I WAS PARKED in front of Amelie’s house Monday morning, waiting for Henry to leave for school. I’d coaxed the information out of Robin when she came to pick up Henry from the bar, determined to figure out who had bruised up his face. Henry had gone to the bathroom to relieve himself of a bladder full of Sprite, and I’d grilled her. I hadn’t said anything to Millie that night or even at the gym Saturday, but it wasn’t okay to ignore it, and the thought of someone making Henry’s life miserable, of someone putting their hands on him, gave me the itch to hurt people. Bullies and bitches. Hated ‘em. So I took it upon myself to intervene, beyond just teaching him a few moves at the gym.
Robin said Henry walked to and from school most days. It was only a few blocks, and sometimes Millie walked with him. He went to regular classes in a regular high school and, according to Robin, he got decent grades. Apparently Millie was in frequent contact with his teachers and was on a first-name basis with the administration. I wondered how much he participated in his classes and how well he got on with the other kids. Robin said he didn’t have any friends that she knew of. Judging from his lip, he was getting some attention from someone. I told Robin I would handle it. She seemed a little surprised and then shrugged.
Henry left the house at seven-thirty, and I was idling at the curb, my truck warm, two cups of coffee in the drink holders. I didn’t know if Henry liked coffee, but I did. I felt like a creeper, waiting at the curb for a kid, but I rolled down my window and greeted him easily and asked if I could talk to him for a second.
“And I’ll take you to school so you won’t be late,” I added when Henry looked at his watch.
He smiled widely, like my presence was welcome, and trotted around to the passenger door without protest. I made a note to talk with Henry about stranger danger and creepers. He shrugged his back-pack to the floor and took the coffee I handed to him with a grateful groan. I chuckled and we sat, doctoring our brew for a few minutes before I jumped into the conversation that needed to be had.
“Henry? You need to tell me what happened to you. Why was your lip swollen? And who put that bruise on your cheek?”
Henry blushed a deep crimson and choked a little on his coffee. He set it down and wiped the back of his hand across his lips uncomfortably. I felt my temperature rise a notch.
“You know, the reason I wanted Millie to bring you to the gym was so I could teach you how to defend yourself. But that’s going to take a while. And in the meantime, I want to know if someone is giving you trouble at school.”
Henry wouldn’t look at me.
“Henry? Whose ass do I need to kick?”
“You can’t.”
“I can’t what? Kick a giant’s ass?” I said softly, remembering his cryptic talk of giants.
“Not a giant. A girl,” Henry whispered.
“A girl?” I wouldn’t have been more surprised if he told me Millie had punched him in the face.
“My friend.”
I shook my head. “No. Not a friend. Friends don’t smack you around.”
Henry looked at me and raised his eyebrows doubtfully. Touché.
“Well, they don’t smack you around unless you ask them to,” I amended, thinking of all my friends at the gym who regularly slapped me around.
“What did you do?” I asked, trying to understand. “Did you say something that upset her? Or is she just a bully?”
“I told her she was like a sumo wrestler,” Henry said softly.
“You said that to her?” I yelped. “Ah, Henry. Don’t tell me you said that to her.” It was all I could do not to laugh. I covered my mouth so Henry wouldn’t see my lips twitching.
Henry looked crushed. “Sumo wrestlers are heroes in Japan,” he insisted.
“Henry,” I groaned. “Do you like this girl?”
Henry nodded.
“Cool. Why?”
“Sumo wrestlers are powerful,” Henry said.
“Henry, come on, man. You don’t like her because she’s powerful,” I insisted.
Henry looked confused.
“Wait. You do?” Now I was confused.
“The average sumo wrestler weighs over 400 pounds. They are huge.”
“But she’s not huge, is she?”
“No. Not huge.”
“Does she look like a sumo wrestler?” I asked.
Henry shook his head.
“No. But she’s big . . . maybe bigger than other girls?”
Henry nodded. Okay now we were getting somewhere.
“So she punched you when you told her she reminded you of a sumo wrestler.”
Another nod.
“She blacked your cheekbone and split your lip.”
Henry nodded again and smiled slightly, as if he was almost proud of her.
“Why did you say that, Henry? She obviously didn’t like it.” I couldn’t think of a girl who would.
Henry gritted his jaw and fisted his hands in his hair, obviously frustrated.
“Sumo wrestlers are awesome!” he cried.
“Hey man, I get it. Talking to girls is hard. I said all kinds of stupid things the first time I walked Millie home. Luckily she didn’t punch me.”
“Amelie isn’t a fighter!” Henry said, and laughed a little, releasing his hair and taking a deep breath.
“You’re wrong about that, buddy. She’s a fighter. She’s just a different kind of fighter.”
We were both quiet for a minute, mulling that over.
“I l-l-like her,” Henry stuttered sadly, as if such a simple statement was so much harder than spitting out trivia. And maybe it was.
“Because she’s powerful,” I repeated, hoping he’d give me something more.
“Yes.”
“And has she been nice to you? Before she hit you in the face, I mean.”
“Yes.” Henry nodded vigorously. “Like a bodyguard.”
“She looks out for you?”
Henry nodded again.
I felt light-headed with relief and I started to laugh. “So nobody, no giants, no jocks, nobody is pushing you around?”
Henry shook his head slowly.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I messed up.”
“And I’m going to help you fix it, man,” I said suddenly, shifting my truck into drive and pulling away from the curb.
Henry pulled on his seatbelt as if he were about to go for a wild ride.
I slid into the parking lot in the front of the school, turned off the ignition and climbed out. Henry was staring at me, his eyes huge.
“Let’s go, Henry. I’ll help you smooth it over with your friend. Come on!”
Henry walked beside me, holding onto the straps of his back-pack like he was getting ready to parachute from a plane. His face was grim.
“You can do this, Henry,” I encouraged. He nodded once, but his eyes stayed forward. A few people stared, but the hallways were thick with kids, and, for the most part, the only heads that turned were of the female variety. I would have felt flattered, except everybody looked like they were about fourteen, especially the guys. It was weird. I thought I was such a badass in high school. I thought I was a man. These kids looked like they still secretly sucked their thumbs.
Henry stopped suddenly, and I laid a hand on his shoulder. He was shaking so hard he was vibrating. He pointed toward a girl standing alone next to a row of red lockers.
“Is that her?” I asked.
Henry nodded, still staring. I choked, swallowing my laughter. She wasn’t huge at all. But she was Japanese.
She was short and softly rounded, maybe a little bit chubby, but most of her weight was in her chest, which told me a lot about where Henry’s attention had been. Henry continued toward her and then stopped next to her, his eyes darting between the lockers beside her head and my face. He looked desperate.
The Japanese girl stared at me and raised one eyebrow expectantly. She had a row of loops through that eyebrow, a tiny diamond in her nose, and two rings through her bottom lip. Her ears were practically bedazzled.
“I’m Tag Taggert.” I stuck out my hand and gave her a smile of dimpled sincerity. It was my money grin.
“Ayumi Nagahara,” she answered, extending her small hand. I almost laughed. Her voice was impossibly sweet and high.
I gave her hand a brisk shake and released it. Then I folded my arms and got serious. “Henry likes you. He thinks you’re amazing. He’s told me all about you.” Both eyebrows shot up, and I had a feeling it had more to do with Henry confiding in me than the fact that he liked her.
She looked at Henry for a minute, her expression softening, and then looked back at me. Henry leaned his forehead against the lockers as if the whole conversation was making him dizzy.
“He’s sorry, Ayumi. He wasn’t trying to infer that you are like a sumo wrestler. He was trying to tell you he reveres you, the way the Japanese revere their wrestlers.”
Henry started to nod, his head banging against the locker. I put my arm around his shoulders and pulled him back just a bit so he wouldn’t knock himself out.
“However, he does think you’re tough. You obviously know how to throw a punch.” I looked pointedly at Henry’s face and Ayumi blushed a deep, ruby red. I figured I didn’t need to say anything more on that subject. I just hoped she’d think before popping poor Henry again. Because girl or not, she couldn’t go around slugging people. Especially people like Henry. “And anytime you want to come and hang out with us at Tag Team, me and Henry, you can. A friend of Henry’s is a friend of mine.”
“Okay,” she squeaked, and I tried to imagine her angry enough to double up her fists and swing. Henry must have really set her off.
The bell rang and Henry jumped. Lockers slammed, and kids started to clear the hall.
“See you at the gym after school Henry, okay?”
Henry nodded, his face relaxing into a smile. His color was returning to normal, and his grip on his back-pack had eased.
I tousled Henry’s hair, giving him a one-armed man hug, and as I walked away, I heard him rattle off my record to his little friend.
“David ‘Tag’ Taggert, light heavyweight contender with a professional record of eighteen wins, two losses, ten knockouts.”
“THERE’S NO WAY you can support Henry on a dancer’s wage,” I said. Even the wage I’d moved her up to. I was walking Millie home again, like I’d done every night she’d worked for the last two weeks. I still hadn’t found a replacement for Morgan, and I was still working too many hours at the bar. But I hadn’t minded it at all, and the reason walked beside me.
“No. There isn’t. But lucky for us my mom planned well. She had a life insurance policy, a good one, and the house was hers, free and clear. It’s been in her family forever. And my dad gave her a chunk of money—maybe you’ve heard of him. Andre Anderson? He played for the San Francisco Giants. He was a first baseman. I don’t know what he’s doing now.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said, surprised. “I do remember him.”
Amelie nodded. “We think that’s why Henry became so fixated on sports. He was only five when my dad split. You know how players study game film? Well, Henry does that. My mom had discs made up of all the video, all the recordings of my dad’s games, as much as she could get her hands on. Henry would sit and watch, endlessly. He still does. He can quote entire innings. It’s crazy.”
“So why do you dance?” I hadn’t meant to ask. It just came out, the way most things usually did. If I felt something, it eventually worked its way from my gut to my throat and out my lips.
“Why do you hit people?” she asked. I didn’t bother to defend the sport. I did hit people. That was a big part of it, and it was silly to argue about it.
“I’ve spent my whole life fighting.”
“Your whole life?” Amelie asked doubtfully.
“Since I was eleven,” I amended. “I was the happy-go-lucky fat kid on the playground that was fun to laugh at and easy to mock. The kid that other kids taunted. And I would laugh it off, until one day I’d had enough, and my happy-go-lucky slipped and became happy-don’t-likey.”
Amelie giggled softly and I continued. “That day, I used my fists and the anger that had been building for five, long years since Lyle Coulson had said I was too fat to fit in the little kindergarten desks. It didn’t matter that he was right. I was too fat to fit in the little desks, but that only made me angrier. The fight wasn’t pretty. I only won because I laid on Lyle and trapped his skinny arms beneath me and wailed on his mean, red face. I got sent to the principal’s office for the first time ever, and then I was suspended for fighting. But Lyle Coulson never bothered me again. I learned I like to fight. And I’m good at it.”
“Well, there you go.” She shrugged. “We’re not so different. I like to dance. And I’m good at it.”
“I don’t like you dancing at the bar.”
She laughed—a sudden, sparkling eruption that created a white plume in the frigid air and had me staring down at her upturned face, marveling, even though I knew I was about to take some heat. It was my bar, after all. I was her employer. It was my freaking pole, for hell’s sake.
“What don’t you like? David Taggert, are you a hypocrite? You aren’t. I know you aren’t.” She was smiling, but not up at me, like other women did. She was smiling straight forward, at no one and nothing, and I felt an ache in my chest, a warning note. She would never smile at me like other women did. Was I okay with that? Because if I wasn’t, I needed to back the hell off. I was getting personal.
“Nah. You know what I mean. Why do you dance in a smoky bar, spinning around a pole, wearing next to nothing, for money that isn’t all that good? You’re a classy girl, Amelie, and pole-dancing just isn’t very classy.” Backing off wasn’t my style.
Her smile was gone, but she didn’t look angry. She stopped walking, her stick extended like she was strolling with an imaginary pet. Then she pulled the stick upright and tapped it sharply on the sidewalk.
“See this stick?”
I nodded and then remembered she couldn’t see me. “Yeah.”
She pushed it toward me and it knocked against my shoulder. “Being blind comes with a stick. Not a cute golden retriever. A stick. But this stick means I can walk down the street by myself. I can make my way to the store. It means I can go to school, walk to work, go to the movies, go out to eat. All by myself. This stick represents freedom to me.” She took a deep breath and I held mine.
“I guess I just replaced the stick with a pole—and when I dance, for a few hours, several nights a week, I’m living my dream. Even though it may not look that way to you. My mom wouldn’t have liked it. You’re right about that. But she isn’t here. And I have to make my own choices.”
Amelie stopped talking and waited, possibly to see if I was going to argue. When I didn’t, she continued.
“I used to dance and do gymnastics. I used to leap and turn. I could do it all. And I didn’t need a pole. Just like I used to walk down the street and chase my friends and live my life without my stick. But that isn’t an option anymore. That pole means I can still dance. I don’t need to see to dance in that cage. If that means I’m not a classy girl, so be it. It’s a tiny piece of a dream that I had to give up. And I’d rather have a piece of a dream than no dream at all.”
Well, shit. That made perfect sense. I felt myself nodding again, but punctuated it with words. “Okay. Okay, Millie. I sure as hell can’t argue with that.”
“So now I’m Millie?”
“Well, we’ve just established that you aren’t a classy girl,” I teased, and her laughter rang out again, echoing in the quiet street like a faraway church bell. “Amelie sounds like an aristocrat, Millie sounds a little more down home. A girl called Millie can be friends with a guy named Tag.”
“David?”
“Yeah?”
“I have a new favorite sound.”
“What’s that?”
“The way you say Millie. It shot straight to the top of my list. Promise me you’ll never call me Amelie again.”
Damn if my heart wasn’t pounding in my chest. She wasn’t flirting, was she? I couldn’t tell. All I knew was that I wanted to call her Millie again. And again. And again. Just because she asked me to.
“I promise . . . on one condition.”
She waited for me to name my price, a small smile tiptoeing across her mouth.
“I’ll keep calling you Millie if you call me Tag,” I said. “You callin’ me David makes me feel like you expect me to be someone I’m not. The people I care about the most call me Tag. That’s what fits.”
“I like calling you David. I think you’re classier than you give yourself credit for. And everyone calls you Tag. I want to be . . . different,” she admitted softly.
I felt a slice of pain and pleasure that had me holding back and leaning in simultaneously, but I pushed the feeling away with banter, the way I usually do.
“Oh, I’m very classy.” She laughed with me, the way I wanted her to. “But you bein’ special and different has nothing to do with what you call me, Millie. But you can call me any damn thing you want to.”
“Any damn thing doesn’t have the same ring as David, but okay,” she quipped.
“You’re a smart aleck, you know that, right?”
She nodded, grinning and gave my nickname a shot. “So, Tag.”
“Yeah, Millie?”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday. Do you go to church?”
“No. You?” I was guessing she did. Amelie was full of contradictions. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if she was a pole-dancing church-goer.
“In a manner of speaking. Church is hard for Henry. I could go alone. He’s fine at home by himself for a little while, obviously. But when I was younger, my mom would try and take us, and when Henry would get agitated or start making too much noise, she would take us out. That’s when I discovered one of my favorite sounds. You want to hear it?”
“Now?”
“No. Tomorrow. Eleven a.m.”
“At church?”
“At church.”
Well, damn. Maybe I should go to church. Work on saving my soul. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Her smile knocked me over, and I mentally kicked myself. I was spending too much time with her, and the more time I spent, the harder it was to keep my head on straight. Before I thought better of it I spoke. “We’re just friends, you and I, right Millie?”
The smile wobbled and Millie reached out for her gate, feeling for the latch as if she needed something to hold onto while I kicked her in the stomach.
“Yeah. Why would I ever presume to be more?” she asked, her voice light. The gate swung open and without turning toward me again, she walked toward the front door, barely using her stick.