“Fuck you, Michael,” I mumbled into my pillow. I told my mind to shut the fuck up as I brought the blanket up a little higher and dropped off to sleep.
*****
Still bleary-eyed, I laced up my running shoes and carefully locked my apartment behind me. I couldn’t help but glance at apartment 142 as I went by and realized I was kind of hoping to run into the new neighbor as I took off for my mid-morning run. It had been a week since we met in the street, but I hadn’t seen her again. Sometimes when I would get home, I’d see her lights on but never actually saw her.
I took off running across the street, checking for cars as I went. It was good weather for running, at least. It wasn’t as hot as it had been just a few weeks ago. I turned left and headed out of the neighborhood on my typical route.
My usual three-mile run took me out of the slums and into an industrial district. There were a lot of warehouses and factories that had shut down in the recession, but a few were still open. I knew at least a couple people in my building who sometimes got work in one of them, but the layoffs were frequent, and they’d be right back on welfare a few months later.
At least I wasn’t that bad off.
I had a good deal working for Dordy and Yolanda. I got paid a hundred a fight, win or lose. If I won, I got more. Fighting twice a week put me at just enough to live on and not much more. I could make rent on my crappy apartment, feed myself, and pay for the utilities. I usually had a little left over for smokes and weekly pizza delivery.
I did better than a lot of people I knew, and having any extra money was dangerous for someone like me.
Thinking about my own livelihood made me wonder just how Tria was doing. She had only been around a few weeks; she had told me the night I met her. I wondered how she was adjusting to school, work, and living in a shit neighborhood that was probably very unlike whatever she had at home.
There was a scrawny little tree surrounded by the only patch of real dirt for a mile in any direction. It was the spot that marked my halfway point. I circled wide and then at a slightly faster pace headed back in the direction of my building. Once I crossed the street, I checked my time and walked around the block to cool off before going back inside to down three large cups of water.
I looked over at my hand-me-down rowing machine in the corner of the living room and sighed. I didn’t work out much on fight nights. I’d run early in the day to loosen up but keep myself from doing too much right be
fore a fight. Tonight was going to be a challenge night, too, which always took a lot out of me.
There wasn’t shit to watch on television, and I wondered why I even bothered to steal cable from Krazy Katie. Not that it was really stealing from her; we just kind of…shared it. I brought her smokes when she ran out, and she didn’t respond when I asked her if she minded if I strung another line through our windows. She let me in to do it, so I figured it was okay with her, at least.
Boredom set in, and I was starting to sweat just a little. I ran my hand over my face. My fingers were trembling, and I glanced down at the aging marks on my arm. Boredom was a dangerous mindset, and I had to get myself moving before temptation became more than just an itch in the back of my head. As long as I kept moving, I wouldn’t go searching.
I grabbed my gym bag and headed to the bar early. Dordy and a kitchen chick named Stacy were there, serving a single customer whose name I couldn’t remember, but he was a regular and always hammered. Phil? Peter? Some “P” name, I thought. It was still too early for the after-work crowd to start showing up yet, so he was on his own, muttering bullshit about the upcoming presidential election.
“Hey, Teague!” Dordy called out as I walked in. He rubbed at the inside of a pint glass with a towel. “You’re early.”
“Bored,” I announced. “Figured talking to you was better than talking to myself.”
“You ordering?”
“If you’ll spot me from tonight’s take.”
“No problem,” he said.
Dordy didn’t carry anyone on credit—no fucking way. He let me get by with it on the day of a fight, though, since he would see enough at the door to make it worth his while even if I didn’t show up and he had to jump in the cage himself. The day before a fight, I’d be shit out of luck, but fight days were okay with him.
“Scotch?” Dordy asked.
“Veggie Burger?” Stacy asked. The large, grandmotherly woman stocked them just for me.
“No scotch—just the burger and a beer. Thanks.” I sat down on one of the stools nearby while Dordy drew a Guinness from the tap. I hung out and had a couple drinks while people slowly began to trickle in. The early ones knew who I was and would come over to make small talk before the crowd arrived. A couple hours before the fight, Dordy’s bouncers, Gary and Wade, waltzed in. Gary was just freaking huge height-wise. He had long, grey whiskers hanging from his chin down to his collar and was shaved bald. Wade was a little older, also bald, and used to train for MMA. He wasn’t as physically intimidating, but he was definitely the more dangerous of the two. Gary couldn’t fight for shit, but he was big enough that he rarely ever had to do anything other than stand up straight to get a patron to behave.
“Takedown fights again!” Gary roared in greeting. I fist-bumped him, then went back to nursing my beer. A few minutes later, Wade cocked his head to one side to point at the door, and I followed him out for a smoke.
“Word on the street says you fucked up some guys on your way home the other night.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said, raising my brow as I lit up. “Who said that?”
“One of the guys you fucked up.”
I laughed and took a deep drag.
“He came in here last night saying Takedown Teague broke his nose,” Wade told me. “He thought that as his employer, Dordy ought to pay for it.”