“TAG?” LISA LOOKED a little harried, her eyes wide, her hands shaking. “Uh, I think we’ve got a problem. Morgan . . . Morgan is in the lounge. He’s been drinking for the last few hours, and he’s starting to get abusive. I didn’t want to get him in trouble. Morg’s my friend. I don’t know what happened with his job, but, well—” I was around the bar, tossing instructions at Vince and moving down the hall and into the lounge with Lisa trotting after me, making all kinds of excuses for Morgan.
The music was thumping—something guttural and earthy, and Amelie was in the octagon, twirling and swaying around the tall pole, a determined smile pinned to her face. But unlike the first time I’d seen her dance, and every time I’d watched her dance since, her eyes were open, and her movements seemed stiff. She clearly wasn’t enjoying herself.
“I’m not liking what I see!” a voice bellowed out. “Are you liking what you see, princess?” Laughter. “Get Danielle back out here!”
The other patrons had stopped watching Amelie and were peering, hands over their eyes in the direction of the corner booth. The dim lighting made it hard to make him out, and the loud bass camouflaged his taunts, but Morgan was doing his best to be heard, and the charged atmosphere in the room had nothing to do with sexual tension or the scantily clad dancer performing a seductive routine under a spotlight.
He was so intent on heckling Amelie, he didn’t see me coming. So when I reached over the back of the booth and grabbed him around the ears and yanked upward, he came to his feet with a yelp of pain and surprise.
Lady Gaga was singing about having a poker face and Amelie was trying to take her advice, dancing like a wind-up doll, unable to see the cause of the drama unfolding in front of her. I was extremely grateful for that. Lisa squealed and Morgan roared as I dragged him across his table, sending empty bottles crashing and upending two chairs at another, thankfully unoccupied, table.
A few customers clapped and whistled as I locked my arm around Morgan’s head and headed for the emergency exit. I pushed through the door as the final bars of Amelie’s number played out. I didn’t hang around to see the spotlight on the cage dim to black or the lounge lights softly rise, which was customary as a new dancer took her place in the cage. I wanted Morgan out of sight and out of ear-shot before I beat the hell out of him. But as we barreled through the doors and out into the cold night, both breathing hard, both angry, Morgan, off balance and clinging to my forearm around his neck with one hand, swung at me with his other. It was a Hail Mary, a desperation shot, but there happened to be a beer bottle in his hand, and that beer bottle connected with my forehead with a resounding crack.
The blow stunned me, and I went down to one knee, pulling Morgan with me. Blood filled my eyes, and rage filled my head.
“You gonna tell me what that was about, Morg? You gonna tell me why you decided to come back?”
I swiped at the blood on my forehead with one arm and ground Morgan’s head into the ground with the other.
“I want my job . . . I want my job back,” he wailed, pushing on my hand. “I just thought I’d have a drink or two first, to get my courage up to ask for it back. I watched Danielle and Crysti dance. Then I had a few more. Then she came out. It just made me mad that she still had a job and I didn’t. Where’s your loyalty, Tag? I don’t get it, man.”
My vision was starting to swim and my head had started to pound like Morg had taken Thor’s hammer to it, instead of a bottle of Bud. Someone burst through the exit doors and I stood, releasing Morgan and swaying on my feet. I wasn’t going to go down. Losing consciousness meant a concussion in the fight world. Concussion meant mandatory down time and testing. I didn’t have time for that. Vince and Leo were suddenly at my sides, looking down at Morgan who still lay on the ground in front of me, as if he didn’t know what to do with himself. His eyes were wide as he took in the blood pouring from the wound he’d inflicted. I pulled off my black T-shirt, mopped the blood from my eyes, and pressed it to the gash in my head. It felt like the Grand Canyon beneath my fingers and my stomach roiled and shifted.
“Don’t come back, Morg. I’m all about second chances. But that? In there? That was it. That was your second chance, and you repeated all your mistakes. You’ve shown your colors, and I don’t like the way you look in them. I don’t want you around.”
A trip to the ER was just where I wanted to spend my evening. They had to dig glass fragments out of my forehead, and that hurt worse than the actual blow to my head. The shot of Novocain wasn’t a picnic either. But I kept my eyes open and my mouth moving as the emergency room doctor stitched me up.
“You’re going to look a little like Frankenstein,” the doctor said good-naturedly. “You’ve got thirty stitches holding your forehead together. It’s right at your hairline though, and I’m guessing the scar will be pretty well hidden. I’m more worried about concussion. Your head is extremely swollen, your pupils still haven’t returned to normal, and I know you think you’re fooling me, but your speech is wobbly and so are your knees. I think we need to order an MRI just to be safe. In fact, I’m going to insist on it.”
“That’s my drawl, Doc. That’s just how I sound, and I’m tired. I’ve been up for eighteen hours and an MRI isn’t quick, right?” I’d had an MRI in high school when a bull I attempted to stay on for eight seconds, a bull named Ginger, sent me careening into a fence a few seconds after my butt hit his back. Less than eight seconds to warrant a test that had taken forever. I had learned I was claustrophobic and that I didn’t especially want to ride bulls anymore.
Plus, I was feeling fine, and I wanted to see Amelie. She would be wondering where I was. Leo had run me to the hospital and Vince had gone back inside, while the new guy, Chuck, made sure Morgan went home. Everyone had been firmly instructed to keep their mouths shut. Millie didn’t need to be worrying about me getting my head bashed in. For all she knew, she’d had a heckler, and he’d been removed. I told my employees as much. I would tell her an abbreviated version of events and leave Morgan’s name out altogether. But her shift had ended hours ago, and I hadn’t been there to walk her home for the first time since we’d met. I’d texted her and told her I’d come when I could—she had an app on her phone that announced her messages and read them aloud when she tapped the screen. I purposely made my texts ridiculous because it was so funny to hear the canned voice relay my messages. She’d responded with song lyrics about waking her up, and I responded with a demand that she go to sleep.
“I’ll let you go home as soon as you’re done. This will give us another hour of observation too. Humor me, Tag. In your line of work, sparring day in and day out, you can’t mess around with a head injury.”
I grumbled and resisted, but the doctor was adamant, and I finally decided it would be easier to give in than to keep arguing.
In the end, the ER doc got pulled out on an emergency, a tech wheeled me in, and I spent a grueling forty-five minutes trying to stay calm inside a tube while pictures were taken of my brain. It was three a.m. before I walked out of the hospital, the tech promising that a radiologist would read the results, talk to the doctor who’d ordered the test, and someone would be calling me. I waved it all off. Other than the dull ache in my forehead and a desperate need for a shower, I felt absolutely fine. The nurse who handled my discharge asked if I had someone who could stay with me and wake me up every so often, just to be safe.
Leo had fallen asleep in the waiting room, and I didn’t want to put him out any more than I already had. Plus, Millie was the only one I was interested in spending the night with, even the few hours of the night remaining. Leo dropped me off at home and I took a bath, carefully washing the blood out of my hair, and made it to Millie’s at about four a.m.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been driving, but I felt fine and I didn’t want to stay away any longer. I knew where the spare key to Millie’s front door was stashed, the key Henry had shown me with all the seriousness of a man with a highly important secret. He kept it tucked inside a latticework curlicue, directly across from the door, and I felt for it in the darkness, finding it easily and mentally thanking Henry for entrusting me with the keys to the house.
I opened the door and put the key back in Henry’s spot before I slid into the dark foyer and tiptoed up the staircase.
I turned on the light in her room, a definite perk of loving a blind girl, and found her sprawled across her bed, her phone by her head, her arms wrapped around a pillow like she didn’t want to be alone. I flipped the light back off, pulled off my shoes, and padded to her side in the darkness. I laid down beside her, pulled the spare pillow from her arms and stuck it beneath my head, and rolled her into me, settling her on my chest to compensate for the theft of her pillow.
“Hey,” she said sleepily, but the pleasure in her voice warmed me.
“Hey. Go back to sleep. I didn’t want to wake you. I just wanted to see you.”
“I want to see you too,” she mumbled, and her hands immediately began exploring, making me feel immediately less sleepy. This was a first for us, sleeping side by side, and that was as far as it was going to go, though her sleepy sighs and roving hands had me considering options. I should have known she would discover my bandage immediately.
“What’s this?” she asked, her fingers cradling my head.
“That’s a few stitches I got when a drunk heckler decided to smack me in the forehead with his beer bottle.”
She sat up immediately.
“My drunk heckler?” she asked, incredulous.
I didn’t answer.
“So that’s where you were? The hospital? Why didn’t anyone tell me? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want you to worry.”
“But . . . but . . . I’m your girl, right? So that’s my job. That’s what people do when they care about each other. They worry!” Her voice rose, and I shushed her immediately, smoothing her hair. We’d had this argument before.
“People that care about each other don’t cause unnecessary worry. I’m fine. I’m here. And I’m going to have an awesome scar for you to trace when it’s all healed up.”
Millie pushed my hand away and rose from the bed, retreating to the bathroom without a word. She shut the door a little harder than necessary, and I tried not to laugh. Millie was a typical female when it came to showing her displeasure. She wasn’t happy I’d kept her in the dark. I heard her flush the toilet and listened as she slammed around for several minutes. When she finally clomped out of the bathroom and laid down beside me once more, I feigned sleep just to see what she would do. She lay stiffly beside me for several minutes and then turned into me, wrapping her arm around my waist.
“I know you’re not asleep,” she whispered.
“How can you tell?”
“You’re too still and you’re listening too hard.”
“You can hear me listening?”
“People take very shallow breaths or they don’t breathe at all when they are really listening.”
“I’m trying to hear your thoughts.”
“I’m mad.”
“You must not be too mad. You brushed your teeth even though you didn’t need to. Which means you want to kiss me. Which means you are planning on forgiving me.”
“I’m mad because I really like you. And I want to kiss you because I really like you.”
“You’re mad because you like me?
“I’m mad because I love you,” she confessed with a sigh. “And you didn’t let me know you were hurt.”
“Well, I love you too, Millie. And I’m always going to try to protect you. That’s who I am. That’s what I do. If you knew I was getting a few stitches in my head, you wouldn’t have been laying here fast asleep, so sweet and so soft I could eat you. You would have been chewing on this lip, worrying, instead of dreaming about me.” I leaned in and tugged on her lower lip with my teeth, gently mimicking her tendency to bite her lip when she was concerned. I kissed her pouting mouth and felt her anger slip away as I slid my tongue beneath her lips.
Our breaths grew short and our bodies restless, and it was Millie who pulled away first, clearly not quite ready to extend this night of firsts. I closed my eyes and willed my heart to still as she stroked my head, her fingers slipping through my hair and easing the dull ache still lurking behind my eyes.
“David?” she whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Sing me a song.”
“What kind of song, baby?”
“A love song.”
“Millie, Millie, You’re so silly. I’m so glad your name’s not Willy,” I sang in my best country twang.
“Willy?”
“Let me rephrase.” I cleared my throat and began again. “Millie, Millie, you’re so silly, I’m sure glad you don’t have a willy.”
“That’s not a love song,” she giggled.
“Okay. How about this? I love your legs. I love your chest, but this spot here, I love the best.” I tickled her smooth stomach and she squirmed against me.
“Keep singing!” she demanded, swatting my hand away.
“I love your chin and your funny grin, I love your hair and that spot there.” I tickled her beneath her right rib and she grabbed my fingers, laughing.
“I love it! Second verse, please.”
“I love the way you shake your booty, I love the way you smell so fruity! I love the way you call me David, and . . . . la la la nothing rhymes with David.”
“That was beautiful,” she giggled. “What’s it called?”
“It’s called ‘Nothing Rhymes with David.’”
“Nothing rhymes with David?” Her voice was disbelieving, and she was quiet for several seconds, as if trying to find a word that rhymed to prove me wrong. Then she stroked the side of my face, her fingers tracing my jawline, and when she spoke again her voice was as earnest as her touch.
“It makes me feel close to you, listening to you.”
“Is that why you always want me to sing? I thought it was my honeyed tones.” I joked, but my throat was suddenly tight, too tight to sing.
“It’s more than that. You can’t see a song. You feel a song, you hear a song, you move to it. Just like I can’t see you, but I feel you, and I move toward you. When you’re with me, I feel like I glimpse a David nobody else knows is there. It’s the Song of David, and nobody else can hear it but me.”
My heart shuddered and then grew twice its size, a Hulk-like shredding and popping sensation filling my chest, and I wrapped her in my arms and buried my face in her neck.
“Nah. That’s not me. That’s the ode, Millie. I feel it too, every single time you’re close to me.”
“The ode, huh? That’s what you call it?”
“That’s what I call it.”
“I think I’ll stick with the Song of David. It’s my favorite,” she said, speaking the words against my cheek.
“If I sing, you have to dance,” I whispered, and my mouth found hers, and the music between us became an urgent hum, a rhythmic pulse, and we danced around the fires between us until sleep slowed our steps and muted our song and softly pulled us under.
(End of cassette)
Moses
MILLIE STOOD AND with no warning, lifted the tape recorder above her head and threw it to the ground as if she couldn’t bear to hear another word. The back of the tape recorder sprang off when it hit the ground, and the fat D batteries rolled out like wounded soldiers, their tank disabled, their weapons depleted.
Georgia and I stood watching, unable to form a coherent response. Millie was shaking with fury, and her eyes were bright with tears.
“I don’t know what to think, anymore. I don’t know what to do! We’re sitting here listening to him tell us a story that I wholeheartedly believed two weeks ago. But he’s gone. I’m actually . . . embarrassed. I’ve called you, interrupted your lives, and made a big deal about the fact that he’s gone. But he obviously chose to leave!” Millie took several ragged breaths, but then her chin hit her chest, and the rage seemed to leave her as quickly as it had come.
“The worst part is . . . I actually hope it’s just that he doesn’t know how to tell me he changed his mind. I actually hope he woke up and realized he wasn’t in love with me after all. I hope that’s it. Because I can’t think of an alternative that isn’t a hundred times worse. And I’d rather lose him than lose him.”
I knew exactly what she meant.
My phone pealed out mercifully, and Georgia knelt to put the batteries back in the tape recorder as I excused myself to take the call.
“Mikey,” I greeted, slipping out the front door.
“Moses,” he said in reply. “I’ve got news.”
My heart did a belly flop.
“Tag is fighting in Vegas tomorrow. At the MGM. Cory caught the weigh-in on ESPN this morning. Apparently he’s a last minute substitution. It’s a big fight, Moses. A huge fight. It’s the Terry Shaw versus Jordan Jones match-up. But now it’s Terry Shaw versus Tag Taggert.”
My mouth fell open, and I actually pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at it, as if Mikey wasn’t really Mikey and my phone wasn’t really a phone.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” I hissed, and pressed the phone against my ear once more.
“That’s what I said. We’re all reeling. We don’t know what to think, man. He’s fighting, and none of us knew. We’re his team. What the hell is he doing, Moses?”
“I have no idea, Mikey,” I breathed. I felt lightheaded with relief that we’d found him, and sick with dread about what was coming next.
“Should we go? Should we drive to Vegas and just confront him?”
I could tell Mikey was pissed. And confused.
“How hard is it to get close to a fighter at the MGM if you don’t have a pass, if you don’t have clearance?” I asked doubtfully.
Mikey swore, and I nodded to myself. That wasn’t going to work. If Tag didn’t want his team there, they weren’t going to get to him.
“Is everyone there, Mikey, all the guys?” I asked.
“Yeah, everybody but Paulo. But the rest of us are here, Moses.”
“Hang tight. I’ll be there in five.”
I called into the house, letting Georgia know I was heading out for a minute. I wasn’t ready to tell Millie what I’d just learned. I needed to know more. Judging from her attempt to smash the tape recorder, she had reached an emotional peak. Even still, the tape recorder was back on, clearly none the worse for wear. I could hear Tag speaking like he’d never left, and my anger spiked again.
I walked through the doors of the training gym four minutes later and headed for the office. As Mikey had promised, all the guys were assembled, and the footage was cued. It was a media zoo, just like all weigh-ins. The scale was center stage and one by one, each fighter took his position.
I watched as Tag stripped down with none of his usual smirk and swag. He was hard-faced and serious. No flashing dimples, no chest pounding, no nonsense. He stepped onto the scale in nothing but a Tag Team ball cap and a matching pair of fitted nylon shorts with Tag Team emblazoned in yellow across the butt. He stood as his weight was announced and then flexed his arms for the pictures. He looked lean and cut—thin—though that could be from cutting weight to hit the required 205.
“He looks skinny.” Axel confirmed what I was thinking, although skinny was relative. Tag was big and muscular, ridiculously so, but there was something gaunt and hollowed out about his cheeks and hip bones. “His walking-around weight is easily 220 and he’s at 203. What’s he thinking, sucking off an extra two pounds?”
“He hasn’t been in the gym for three weeks, that’s why!” Cory exclaimed.
“And he’s fighting freakin’ Terry Shaw. This could be a bloodbath,” Mikey moaned as we watched Shotgun Terry Shaw step onto the scale, looking surly and sour and cocky as hell. He shot Tag a look of disdain. Tag just ignored him altogether.
“No.” Andy shook his head stubbornly. “Tag knows what he’s doing.” He folded his arms and stared us all down. “We just don’t know what he’s doin’. But I know one thing. I’m goin’ to Vegas.”
“Me too,” Cory said.
“Count me in,” Mikey agreed.
“I’ll drive.” Axel took out his phone as if the decision was made and reservations were in order.
“I gotta tell Millie,” I sighed.
“What you gonna tell her, Moses?” Andy asked.
“Maybe we should go, see what’s up, before you say anything,” Axel suggested. His face was creased with concern and his big arms were folded across his chest. I had noticed that Axel was pretty protective of Millie, and Henry too, and I was pretty sure all the guys were thinking what I was thinking. Tag had run out on Millie. For whatever reason, he’d split, and now I had to tell her.
I shook my head slowly. “No, I can’t do that. I have to tell her we found him.”
Axel shook his head adamantly, like he couldn’t believe any of it, and the rest of the guys kept their eyes trained on the floor.
My phone bleeped, indicating a text message, and I glanced down at it.
Georgia: Call me.
“Give me a second, guys,” I said, excusing myself. Georgia picked up on the first ring.
“Moses?” Georgia’s voice was tight.
“Yeah?”
“I think we know why he left. Come back to Millie’s. You need to hear this for yourself.”