Chapter Thirty-Four
Jaimie
“Have you and Braxton been talking?” asked Ren.
“What? Of course.” I was standing at the kitchen table cutting up a cucumber, not really paying attention to what I was doing. Sometimes I got so lost in my own head that I was only dimly conscious of time passing. “You make it sound like we broke up.”
“Just asking.” She brought over a cutting board full of carrots and scraped them into the salad bowl with a carving knife. “This is the first time you’ve really been apart since you started going out.”
“We’ve only been formally going out for about five days.”
“Well, whatever you want to call it. You were pretty official before you ever made it official, if you know what I mean.”
This was probably true, but I wasn’t going to let on how much his absence had been affecting me. Sometimes I wanted to apologize for thinking of him as a dumb bruiser; our conversation on the hay bale had definitively laid that illusion to rest.
“I just wish I had the gift of hiding my real feelings,” I said aloud. “I get teary-eyed at work, and people won’t stop asking what’s wrong. Yesterday, Eleanor came over and offered me some medicine.”
“You were crying because Braxton was leaving? That’s… sweet.”
I laughed bitterly. “I think ‘obsessive’ is the word you’re looking for. But no, I wasn’t just crying for that. I was crying for him, for the things he’s had to overcome, that we’ve both had to overcome, for the childhoods we might have had if humans weren’t so cruel and screwed up.”
I told her the story he had shared with me about his friend Jim and how he had ended up in a wheelchair. Ren set down the knife and listened attentively until I had finished, looking increasingly distressed.
“It makes sense that he would want to be as strong as possible, to make sure that never happened again,” she said. “He’s stronger than me, and I don’t just mean physically. If I witnessed something like that with my own eyes, I think it would break me.”
“Same.” I shoved the cutting board aside and rubbed my tired eyes. “And I think I would hate the world and feel betrayed by the adults in my life who didn’t intervene sooner. But that could just be some of my own teenage angst bleeding into the situation.”
“Maybe.” She opened the oven door just a crack, and a wave of hot air blew over her face. “Lasagna’s still not done. I always considered myself sort of privileged that you let me into your life.”
“Why?” I asked, surprised.
“Because you shut everyone else out. It was especially bad when you were a teenager and I was your only friend. As you’ve gotten older, you’ve opened yourself up to the world a little more, but not really.”
“Well, I think everyone has two faces.” I reached for the French onion dip. “You just have the extraordinary privilege of seeing me at my worst. Not everyone gets that.”
“I consider myself very lucky,” said Ren.
“You should. I can curse and complain in front of you in a way I can’t with really anybody else.”
“Not even Braxton?”
“We’re getting there. I’ve shared some pretty painful experiences with him that I’ve only ever told one other person.” I shrugged. “We’re still dating, so I have to assume he didn’t mind.”
“Of course not. I’m sure he finds that kind of vulnerability thrilling.”
“It is, in a way. It’s like a nakedness of the soul.”
When the lasagna came out of the oven, I poured us both a glass of iced tea and followed Ren into the living room. The match was just starting: Bones and Braxton stood at opposite ends of the octagon glowering at each other, Bones in his gaudy spandex and Braxton in his blue shorts. The crowd yelled and stamped its feet. At the back of the screen, I spotted a blonde girl, no older than eighteen, holding up a hand-made sign that read “MARRY ME, BRAXTON.” A girl standing next to her, and looking not much older, held up a second sign that read “MARRY HER.”
“Looks like you’ve got some competition,” said Ren.
“I’m not worried,” I replied.
But perhaps I should have been, because Bones came out swinging, apparently hoping to crush Braxton in the opening round with a devastating barrage of kicks and punches to the face. I’d seen several hundred fights, but had never before felt in my body the pain being inflicted onstage. I winced with every blow Braxton took to the jaw, watching the screen through closed fingers.
Braxton lost the first round, badly. But he rallied in the second, surprising his opponent with a hail of quick punches and then pinning him to the floor before he could recover himself. The two men glared at each other with a hatred that was alarming and unfeigned.
For the final round, Bones, having apparently given up on defeating him in the usual manner, decided to try a different tack. Instead of confronting him directly, he hovered in a corner hurling schoolyard taunts.
“You are going to wish you had a time machine,” he said, “so you could go back and warn yourself not to fight this match tonight. The history books will call this ‘the humiliation of the century.’”
“No they won’t, Bones,” said Braxton coolly.
“Right up there on the timeline of embarrassing American defeats,” Bones went on with enthusiasm: “My Lai. The Sixty-Eight Tet Offensive. Fallujah. And Braxton Savery in Vegas!” Energized by the cheers of his audience, he added, “You are the most embarrassing thing to happen to this country since World War II!”
“What happened in World War II?” asked Ren. “He knows that we won that, right?”
I shrugged. Braxton’s face bore the faintest tinge of red behind the ears, and he seemed to be keeping himself in his own corner by some superhuman effort.
“He’s an idiot!” Ren shouted. “Don’t listen to him, Braxton. He’s just trying to provoke you into breaking the rules!”
“It’s a compliment, really!” I added. “He knows he can’t beat you any other way!”
We went on shouting at the screen as though he could hear us. Braxton continued to stand quietly and the crowd, presumably annoyed by his passivity, started booing in earnest.
“What the hell is wrong with those people?” said Ren. “I have never seen a more fickle bunch.”
Despite working for years at FAF, it was only the second or third match I had ever felt invested in. As the minutes ticked past, and the two men stood in their respective corners, one glowering, and the other taunting, my sense of anticipation increased. They weren’t even really doing anything, and yet I couldn’t look away from the screen.
“Are they even allowed to stand there like that?” I asked Ren.
“I hope your mom is watching when I crack open your skull tonight and partake of its innards,” said Bones. “You know why? Because she’s going to thank me. And the nation will thank me when I topple your sorry ass. I am going to win the Congressional Medal of Freedom for ridding the world of your stench. They are going to make movies about this night for centuries, and no one will even remember your name!”
“That would make it hard to make a movie, then, wouldn’t it?” said Braxton, speaking up for the first time in a while. The audience laughed, and Braxton, seemingly buoyed by the response, managed a smile.
“I like how this became open mic night at the stand-up comedy club,” said Ren.
“Your mom saw that movie The Babadook,” said Bones, “and she was surprised, because she didn’t know you had gone into acting. If you and Kim Jong-Un were trapped in a room, I would tell Kim, ‘I’m sorry.’ The difference between you and Bin Laden is that one is a shit-faced traitor despised by all men of good will and the other died in 2011. If you were my dad—”
But we never got to find out what would have happened if Braxton was his dad because at that moment Braxton strode forward and clocked him in the face. It happened so fast that Bones had no time to prepare; in the split second before Braxton’s fist collided with his jaw, he made a belated effort to raise his arms, in vain. Looking badly stunned, he staggered back against the metal cage.
Ren and I leaped to our feet.
“Get him while he’s down!” shouted Ren. “Don’t let him recover his wits!”
“Eviscerate him!” I yelled. “Send him to the ER!”
“Send him to the morgue!”
Braxton, as if taking our advice, leaped forward with all the ferocity of a house cat tackling a lizard. Bones managed to get in a few swift kicks but Braxton was simply too powerful, and the hurricane of fists proved overwhelming.
“Don’t bite him!” I shouted, my hands over my mouth. “Let it be a clean fight!”
“Ignore her!” said Ren. “Do what you have to do!”
But I needn’t have worried. Within a few minutes, Bones was too stunned to move. His face bloodied, his arms pinned to the mat, he raised his head to spit in Braxton’s face but missed. The referee called time, and the room rose to its feet in applause, cheering loud enough to shake the house.