Montaine (12 page)

“But the doctors got him
breathing again. You said yourself that Oscar is as tough as they come. He will
recover. Don’t lose hope yet.”

Trent chuckled ruefully.
“Hope, huh? When has hope ever saved anyone? There was a time when I was naïve
enough to think that way too. But I outgrew it. So should you, Kat, for your
own good.”

His words pierced my
heart with a bitter sting. He spoke to me like I was a child or a fool.

“You’re being cruel.” I
swallowed back the tears that threatened to spill down my cheeks.

“It’s not cruelty. It’s
reality. If you always expect the best, then you’ll never be prepared for the
worst. People will use you and exploit you. Those you trust most will betray
you without a second thought. You have to be ready, or you’ll never survive.”

“This isn’t about Oscar
at all, is it? It’s about Kill.”

“Yeah, maybe it is.” He
paused for a full minute. “I’ve been good to him. I handed him a career when he
was struggling. I just don’t understand what he wants from me.”

“He doesn’t want anything
from
you. He wants to
be
you. Don’t you get it?” Now I sounded
condescending. I checked myself and relaxed my tone. “You told me that Kill was
the star when you two were in college together. He was the one destined to do
great things. Then you surpassed him. He never got over it. He never stopped
imagining himself as the big shot, the leader. When you were arguing that night
in the office, you said that he was jealous. You were right. He is jealous. He’s
jealous of
you
. He envies your life. He wants your life. That kind of
jealousy can be dangerous.”

Trent knit his eyebrows
in thought.

“You really think so?”

“I do. You have this idea
that you owe him some debt of honor because he helped you fifteen years ago. He
didn’t do anything that a hundred other people wouldn’t do for their best
friends. And if you ever did owe him a debt, you paid it back tenfold. It’s
time to let him go. People change. Friendships change. The past is the past. If
you cling too tightly to it, you may only succeed in destroying the present and
the future.

My words hung heavily in
the midnight silence.

“You’re smarter than you
look, Kat Raney.” His lips parted in a sly smile, a shallow dimple popping into
his unshaven cheek.

“Thanks. I wish I could
say the same.”

He laughed and shifted
higher up on my body until our faces were even. He kissed me long and slow.
With his fingertips, he brushed my disheveled hair back from my forehead and
cupped my cheek within his palm. He kissed my temples, the tip of my nose, and
my chin. He kissed the shadow beneath my ear and the hollow between my neck and
shoulder. I closed my eyes, and he lightly kissed each of my eyelids as my
lashes fluttered from the warm tickle of his lips. He rested his cheek against
mine, the coarse sandpaper of his stubble rubbing against my skin with a
pleasing roughness.

I love you
, my soul spoke softly while my voice remained silent.
I placed my hand on his smooth back. My heart already rested firmly within his
grasp.

I switched the plastic
bag of groceries to my other hand and knocked on the white aluminum screen door
of a row house in Queens. A red plastic tricycle, faded from the sun and rain,
sat on the front stoop next to a statue of the Virgin Mary and a sleeping orange
cat that flicked its tail now and again as it dozed.

“Kat! Come in.” Esmeralda
propped open the screen door and waved me inside. I stepped over the threshold
and heard the sounds of cartoon chatter from the living room.

“I brought you some
things. I figured you wouldn’t have time to get to the store.” I held out the
plastic bag, filled with essentials like bread, milk and eggs, along with a few
candy treats for the kids.

“Oh my god, thank you.”
Esmeralda wrapped my shoulders in a tight hug and took the bag from my hand. I
followed her into the kitchen as she spoke over her shoulder. “And thank you so
much for agreeing to watch the kids. I can’t bring them to the hospital…I don’t
want them to see their daddy that way…but I also want to be there when Oscar wakes
up.”

I could tell from the
dark circles under her eyes that she had been getting very little sleep. I knew
that she had been keeping near constant watch at her husband’s bedside since
the fight thirty-six hours earlier, sleeping in fits and starts in an armchair.

“It’s no problem at all. If
there is anything I can do to help, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

She poured a mug of
coffee from a pot on the counter and handed it to me. I sat at the kitchen
table, a rickety dinette that was half covered in sheets of paper with children’s
crayon drawings.

“There is still no change
with Oscar.” She leaned against the stove and smoothed tendrils of long hair
that had escaped from her haphazard bun. “The doctors say that he is safe for
the moment, but they won’t know more until he wakes up. The damage to his neck
is bad. I saw x-rays.” She gestured with her chin toward the living room as she
picked up a mug from the counter and took a slow sip. “I haven’t told the kids
anything yet except that Daddy has to stay in the hospital for a little while.”

A little girl ran into the
room, her bare feet slapping on the scuffed vinyl flooring. She wore a
nightgown covered in rainbows and unicorns. In the crook of her elbow, she
clutched a rag doll with black button eyes and yellow yarn for hair.

“Mommy, can I watch my
show? Hector says I can’t.” She rubbed one eye sleepily with the back of her
hand and peered curiously at me with the other.

“Lily, this is Kat.
She’ll be watching you and Hector this afternoon while I visit with Daddy at
the hospital.”

“Hello,” Lily said shyly.

“It’s nice to meet you,
Lily.”

She turned to her mother.
“When do I get to see Daddy?”

“Soon, baby girl.”
Esmeralda spun her toward the living room and patted her lightly on the head.
“Now go tell your brother that I said you can watch your show, ok?”

Lily smiled
mischievously.

“Mommy said so!” she
shouted at the top of her lungs, the sound receding as she sprinted into the
living room.

“They can be a bit of a
handful sometimes.” Esmeralda gave a closed-lip smile. “Oscar’s mother is at
the hospital with him right now.” She shook her head and took another sip of
coffee. “I don’t know what we’ll do if he’s really badly hurt. I’m trying not
to think about it yet. I never wanted him to do this fighting. He was a boxer
when we first met, but then he gave it up when we got married and had the kids.
I thought it was out of his system.”

 “How did he get involved
with the underground ring in Brooklyn?”

“Trent.” She pulled a
chair out from the table and sat down with a tired huff. “Oscar was training at
his old gym. Trent happened to be there too. When the recession hit, Oscar was
in and out of jobs. He worked in construction, and the downturn hit hard.
Suddenly, he couldn’t find steady work anywhere. He had this idea that he could
start fighting again. I humored him. I didn’t think he would actually do it. I
didn’t want him to do it. But Trent can be very convincing. I guess you know
that.”

I lowered my head, trying
to hide the blush that I felt spreading across my cheeks. I cleared my throat
and raised my head again.

“Why didn’t you want
Oscar to fight?”

She paused and tapped her
manicured fingernails against the side of her mug.

“It’s very difficult to
watch the person you love get punched and pummeled on a regular basis. Every
time he gets hit, I feel it myself, in my bones and my flesh. I also knew that
he wasn’t the fighter that he once was. I feel terrible for saying it, but it’s
the truth. When we met, he was a young, brash, devil-may-care stud with supreme
confidence. But he changed once he had the weight of a family on his shoulders.
I work on and off, but my jobs are never enough to support us. Oscar bore the
brunt of the pressure. It made him careful and wary in the ring. It made him
nervous. It stripped him of the belief that he would always win because life had
since taught him otherwise.”

The germ of an idea
formed in my brain as Esmeralda spoke. I thought of the fighters that I had
seen swarming around that Brooklyn warehouse, all from different backgrounds
and walks of life. I also thought of the family members who trailed them,
cheered them, and suffered with them through losses and injuries. Each fighter
had a backstory, a reason that he decided to risk his health and safety for the
promise of ready cash. Some were thrill-seekers like Trent, but others were
family men like Oscar who depended on their fighting abilities to keep food on
their tables and roofs over their families’ heads.

Telling their stories
could make for exactly the kind of unconventional journalism that
KTFO
was seeking. It was exactly the kind of edgy, outside-the-box story that could
land on the cover of the magazine.

I rifled through my purse
and drew out a thin marble notebook and a pen.

“I’m sorry. I have kind
of a strange request, Esmeralda.” She raised her eyebrows and watched as I opened
my notebook and clicked my pen. “I was wondering if I could tell your story.
For the magazine, I mean. There is this contest, and the winner will be on the
cover of the next issue.

She looked skeptical and
pursed her lips.

“I can change the names
and details so no one will recognize you,” I continued. “I really believe that
stories like yours will resonate. Sports magazines always glorify athletes, but
they rarely pay any attention to the people on the sidelines. We have to know
those stories in order to get the full picture of what the sport means. That’s
the full picture that
KTFO
needs. I think we could really make a
difference.”

I sat with my pen poised over
the notebook page. I figured she would either agree or throw me out of her
house.

She stared into her
half-filled mug. A clock in the shape of a sun clicked loudly into the silence
from the opposite wall. The high-pitched voice of cartoon chatter and Lily’s
light giggling wafted in from the living room.

“Ok,” she nodded. “I have
twenty minutes before I have to head back to the hospital. Just ask me whatever
you want to know.”

For the next twenty
minutes, I furiously scribbled notes as Esmeralda told the story of her life
with Oscar, from their first date at a pizza parlor to the anxious vigil at his
bedside that had briefly ended earlier that morning and was ready to commence
anew that afternoon. I felt that I grew to know Oscar through her stories and
to understand the depth of their love and their devotion to one another. I also
got a sense of the profound worry that she felt every time he stepped into the
ring and the terror that she must have been experiencing behind her calm face as
he lay fighting for his life in that hospital bed.

Esmeralda turned to check
the clock behind her head.

“Well, it’s time for me
to go.” She placed her palms on the table and pushed herself up from her chair.

“Thank you so much for
this, Ezzie. I’ll do your story justice. I promise. I’ll do Oscar justice.”

She nodded sadly.

“I want you to know
something,” she said. “I don’t blame Trent for any of this. I want Trent to
know that as well. He has helped us a great deal, and I don’t forget that. He
has been a true friend. Oscar knew what he was doing when he stepped into that
ring.”

I closed my notebook and
set my pen on top. “Trent blames himself. He thinks that he should have done
more to stop the fight.”

“He couldn’t have stopped
it. Oscar wouldn’t have let him. I know my husband.” She gave a thin
half-smile, the corners of her mouth turned inwards. “Tell Trent that it’s
alright.”

“I will.”

She grabbed a purse slung
over the back of a chair and checked its contents, slipping her phone into an
interior pocket.

“I know a few other
people you might want to talk to. For your story, I mean. I can put you in
touch.”

“That would be great.” I
stood and hugged her. She was a good five inches shorter than I was, and her
shoulders felt slumped and fragile.

“Keep an eye on those
little terrors.” She jutted her chin toward the living room and winked.

The screen door crashed
shut behind her as she left the house and picked her way along the broken
cement path to her car.

***

Ezzie was as good as her
word, texting me the names and contact information of several other sources
before I had even left her house that evening. At six o’clock, a woman appeared
at the door who looked exactly like Esmeralda but for the addition of about
twenty years. She seemed surprised, and I quickly explained my presence.

“I’m Kat, a friend of
Esmeralda and Oscar,” I told her. “I’ve been watching the kids this afternoon.”

Hector and Lily were
politely eating the macaroni and cheese that I had just finished preparing for
them.

“Grandma!” Lily yelled
and ran to hug the woman.

“Nice to meet you, Kat.”
She smoothed Lily’s hair with one hand and shook my hand with the other. “I’m
Silvia, Esmeralda’s mother.”

“Grandma, Kat made us
macaroni!” Lily returned to her bowl and spooned an oversized heap into her
mouth.

“I see that, baby girl,”
Silvia crooned. “I’ll take it from here.” She winked at me, a mirror image of
her daughter.

I shouldered my purse,
wished everyone a good night, and headed out into the humid summer evening.

***

As soon as I climbed out
of the uptown subway at 110
^th
Street, I got to work contacting my
newest sources.

The first name on the
list was Tanya Temple. I rested on the edge of a fountain in the middle of
campus and dialed her number. A raspy voice answered. I explained the purpose
of my call, being careful to mention that I had obtained her name from
Esmeralda so she wouldn’t think I was just some journalistic interloper.

“Wait, are you the
redhead?” she asked. “The one with that hottie, Trent Montaine?”

“Ummm…yes, that’s me,” I
stammered.

She laughed, a droll
tickling sound. “I believe that I handed you a wad of money a couple of weeks
ago. Eugene, my husband, lost that fight.”

I immediately remembered
the young woman with the fried hair and the bright red fingernails. Tanya was
married to the lumberjack. I never would have pictured him as a Eugene. In any
event, she struck me as friendly and forthcoming, so I made an appointment to
visit their apartment in the Bronx after work the next day.

As soon as I hung up the
phone I received a text from Trent.

How did the
babysitting go?

I quickly typed out a
reply.

The kids were great!
No news on Oscar. Ezzie wants you to know that it’s not your fault. She said
you have been a good friend to them.

Trent did not reply by
the time I arrived at my building a few blocks away. I pushed open the door to my
room and walked straight into a cloud of peach-scented body spray. Marcie was busily
spritzing and twirling her partially clothed body.

“Jesus, Marcie. That’s
enough body spray to kill a horse.”

“I’m not trying to kill a
horse,” she chirped. “I’m trying to catch a man!”

“Uh-oh. Which men are in danger
of being ensnared by your undeniable allure and your toxic cloud of peachy
aphrodisiac?”

“Only one man,” she
replied, slipping into a black jersey knit dress and lifting the cap sleeves
over her shoulders. “It’s your friend, Tony.”

“Tony? Seriously? He
asked you out?” I plopped onto her bed, my jaw hanging loose.

“Not exactly. I figured
he would be too shy, so I made the first move. I stole his number from your
phone when you weren’t looking. You should really put a password on that thing,
you know.”