Most of the living room furniture came from Freecycle.
The mattress had been new when I got it, at least. I’d splurged a bit on it when I moved in, deciding I could make up for its cost by eliminating the box spring and a frame, so it’s not actually a proper bed. It just sat on the floor of my bedroom next to a little nightstand made of cinderblocks and plywood.
Still, it was better than squatting in an abandoned building or living out of car. I tried to remind myself of that on a regular basis.
I walked over to the gym bag I had discarded by the door and pulled out my cigarettes. Clambering over dirty laundry on the bedroom floor, I hauled the window open and threw my leg over the sill. Right outside was a ledge of decent width, so I could make my way over to the fire escape.
On one side of the three-foot by six-foot platform was a miniscule woman of completely indeterminate age. If you just looked at her size, you’d think she was about twelve, but her eyes were a whole different story. They were deep and dark and gave the impression they’d seen a lot of deep and dark shit. If you judged her by her eyes, you’d think she was a hundred. If someone asked me to really guess, I’d probably say she was in her thirties, but that was still a guess. Her hair was a mess of spiky black tangles, and I kind of doubted she owned a hairbrush.
“What’s shaking, Krazy Katie?” I wasn’t expecting a response and didn’t get one as I dropped down on my ass next to her and lit my cigarette.
Krazy Katie lived in the apartment next to mine and had been in the neighborhood longer than the nine years I had been here. She didn’t really say much of anything, let alone talk about herself, so I didn’t really know much about her. The assumption was she was on disability for whatever the hell was wrong with her head, living here in the half of the apartments dedicated to Section 8 housing. She spent almost all her days and nights sitting on the fire escape and chain smoking.
Every once in a while, she’d start yelling predictions about the future at people on the street, and the police would get called. That always stirred shit up and had even been pretty damn entertaining more than once. Most people just ignored her, but I sometimes kind of liked talking to someone who almost never said anything back, and she didn’t seem to mind me sitting out here with her.
I never knew what she would be doing when I crawled out the window. Sometimes she’d make a lot of strange sounds. Sometimes she’d spend the afternoon pushing her finger into each and every hole in the fire escape grate, one-by-one. Sometimes she’d take off her clothes and just lie up there in her underwear until the landlord or police made her put her clothes back on. Sometimes she ditched the underwear, too.
Tonight she was stacking cigarette butts into a little pyramid of sorts. She had done this before, and at least her timing was a little better. When she did it during the day and a door in the building slammed shut, they would all tip over, and she’d go ballistic.
“Pretty,” Krazy Katie said. She took a long draw on her cigarette, which brought it all the way to the filter. I cringed a little at the smell, knowing what that tasted like, and shook my head.
“You saying I’m pretty?” I asked with a quiet chuckle. “I didn’t know you were into guys.”
She didn’t respond, and I didn’t try to get her to do so. I had been around her enough to know that random shit just came out of her mouth for no particular reason. I used to try to figure out what she was talking about, but I never got very far, so I didn’t try any more. She could have been talking about me, the stack of butts, or the crabgrass growing in the gutter, for all I knew.
I leaned back against the brick wall behind me, then hissed and pulled away. It was damn cold. I decided to sit up with my knees against my chest instead. I took a long draw on the smoke and watched the ash fall between the holes in the grate below me. Krazy Katie lit up another cigarette off a little butane lighter she kept shoved in the center of her bra and actually looked at me for a minute. As soon as I looked at her, she looked away. She never looked me in the eye.
I shivered a little, wondering if it would be warmer inside than it was outside. I concluded it was probably about the same. At least inside, there was a blanket on the bed and no wind. I sucked down my cigarette and started to climb back inside.
“Don’t stay out here all night, Krazy Katie,” I said on my way in. “And eat something, for Christ’s sake. I’m afraid you’ll fall right through the grate.”
She didn’t respond or even look at me.
Rubbing at my eyes, I clambered onto the queen-sized mattress and dropped onto my back. I sighed heavily and pulled the sheet and blanket up to my chest before I rolled over to my side. It was too cold to sleep comfortably but too warm to actually crank up the heat. I had already had the electricity turned off once when I couldn’t cover the bill. Now I tried to economize as much as possible on heat and lights.
Physically I was exhausted, but my mind wouldn’t turn off. Images of the girl in the street with her ridiculous purse-slash-Bag of Holding ran through my mind.
Tria.
She just didn’t seem to be the kind of person who would be living in this area, working at that nasty bar and grill, and having a bunch of guys ogle her for tips. And studying economics? Really? Who does that, other than the Northsiders and their high society business and bullshit majors? People didn’t study economics because it sounded interesting—they did that because Daddy told them that’s what they needed in order to take over as CEO.
“Just your yearly reminder that you don't have to live like this.”
“Fuck you, Michael,” I mumbled into my pillow. I told my mind to shut the fuck up as I brought the blanket up a little higher and dropped off to sleep.
*****
Still bleary-eyed, I laced up my running shoes and carefully locked my apartment behind me. I couldn’t help but glance at apartment 142 as I went by and realized I was kind of hoping to run into the new neighbor as I took off for my mid-morning run. It had been a week since we met in the street, but I hadn’t seen her again. Sometimes when I would get home, I’d see her lights on but never actually saw her.
I took off running across the street, checking for cars as I went. It was good weather for running, at least. It wasn’t as hot as it had been just a few weeks ago. I turned left and headed out of the neighborhood on my typical route.
My usual three-mile run took me out of the slums and into an industrial district. There were a lot of warehouses and factories that had shut down in the recession, but a few were still open. I knew at least a couple people in my building who sometimes got work in one of them, but the layoffs were frequent, and they’d be right back on welfare a few months later.
At least I wasn’t that bad off.
I had a good deal working for Dordy and Yolanda. I got paid a hundred a fight, win or lose. If I won, I got more. Fighting twice a week put me at just enough to live on and not much more. I could make rent on my crappy apartment, feed myself, and pay for the utilities. I usually had a little left over for smokes and weekly pizza delivery.
I did better than a lot of people I knew, and having any extra money was dangerous for someone like me.
Thinking about my own livelihood made me wonder just how Tria was doing. She had only been around a few weeks; she had told me the night I met her. I wondered how she was adjusting to school, work, and living in a shit neighborhood that was probably very unlike whatever she had at home.
There was a scrawny little tree surrounded by the only patch of real dirt for a mile in any direction. It was the spot that marked my halfway point. I circled wide and then at a slightly faster pace headed back in the direction of my building. Once I crossed the street, I checked my time and walked around the block to cool off before going back inside to down three large cups of water.
I looked over at my hand-me-down rowing machine in the corner of the living room and sighed. I didn’t work out much on fight nights. I’d run early in the day to loosen up but keep myself from doing too much right be
fore a fight. Tonight was going to be a challenge night, too, which always took a lot out of me.
There wasn’t shit to watch on television, and I wondered why I even bothered to steal cable from Krazy Katie. Not that it was really stealing from her; we just kind of…shared it. I brought her smokes when she ran out, and she didn’t respond when I asked her if she minded if I strung another line through our windows. She let me in to do it, so I figured it was okay with her, at least.
Boredom set in, and I was starting to sweat just a little. I ran my hand over my face. My fingers were trembling, and I glanced down at the aging marks on my arm. Boredom was a dangerous mindset, and I had to get myself moving before temptation became more than just an itch in the back of my head. As long as I kept moving, I wouldn’t go searching.
I grabbed my gym bag and headed to the bar early. Dordy and a kitchen chick named Stacy were there, serving a single customer whose name I couldn’t remember, but he was a regular and always hammered. Phil? Peter? Some “P” name, I thought. It was still too early for the after-work crowd to start showing up yet, so he was on his own, muttering bullshit about the upcoming presidential election.
“Hey, Teague!” Dordy called out as I walked in. He rubbed at the inside of a pint glass with a towel. “You’re early.”
“Bored,” I announced. “Figured talking to you was better than talking to myself.”
“You ordering?”
“If you’ll spot me from tonight’s take.”
“No problem,” he said.
Dordy didn’t carry anyone on credit—no fucking way. He let me get by with it on the day of a fight, though, since he would see enough at the door to make it worth his while even if I didn’t show up and he had to jump in the cage himself. The day before a fight, I’d be shit out of luck, but fight days were okay with him.
“Scotch?” Dordy asked.
“Veggie Burger?” Stacy asked. The large, grandmotherly woman stocked them just for me.
“No scotch—just the burger and a beer. Thanks.” I sat down on one of the stools nearby while Dordy drew a Guinness from the tap. I hung out and had a couple drinks while people slowly began to trickle in. The early ones knew who I was and would come over to make small talk before the crowd arrived. A couple hours before the fight, Dordy’s bouncers, Gary and Wade, waltzed in. Gary was just freaking huge height-wise. He had long, grey whiskers hanging from his chin down to his collar and was shaved bald. Wade was a little older, also bald, and used to train for MMA. He wasn’t as physically intimidating, but he was definitely the more dangerous of the two. Gary couldn’t fight for shit, but he was big enough that he rarely ever had to do anything other than stand up straight to get a patron to behave.
“Takedown fights again!” Gary roared in greeting. I fist-bumped him, then went back to nursing my beer. A few minutes later, Wade cocked his head to one side to point at the door, and I followed him out for a smoke.
“Word on the street says you fucked up some guys on your way home the other night.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said, raising my brow as I lit up. “Who said that?”
“One of the guys you fucked up.”
I laughed and took a deep drag.
“He came in here last night saying Takedown Teague broke his nose,” Wade told me. “He thought that as his employer, Dordy ought to pay for it.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said again. “What did Dordy do?”
“Had me break one of his fingers.”
That had me nearly in tears.
“So what’s the deal?” Wade asked. He blew smoke out of his nose as he talked. “You don’t get enough fighting as it is?”
“They were fucking with some girl,” I told him.
“You in the business of saving damsels in distress now?” He snickered.
“That shit ain’t right,” I said. “They didn’t need to be messing with her.”
“Who is she?”
“Just some girl,” I said with a shrug. “I hadn’t seen her before that night. Turns out she lives in my building, though.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah. Remember the couple I was always bitching about? The ones who would fight and scream all the time?”
“Yep.”
“They’re gone, and she’s in the apartment below me now.”
“That ought to help you sleep better,” Wade replied.
“Amen to that shit,” I agreed. I thought about the dude whose nose I had broken. “I wonder why Dordy didn’t mention that.”
“Because he wants to hold it over your head later,” Gary said as he stepped out from behind the front door and joined us for a smoke. “Did you fuck her?”
“Who?”
“The bitch you saved.”
“No.” I scowled at him.
“Well, what’s the point, then?” Gary asked. He grinned a ridiculous grin and winked at me, but I didn’t find anything funny about his comment, and he caught on to that and tried to make a serious face. “Who is she?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “If you wanted the whole fucking story, why didn’t you come out sooner?”
“Dordy had me hauling beer from the delivery truck,” Gary replied. “Are you going to see this girl again?”
“I don’t know,” I said again. “What’s with the fucking twenty questions? It was some random chick who is obviously so fucking stupid, she would walk through this neighborhood at night by herself. I beat the shit out of a couple drunks and then walked her home. I don’t know her. She lives in my building and works at that greasy spoon place with the big screen TVs. That’s all I know, bitches.”
“Fin’s?” Wade asked.
“Whatever it is,” I said, knowing full well that was the name of the place.
“They got a new brunette waiting tables there,” he said.
“That might be her,” I said. “She said she moved into town a couple weeks ago.”
“Pretty little thing—hair in a ponytail?”
“Could be,” I shrugged. “Sounds like her.”
“I know who you mean,” Gary said. “Nice, pretty mouth, too. And with that ponytail? Mmm…”
I rolled my eyes.
“Just makes you want to wrap it around your wrist and go to town!” Gary put his hands in front of his crotch and moved them back and forth in front of him, as if he were bouncing a basketball on his dick. His hips moved suggestively.
Wade just shook his head.
“Don’t make me fuck you up,” I threatened. I tossed the butt of the cigarette beyond the ashtray on the sidewalk and into the gutter before turning around and walking back inside.
There wasn’t a scheduled opponent for me tonight, which meant it was a challenge night. Anyone in the bar was free to challenge me in the cage, and anyone who made it past five minutes without tapping out won a hundred bucks. On top of my normal hundred a fight, I received an extra ten bucks for each guy who didn’t last.
I was on number six, and he was the first of the night to make it past three minutes.
He swung and hit me in the gut as I danced away. I had landed several good blows on him, but the dude was fast and wiry. He landed one good one that knocked me down and slammed my head on the ground, and the fight hadn’t been completely in my favor since. I couldn’t seem to get a grip on him long enough to get him in a hold and choke him to unconsciousness. I was getting a little frustrated. It wasn’t often an amateur managed to last this long with me, and it pissed me off.
I decided to stop fucking around and just beat the guy.
We had spent the past two minutes smacking and just trying to get a hold of each other, and he seemed surprised when my tactics suddenly changed. I just dove at him, ignoring tactics and his fists as they came at my face. He tried to move back and away, but I shoved with my shoulder and pushed him up against the corner of the cage. I could still feel his hands punching at my shoulders, but it didn’t matter anymore—I had him where I wanted him.
Using my head, I slammed against his
sternum. He cried out, stunned for a moment, and then gasped as my knee connected with his gut. I hit him with my forehead again—this time in the shoulder. It hurt like a bitch, and I would pay for it later, but it worked. Then I stomped on the top of his foot. His grip on me faltered, and I turned him around and slammed him against the cage.
Now that I had my arms around him, I wasn’t about to let go even as he pounded on my shoulders and back, trying to get away. I wrestled him to the floor of the cage and knocked his head against the ground a few times, then started throwing actual punches.
He tapped out a few seconds later, but it was enough to break five minutes.
I was annoyed to realize he had lasted so long, but he deserved it. Dordy was going to be pissed off, though. I hoped I would still get the fifty I earned from the last few fights. When he and I first worked out our business arrangement, he would take it out of my pay when one of the guys from the bar won.
Helping the guy back on his feet, I shook his hand and dusted him off a bit. Yolanda led him out of the cage door and announced I would be back on Tuesday to fight some guy from across town. My ears were ringing, and I could barely focus on the crowd as I headed to the locker room.
I rubbed at my head a bit. The last guy had gotten me pretty good a couple of times, and the face in the mirror was kind of a mess. I was cut above both of my eyes, one cheek, and my lip was busted open. Blood smeared my chest and my forearms.
“You okay?” Yolanda’s voice came from behind me. “You took a couple good smacks.”
“Ears ringing,” I mumbled. “Need some air.”
“Let me check you out first,” Yolanda insisted.
“Fuck you,” I growled as I headed for the back door. I felt her slip around me just before she popped up in front of me and shoved me backwards with both hands on my chest.
“I’m going to check you out,” she said through clenched teeth. “If and only if I decide you are okay will you go out for a smoke. Got it?”
Closing my eyes and huffing breath out my nose, I turned around and dropped down to the bench next to the lockers. If I was going to admit it to myself, I was a bit dizzy. Besides, I had a sneaking suspicion Yolanda could kick my ass if she wanted to.