CHAPTER SIX: HUGH MADDOX
I am such a fucking idiot.
What is wrong with me? I come all the way out here to hide, to get away to forget what happened, to make sure no one can ever bring it up again, and here I am almost daring some stranger to guess who I am. Need a clue? Here’s my name! I offered it up as soon as I could tell she thought she knew me from somewhere!
Time to dial it down. Easier said than done around a lovely woman of perfect proportions. Not just that, her personality! It was like someone had made her for me in a lab! The look on her face when she saw my books was priceless. I never understood where the stereotype that strong and tough men couldn’t also be brainy bookworms came from. Even when I was fighting in New York, it’s not like the guys finished sparring and training and then went home to their Xboxes. Most of them craved something mentally stimulating after a day that took such a brutal toll on the body.
Andrew in particular had been a brain. He made me look like I barely even knew how to read. That was the fine line I meant when I talked about inspiration versus intimidation. I would probably never have caught up to Andrew’s formidable intellect, but I was sure as hell going to try.
Then came the fucked up day when he died and there was no way to chase him anymore.
Fast forward a few years and I’ve got some beat reporter in the bed down the hall, falling all over myself to answer my questions. Did I want to get caught? Found out? Revealed? Whenever I stepped out of the octagon I prided myself on how analytical, objective, and empirical I had trained my mind to be.
It’s not doing me much good tonight. All I want to do is rush down the hall, crawl into that bed with her, and take my chances. Maybe she would kick me out, but maybe not.
It’s been so fucking long. It’s an old cliché: I’m a man. I have needs. Boo hoo. Still true, though. Clichés don’t spring up out of nowhere and they sure as hell don’t stick around for centuries because they’re completely false.
There are other ways to meet my needs. I’ll see whatever happens with her tomorrow, and the day after. She really can’t go out in this storm, and it looks like it’s going to be a historic screamer. All I have to do until I can get her out of here is keep my mouth shut. She wants a story? I’ll invent one for her.
I realize that, whatever story she writes, if it gets published, people are going to know someone is out here. The folks down in Wahay already do, of course, but they respect privacy and there’s no way any of them are going to put people on my trail, not without my consent. Consent, which I am now basically giving this beauty by the name of Sam on a silver platter!
Again, I am a fucking idiot.
Before I knew it I’m wrapping my wrists, the old familiar criss-cross pattern that I have done a million times. I’m opening my door and heading down the hall, down the stairs, out onto the back porch in the rain where the heavy bag is hanging from the rafters.
I settle into the old violent rhythm, something I’ll never forget, even if I never threw another punch in my life. Boom, boom, boom. In time with the rain, the thunder, the tumult of the night. Within a minute I’m sweating so badly that I take off my shirt despite the cold.
There is always peace in familiarity. I’ve spent my whole life trying to find out what I should be doing - what I was born for. When I found fighting I knew that was it. Time to call off the search. Even now, I know it as my fists pummel the bag. I begin to mix it up, elbows, knees, shins, palm strikes. This is elegance and mastery of the most brutal sort. But, where I once practiced my art in front of thousands of screaming fans and attracted sponsorship offers like blood attracts sharks, I was now a shirtless no one in a forest, trying, forever trying, to drive the thoughts away.
Andrew stepping into the octagon for the first time, smiling as his name was introduced.
I punch faster and faster. My wrist wraps are coming undone and my wrists are going to be unsteady if I don’t ease up, but I can’t.
Andrew taking the center of the octagon as soon as the opening bell blew. We had prepared for nearly a year for his debut fight. He was more than ready.
I feint, bob, weave, and then slam a shin into the bag so hard that it swings up and nearly hits the rafter to which it is chained.
I can’t think about Andrew anymore. It never leads anywhere good, although it did lead me here to whatever this is...my so-called sanctuary. But I’m still haunted by it, every fucking bit of it. It is hard to find refuge from yourself …. unless you have someone to take you out of the shit hole you created for yourself.
Now this is a welcome train of thought. Sam. Upstairs in bed. I slowed my pace and focused on her. On the way her body had looked as she had twisted her way out of the poncho. On the delicate movement of her throat when she tipped the bottle back. On her insistent but somewhat unsure flirtiness, and how good it had felt to know that she was both interested in her story and in me.
I have everything I need. Money. A home. Solitude. Talent.
Almost everything.
She is so close and it has been so long.
A familiar urge overtakes me and suddenly I’m not hitting the bag anymore.