Blythe pointed a stern finger at her boy. “Twenty minutes, young man.”
In the suite, she finished unpacking the suitcases Jackie had put in the car for them, then placed calls to her booking agent, her boss at the diner, and Logan’s school. Told them the same lie: they’d been in a bad car accident, suffering injuries that would keep them home for a couple of weeks.
Twenty minutes later, while Logan leaned against the foot of the queen bed, eyes drooped, Blythe unstrapped his gel pack and finished drying him with a towel.
“I miss Aunt Jackie,” he yawned, lying back in bed.
Blythe said, “Me too.” But the boy was already asleep. She slid a cool sheet over him until she got to his hurt arm, the blue sling. Quiet tears overtook her. Yes, she had moved in with a creep, just like Jackie said. Stupid. A stupid, bad mother — that’s what she was.
In the kitchenette, she made herself a cup of coffee and leaned against the counter. The late March afternoon had risen to eighty-one degrees. Through the wall glass, in the distance above a windbreak, she found the snowy peak of San Jacinto, a steady companion her whole life. Logan’s sun-bleached hair was almost as white as the mountaintop. Looking at his resting face, she feared there would be no father figure for him ever again, no happy family.
She checked e-mails with her phone. Nothing from the UFC yet. Most of the women at the audition had been in their early twenties. How many more years could her body, pushing thirty, compete? Not many, but what a way to go, right? Traveling the country to strut the best fight venues, streamed internationally. Even if they didn’t take her, Blythe resolved right then to save every penny and move herself and her boy to LA anyway. Grab some casting calls for movies.
Digging out the prescription bottle in her purse, she took a Vicodin and dropped it into the steaming mug to melt it. Her broken nose throbbed. Breathing deeply brought a twinge of pain, a chronic reminder that, once Sandro had released his choke hold, she’d fallen to the floor, her ribs hitting a metal leg of the dummy on the way down, then a face-plant into an iron dumbbell plate. Out cold, like Musaff Ali.
Her phone vibrated on the counter. There were three texts from Sandro:
i wan 2 die 4 what I don
u no i lov u
and logan
So, he had his cell phone now, which meant he was back on the street already. Sure enough, a new post on his Instagram page promoted his upcoming fight, in ten days, at the sports arena again. He was out there, free as a tumbleweed. She wondered if she should have pressed charges. No. Somehow she would handle things her own way. For starters, she blocked his cell number.
While Logan slept, Blythe went out to the Camry, hoodie pulled down around her face, and retrieved the weighted beach towel folded up under the driver’s seat. Locking her self in the bathroom, she placed the towel on the counter. Her hands undid the folds from a snub-nosed Diamondback .38 Special, the handgun her father had given her when she turned sixteen. And a box of shells. After loading the weapon, she shoved it into the waistband of her jeans and dropped the tail of her blouse over it. The gun’s stability felt good against the small of her back.
First gun she ever fired was her father’s Sterlingworth shotgun, in the open desert. She was nine. Got thrown to the ground after an ugly explosion. She didn’t want any part of the shotgun after that. But he made her stop crying and put the shotgun in her hands again. Told her to say I am not afraid then fire the other barrel. The kick wasn’t so bad that time because he showed her how to be ready for it. And she felt proud by his smile, one coffee can blown off its hook.
The gun gave her courage. Since leaving the hospital, she’d been avoiding her own reflection. Now, taking a deep breath, Blythe looked into the cabinet mirror. An apparition stared back. A face with gauze cross-taped over the swollen nose, ruined by the macabre colors of Sandro’s rage. She experienced again the incredible pressure of his arm around her neck, a steel bar compressing her carotid, his feral growl in her ear. She had quick-tapped his forearm like she saw them do in the octagon. The gesture meant you’d had enough. But there was no ref to jump in.
When she came out of the bathroom, Logan was awake, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“How’s the shoulder, my little man?”
“Aches.”
His sling was askew, so she had him stand still while she adjusted it. A bolt of pain made him suck in air. She pulled a Vicodin from her jeans pocket and held it up for him. “After I get you some water, I want you to take half of this, to make it hurt less.”
Logan shook his head. “I don’t need it. Pain is good.”
The back of Blythe’s neck tingled.
Whenever he and Sandro had roughhoused, and Logan inevitably got bonked somehow, Sandro coached him to tough it out, pulled him back from tears, and said, Pain is good... pain makes you stronger... She had loved the way Sandro taught him to be strong.
“Please don’t ever say those words again,” she said.
“Why? What did I say?”
“I’m sorry. Your mama is just in a strange way right now. Never mind, give me a hug.” She pulled him close, careful of his sling arm.
Stepping back, Logan held it up for her, the .38, gripped in his hand. “Is this a real gun?”
Blythe eased it from his grasp, but he still held it with his eyes. Her son deserved a straight answer, she decided. Especially now. She laid the .38 across her palm, barrel pointed to the side. “This is to keep us safe.”
“From him?” Logan said.
She nodded.
“But he’s in jail now, right?”
“He won’t stay in jail, honey. That’s why we can’t go home for a little while.”
Logan reached for the gun again, but she tucked it back in her jeans. “Time to put it away.”
The boy’s eyes converged on the gauze over her nose. “It’s my fault he hurt you, Mom. I know I wasn’t supposed to use Sandro’s stuff.”
“No, it isn’t your fault, don’t ever think that.” Blythe’s voice constricted. “It’s my fault. I couldn’t protect you, so you protected me instead.”
He shook his head. “But I didn’t. I ran away.”
“So you could call 911.” She held his face in her hands. “That was a very smart, awesome thing you did.”
He shrugged, then his eyes darted behind her. “Mom, a scorpion!” he said, pointing to the marble floor.
The bug idled only a few feet from them, pinkish exoskeleton a translucent window to its dark innards. The stinger was folded downward into the lowered tail.
“Stay here,” Blythe said.
As she drifted toward the invader, it did not back away. The stinger rose. With her boot, she quickly stepped on the tail end. Squatting, she used the butt of the gun as a hammer, twisting each blow into the writhing body. Even after the scorpion went still, she kept on hammering and hammering until Logan touched her shoulder. “Okay, Mom.”
Lodge time elapsed in a reel of mindless TV, board games on the bed, takeout and pizza deliveries. Logan, young and resilient, didn’t need the sling for long as his range of motion in the shoulder improved. Blythe’s rib pain faded enough so she could tolerate sit-ups and some floor exercises. The bruises on her face slowly cleared. Her nose, bandage-free, now had a subtle curve to the left but thankfully wasn’t flattened any.