Punching and Kissing (4 page)

“
Well,”
said a voice from the doorway. “Isn’t this cute?”

Rick scared the crap out of me. Rick scared the crap out of everyone.

Once, about twenty years ago, Rick had probably been an okay kid. Then—the story goes—his dad beat him so bad his leg didn’t heal right. Little Rick got a walking stick. And maybe from the pain in his leg, maybe from his dad’s cruelty, he developed a mean streak. The sort of kid who beat stray dogs with a car aerial until, exhausted and terrified, they’d fight one another.

Twenty years on, he’d moved up to people.

He got through most days, from what I’d seen, by downing coffee and snorting coke. It had left him thin, his eyes bulging from his skull. Not a guy who’d win in a fight. So he’d traded his wooden walking stick for an aluminum cane, vicious as a baseball bat but less conspicuous on the street. It was a gaudy thing with a crystal on top as big as my fist. He kept it polished and he didn’t use it all the time when he walked. He preferred to trail it along walls. It was the cane, banging against the metal staircase that I’d heard as he approached.

Rick’s favorite way of punishing someone was to get them down on the ground and then beat an arm or a leg with the cane until the bones were powder. And this was the man who basically owned my brother, in the kind of backroom “management” deal that involves no paper or ink, only handshakes and threats.

Alec could easily have taken him in a fight—maybe even with the cane. But Rick never went anywhere without his protection, two ex-heavyweight boxers called Al and Carl.

We turned. Rick was in his favorite gray suit with a blood-red shirt and silver tie. He always dressed classy, as if that could disguise what he was. His two bodyguards were right behind him.

“Am I interrupting something?” asked Rick. “That how it works in Holland? Brothers and sisters get....
close?”
He leered at us.

I wanted to kill him. Alec was the one thing I had left in the world. How could Rick take something so good and twist it into something perverted? I shook my head.

That was a mistake. With Rick, there never
was
any right answer. Whatever you did, it would end in pain or humiliation.

“I don’t mind,” said Rick. “If you want to kiss him for good luck. A good, big kiss on the lips.”

I heard Alec’s intake of breath. Normally, he tried to keep me away from Rick and I was happy to oblige. Coming down here had been a mistake.

I shook my head again.

“Rick—” started Alec. He tried to keep his voice level, but I could hear the anger there.

“
WHAT?”
screamed Rick and slammed his cane against the pipes beside Alec. Everyone, even his two bodyguards, jumped. The sound reverberated around the room for long seconds. God, his pupils were enormous. He was really coked up. “She should kiss someone, for good luck.” He wasn’t going to let go of the idea. “Maybe she should kiss
me.”
And his thin lips twisted into what he called a smile.

Alec was standing close enough to me that I could feel him tense up. I knew he was getting ready to fly at Rick and I knew how that would end. But the idea of kissing Rick made me sick.

Rick stepped forward. Alec squared up to him.
Shit!
Rick was going to wind up beating him up, before the fight had even started. I had to do something.

Before any of them could stop me, I stepped forward and grabbed Rick’s hand where it held his cane. His skin was cold and clammy, very different to Aedan’s warm touch. Rick’s eyes widened in surprise and I thought he was going to hit me. But then I gently lifted his hand, and the cane with it, towards my face, and he relaxed as he saw what I had in mind.

I brought the ugly, gaudy crystal head of the cane up to my mouth and kissed it softly, the facets sharp against my lips. When I looked up at Rick, he was grinning all over his face.

“There,” he said. “See? She’s got the idea.”

Rick planted his cane back on the floor with a hard little rap. I winced. I couldn’t imagine how painful that thing would be, against flesh and bone. “You can take this guy, right?” he asked Alec.

Alec was still having to restrain himself. “Sure,” he said tightly. “No problem. He’s a little guy. One good hit and he’ll go down.”

“Good, ‘cause I got a lot of my own money on you, tonight,” said Rick. “Make sure he goes down and stays down.” Then, with a final leer at me, he was walking out into the pit to introduce the fight, his bodyguards trailing him.

Alec turned to me and pulled me into another hug.

“You sure about this?” I said. I didn’t know why, but I was suddenly panicking. “There’s still time to pull out.”

Alec didn’t answer, but I knew what he was thinking:
no, there isn’t.
Even if we didn’t need the money, you don’t just walk out on one of Rick’s fights. You did what you were told or you had your legs broken.

“I got this,” said Alec. “He’s just a little guy.” He released me from the hug but I kept stubbornly holding him until the last second. Then, reluctantly, I tapped my fists against his like we always did, our good luck charm.

“I’ll see you afterward,” said Alec. “Go upstairs and watch. And stay the hell away from Aedan.”

And then he was jogging out into the pit.

Sylvie

The crowd had gone quiet as I climbed the stairs back up to the balcony. I could make out Rick’s voice, telling them who they’d be watching. “From the land of tulips and dykes”—the crowd snickered—”undefeated in The Pit these last three weeks,
The Dutchman!”

Alec and I had both been born right here in New York, but he had to make it sound good.

“And stepping up to take him on tonight, a challenger from Detroit—
Morgan!”

I faltered on the stairs. That was weird. Normally, Rick had a whole spiel. Did that mean he didn’t know this Morgan guy? What if he was dangerous?

I raced up the rest of the stairs, slipped through the crowd and leaned over the balcony to look. To my relief, Morgan didn’t look like much at all. He was at least five years older than Alec, maybe more. And he didn’t have Alec’s muscle or his height. Maybe this would be alright after all.

The Pit didn’t go in for niceties. The bell was an air horn, blown every three minutes to give the fighters a minute to recover. There was no grinning blonde in a bikini holding up round numbers and no medics on standby for injuries. Most important of all, there was no referee. The rules were simple: you fought until one of you couldn’t get up.

The horn sounded and Alec went in fast and confident, swinging a heavy right hook. I think he meant to take out Morgan fast, before anything went wrong.

Almost immediately, it did.

Alec wasn’t slow on his feet, but Morgan made him look like he was sleepwalking. Whenever Alec swung, Morgan was somewhere else. His punches weren’t heavy, but they were lightning-fast and precise. Within a minute, Alec was sweating and off-balance, guarding his side where Morgan had hit his kidneys.

I could feel my chest tensing up with every hit my brother took.
Who the hell is this guy? Who’s Rick put him up against?

By the second round, Alec was starting to tire. He wasn’t used to a small, nimble fighter. He couldn’t turn fast enough, couldn’t protect his sides when Morgan darted around him. And then a vicious kick to the back of the leg made him crumple and stagger. His hands went out for balance, leaving him exposed, and Morgan started punching him in the face.
One, two, three, four—

Alec finally got his hands up, but he was reeling. He slumped back against the concrete wall, blood pouring from between his fingers.

My insides had clenched into a tight, hard knot. I could barely breathe.

In the next break between rounds, the difference between them was obvious: Alec had to hold himself up using the wall, wiping the blood from his eyes. Morgan was rock steady and untroubled—not taunting and whooping but not worried, either. Just a professional, doing a job.

Then he stripped off his tank top and I saw the tattoos.
Military
tattoos. Rick had put my brother in the ring with some ex-Army guy.

The next round started.

I bolted for the stairs.

Sylvie

Al, one of Rick’s bodyguards, was watching from the little side room. He held his arms out to block me, a solid wall of suited muscle.

“
Stop the fight!”
I screamed. “He’ll kill him!”

He shook his head. “You know how it works. Crowd have paid their money. It’s over when it’s over.”

When one of them can’t get up.
I could feel the bile rising in my throat. Behind Al, I could see Alec being driven back by a flurry of blows. His head rocked left, right, left. I imagined his brain being hammered inside his skull. All that delicate artistry that made him
him:
his personality, his kindness, his memories of our parents. It was being wiped out, punch by punch.

I launched myself at the pit. I’d throw myself between the two of them, if I had to. But then Al caught me easily around the waist and held me back. I stretched, clawing at the air, reaching for Alec.
“No!”

The punches kept coming. Alec’s legs went to jelly and he fell to his knees, his head lolling forward.
He’s going to go down anyway. Stop, now! Stop! Please stop!

Morgan didn’t look cruel as he did it. He didn’t gloat. He was just like Alec, trapped in the system Rick had created. But he needed to win, just as Alec had.

I remember screaming as he drew his arm back. Alec’s eyes opened for a second and I thought he looked at me.

Then Morgan’s fist smashed against the side of his head and he fell to the floor.

Sylvie

There was no moment of victory for Morgan. Rick didn’t come and hold his fist aloft and proclaim him the new champion. The crowd fell quiet—they could sense that things had gone very badly wrong. Rick’s fighters weren’t supposed to lose, not on their home turf. Especially when he’d been betting on them.

Morgan slunk past me with an apologetic glance. Al finally let me go and I ran to Alec’s body. He was slumped on his back, his legs bent awkwardly.
Shit. Shit! Should I move him? Not move him? Is he breathing? “ALEC!”