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.”
“Yeah. Not unless you’re throwing someone while you’re spinning.”
“Would I have to punch a bad guy?” Henry asked doubtfully.
“Nah. Judo’s all about throws. An MMA fighter uses a lot of throws and submissions, so judo is a pretty big deal around here,” I said. Henry seemed overly worried about having to punch someone. Which meant I probably needed to teach him how.
“You don’t have to punch anything. Except maybe that bag. Do you think you’d like to punch that bag over there?”
Henry halted and looked suspiciously at the punching bag a couple of feet to the left of where we were standing.
“You could punch the speed bag too. It’s fun. And it doesn’t hit back.”
Amelie was still holding onto Henry’s arm, her stick nowhere in sight. I reached out and gently grabbed her elbow, pulling her beside me so that Henry wouldn’t hurt her if he attempted a jab. I was doubtful Henry had ever punched anything in his life. He was a small, skinny kid, and he clearly had developmental problems. He sounded a little robotic when he talked, and I wondered if he was autistic. On the one hand he could spit out sports trivia like he was a walking record book. On the other, the kid asked for permission to say ass. Not your average teenager.
Henry walked toward the long punching bag, eyeing it like it might transform into something deadly. His left hand darted out and slapped the bag, and he jumped a foot in the air.
Amelie clapped. “Was that you, Henry? I heard that!”
“Try again, Henry. You can kick it too,” I instructed.
Henry’s leg shot out as if he were kicking open a door, and the bag swung back and bumped his upraised leg, sending him sprawling.
“He got me, Tag,” he groaned, and Amelie gasped. I guess I was wrong. Apparently the punching bag could hit back.
“Stand up, buddy. You kicked it hard. You gotta watch out for the swing, make sure you step back a little, time your kicks and your punches.”
Henry rose to his feet as if the bag was going to take his legs out from under him at any minute. He jabbed at it, jabbed some more, kicked a time or two without falling, and then moved onto the speed bag while I threw out instructions. Amelie stayed quiet, listening intently, and I realized that I’d kept my hand on her elbow all along, clutching her to my side as I coached Henry. When Henry seemed to get a bit of a rhythm going on the speed bag, and began chortling happily to himself, she spoke up.
“David?”
I almost looked around to see who she was talking to and then remembered my own name. It sounded different on her lips.
“Yeah?”
“You’re so nice. I didn’t expect you to be so nice.”
“Why?”
“Because all the girls at the bar are either in love with you, and they want to sleep with you, or they hate you, and they still want to sleep with you. I thought you were one of those bad-boy types.”
“Oh, I’m plenty bad. I just try not to be an asshole to people who don’t deserve it. I guess you could say I’m a nice bad guy.”
“I don’t think it works that way,” she said softly.
“Trust me. It does. I’m good with people. But don’t cross me. And don’t cross the people I care about. Or you’ll see my bad side.”
“I’ll remember that,” Amelie said seriously, nodding as if she had been contemplating crossing me only seconds before. The thought of the dainty, blind brunette with the pearly skin and the sweet smile screwing me over was comical.
“You plotting something?” I asked, trying not to laugh.
“I was. But I thought better of it.” She shivered dramatically. “Don’t want to see bad Tag.”
“Bad Tag and Silly Millie.”
“Millie?”
“Doesn’t anyone ever call you Millie for short?”
“No,” she answered frankly.
“Henry and Amelie aren’t names you hear every day. They sound kind of old-fashioned.”
“That’s because we were actually born in the late 1800s, when our names were more popular. We vampires don’t age, you know. And my blindness is just a ruse to make people feel safe.” Her lips twisted in a smirk.
“Is that right?” I drawled, “Well, I’ll be damned. So you and Henry are forever gonna be, what, thirteen and twenty-two?”
“Fifteen. Henry’s fifteen.”
“But you’re actually one hundred and twenty-two?”
“That’s right. We’ll still look this good in another hundred years.” That was a sad thought for Henry, but for Amelie, not so much.
“You’ll outlive us all.”
Amelie’s face fell a smidgeon and her smile slipped. If I hadn’t been looking directly into her face I wouldn’t have seen it. But I did, and I realized Amelie had already outlived someone she cared about.
“Are your parents among the undead too?” I asked lightly, wondering if she would abandon the banter.
“No. My dad isn’t in the picture. Haven’t talked to him in years. My mom died a while back.” She shrugged, the fun completely ruined by reality.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” It was an endearment that I used easily. I’d called more women sweetheart in my life than I could count, but Amelie’s cheeks pinked and her chin dipped almost shyly. People must not call her sweetheart very often. “My dad didn’t handle it very well when I went blind. Two kids with issues was one too many for him, apparently.
“So you take care of Henry . . . by yourself?” I was stunned and tried not to let it show, but she heard it anyway, from the set of her chin and the stiffening of her back.
“Do you really want to know, or are you doubting me?” She turned her face toward me, as if confronting my question head on, and when I stared down at her, I felt a quaking in my chest that was instantly familiar. It was a jumping-off-a-cliff kind of feeling, a heart-swelling, chest-bursting sensation, and I’d stumbled across it a few times in my life.
I felt it when I watched Moses hold his new baby girl for the first time. He and Georgia were so happy, so deserving, and the joy in his face had spilled over and filled my heart with wonder. I felt it two years ago when I came back in the fifth round to win my first big fight. I’ve actually felt it a lot of times over the last few years, seeing Moses at work, seeing people weep at his gift. But the first time that feeling took my breath away was in Venice. It was a year after I’d gotten out of Montlake, eight months since Moses and I had taken off across the globe. I’d been so sad and so lost for so long that I’d gotten used to not feeling anything else. But there, in a little boat in Venice, as I watched the sun set—a fiery, hellish, red ball turning the water and sky into shades of heaven—my eyes had filled up with tears at the violent beauty of it all. In that moment, I realized I wanted to live again. For the first time in a long time, I was glad to be alive.
Looking down into Amelie Anderson’s heart-shaped face, her mouth set in a stubborn line, I had that feeling again. It rushed through me, taking my breath with it.
“I really want to know,” I said, and it came out in a husky whisper.
“We take care of each other,” she said simply. “He helps me with the stuff I have a hard time doing. He even cooks sometimes. I mean, not gourmet, but between the two of us, we get by. I may never truly know if my clothes match, or if the house is actually clean, or if there’s a fly in my soup, but Henry takes as good a care of me as I take of him.”
Right. It was pretty obvious who played parent and who played child. This girl was a surprise a minute.
“Henry and I are a team. You’ve got Tag Team, right? You understand. Everybody contributes something different.”
“Oh yeah?”
“He’s the eyes. I’m the heart. He’s the hands, and I’m the head. That’s what my mom used to say.”
We were silent then, my mind reeling, Henry back to fighting an epic battle with the huge punching bag, and Amelie standing straight and still, listening, as if by doing so she could actually see her brother’s attempt to take down an impossible opponent. What she didn’t know, what she couldn’t have known, was that she’d leveled me. I may have been standing next to her, but I was already falling.
(End of Cassette)
Moses
HE’S THE EYES. I’m the heart. He’s the hands, and I’m the head. The words rang in my ears. Millie could have been describing me and Tag. I was the eyes and the hands—the artist who could see what others could not, what Tag could not. But he was the leader, the head and the heart, and his head and his heart had provided for my eyes and hands time and time again. Tag was all heart, and sometimes it got him in trouble, it got us in trouble, but more often than not, it led us in the right direction. He’d taken care of me. I don’t know if I had taken care of him, though. I hadn’t thought I needed to.
“Why did he leave, Moses? Where did he go? Nobody’s seen him for two weeks. Nobody knows anything. If he was falling for me, like he says, then why did he leave like that?” Millie was close to tears and I had resorted to drawing, my fingers flying over a sketch pad so that I wouldn’t go crazy listening to my best friend saying goodbye.
I’d called Tag’s dad, who called his mom, who in turn called his two younger sisters who were away at school. Millie was right. Nobody knew anything. Nobody had seen or heard from him since he’d left.
“Did he say or do anything that seemed off? Anything that you can think of that might give us a clue where he went?” I asked helplessly. Listening to Tag had filled me with hopelessness. He was clearly telling a love story. And my experience with love led me to believe this story would not end well. Love stories tend to be tragic.
“No. I mean, he had seemed tired, which was unlike him,” Millie answered, interrupting my depressing train of thought. “Tag never seems tired. Have you noticed that? He has more energy than anyone I’ve ever met. But he was tired. He’d been training so hard for the Santos fight. A couple of nights he fell asleep on the couch watching TV with Henry. Once, I woke him up at about midnight because our couch is small and he had to have been uncomfortable. He was disoriented and so out of it that he was slurring his words a little. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was drunk. But he hadn’t had anything to drink. He’s never had so much as a beer the entire time I’ve known him. And he’d been asleep on the couch for three hours.
“I didn’t want him to drive. I told him he was too sleepy to be driving. Even if it was just a few blocks. But he said he was fine. I walked him out to his truck, and he made a joke about the blind leading the blind.” Her voice broke.
“Was that the last time you saw him?”
“No. The last night I saw him he . . . he and I . . .” Millie’s voice trailed off and her cheeks grew suspiciously pink.
Son of a bitch. I didn’t need any further explanation. Once again, I was at a complete loss. I excused myself to call Georgia, and she answered on the first ring, her voice sharp with hope and fear.
“What’s the news?” she said, foregoing a greeting for the obvious. That’s Georgia—take the bull by the horns. It was one of the things I loved most about her, one of the things that had saved us when our own love story took a few tragic turns.
The phrase awakened a memory and instead of answering I said, “Do you know that Tag actually grabbed a bull by the horns once? I saw him do it.”
Georgia was silent for a heartbeat before she pressed me again.
“Moses? What are you talking about, baby? What’s going on with Tag?”
“We were in Spain. In San Sebastian. It’s Basque country, you know. Did you know there are blond Spaniards? I didn’t. I kept seeing blond women and they all reminded me of you. I was in a horrible mood so Tag got this bright idea that we should go to Pamplona for the Running of the Bulls. He said a shot of adrenaline was just what I needed to cheer me up. Pamplona isn’t that far from San Sebastian. Just an hour south by bus. I knew Tag had a death wish. At least he did at Montlake. And I knew he was a little crazy. But he actually waited for the bull to run past him. And then he chased the bull. When the bull turned on him, he grabbed it by its horns and did one of those twist and roll things that cowboys do at rodeos.”
“Steer wrestling?” Georgia still sounded confused, but she was listening.
“Yeah. Steer wrestling. Tag tried to wrestle a bull. The bull won, but Tag got away without a scratch. I still don’t know how. I was screaming so loud I was hoarse for a week. Which was fine. Because I didn’t talk to Tag for two. That son-of-a-bitch. I thought he was going to die.” I stopped talking, emotion choking off my ability to speak. But Georgia heard what I couldn’t say.
“What’s happening, Moses? Where’s Tag?”
“I don’t know, Georgia. But can you come? I need you. And I have a feeling that before this is all over, Millie’s going to need you. There are certain things you can’t talk about with a man. Even if he’s your lover’s best friend. Especially if he’s your lover’s best friend.”