Chapter Six
Jaimie
On Monday, we returned from our trip. On Tuesday, Randy called me into his office.
It was a cold, gray morning, and a chilly mist rose over the abandoned train tracks on the other side of the window. Randy sat at his desk clutching a mug that said “World’s Best Dad,” a thoughtless gift from a cousin of his. In front of him lay a stack of important-looking tax files and a couple of manila envelopes with red clasps.
“Morning,” he said in a sleepy voice as I walked in. “I feel bad for dragging you all the way to Florida. It would’ve been one thing if we had done what we set out to do, but the whole trip was sort of a waste.”
“That’s okay. At least we got to see the Enchanted Tiki Room.”
It wasn’t okay, but of course, I wasn’t going to tell him that. I could have spent the weekend resting and working on my novel, but instead, I had squandered it chasing Randy around the Magic Kingdom. And we hadn’t even gotten to try butterbeer.
“Yeah.” Randy grinned wistfully. “Boy, that was really something, all those Polynesian dancers. I’ve been humming that song for days.”
“Same,” I said sadly.
“Anyway, I hate to ask you to accompany me on another trip so soon after the last one, but I’d love it if you could come with me to this training facility. Aardman is an old friend of mine from my college days, and he’s convinced that his current crop of fighters showcases some rare talent.”
“Don’t they always say that?” I asked skeptically.
Randy shrugged grudgingly. “It’s a fair point, but Aardman has never been the type of guy to bullshit me. He’s always been sort of allergic to hype, even his own, which makes him a bad marketer but a good friend. If he says there’s something unique about these guys, I’m inclined to believe him.”
“Fair enough. At least we won’t have to stay in a cheap hotel with tatty furniture.” I’d rather not have to go at all. Assessing prospective fighters wasn’t strictly part of my job—I could have stayed indoors today where it was warm and immersed myself in the satisfying monotony of crunching numbers—but he was being so polite and respectful that I didn’t dare say no.
“You sure you feel up to this?” he asked, apparently sensing my hesitation. “You can stay here if you feel you need to.”
“No, I’ll go. Your opinions can skew toward the eccentric, and it would probably help to have a second pair of eyes.”
“Do they?” He stared in surprise.
I nodded, remembering how excited he had gotten over the finials poking up over the tops of the buildings at Disney World. “You’re great at a lot of things, but selecting champions maybe isn’t one of them.”
“Weird, I’ve always thought my selections were impeccable.” He rose from the desk, adjusting his tie in the gray light. “If it helps, you can think of it as being like a Doctor Who adventure: a kindly older gentleman with a unique style of dress takes a journey through time and space with the help of a young female companion.”
“Or a journey to the other side of Boulder,” I said as I reached for my coat. “But if it makes the trip more interesting for you, I suppose you can be the Doctor.”
***
But whatever Randy said, I couldn’t escape the impression that Aardman was desperate to push his guys on us. When we reached the training facility, he led us into a cozy office furnished with leather armchairs and a Persian carpet. The whole place smelled faintly of wood varnish. In the next room over, I could hear a couple guys grunting feebly as they took turns whaling on each other.
Reaching into a wooden liquor cabinet, Aardman pulled out a bottle of vodka, which he poured into three glasses.
“I’ll try to make this worth your while,” he said, seating himself in a burgundy chair opposite. “As I think you’ll see in a minute, my boys are some of the best in the business.”
“How so?” asked Randy, holding his glass just under his nose.
“For one, they’re built. But big deal, right? These days, anybody can be built. Exercise regimens for men have come a long way since our day.”
“Very true.”
“But these guys are driven, and that’s something you don’t see every day. It’s been ages since I’ve seen this much dedication and ambition in a single group of people.”
“Well!” Randy set his glass down on a side table and placed his hands in his lap. “Now you’ve got my attention. If these guys are really as good as you say they are, then I have to see them.”
I could sense that both Randy and Aardman were going through a ritual, saying things that maybe they didn’t quite mean. But they were both professionals, and they did it with such skill, I almost envied them. I was too sincere, too volatile, too much of a mess, to ever do what they did.
He rose and led us out into the auditorium where stood a octagon and several dozen rows of brown metal folding chairs. We took our places in the front row while he trotted out the first pair and introduced them.
Then the fighting commenced, and I nearly fell asleep in my chair.
I might have underestimated how done I would be with MMA fights after having to watch them the entire weekend. The meeting on Saturday night had been dull and exhausting, and the one on the following afternoon had been just as dull and just as exhausting. I don’t know what it was about boys and sports: I had less trouble staying awake when I had to sit at my desk all day examining financial records.
If there was one thing I could say about them, they were better fighters than the group we had seen in Florida. Even the weakest displayed a level of aggression that was slightly alarming in men so young. I winced as we watched one, whose name was Gerald, steadily pound the face of his opponent like a ragdoll.
“Are you seeing this?” Randy leaned over and whispered. “Aardman wasn’t joking. This is next-level stuff.”
I nodded weakly, wishing we could hurry up and skip to the end. I had found the one sport I hated more than football, so of course, I worked for an organization that promoted it.
But then the last pair of fighters went up, and they had my full attention.
“This is Bruce,” said Aardman, lifting up the arm of a slender shirtless boy in his late teens. “Bruce has been with us for about three years now. Bruce, you want to tell them your story?”
Bruce smiled. “Yeah, when I was eleven, me and my mom went walking on the beach near our home in New Haven. Mom fell and sliced her leg on a jagged rock. I used my own shirt as a tourniquet and stayed with her for the next hour until help arrived.”
“Did she make it?”
“She survived that. She was killed the next Christmas by a drunk driver.”
Randy winced in sympathy.
Coach Aardman thanked Bruce and turned to his next player. “What about you, Braxton? Any exciting stories?”
“Nothing I care to talk about,” said the one named Braxton with a shake of his head.
Rennie and I had recently discussed the mystery of how some people are effortlessly charismatic. Braxton radiated charisma without seeming to be aware of it. He had one of those bodies that are the admiration of women and the envy of men, the kind that you want to sit and stare at because it seems impossible that nature could make something this perfect. His eyes were a hypnotic shade of gray, and when he looked out over the audience, I shivered without really knowing why.
“Where are you from, Braxton?” asked Aardman.
“Texas.”
“You seem very taciturn today.”
Bruce grinned shyly. “I don’t know what that means, Coach.”
Randy and I both laughed.
Aardman seemed to have realized he wasn’t going to get any more out of him, for he turned to us and said, “Braxton Savery—nineteen—youngest in a family of five—and by all accounts, his mother makes the best baklava in the state.”
Braxton leaned forward and spoke into the microphone. “It’s true.”
“Braxton and Bruce, are you ready for this?”
They both nodded, Bruce eagerly and Braxton with tranquil solemnity.
The two men climbed into the octagon. I don’t know what was so different about this match—maybe Bruce’s tragic history or Braxton’s innate magnetism—but I couldn’t look away. For a moment, they circled each other calmly. Braxton flashed a confident smile, faking a lunge that sent his opponent scrambling back, and laughed lightly.
“I don’t know who I’m rooting for more,” confided Randy. “I’d take either one of them over the other guys—or anyone we saw in Orlando, for that matter.”
Right as he said this, Bruce pounced like a snake, battering Braxton with a rapid-fire series of perfectly executed jabs to the head. Amazingly, Braxton didn’t once flinch; he absorbed the blows like a punching bag and even managed to land a blow to Bruce’s chest which momentarily knocked him off his feet. There was a ferocity to his punches that suggested some longstanding personal grudge. He fought with the tenacity of a man who didn’t particularly care if he killed his opponent outright.
It was almost a relief when the fight ended. Braxton managed to level Bruce with a well-placed blow to his nose, pinning him to the ground until Bruce surrendered in humiliation. Randy, ecstatic, rose to his feet in applause.
“That was tremendous!” he shouted. “Tree-men-dous!”
High on his victory, Braxton paced around the octagon with his arms raised high in the air. Oddly, Bruce didn’t seem particularly upset at having been defeated. Instead, he raised himself up on his elbows and grinned good-naturedly. “That’s how you do it!” I heard him say. “Now if only you had had an actual crowd.”
“Doesn’t matter,” crowed Braxton. “There is literally no one like me.”
Meanwhile, Randy stood shaking his head.
“Just look at him,” he murmured, half to himself. “He’s compelling, charismatic, funny…” Turning to me, he added, “Jaimie, I think we may have found our guy.”
And we had.