Don't Read in the Closet volume one (11 page)

“Jesse, there
hasn’t been much you’ve tried to do physically that was hard for you. You’re in
good shape. You’re in tune with your body. It should be easy. But that doesn’t
mean it isn’t gonna help.”

“I do like the
way it feels. The movements are almost liquid. Almost think I can use it in the
ring.”

“Yeah? You want
to spar, try it out?”

“I think so.
Who’s around?”

“Bo’s here.”

“He’s just a
baby.”

“Yeah, but you
were a baby once. He’s hungry, like you were. He looks at you sometimes… I
don’t know what that boy’s thinking.”

Jesse raised
his eyebrows. No, Corry didn’t know what that boy was thinking. It would never
cross his mind. Evan would nail it in a New York minute, though.

He went into
the ring, did a few of the exercises he remembered from the day before. Bo
climbed in, handed him a pair of gloves. “What are you doing?”

“Chinese
exercises. For balance.”

“Yeah? Can you
teach me?”

“When I know
more I’ll teach you. I only leaned these for the first time yesterday.”

Bo laced up
Jesse’s gloves, then slipped a pair onto his own hands and held the laces out
to the kid with the towels. He looked up then, and Jesse caught just a glimpse
of that hunger on his face before he frowned, stared down at the floor, did a
few warm up bounces on his toes.

Bo was a
towheaded kid, about twenty-five, with big brown eyes the color of melting
chocolate, and some old scars through his eyebrows, like he’d been knocked
around when he was a boy. He’d been hanging around the gym since he was
fourteen, had seen lots of dreams end, and one, Jesse’s, climb higher and
higher.

Jesse stretched
his back, felt the energy flow up his spine. “Bo, do me a favor? I want you to
try some left hooks, and I’m gonna try and move out of the way using this
Qigong I learned yesterday. Okay?”

“You want me to
really hit you?”

Jesse reached
out, gave him a little tap on the chin. “You think you can, big man?” And he
danced back, out of the kid’s reach.

Bo was short
for a boxer, just five eight, and his reach was always a problem. But he was
game, with a lot of heart, didn’t mind crowding into the danger zones. Jesse
wanted him to move that left arm into the right side of his face, to see if the
little stutter in his eye was still there. He didn’t know how to explain it to
Evan, but it felt like his eye had a flinch when something was moving fast near
his face. He didn’t know if it was from the sucker-punch or from the surgery to
fix the retina, but it seemed to be developing into a reflex, and he needed to
stop it.

They touched
gloves, danced back a step,
then
Bo came at him fast.
He was like a bull, all rush and pounding blows, and Jesse slid away from him,
blocked the blows easily. He let the left hook come close before he moved his
head back, had Bo stop and do it again and again. When they finished, he worked
with Bo for a few minutes more, showed him some tricky inside moves with a
little twist of the hips at the end, so he could spin out of trouble.

Corry sent him
to the stadium to do wind sprints up and down the bleachers,
then
they sat down over lunch to review the training schedule. Corry was eating a
Hoagie. The meat and pickled peppers and roasted tomatoes were sliding out of
the bread, dripping olive oil and oregano all over the napkins. Jesse stared at
it for a long moment,
then
ate his grilled salmon with
some broiled squash on the side.

“So you think
this PT is worth the time
it’s
taking? I hate to have
anything new in the schedule when we’re under six months, but I don’t want you
to fall on your ass, either.”

Jesse pressed
the bandage to his knee under the table. He’d finished the sprints, forty-five
minutes up and down the bleachers, and on the way out of the stadium, he’d
taken a tumble, scraped his knee on the tarmac in the parking lot. It had
happened so fast, just like before, with no warning. He didn’t know how to
prepare when there was no warning.

“Yeah, I think
we better keep going. I told Evan to push harder, make the time count.”

“You were
invited to be a special guest of the Packers, first game of the season. You
want to go?”

“It’s after the
match, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.
September.”

“What do they
want me to do?”

“I think they
want you to talk to kids about sports safety. They’ve got a bunch of their
players doing it, and they want a boxer, a snowboarder, a swimmer. I think they
even asked one of those ice skaters. They don’t want to leave any kids
out,
even the boys want to be ice skaters.”

“Yeah, okay.
Can you send me the info to my email?”

Corry looked
pained, but he nodded gamely. “Oh, fine, fine, you and that email. You’re gonna
make me carry a cell phone next.”

After lunch
Jesse went to the weight room, spent a couple of hours lifting, then he put on
his running gear, shorts and a sleeveless tee and ran across town to the
hospital. He was a couple of minutes early, and Evan was at his desk with an
old man, taking his blood pressure. Jesse went to the water fountain, took a
long drink,
then
leaned back on one of the treatment
tables.

“Son, you’re
not listening to what I’m saying!”

“Mr.
Washington, I am listening. I hear you. But you need to listen to me as well.
This is your blood pressure today. 162/92. Too high on the top and the bottom.
Maybe it isn’t the bourbon or the salt. Maybe you need to get your medicine
adjusted. My point is that ignoring it isn’t going to help it go away.”

“If it kills
me, it kills me.”

“But what if it
doesn’t kill you? What if it just gives you another stroke?”

The old man
stood up, clicked his cane against the floor in a bad-tempered way. Jesse stood
up, held the glass door open for him. The old man looked him up and down when
he limped through the door, one leg dragging behind him with every step. “And
who are you supposed to be?”

“I’m Jesse
James Jones,” he said, and watched the old man’s eyes get wide with shock. He
closed the door behind him, went to the desk and pulled up a chair. Evan was
rubbing his forehead like he had a nagging headache. “So what have you been
doing today?”

He gestured
toward the old man limping down the hall. “Sitting on my ass and listening to
that. Did you smell the bourbon?”

“Yeah, he took
a toot in order to get through his physical therapy.”

“And you? What
have you been doing today?”

“Boxing, wind
sprints at the stadium, weight lifting, and a run. A short one, only a couple
of miles.”

“Good God. You
sure you’re up for more?”

“This is cake
for me. Maybe you better do some Qigong with me before your butt sticks to that
chair.”

“Yeah, maybe I
will. I’ve got a long routine for you, almost two hours.”

“Good. Let’s
push it a bit.”

Evan looked
down at Jesse’s knee. The bandage was four inches square, and some blood had
seeped through, spotting the gauze. “Was it the balance? Did you fall?”

Jesse nodded.
“When I finished the wind sprints at the stadium. I was walking back out to the
car, and I fell over in the parking lot. Tilted to the right, just like before,
and was down before I could catch myself.”

“Remind me and
I’ll put a clean bandage on it when we’re done.” Evan filled a couple of water
bottles, set them on the shelf next to the work area, and put a DVD in the big
screen TV. “Don’t forget the breathing. Synchronize it with the movements.”

Evan meant
business today, Jesse thought, moving through Swimming Dragon. They picked up
speed faster than yesterday, and moved quickly into the more complex forms.
They were nearly two hours in when he felt the ground tilt a bit, and caught
himself with his hands flat on the floor. Evan was right there, an arm around
his waist. “Let’s take a break.”

“I’m okay. We
can finish.”

“No, let’s sit
for a minute. I see what you mean now. It’s just a little bit of drift, but
you’re so carefully balanced, just that small bit throws you off. I bet most
people wouldn’t be falling. You’re just a fine-tuned machine. You’re more
sensitive to something going wrong.”

“It’s enough to
ruin my career.”

“This career,
yeah. But we’re working on it.
It’s
early days. Let’s
just keep with the plan.” Jesse hopped up to sit on one of the treatment
tables, and Evan handed him the water bottle, then climbed up to sit next to
him. He titled the bottle back, took a long drink.

“I like the way
I feel doing this routine,” Jesse said. “It’s smooth, relaxing. I should get a
copy of the DVD so I can practice at home.”

“This one’s
from Gaiam,” Evan said. “Advanced practice. You picked up the beginner moves so
fast, I thought we could go straight into the more difficult moves. Maybe we
went too fast.”

“No, it was
good.”

“We’ve got
hydrotherapy next.”

“Hydrotherapy?”

“Also known as
sitting in a big steel tub of hot water.”

“Now you’re
talking.”

Evan handed him
a pair of swim trunks, put him into a hydrotherapy tank up to his neck, had him
go through some of the Qigong positions and hold them. It felt different moving
through the water, like he was being forced into slow motion.

“Remember we’re
trying to develop alternate pathways in your brain. So we want to give the
nerves lots of different experiences. Your brain bundles experiences together,
forms new connections.”

Jesse worked
for another thirty minutes, then he held up his hands in surrender. “How about
you let me soak in the water for a bit? You can come in, keep me company.”

Evan sighed.
“I’m tired. Maybe I will.” He disappeared, come back wearing a pair of trunks
and dropped some towels on the bench next to the hydrotherapy tank. “I’ll get
my ass kicked for this if my boss finds out, but I can’t think of anything I
want right now more than a nice hot soak.”

He climbed in,
and Jesse enjoyed the view, curly black hair across his ivory chest, down into
the waistband of the shorts. He was lean and smooth, and Jesse wanted to run
his hand over that ivory skin. Evan leaned back, closed his eyes and sighed.
“Oh, man. I needed this. I always feel better after the Qigong, too, but it’s
been a bitch of a day. I got called onto the carpet over the YouTube video.
Upstairs said I should have “sequestered” you. Though how they think I can work
in a closet is beyond me. If anyone asks, we’re sequestered in here, okay?”

“What YouTube
video?” Jesse was feeling fine, the aches and tiredness in his muscles drifting
away in the hot water, the peace and calm from the Qigong smoothing out his
mind.

“Somebody took
a video of you doing the routine yesterday. I have my suspicions
who
the rat-bastard was.”

“Don’t sweat
it. It comes with the territory. How did it look?”

“You looked
hot, almost like you were doing ballet. I bet those Dancing with the Stars
people call you for next season.”

“Who? The
what?”

“Do you even
own a TV?”

“That’s what
sports bars are for.” Jesse rested his arms along the side of the tank, let his
legs drift out, and he captured Evan’s legs between his, pulled him over.
“Sorry you got in trouble.”

Evan smiled,
eyes closed, let Jesse pull him over to his side of the tank. He settled up
against Jesse’s chest. “I have never felt a chest like yours before,” he said,
running his hands over the smooth skin. “It’s like you’re carved out of wood or
something. But warmer. Definitely warmer than wood.” He leaned his head back,
closed his eyes, and Jesse wrapped an arm around his waist, held him still.
“This is nice.”

“Yeah, it is.
What have you got going on later?”

“Nothing.”

“You have a
cat, don’t
you.
”