you. You know something about this?’

  ‘Me?’ I said, pointing to my own chest. ‘You know I’m straight now, Lieutenant. I don’t know nothing. Anything. I don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘About what?’ he said.

  ‘The gun shots. We heard them, and I told Malu to call 911 and then I went to look around.’

  ‘You went to look around. That was smart. That your official statement?’

  ‘I just went to see what was going on. But I couldn’t see nothing, so I came back.’

  ‘You been gone a good... twenty minutes. You sure you didn’t see nothing, Jade?’

  ‘I didn’t see nothing,’ I said, looking him in the eye.

  ‘OK,’ he said, and the way he said it was so neutral I couldn’t figure out what he was thinking about me but I figured it couldn’t be good. I didn’t think Malu would have caved so quickly, but Perez knew how to make me feel guilty just by looking at me. He always made me feel like I should be going to church with him and saying my Hail Marys. He’s so... moral, which I find funny in a cop. He always used to be on my side, though, back in the day. I decided to try and play it through.

  ‘Can I go upstairs now?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, go.’ I turned, not daring to believe it would be that easy—

  ‘Yo, Jade, one more thing!’

  I turned back. I knew it. Perez sauntered toward me, getting ready to spring whatever he was going to spring. But before he could say anything, his partner in the car put the sirens and lights on and gestured for Perez to get in.

  Perez kept his eye on me as he jumped in the car and went. I watched the cop car do a U-turn in the road and squeal off down the hill, toward a big, fancy house on the cliff, where they’d find...

  I tried not to think about what they’d find.

  Malu was sitting on a kitchen stool doing shots of tequila. She’d had the presence of mind to put on a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of yoga pants that covered the marks of the duct tape, but when her sleeve fell away from her arm you could see a weal.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I swear to god I don’t know what any of that was about.’

  She gave me a wounded look. Even though now she goes to the New School for Social Research and I go to the Old School for Kicking People’s Heads In, still I tell her everything. She might be upset about being held at gunpoint and tied up and stuff, and she might be scared of what those guys could do to us, but the look she gave me now was the look of betrayal because she thought I’d been into something and hadn’t told her.

  ‘I swear,’ I said again. ‘I don’t know who they are or why they wanted that phone—you know I didn’t steal it or nothing, I found it and I forgot I even had it in my bag—’

  Malu gasped. She had just taken a wedge of lemon out of her mouth and now she turned to look at me as she made the same connection I’d made earlier. She’s usually a little quicker than that; being tied up and drugged must have put her off her game.

  ‘Oh my god,’ she said. ‘You were a mule. That’s why those guys wanted it back. You have to tell the police, explain what happened and that it was innocent. It happens to people all the time. Just tell the truth and—’

  ‘Shhhh!’ I hissed, so vehemently that spit flew everywhere. I slid past her into the kitchen and reached for a glass for myself. ‘Why don’t you talk a little louder so Grandma Bernstein can pick it up with her hearing aid?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Malu whispered. Then, hand trembling, she picked up her drink and took a long swig. She shuddered a little as it went down. She looked at me. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Me?’ I laughed. ‘I should be asking you that. Do you need to go to the hospital? They didn’t... they didn’t do anything to you, did they?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Not that I know of. I was out of it part of the time.’

  ‘They knocked you out?’

  ‘They were here when I got home. I don’t know how they got in, but they grabbed me as soon as I came in and put a needle in me. When I woke up I couldn’t move, and that huge guy was asking me what I did with the phone. He called me Jade.’

  I put my hand over my mouth. ‘I’m so, so sorry. I swear to you, Malu, straight up, I’m not into anything here. The phone was in the cat carrier. I don’t know how it got there.’

  ‘I don’t know about that Mr. B, Jade. You read the behind-the-scenes stuff on MMA, there’s Mob money and stuff like that going on. I wonder if these guys are some kind of Thai Mafia.’

  ‘What did you tell the police, anyway?’

  ‘I said you heard a noise and went after them.’

  ‘And Perez bought that?’

  ‘I didn’t know what else to say. You heard that scary guy. Even the other guy—Johnny?—even he’s afraid of that guy. How can the police protect us from that?’

  ‘They won’t have to,’ I muttered. The scary guy was now a dead arm. Ugh.

  ‘You did the right thing, Malu. The last thing we want is for them to come back.’

  ‘But... I still think I should have reported it. Won’t the police take it more seriously if they know I was drugged?’

  ‘They’ll take it serious. The question is, do you want to go to the hospital and get checked out?’

  Malu poured another shot. ‘I’m all right. They’d better get the guys. Do you think they’ll get them?’

  I didn’t look at her.

  ‘I hope so,’ I said unconvincingly. ‘But we gave them the phone, so they have no reason to come back here.’

  ‘Did you see where they went?’ she asked.

  I made a vague face. It’s almost impossible to lie to Malu.

  ‘You better call your grandma and tell her,’ I said. ‘You don’t want her to see this on the news.’

  ‘You saw something, didn’t you?’ Malu would make a great interrogator. I swallowed my drink. I don’t really like tequila, but this wasn’t the time to be choosy.

  ‘I saw something but I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Oh, no, don’t give me that. You owe.’

  I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing I could un-remember.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe me,’ I said. ‘And plus, it’s gro
ss.’

  ‘Try me.’

  I told her. She said, ‘You smoking herbs now at that gym?’

  ‘I’m so glad I tell you things, Malu.’

  She said, ‘What are we talking about here, werewolves? Vampires? Giant spiders?’

  ‘Like I said, I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘So what about the guy’s arm?’ she said. ‘What happened with that?’

  ‘I think we can expect Lieutenant Perez to be coming back,’ I told her. ‘I just got to think what I can say to him.’

  ‘Well, he can’t accuse you of being involved in some supernatural shit. I think you should just tell the truth. There has to be a plausible explanation.’

  I finished my drink. I could see the cop in the hallway, pacing up and down and talking on the phone. She was just babysitting us. But what if that man-eating shadow came back up here? Plausible explanation or not, I had the urge to call Aunt Yanira in the Dominican Republic, who practices Las 21 Divisiones. Maybe she could ask the ancestors to help me out with some kind of protection. But then my mother would find out. So... maybe not.

  ‘You’re going to lie, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘You don’t believe in telling the truth.’

  ‘When the system’s fair to me, I’ll be fair to it,’ I said, echoing what my dad used to say. ‘Anyway, who would believe the truth? I told you, two of them got away, including that asshole with the piercings. Do you want them to come back here? What if they saw me see their guy getting eaten?’

  ‘You actually saw people getting eaten?’

  ‘Well, no, but I heard it. I definitely saw the dismembered member, you know what I’m saying?’

  There was a silence. The tap dripped. Malu said,

  ‘Let’s leave. Let’s go to my Grandma’s house.’

  Malu’s grandmother on her dad’s side was an OK lady, but she wasn’t my Nana. I wasn’t going there.

  ‘Go to bed,’ I said. ‘I’ll get rid of the cop. We’ll be OK. We can deal with it.’

  I don’t know why after all these years of me fucking up my life and her succeeding in hers, Malu still listens to me. But for some reason, she does. She went to bed.

  Birdhouse in Your Soul

  THE RED BIRD-GIRL was called Hla. She was the first of many animal-children who came to Mya for human food. There was an elephant-headed bird whose body housed the spirit of a capricious nine-year-old boy, and a skittish deer girl who was afraid of the elephant head. And there were others, too shy to speak to Mya but no less hungry.

  All of them had been dumped in the forest by Mr. Richard and his associates, but had been taken under protection of animal spirits.

  ‘Are they alive or dead?’ Mya asked Luck.

  The ghost shrugged. ‘Both. Neither. Like Shea. They could go either way.’

  Luck told her that he’d been the first of Mr. Richard’s children to travel to the forest. At first he had come alone, sent to find plants that Mr. Richard could use in his drugs. Later Mr. Richard had developed the extract of the night orchid that enabled him to come with Luck and explore the immortal land for himself.

  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.