Sideways and Out
Maribel
The sign on the front door says CLOSED, but the lot is full of bikes.
Rook is on the gravel with a folded piece of paper in one hand, checking every man who comes up against a list. Most of the cuts say Black Flag. The others wear colors I’ve seen Torque greet before, men he calls brother even though the patches on their backs say something else.
Money doesn’t get anybody through the door. Nobody walks in off the street.
Rook brings the last two men inside, locks the front door behind them, and disappears down the hall.
The padlock is off the door under the stairs.
I’ve walked past that door every day since Doc gave me the sandals. Tonight it’s open. Men I don’t know head down in twos, but none of them are strangers to Black Flag. Only to me.
Mess works the taps with both hands. Hendrix is on a stool by the basement door with his bad leg out, taking the fight money and checking every face against a second copy of Rook’s list. The bar upstairs is louder than it’s been since I got here.
“What’s down there,” I ask him.
“Fight night.” He doesn’t look up from the money. “Ask your man.”
I find my man in the mat room with his shirt off and Rook wrapping his hands. He sees me in the doorway and his face does something I haven’t seen it do. He looks caught.
“There’s a cage under the bar,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“You fight in it.”
“Yeah.”
“You were going to tell me when?”
He looks at his hands while Rook works. “You’re going to see me different down there.”
“Good.” I mean it. “I want to.”
He looks at me a long time. Then he tells Rook to go tell Steel I’m coming down. Rook goes. Mateo stands up, puts a wrapped hand on the side of my neck, and kisses me once, hard. Then he goes past me toward the stairs.
Steel is on the basement door.
“Santo’s man is still across the street,” I say.
“He can sit there until his ass fuses to the bike.”
“What if he tries to come in?”
Steel looks past me toward the front of the building. “That motherfucker is never getting inside here.”
He steps aside. “Stay where I can see you.” Which from Steel is more like a hug than a command.
I glance around. It’s a basement. It’s a cage in a basement, chain-link on a plywood floor, with lights hung off the pipes and more men than should fit down here. It smells of beer and sweat and money.
Nash stands at a table by the wall with a cash box, a stack of envelopes, and a face that says he’s never lost count of anything in his life. Men go to him. Men leave lighter. Torque is against the far wall with his arms folded, not betting, watching all of it.
There’s a fight going when I come down. I don’t know either of the men in it. One of them goes down and doesn’t get up. The room makes a sound I feel in my stomach, and Nash starts handing out envelopes without looking up.
Then Mateo weaves through the crowd.
The room changes for him. That’s the first thing I notice.
Men move. Men who were yelling stop yelling and start yelling something else, and it’s his name.
He goes into the cage and the door shuts behind him.
My man stands there with his hands up in the wraps, and he doesn’t look at anybody. He looks at the man across from him.
I’ve seen him without a shirt. I’ve had my hands on every one of those tattoos. This is different. Upstairs he holds all of it still for me. Down here he’s going to let it go.
Steel comes and stands next to me. He doesn’t say anything until the bell.
“Watch his feet,” he says.
I watch his feet. The other man comes at him and Mateo isn’t there anymore. He’s moved a step and turned. The man goes past him, and Mateo hits him on the way by so fast I don’t see it, just the man’s head snap.
“He didn’t back up,” Steel says. “He went sideways. You back up, you’re still in front of the man. Sideways, you’re gone.”
“Sideways.”
“That’s your whole life. How you keep your choice. Sideways and out.”
I nod. I’m watching Mateo. The other man is bigger and it doesn’t matter. Mateo isn’t angry. That’s what I can’t stop looking at. There’s nothing on his face at all.
He waits. The man swings. Mateo makes him pay for swinging, and then he waits again. He’s not fighting the way I thought men fought. He’s working.
“Watch his hips,” Steel says.
I’ve been watching his hips. I’ve been watching his hips for a while now. I don’t think Steel means it the way I’m doing it.
“He turns from the hip. The arm’s just the end of it. You’ve got no arm on a man his size, but you’ve got a hip.” Steel’s voice doesn’t change. “That’s where the space comes from.”
“Hips.”
“Maribel.”
“I’m watching.”
“Remember what I said about Ortiz’s dick.”
“I was thinking about his shoulders.”
Steel looks at me.
“Mostly.”
“Jesus Christ.” He looks back at the cage. “Watch the fight.”
I watch the fight. The man gets Mateo against the fence. For one second the whole room goes up, and my hand grabs Steel’s arm before I know it’s moving.
Steel doesn’t move his arm. “Wait.”
Mateo puts his hip into the man and turns him off the fence, and now it’s the man’s back on the chain-link. Mateo hits him in the body. He hits him again in the same place. The man’s hands come down to cover it, and Mateo’s already going where the hands used to be.
I let go of Steel’s arm.
“That’s the lesson,” Steel says. “He turned the man off the fence with his hip. Not his hands.”
“I saw.”
“You saw something.”
I saw everything. I saw the sweat down the middle of his back and the shark on his shoulder going crooked when he turned and his whole body doing the thing it does, which is exactly what it wants.
He’s gentle with me because he chooses to be.
I knew that. I didn’t know what it looked like when he chose the other thing.
Then he looks at me.
He’s got the man on the fence and he looks across the cage through the chain-link, straight to where I’m standing next to Steel, and I know what he’s checking for. He wants to know if I’m scared.
I’m not scared. I’m the opposite of scared. I don’t hide it. I let him see exactly what’s on my face.
Something changes in the way he’s standing. He doesn’t get stupid. He doesn’t play to me. He just goes back to the man on the fence and finishes it, cleaner and faster than he was going to. When the man goes down and stays down, Mateo isn’t looking at the man.
He’s looking at me.
The room loses its mind. Nash starts moving envelopes. Torque pushes off the wall and nods once at the cage.
Steel says, “That’s how it’s done,” and it’s the most words of praise I’ve heard out of him for anybody, and it isn’t for me.
Mateo comes out of the cage. His mouth is bleeding at the corner. His chest is heaving. His hands are still up in the wraps. Men are slapping him on the back and he doesn’t feel any of it. He comes through them to me.
He stops close, but doesn’t touch me. He’s got sweat and somebody else’s blood on him. He smells of the cage, and I want him so bad I can’t get a full breath.
“You watched,” he says.
“I watched.”
“You liked it.”
“Yes.”
He looks at my mouth. I look at his.
“Steel,” he says, without looking away from me. “Hold my envelope.”
“Take your time,” Steel says, to nobody, and goes back to the door.