They didn’t puff out their chests and they didn’t care about belts. True monsters just wanted to be left alone to fix cars in peace. And heaven help the fool who disturbed them. The gym felt different the next day. It wasn’t the smell and it wasn’t the temperature. It was the noise. For a decade, the heavy rhythmic thud of shins hitting leather pads and the sharp exhales of sparring fighters had been Chloe’s favorite symphony. It was the sound of progress. It was the sound of dangerous people sharpening their tools. Now it just sounded like children playing a very loud, very complicated game of tag.
She stood on the edge of the blue mat, her arms wrapped tightly around her chest, watching a pair of purple belts drill submissions. They were good. They flowed through a sequence of arm bars and triangle chokes, tapping each other’s shoulders lightly to signal a reset. They were smiling. They were having fun. Chloe felt a dull, heavy knot of nausea in her stomach. “You’re up, kid.” Greg, her head coach, slapped her on the shoulder. He was a fireplug of a man built like a brick wall with cauliflower ears. He had cornered her in 20 different amateur fights.
He was tough, practical, and heavily invested in her eventual transition to the pros. “Put the mouthpiece in,” Greg barked, pointing to the center of the cage. “You’re sparring with Miller. Three 5-minute rounds. MMA rules. Let’s see how that hip mobility is holding up.” Chloe mechanically popped her custom-molded mouthpiece in and stepped through the chain-link door of the cage. Miller was a local amateur lightweight. He was fast, aggressive, and relied heavily on spinning back fists and flashy kicks. The buzzer sounded.
Miller bounced on his toes, darting in and out, throwing feints. Chloe stood perfectly still. She wasn’t looking at Miller’s gloves. She wasn’t watching his hips to read his kicks. She was looking at his center line. She was looking at the junction where his neck met his spine. She was looking at the soft tissue just beneath his jaw. Miller threw a stiff jab followed by a heavy overhand right. It was a classic, predictable combination. Chloe easily slipped her head to the outside of the punch.
In a normal sparring session, she would have pivoted, secured a body lock, and dragged him to the mat for a grinding, exhausting grappling exchange. Instead, her right hand twitched. Her thumb instinctively curled, seeking that soft cluster of nerves Arthur had struck. She stopped herself just in time, her hand hovering an inch from Miller’s throat, frozen in space. Miller, oblivious to how close he had just come to a crushed windpipe, capitalized on her hesitation. He shot in, grabbed a single-leg takedown, and dumped Chloe onto the canvas with a loud, resounding thud.
“Time!” Greg yelled from the side of the cage, slapping the chain-link fence. “What the hell was that, Chloe? You slipped the punch perfectly and then just stood there. You admiring his haircut? Take him down.” Chloe lay on her back, staring up at the harsh fluorescent lights on the ceiling. She didn’t feel angry. She just felt exhausted. “I’m done for today,” she mumbled around her mouthpiece. She pushed Miller off her, rolled to her feet, and walked straight out of the cage door. Greg chased her all the way to the locker room.
“Hey, hey, we have a camp starting in a month. You can’t just walk off the mat because you got taken down. You’re getting soft.” Chloe turned around, her gym bag already slung over her shoulder. She looked at Greg. She looked at his cauliflower ears and his taped fingers. She loved Greg, but right now he looked entirely clueless. “Soft,” she repeated. The word tasted ridiculous. “Greg, what do we do here?” Greg blinked, caught off guard by the question. “We train. We fight.” “No,” Chloe said quietly. “We play by a rulebook.
We wear padded gloves so we don’t break our hands. We fight on a padded floor. If someone gets hurt, a man in a black shirt steps in and stops it. If we get tired, we tap out and we get to go home and eat dinner.” “Yeah, it’s a sport. What’s your point?” “My point is that we’re pretending,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “We’re all just pretending.” She didn’t wait for him to respond. She pushed through the heavy glass doors of the gym and stepped out into the biting November air. She walked around to the alleyway.
The rusted Honda Civic was gone. In its place was a beat-up Ford Ranger. The hood was propped open. Arthur was there. He was leaning over the engine block, a socket wrench in his hand, coughing a dry, rattling cough that sounded like it hurt. The cold air was unforgiving, and he wasn’t wearing a jacket, just his standard grease-stained coveralls over a thermal shirt. Chloe watched him for a long time. She walked down the street to a corner bodega, bought two large black coffees in cheap Styrofoam cups, and walked back. The paper bag burned pleasantly against her cold hands.
She stepped into the garage. It was dimly lit, smelling intensely of WD-40, old rubber, and stale coffee. There were calendars from auto parts stores from five years ago pinned to the cinder block walls, peeling at the corners. It was a chaotic, dirty place, but it felt remarkably safe. It felt real. “You shouldn’t leave the bay doors open,” Chloe said, her voice echoing slightly off the concrete floor. “It’s freezing.” Arthur didn’t jump. He just slowly turned his head, assessing her presence before turning back to the engine block. “Heater’s broken,” he grunted, twisting the wrench with a sharp jerk. “Fumes got to go somewhere.”
Chloe walked over and set one of the coffees on a relatively clean spot on his red metal workbench. Steam curled up from the small hole in the plastic lid. “Black. No sugar,” she said. “I figured you for a black coffee kind of guy.” Arthur stopped working. He wiped a smudge of oil off his forehead with the back of his wrist, leaving a fresh streak of grime. He looked at the coffee, then at Chloe. “I didn’t ask for a coffee.” “I didn’t ask if you wanted one.” She hopped backwards, sitting on a stack of old tires. She crossed her legs, making herself comfortable.
Arthur let out a long, slow sigh. It was the sound of a man who realized his quiet, invisible existence was officially over. He picked up the Styrofoam cup, his large, calloused hands dwarfing the fragile material. He took a slow sip. “It’s awful,” he said. “It cost me a dollar fifty,” Chloe replied, taking a sip of her own. She winced. It tasted like burnt battery acid. “You get what you pay for.” They sat in silence for a few minutes. The only sound was the pinging of the cooling engine block and the distant muffled sounds of traffic.