“Smart girl,” I said. I was impressed. She was full of life, and I felt a brief flash of happiness for my friend before I remembered that he’d let go.
“I took dancing and gymnastics when I was younger, and I was competitive all the way up to the time my sight started to fail. But being blind didn’t take away my ability to tumble, or swing from a bar, or even balance on a beam. With the help of my mom and some patient coaches, I was able to continue with my gymnastics up until just a few years ago. I still work out at the training facility sometimes, but I’ve over-stayed my welcome. I’ve outgrown my pathetic appeal, and I feel like a burden more often than not, always having to have someone nearby, keeping an eye out for me.
“But in the basement with the pole, with the music pounding as loud as I want, I can put my dance and gymnastics training to good use. And no one has to help me. Nobody has to make sure I don’t fall or hurt myself. When I dance, I can pretend like I’m the real thing, I can pretend I look as good as dancing makes me feel. I even got brave enough to show Robin. She told me I looked amazing. She was so excited for me. So I started creating routines, you know, dreaming a little.
“I even choreographed a routine to “Perfectly Blind” by Day 26. It’s a sexy song and that’s funny, admit it. I figured if I could laugh at myself, then it wouldn’t bother me if other people laughed too. I wanted to dance. I dreamed about it. But I could just imagine the wave of new material available for stand-up comics. I would start a movement. Instead of blonde jokes, or Yo’ Mama jokes, it would be blind stripper jokes.”
“I can think of a few.” I was teasing her, and she giggled.
“Yeah, me too. I have a million of ‘em.”
I didn’t ask her to share, but I was curious. Her laughter faded quickly, and she smoothed her hair self-consciously.
“I make jokes, but I actually care about the way I look. I go to a lot of work to take care of my appearance. Robin’s a beautician and that helps. I’ve been told I’m pretty often enough, and there’s no reflection in the mirror to dispute it. So I choose to believe it. But dancing in front of people? That’s a whole different story.
“A few months ago, Robin told me they were hiring dancers at the club on the corner of Broadway and Rio Grande. She thought I should apply. I wanted to. I really, really wanted to. I could laugh at myself with Henry and Robin, and I could dance around a pole in my basement, but could I actually dance anywhere else? Could I actually get paid to dance?”
“Tag apparently thought so,” I interrupted.
Millie nodded but continued her narrative.
“Robin told me she would help me. And she would have. She would have had me looking like a million bucks. But in the end, I walked into the audition looking like a bag lady. A blind bag lady. Or at least what I imagined a bag lady looked like. I walked in off the street, prepared to be turned away, my clothes unflattering, my hair a mess. I did it on purpose. I wanted to give them every reason to turn me down. I wanted to provide them with an easy way out. But they didn’t turn me down.” Millie paused. “I guess now we know why.”
I had no idea why Tag included that part of his story on the tapes. I’d watched Millie when Tag had recounted the scene with Morgan, and her face had fallen like a house of cards. I’d wanted to throw the tape recorder out the window and hunt my best friend down, so I could slap some sense into him.
But then, as Tag had continued talking, Millie’s expression grew thoughtful and her stiff posture relaxed, and I realized suddenly why Tag was sharing the uncomfortable story. Tag confessed the details of Millie’s hiring because he didn’t want her hearing it from someone else and thinking that he was in on the joke. Tag clearly wanted Millie to know that the first time he’d seen her dancing, he’d had no idea she was blind. He’d thought she was beautiful.
“You heard what he said, Millie. He didn’t know. You convinced him you were the real deal. He thought you were even better than the other dancers.” My gut twisted again. If Tag were coming back, he wouldn’t have felt the need to make that clear or insulate Millie from gossip.
“I know,” she whispered and then stood. “I need to take a break, Moses. I need to go home and make sure Henry’s okay.”
I offered to give her a lift, but she refused, claiming she needed to stretch her legs. She had to dance at the club in a few hours too, and I was glad to hear it, even if she was only going through the motions. Going through the motions means you aren’t sitting still. Sitting still is what kills you. And so far, everyone was keeping up appearances for Tag, everyone was showing up for work, doing their jobs at his gym, his bar, and his store on the corner. Tag may have abandoned his world, but if we all went through the motions, maybe we could keep it turning for him until he came back. I didn’t let myself think any further than that.
MORGAN DIDN’T COME back to work. I made sure I was at the bar at two the following afternoon, ready to meet him or fill in for him, whichever it was going to be. When five thirty rolled around with still no sign of my manager, I cursed and started flipping through options in my head. I had a big fight to get ready for, and I didn’t want to be working late shifts at the bar every night. That’s why I’d hired Morg. I wanted to come in, make my rounds, slap some skin, and work the back room. I didn’t want to be working forty hours a week behind the bar managing the place. I already had too much on my plate. But I’d embarrassed Morgan. Hurt his pride. Still, I was surprised he hadn’t shown.
I spent the evening making drinks, chatting up my regulars, and watching the door. I was sure Morgan would slink in eventually. He just didn’t have that many options. Amelie came through the door at seven, using the front entrance instead of the back, which was customary for employees. Henry was with her, his riotous hair covered by a Giants ball cap, his eyes darting from one side of the bar to the other. It was interesting to see the siblings together, one so composed, one so uncomfortable.
I called a greeting to both of them, and Amelie smiled uncertainly, moving toward the bar with Henry in tow. She was on the schedule to dance, and I wondered what she was thinking, bringing her brother to work. Henry didn’t act like he heard me at all. His eyes shot straight to the television over my head and he halted about three feet from the stools, stuffing his hands in his pockets, shutting out everything around him. His lip looked swollen and there was a bruise on the side of his face. I wondered if Amelie had any idea.
“Uh, hi David . . . Mr. Taggert,” Amelie said, feeling for the edge of the bar.
“Amelie,” I interrupted. “Please, for the love of Pete, stop calling me Mr. Taggert.”
“Okay. Right.” She smiled sheepishly, but continued, discomfort evident in her voice. “Could Henry sit in here and watch the Laker game? My neighbor usually comes over and house sits while I work, just so Henry has someone there at night. But she’s not feeling well. He’s old enough to be alone, obviously, I mean, I’ve left him home at night before. But never for very long. And he’s had a rough day. Robin’s coming to get him, but she won’t be here for about twenty minutes . . .” Her voice faded off uncomfortably.
I wondered briefly about her parents and then decided it wasn’t any of my business.
“Does he like bubbles too?” I teased. If Henry could sit quietly on a stool and watch the game until Robin arrived, I’d keep him in drinks and pretzels. He wasn’t old enough to be in the bar, but as long as he wasn’t drinking—which I could make sure of—and as long as it wasn’t for very long, I wasn’t too concerned about it.
“Sprite. He loves Sprite.” She sounded so relieved I thought she was going to break into tears, but she turned to Henry instead, finding his arm and instructing him gently.
“Henry, did you hear that? Mr. Tag—um, Tag says you can watch the game with him.” Henry slid onto a stool, his eyes not leaving the screen.
“Is he okay right here, David?” She just couldn’t get comfortable with my name. I wondered why.
“That’s fine. Go on. I’ll keep an eye on him.
”
“Thank you. Thank you, I . . .” She stopped, squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and smiled. “Thank you. I appreciate it,” she said firmly. With her stick in hand, she tapped her way around the bar and disappeared down the long hallway that led to the restrooms and the employees’ locker room.
I put a bowl of peanuts in front of Henry, along with a tall Sprite, thought better of it, and replaced the peanuts with pretzels. Henry seemed like he might be the type of kid who would be horribly allergic to peanuts. That was just what I needed tonight.
“Kobe Bryant leads the league in free throws.” I had no idea if this was true. I just threw something out there to see if Henry would engage.
Henry’s eyes snapped to mine and he shook his head, indicating my stat wasn’t the case.
“He’s the tallest man in the NBA?” I knew this wasn’t true.
Henry started to smirk.
“He has the biggest feet?”
Henry shook his head.
“His best friend is named Shaq?” I asked.
Henry shook his head so vigorously I thought he was going to fall off his stool.
“Kobe Bryant is the youngest player in league history to reach 30,000 career points,” Henry informed me. I gave myself a mental high five that he was talking at all.
“Oh, yeah?” I asked, nonchalant.
“He was also the youngest player to ever start in the NBA,” he added.
“Big deal.” I waved my hand. “Everybody knows that.” I winked, letting him know I hadn’t had a clue.
“Did you know he was named after Japanese beef?” Henry boasted, pulling his Sprite toward him and taking a long pull at the straw.
“No kidding!” I started to laugh. I moved away from him to take care of some customers a few stools down, and greeted Axel, my Swedish sparring partner, who slid onto a stool one over from Henry and said “tack”—thank you in Swedish—before guzzling back the beer I placed in front of him.
“Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant aren’t friends,” Henry said seriously, and placed a pretzel carefully on his tongue. He looked at his now empty glass despondently.
“No? Why not?” I asked, refilling his Sprite.
“Giants don’t make good friends.”
“Are you talking about Shaq or Kobe? They’re both pretty big.” I tried not to laugh because Henry wasn’t laughing.
“Giants don’t like when someone is bigger than they are.”
“I don’t know about that. Look at me and Axel. We’re both pretty big.”
“Who’s the biggest?” Henry asked.
“I am,” I said firmly, and at the same time Axel thumped his chest.
Henry looked at me owlishly, as if I had just proven his point. Axel started to laugh, and I laughed with him, but Henry didn’t laugh at all. He just wrapped his swollen lips around his straw and drank his Sprite like he was dying of thirst. I waited until Axel turned his attention to Stormy, who had stopped to flirt as she waited tables.
“Henry? Are you having problems with a giant?” I touched my lip and looked pointedly at his mouth.
“The Giants won the World Series in 2012,” he said softly. “In 2010 too. They’re very popular right now.”
I wasn’t sure if there was a hidden message in the popularity of the Giants or if Henry just wanted to change the subject. I tried again, using a different approach.
“You know the story of David and Goliath, right? David’s just a little guy, Goliath’s a huge warrior. David ends up killing him with just a sling-shot and Goliath’s own sword.”
“Your name is David,” Henry said, his eyes on the game.
“It is. Do you need me to slay a giant for you?”
“The Giants’ bench is deep.”
I narrowed my eyes at Henry. He didn’t look away from the television. It was like conversing with Yoda. Or R2D2.
I sighed and refilled his drink again. “When all this Sprite catches up with you, the bathrooms are down the hall on the right.”
I didn’t want to upset Amelie, but when she checked to make sure Robin had come and retrieved Henry, covering her dancing “uniform” with a Tag Team T-shirt and leggings, I pulled her aside and stressed once more that she should bring Henry by the gym. It wouldn’t hurt for the kid to learn how to take down a bully, or a giant, if that’s what was going on.
AMELIE AND HENRY didn’t come by the gym the next day. On Saturday, I thought I saw them once, beyond the wall of windows along the front of the gym, but when I looked again they were gone. I shrugged, deciding Henry must not have been as excited by the idea as Amelie thought he would be. A few minutes later I looked up to see them hovering near the speed bags, Amelie holding firmly to Henry’s arm, Henry looking as if he was about to bolt like a runaway seeing-eye dog and drag his poor sister with him. They were garnering some strange looks—Henry with his crazy bedhead, his darting glances, and jittery hands and Amelie because she stood so still with her eyes fixed straight ahead.
I called a quick halt to my bout, escaping Axel, who was trying to pummel me into next week, and slid between the ropes that cordoned off one of the octagons.
“Amelie! Henry!” I called, noting how Amelie’s face was immediately wreathed in a relieved smile, a smile so wide it spread to her eyes, giving the illusion of sparkle and life. But Henry started backing up, pulling his sister with him.
“Yo, Henry. Hold up, man.” I stopped several feet from them and lowered my voice. “Did you know that Jack Dempsey versus Jess Willard was the very first fight to be broadcast over the radio?”
Henry stopped moving and his hands stilled.
“Do you know what year that was, Henry?”
“1919,” Henry said in a whisper. “The first televised fight was in 1931. Benny Leonard vs. Mickey Walker.”
“I didn’t know that.” Actually, I had only known about the Dempsey, Willard fight because I’d seen a biography on Dempsey on Netflix the night before. God bless Netflix. The mention of the radio had made me think of Henry and the sportscast blaring from his bedroom. “You wanna tell me more?”
“David ‘Tag’ Taggert, light heavyweight contender with a professional record of eighteen wins, two losses, ten knock outs.”
“You checked up on me, huh?”
Henry’s mouth twitched, and he looked away shyly.
“You did! What else did you find out? That all the ladies love me, that I’m the best looking fighter, pound for pound, in the universe?”
Henry looked confused for a second, and I realized he was searching his mind for that stat. I laughed. “Just kidding, buddy.”
“Six-foot three, 215 pounds, most often compared to Forrest Griffin and Michael Bisping?” Henry’s voice rose on the end, clearly seeking approval.
“I’m more charming than Bisping, and I have better ears than Forrest. But they could both probably kick my ass.”
“He said ass, Amelie!” Henry whispered, half shocked.
“Yes he did, Henry. It’s okay. That’s how fighters talk,” Amelie soothed.
“Can I say ass?” Henry whispered again, curiously.
“You can,” I cut in, “after you learn how to fight.”
“I don’t like to fight.” Henry started backing away.
“That’s okay, Henry. There’s a lot of different ways to fight. I can show you some stuff when you’re ready. Some moves are just about protecting yourself. But right now, I’m gonna introduce you to my team.”
“Tag Team?” Henry’s voice lifted with excitement.
“That’s right. We’re missing a few people, but a bunch of my guys are here.”
Henry had already met Axel, my Swedish sparring partner, at the bar, but Amelie shook his hand politely and Axel shot me a pointed look over the top of her head. He’d seen her dance, obviously. Mikey, with his powerful forearms and his missing lower left leg, greeted Henry and Amelie with a smile and a handshake. Mikey is always a gentleman in front of the ladies, but reverts to a foul-mouthed marine
in front of the guys. He lost a leg in Iraq and works out his demons in the Tag Team facilities. He’d taught me a few things about hand-to-hand combat you can only learn from someone who has actually fought for his life more times than he can count.
I moved on to Paulo, a Brazilian, and a better grappler than all of us, and then to Cory, the youngest on the team. Cory Mangum was a wrestler, an NCAA heavyweight champion his junior year. But he threw it all away his senior year and ended up at Montlake Psychiatric Hospital after trying to escape his drug habit by jumping off a bridge. My old friend, Dr. Andelin, had sent him my way. So far, he’d managed to stay clean and pin me daily. I was learning a ton from him.
Beyond Axel, Mikey, Paulo and Cory, who provided training but didn’t compete, I had a handful of MMA fighters in a bunch of different divisions who all fought under the Tag Team label, and they greeted Henry and Amelie politely, with side-long looks at Henry’s crazy hair and Amelie’s blinding smile. I wondered if Amelie knew how appealing she was. Probably not. There were plenty of women in and out of our facility. Some came to see me or one of the guys, some came to work out with us. I had two female Tag Team fighters who were ranked in the UFC. Amelie was a novelty, though, and I was positive the guys had all noticed her sweet figure, her shiny hair and her pretty mouth. The thought bothered me. Just wait until Axel told them she danced around a pole several nights a week at the bar. That really bothered me.
“This part of the gym is for fight training. The rest of it—the weight room, the exercise equipment, and the classes—is for Tag Team fitness members. For fifteen bucks a month you have access to everything on that side of the facility. We have classes over here a few nights a week too, the classes that need the mats like judo and some of our self-defense classes, and those things are extra.”
“Maybe you’d like to try out a judo class or a self-defense class, Henry,” Amelie spoke up. “I took judo classes for a while. There’s a division for blind athletes. Pretty cool. But my heart wasn’t in it unless the music was blaring and I could do kicks and spins, which doesn’t work in judo.”