There’s blood in his teeth, but it doesn’t stop his smile from being so utterly infectious.
“Good job,” I say, nodding, rubbing his shoulders. I look at him in the mirror. We’re in a private room at the back of the basement. Everyone has filtered out now, and a lone man comes in and drops a duffel bag on the ground.
“Your payment,” he says. “Stay down here as long as you like.”
Duncan laughs. “Like hell we’re going to stay down here.”
“Suit yourself, mate. We got showers around the corner, fridge over there, take anything you like. Good fights tonight. You kicked arse, mate.”
“Thanks,” Duncan says, his eyes returning to me in the mirror.
“You enjoyed that, didn’t you?” I ask him. The fights were hard for him in his relatively untrained state, but he still ended up winning through sheer heart and skill.
He took his lumps, though. This fight was far more organized than I had expected… they had a doctor on site in case of injury, not the sort of thing you find usually in a dusty basement cage tournament.
“I did,” he says. I appreciate his immediate honesty. “But not enough.”
“No? You sure?”
“I’m sure, Dee.”
“You were slow.”
He rubs his jaw. “I know.”
“Here as well,” I say, pointing to the blotchy black-and-green bruise he’s got on his ribcage where he took a violent knee.
“Yeah.”
“And here,” I say, bending over him to slap open his thighs. He winces, but as his legs come apart from each other, I see the bruise there, above his knee, from where he had to worm himself out of a leg lock. “These guys weren’t just nobodies. Some of them obviously had training.”
“Well, I won.”
“You did,” I say. “You did good.”
“Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here.”
“You don’t want to shower first? You’ve got blood all over you.”
Duncan looks down at himself as if noticing it for the first time. “Damn,” he says.
“Go on,” I tell him, guiding him down the room toward the back. There are just a few showers side-by-side, nothing luxurious but they’re clean at least.
I watch him as he stands beneath the faucet, water pouring down his muscled body. There’s a weight to his shoulders, something that didn’t used to be there.
He finishes, and I help him get dressed, pull a complaint from his lips: I’m not a fucking cripple, Dee. It makes me laugh.
Then we count the money. It’s all there, fifty-thousand. It’s not going to last forever, but it’s certainly enough for an emergency fund.
“I’ll take you out for dinner,” I tell him. “Anything you want.”
He smirks. “We living large now, are we?”
“You earned it.”
Together we take the steps slowly up the basement. I can see that Duncan’s in pain, even if it would take a two-hour interrogation session for him to admit it.
He tells me he wants a steak, which is pretty much what I expect, and so I take him to a nice place I know nearby my apartment.
The staff look at us funny, of course. Duncan’s bruised visibly on his face, but nobody asks us anything out of politeness, which is good.
After an entirely too-large dinner – Duncan wolfed down his steak, and I settled for a bite of his and some soup and a salad – we leave the restaurant hand-in-hand. It’s almost like we’ve forgotten that we’re not yet at the end of it all. It’s a nice moment of respite, though, just going out for dinner together. It’s something we couldn’t really do very often back home, lest one of Dad’s men be watching us.
The night is chilly, and Duncan draws me into him as we walk toward the car. “Sometimes,” I say, looking up at him. In the harsh yellow street light, the cut of his jaw creates a straight-line shadow on his neck.
“Yeah?”
“Sometimes I feel like I could forget it all, you know?”
“I know.”
I rub my belly, then pull my jacket closed over it. “Have you heard anything from your… fans?”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “I’ve got a guy trying to hack into your father’s email right now, but he says it’ll take time. Called it ‘brute force’ or something.”
“Dad is good with numbers. He’ll have a long password. It’ll take forever to crack.”
“Other than that, nothing. I don’t really talk to them much because I don’t want to be too active, you know? Draw attention.”
“I can’t believe I looked at your fan page on Facebook. I hated reading it.”
“Why?”
“So many girls just… I don’t even know how they get the photos they have of you.”
“They’re photos from my fights,” Duncan says. “Don’t worry, I haven’t been posing for private shoots in secret.”
“I should hope not.”
“Are you jealous?” he asks, teasing me.
“Wouldn’t it make you jealous?”
“If some guy had pictures of you topless, I’d kick his fucking ass.”
“Exactly.”
“And then have a conversation with you.”
“Ha. Don’t worry, I don’t take nude selfies and I never will.”
“You could for me.”
“Yeah… maybe not. I don’t want my photos to live forever in the ‘cloud’ or whatever.”
A loud shout pulls our attention forward, and we see a group of drunk boys walking toward us. They’re swearing and laughing, just having a good time, but Duncan’s grip on my hand tightens.
“Relax,” I say. “It’s a Friday night. You’re still on-edge after the fights.”
He sighs, eases the tension in his shoulders. “You never know, Dee.”
“I hardly think they’re goons my Dad sent. They look like they’re sixteen!”
The boys pass us by uneventfully, spitting out a stream of swear words but otherwise doing nothing much of anything at all.
“See? You need to relax, Duncan.”
“Trust me, I’m working on it. Hard habit to shake.”
“Did you get the uh, you know…?”
“I pick up the gun tomorrow,” he says.
“Will you be careful when you go?”
“It’s all done pretty sophisticatedly. I drop money in a postbox, wait for the postman who is not really a postman. He ‘collects the mail’, then as he climbs back into his truck he drops a parcel. I pick it up, chase after the truck for a bit, and that’s it.”
“That much of a show, huh? Couldn’t you just do it in a dark alley like most people do?”
“Fuck, this way I have deniability. I prefer it this way.”
“Did you thank Fletcher?”
“Of course.”
“Well, the next time you see him, thank him for me, too,” I say.
“Maybe we can all go on a double date sometime.”
He looks at me, and for a moment I think he’s serious but then I see that corner of his lip creep up.
“Yuck, never a double date.”
I hold onto his arm, and together we walk, and he’s lost in thought about something now, but I don’t know what.
A man stumbles out in front of us from around the corner. His eyes are glazed-over, and he almost falls forward toward us. His shoulder knocks mine, pulls a cry from my mouth.
“Watch where you’re going, bitch!” he slurs.
Duncan steadies me, holds me up, looks me in the eyes. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I say. I turn and look at the drunk man still stumbling down the street. “Asshole.”
I take Duncan’s hand, squeeze it. I can see the expression on his face, and am desperately hoping he’s not going to go there.
“I’m okay, really,” I say. “He’s just a prick.”
But before I can stop him, Duncan’s fingers have left mine. He charges down the street, a whirlwind, each step thunderous, and grabs the man by his collar and yanks him into an alley.
“Wait!” I cry, walking after him, shaking my head. I come to the alley and see Duncan has the man pinned against the wall.
He leans forward, says into the man’s ear: “You just knocked into a pregnant woman.”
“Fuck off, cunt,” the man says, and I cover my mouth as Duncan winds up a punch and thumps him in the gut.
I rush forward, shouting “Stop!” and clawing at Duncan’s arms.
But he doesn’t let go of the man. He just keeps him pinned to the wall by the neck, and I swear he is actually growling, like some kind of feral beast.
I go to his side, try to pull his hand off the guy’s neck, but I simply don’t have enough strength.
“Duncan!” I cry, grabbing his face and wrenching it to the side so he faces me. His eyes are wide with a crazy anger. “Stop,” I say, and I stroke his face softly. “You’re overreacting. You’re too on-edge. You need to go home and sleep it off. You get like this after fights sometimes, remember? You’re punch-drunk.”
There’s a moment where he realizes it, seems to be in between two places, and then he lets the man go, his eyes lose their threat, and he’s finally not seeing red anymore.
“Are you okay,” I say to the man.
“Fuck off me!” he croaks, his voice a hoarse whisper. He rubs his neck.
“Let me see your neck,” I say. I pull down his collar, see a bruise forming. “Can you breathe?”
“Yeah, Jesus,” he gasps. “You need to control your fucking dog, lady.”
Duncan is on him again in an instant, and I get in between them and push him off. I point at him. “Stop.”
This time he listens. He ceases his advance, walks away with his hands on his hips, breathing hard.
I return my attention to the man who bumped me.
“What the fuck is wrong with him?” He tilts his head at Duncan.
“You knocked into me with your shoulder,” I say, “And you then called me a bitch, and you’re asking what’s wrong with him?”
He doesn’t reply.
“He could have sent you to hospital,” I say, narrowing my eyes at the man. “You owe me one.”
Distantly, I hate myself for saying that. I feel like my father, collecting favors so I can call them in later.
The man snorts, slides against the wall out from under my now-hard stare. He disappears down the alley.
I turn to Duncan, and fold my arms. “What the hell was that?”
“He deserved worse,” Duncan grunts at me.
“You just way overreacted, do you know that? What if there had been police? What if you were arrested for assault? You don’t even know criminal procedure here, your rights. You’re basically a tourist, for crying out loud!”
I lift my palms up, exasperated, shaking my head.
“You can’t be acting this way! If you get arrested, then word might get back to Dad. Then what? Then he’ll know where we are!”
But Duncan doesn’t reply. He just stares off after the man, nostrils occasionally flaring.
“For God’s sake!” I shout, taking his arm and shaking him. “Are you listening to me?”
He turns to me slowly, and puts his hand on my shoulder. “Are you sure you’re not hurt? What about the baby?”
“I’m fine! He hit my shoulder, that’s all. And you need to control yourself better.”
“Come on,” he says, taking my hand again. “Let’s go.”
“I know you’re just trying to protect me, but you don’t need to get revenge. What made you so angry?”
“That I missed it.”
“Missed what?”
“A few months ago I would have reacted to that before he hit you. My reflexes are shot. I haven’t been training. I…”
“You’re not a fighter anymore, you mean?”
“I’m distracted. I was thinking about babysitters.”
I blink, shake my head. “Babysitters?”
“When we want to go out on a date, we’re going to need to find a babysitter.”
“And?”
“And so I missed him.”
“He caught us both by surprise.”
“That would never have happened before.”
“Things aren’t the same as before. What is with you?”
But he doesn’t reply again, so we just walk to the car in silence, get in. Before he starts the car, I put a hand on his.
“Talk to me, Duncan. I know there’s something more going on. Even before you wouldn’t have just wailed on a guy in the street. What is it? Just come out and say it.”
“I don’t know, Dee.”
“Are you still angry?”
“Not at you.”
“Then what?”
Bright lights wipe over us, and I squint as a white Mercedes pulls out from the space behind us.
“Then what?”
“I’ve felt powerless before, when I was a kid. Then… then I had some power, control over my life. I could control my training. I could control your father, even, to an extent. I could win the fights. I could make you… happy, feel good, feel beautiful. Now… It’s just difficult for me, this uncertainty.”
“I know how you feel,” I tell him. “But we need to take no risks. Nothing we don’t have to. I know it’s not ideal, but it’s the way it is. You shouldn’t be fighting people on the street, anyway. That’s not you, Duncan. You’re not just some street thug. Isn’t that what you told my dad?”
“Something like that.”
“Come on, it’s fine,” I say, slapping his arm. “Let’s go. It’s fine.”