Authors: A.J. Sand
“Lost?” the speaker continues in a cautious tone, almost like
he’s
the one uncertain of
me.
It’s the wiry guy.
Like you’re just here to fucking give me directions.
“Nope…” I take a few steps back, and it’s less out of fear and more to size them up to figure out who I can take out if this becomes a fight.
When
this becomes a fight. And the threat of violence starts to sober me up as they form an arc around me. Something’s not right. Well, the entire situation isn’t right, but something is really, really wrong.
What the fuck is this?
It doesn’t feel like a robbery because my cell is still in my hand, right there for the taking, and none of them is even glancing at it. This is just a fight. What the hell? Do I give off a this-guy-loves-to-fight pheromone or something? “I’m just waiting on a friend.”
The one with the bandana pulls it off his face and shoots a wicked smile at me. “
Too bad. They won’t find you…” he lilts. He and the pudgy one charge me with every ounce of strength they have, after his dangerous promise, both with fists ready. I toss the bandana-wearer to the ground as I sloppily dodge his shoddy punches, but the pudgy one takes advantage of the distraction and throws three quick right hooks at my jaw. I duck another one of his swings, pivot, and ram an elbow into his nose. The snap I hear is satisfying, as is the blood flow.
Fucker.
While I’m relishing, the
wiry one locks my arms behind my head and knees me in the back, but I slam my heel into his shin and he buckles, screaming out in agony. I’m tackled from the right, my shoulder taking on the brunt of my fall when we tumble to the asphalt. It’s a shock to the system. The pain is intense and piercing, like an ice pick is being jammed into my body, and I press my teeth into my lip to keep from yelling. Then punch after punch pounds into me—head, face, ribs, stomach, back—and I curl into a ball to protect myself as much as I can. I’m pulled up to my feet and my arms are restrained on either side. The wiry guy stands in front of me, taunting me for a few seconds with the threat of a punch, but he slows it down each time his fist is near my face.
“Just do it, motherfucker,” I slur out. I’m dazed
and not at my full potential on account of the alcohol, but I’m exaggerating it a bit. Unknowingly, he’s giving me time to rebuild my strength and map out a strategy. “Just hit me.”
I can’t help but wonder if
Jimmy is behind this, like he was still raging about our fight and decided to ask a few locals to treat me like a piñata. I also think about the irony of just letting him hit me before. I guess I’m getting what I asked for.
This seems like overkill
, though.
The man in front of me
finally takes me up on my request and drives his fists into my torso. My body jolts with each painful punch as my spine absorbs the blows. I harden my jaw when he moves up to my face, my head flopping from side to side. Pain goes in and blood flies out. I turn myself into deadweight, making it harder for the other two to hold me up. As soon as one of them has to adjust, I break free, grab his throat with a vise of a squeeze, and shove him away. I shoot a kick into the groin and the stomach of the one in front of me, and then hammer a torrent of hard left hooks into the nose of the one still holding onto me.
I suck in air by the lung
sful while all three of them are down, and my survival instinct reenergizes me. It’s like playing Whac-A-Mole after that: each time one of them starts to get up, I give him a reason not to. Then I do the same with the next one. My heart is ravaging my rib cage. I’m moving fast, and I expect to tire out soon, but the way my adrenaline is pumping through me, I feel like I can fight forever. I’d rather not press my luck, though, so I stagger-run toward Vegas. My mind tells my body to go faster, but the exertion of the fight finally crashes down on me, and the burn in my muscles is too overwhelming. Something catches my leg and I tumble to the ground, landing hard on all fours. I lose reality to blinding, disorienting pain. Pushing through it, I scramble to get upright but footsteps gain on me, and in an instant, a hit slams into my back, thrusting me down onto my hands and knees again.
One of them
kicks me in the ribs until I flop onto my back. A car door opens nearby, and my whole body seizes when I hear the distinct drag of metal against the asphalt. Then I see it, the glow of a white cylindrical object, and
I know what’s coming.
“Dude…please
…
take my wallet…” I plead with my hands raised as I swing my gaze to the dark frame looming over me. There’s a pipe resting on his shoulder. It’s the wiry guy. He’s a lot bloodier than I am, and rocking side to side. He raises the pipe over his head, and a small laugh escapes him, the moonlight illuminating teeth reddened by blood. Even though he’s clearly in a lot of pain, he holds his posture with the confidence of a batter who knows he’s about to hit one into the stands. The last thing I hear is the soft whistle of the pipe moving through the air as it comes down.
I think someone’s having sex right next to my head, or inside my head, because the headache I’ve got is definitely similar to a headboard slamming into a wall. It’s painful to open my eyes but I do anyway; I need to know which one of my theories is true. Grimy white walls and cheap cracked furniture come into focus, but I’m
wherever I am
alone. The noises are seeping in through the walls from next door.
Wait…where exactly am I?
When I sit up, my muscles protest, and I immediately have to run to the bathroom to vomit. From the looks of things, I must’ve done the same thing before. Recently, too
.
The memories spill in with a swirl of dizziness. I’m in a hoteles de paso, one of those skeevy hourly rate joints you can pay for in cash, with tacky, bright decorations and really, really thin walls.
A
s my vision clears and I catch a glimpse of myself in the cloudy bathroom mirror, I gasp in horror. There’s blood down the front of my shirt. I have that panicked moment they always show in movies when the guy wakes up in a room with a dead body and can’t remember anything, but more memories come rushing in, thankfully. Salon Tigre. That stupid fight with Jimmy. Wandering. Getting jumped by those guys. It’s
my
blood. They beat the shit out of me. I lift my shirt and my chest and torso are covered in ugly bruises and cuts. My face probably looked like a sack of potatoes a few days ago, too.
I need to call a cab
. I remember right then that those were the same famous last words I thought before those guys attacked me. I check my pockets for my cell phone but it isn’t there.
Did they rob me?
I ransack the room and find my wallet on top of the television set, but my cell is definitely gone.
When I step into the hallway, the door to the room next
to mine swings open—where all the action was happening a few minutes ago—and a woman in disheveled clothing rushes by, stuffing cash into her bag. I trail her down a dark, creaky stairwell for the reception desk, where the clerk sits behind a bulletproof glass barrier. Lap of luxury I’ve chosen here. I tap on the glass partition and she slides it open.
“Do you speak English?” I ask the middle-aged woman. My voice comes out hoarse from my ragged throat.
“Sí,” she says, with a cautious smile, “más o menos.”
“How many days have I been here?”
She flips through a large book on her desk and taps a spot where my room number is listed. “Today, make four. You come, bleed
everywhere.
You give money and say no policía. You pay six days. I give you room.”
I gulp down so hard
it ignites more inflammation in my throat.
Four days.
Shit. I must’ve come in after the fight, passed out, and just lost everything in a haze. “Uh…
teléfono, por favor?
”
“Five dollars for five minutes.”
What the fuck. “Take it from what I’ve paid already.” She’s silent as she aims a disapproving glare at me, but she passes a corded handset through the partition, and then I recite for her one of the only phone numbers I ever learned by heart.
A loud knock sounds on the door to my room an hour later
, while I’m sitting on the bed with a ratty towel wrapped around my waist. Drew doesn’t hug me so much as jump into my arms when I let her in, and the clean clothes she’s brought are now a forgotten pile on the carpet.
“We’ve been looking for you for
days,
Jess,” she breathes out in a frightened whisper.
“Thanks for coming.” Exhaustion masks my sincerity, but this is the most relief I’ve felt since waking up.
“Yes,” she says as she spins around, taking in my accommodations, “but what the hell did I
come
to?”
“I have no idea.
I
don’t even remember coming here.”
Her confusion
fades into concern. “You’re bleeding…” Drew’s eyes stretch wider by the second the longer she stares at me. “Actually…you’re
really
hurt. Who did this to you?”
“Some guys beat me up,” I say on the way to the bathroom to
change. Getting dressed is agonizing, and pain erupts at every angle, no matter how slowly and carefully I move. My eyes are watering by the time I’m done. Oh, and blinking, that shit hurts, too.
“Some guys beat you up?” she asks when I walk out again.
“Yeah, but I let them.”
“You let them?”
“Well, just one guy. The others…there were three of them, and they had a weapon.”
“There
were three of them…and they had a weapon? I need a cigarette. You’re driving me to smoke again, you know.”
“You’re gonna keep repeating everything I say?” I smile
and caress her face. “Did Mig bring you? He’s pissed at me, isn’t he?”
“Downstairs in the car, and not pissed. Worried. Feeling guilty about what happened at the bar.”
I hug her, needing to feel her again. Drew is a welcoming fire after a day in the cold. “I wish you were in Texas.”
She lets out a weak giggle. “You called me…”
“I know, but I just needed to hear your voice. I didn’t know you were still
here
.”
“
I didn’t even make it to the airport. When Miguel got back from Salon Tigre, he told me you’d had a rough night and you needed time. When I didn’t hear from you, I couldn’t go.” She pulls away from me and leads me to the bed, where we both sit. “What’s going on with you?”
Shaking my head, I say,
“I guess fighting again has been wearing on me more than I’ve been letting on. My emotions are all over the place. I let some stupid drunk d-bag in a bar push my buttons over it, but it was brewing before he started shit. It’s not like dudebros haven’t been picking fights since forever. It’s been a tough week, and he just hit a raw nerve. Sometimes I feel like no one
really
notices me until I’m hurting other people. They only care when I’m doing the most inhumane thing possible.” I had said once that I was like God when I was in the ring. But he gets to act with impunity and, to me, that is the exact opposite of humanity. I don’t want to be like God. For the moment, the physical pain numbs beneath the emotional one. “At Salon Tigre, it felt like I was back in Glory again, only mattering when I was in the ring. It feels like I’ve become so
defined
by fighting, that it overshadows
me.
And the sick part is that I
need
people to see me and love me, so I just take what I can get. People always say love is a drug, and that makes it a very bad thing, which is why I’m so afraid, Drew, because it’s mine. It’s
my
drug. And I hate myself for needing it so much. I let myself become a monster trying to get it…”
“We all want love
. But what happens out there with those people when you’re fighting—whether here or in Glory—that’s not love. I think deep down you know it’s not, because you wouldn’t have to seek it out like this. You shouldn’t have to make
anyone
love you, Jesse Chance. Anyone who would require you to be more than the beautiful spirit you are, doesn’t know your heart at all and, therefore, doesn’t deserve it. And you are not a monster...I wouldn’t be here if you were.”
“I’m afraid of what I
will be
when I leave here. After this is done.”
“I know what you
are
…” Drew presses her mouth to my cheek, her face wet with tears. “And right now, I just see a man. A man making innumerable sacrifices, so that he can stop the real monsters.”
****
A line of sunlight shoots through the curtain break, and Drew and I can no longer pretend that it’s not morning. We’re staring at each other from opposite sides of the bed back at the hotel in
Centro Historico
, and she’s playing her guitar and making me guess the songs. We’ve been back here a few days, but last night neither of us slept. She probably stayed awake to make sure I didn’t die overnight. I think she has watched me every night. I’m just staring at her to make sure she isn’t a dream. I’m in awe of her, not just her beauty, but also everything she’s done for me so far, and hoping to absorb some of that strength, too.