I looked at that drink for a long time before taking the first sip. When I did, the promise was all there for me, as it always had been: strength, confidence, luck. And the wilds, never far away in my Luiseno blood. A mirror behind the bar aimed my face back at me. The TV volume was off as the newspeople discussed the virus. I appreciated their silence.
Especially appreciated it when the screen went to Todd Spencer’s somber image from his press conference the day before. There he was, waving a fistful of papers at the press and media. I couldn’t help but read the caption on the TV screen: Republican congressman Todd Spencer refused to answer questions yesterday about his missing wife, Julie... Later he renewed the attack on his Democratic opponent, Najat Amir, whom without evidence Spencer has accused of being terrorist-sponsored...
I wasn’t sure if I wanted Spencer to be lying about Amir or telling the truth. More to the point, after my talk with Dan Morrison, what could I possibly make of Todd Spencer?
As the vodka took me back to that day in Queens again, I smelled the woodsmoke and the lamb and the cumin wafting through that crowded labyrinth of a street. I thought of Spencer and Morrison and Medina, and how the net of that war had snagged us. And hundreds of thousands more. I tried hard to put all of us into some kind of historical and spiritual perspective, to see us all as just blips of life in a vast universe. But I couldn’t. We are not blips. I will not be a blip. Vodka.
I looked at the mirror again, at the reflected snout of one Harold Bear — Luiseno Indian, husband, father, son, and brother. Private investigator. Ex-marine. And I thought: You are okay. As okay as you are ever going to be.
I sat another hour. I’m always surprised how far a mind can wander and still find its way back, how many thoughts and memories can race through you in one slender hour of life. Fallujah. My son and daughter. First touching the girl who would become my wife in the San Luis Rey Mission when I was fourteen.
Dan Morrison sent me a text saying he’d let me know if he thought of anything that might help me regarding ex-Pfc Todd Spencer and his missing wife.
The bartender gave me a look. I shook my head, brought out my wallet on its belt chain. Paid up, left a nice tip and the rest of the vodka.
Octagon Girl
by Chris J. Bahnsen
Desert Hot Springs
Wearing a camo bikini, Blythe stepped onto the octagonal platform and began her stride around the cage perimeter. Above her head, she held a white card with the number three on both sides. The upper rows were mostly empty, but there was still a decent crowd of a few thousand. This was her first gig at the new sports arena. Just opened in Desert Hot Springs, it was already becoming the venue for MMA fights in the Coachella Valley.
God, we needed this place.
Many in the crowd looked as if they’d climbed out of a fissure in the crusty ground, skin clay-colored, eyes deeply crow-footed from squinting against the sun glare and the sand pelting in off Banning Pass. Blythe knew them as hard cores of the low desert, who would not leave DHS, damn the crime, the druggies, the hell temps now topping 120 most every summer.
Catcalls and whistles, the heat of many eyes, affirmed that for the one minute between rounds, Blythe was the center of this raucous beer-soured universe. She let each platform heel come down in time with the hip-hop loop bumped on the PA, just firm enough to shake her goods without being herky-jerky — a flaw she’d noticed in other girls from the agency.
She raised the card higher, felt a slight pinch from one of her nipple covers. The only action her body had seen in weeks because her man Sandro practiced celibacy before a fight. Inside the cage, he sat taking instructions from Franco, his trainer. On the opposite side, Musaff Ali panted on his stool, coal-skinned, face goose-egged from Sandro’s accuracy of hand and foot.
Blythe finished her lap and stepped down to the floor where a director’s chair waited. She smiled at her son Logan, who sat a few yards away in a reserved section, rivers of yellow gold hair over blue eyes. They’d grown bluer with each of his eleven years, about all his father had left behind before drifting on during her third trimester. Logan grinned back at her while sucking soda through a straw.
As she took her seat a buzzer sounded round three.
The two fighters knocked gloves in the center of the cage and began stalking one another. Sandro, carved yet lithe in tight green shorts and fingerless fight gloves, was a fan favorite. Undefeated at 14–0, he wanted to turn pro soon and move to LA, the three of them. Besides his smooth Latin looks and winning record, his growing fan base would also help gain the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s notice.
Blythe could see herself moving up with him. The week before, she’d driven to North Hollywood to a casting call for Octagon Girls with the UFC. Invited there based on head and body shots she’d sent in. Her audition went well, she thought. But it would be two weeks before she heard anything. Either way, after popping out a baby at eighteen, waitressing, and co-caring for her father until last year, her time had finally arrived.
Ali tried a takedown on Sandro, who slipped out of the hold and threw a spinning backfist. It struck the right side of Ali’s head: he wobbled but kept on his feet.
Watching Sandro’s predatory intensity, Blythe smiled to herself. All she could think of was how the sexual tension would boil over tonight in his bedroom. Actually, it was their bedroom now, as of five weeks ago when she and Logan moved in.
After a faked front kick, Sandro torpedoed a straight right hand, dead on Ali’s glass jaw. The big man bounced off the cage and went down, a felled tree with a canopy of dreads. Sandro charged in, but the ref blocked his attack. Ali lay twitching in his dreams.
Blythe mentally adjusted Sandro’s record to 15–0. If he reached 16–0, a fightwear company had offered him sponsorship, mas dinero. Good things for him meant good things for her, and Logan. Just one more win.
As Sandro eased his dusty pickup away from the arena, he kept asking, “Who’s the greatest?” and from the backseat, Logan chanted, “San-dro!... San-dro!” until they all joined in.
Here they were, already becoming a family, and Blythe wished her big sister could see them now. Jackie had been against her moving out. Wanted her to stay put at the Sky Valley house they inherited after their father passed. Logan needed stability, a real home, Jackie said.
“What he needs is a male role model,” Blythe had snapped back. “Not my hard-ass sister trying to be one.” She still felt bad for saying it.
The night winds of March gushed through the half-open windows. Blythe zipped up her hoodie. On Dillon Road, the pickup had to slow down behind a hulking motor home.
Sandro gestured through windshield. “Fucking snowbirders.”
“Snowbirds,” Blythe gently corrected. “Hey, they tip good, mister.”
Sandro grinned at her, and his right hand took her left. She ran a thumb over his stony knuckles. Such deadly hands, yet nothing but adoring when they touched her body.
By the time the truck scooped into a dirt-tracked mobile home park, Logan was dozing. Mature palm trees danced to a gust. They passed an empty trailer space, now a community trash depot, heaped with broken pallets, a car seat, stained mattresses. Two scrap dogs sniffed at the spilled guts of a garbage bag. At least it wasn’t gang turf, Blythe thought.
In the carport, Sandro draped an arm across the boy’s shoulders and steered him inside a dingy double-wide. It was the first time Blythe had seen him in such a fatherly role with her son — more often he acted like an older brother with Logan, playing combat video games with him, or teaching him grappling moves.