Rosie the Ripper (Fight Card MMA) Read online

  ROUND 4

  Rosie entered the café at about six o’clock and picked out Felix in the booth right away. He raised his hand in greeting, waving her over. Rosie skirted around a group of people waiting for a table. She put her purse down in the seat and sat next to it so her body blocked it in. She had been drunk one night and had her purse stolen from beside her. She did not want it to happen again.

  Felix Treviño was somewhere in his forties, though he never said exactly, and Rosie never asked. He was lean in his Army surplus jacket, his face perpetually scrubbed with beard. His eyebrows were marked with scars and one ear had puffed up. Rosie had heard the term cauliflower ear, but had never seen such a thing up close.

  “Hey, Rosie,” Felix said.

  “Thanks for meeting me,” Rosie said.

  “It’s what sponsors are for.”

  A waitress came and brought them menus. Rosie did not want to eat, but she hadn’t had anything since lunch and knew her body needed fuel. Felix ordered coffee for himself and Rosie asked for a Coke. Then they were alone again.

  She’d finished crying a half an hour earlier, but Rosie was aware her eyes were puffy and her face probably splotched with red. Felix looked at her evenly, without pity, but not unkindly. He was a good sponsor, and he’d been with her through all of the last three years. There wasn’t anything she could tell him that would make him turn away from her. This much she knew with a certainty.

  “I look terrible,” Rosie said.

  “I’m not gonna lie,” Felix said. “You do look terrible.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  Felix shrugged. “I don’t mind. You want to talk about it?”

  “I do.”

  “Then talk. I’ll listen.”

  “Okay,” Rosie said, and she told him everything. All the while he watched her with the same neutral eyes, not judging, but not letting his expression betray his thoughts. When his coffee came, he took it with cream, slowly stirring the cup and then tapping the spoon lightly on the rim. Rosie’s Coke stood untouched.

  When she was finished, Felix thought a while and drank his coffee. “Did he say you couldn’t see Jess?”

  “No,” Rosie said. “No, he didn’t.”

  “Then it’s not all bad. You still have joint custody and you still get to see her.”

  “Two weekends a month isn’t enough,” Rosie said, and her voice pitched up in a way she didn’t like. It made her sound desperate, and she did not want to sound desperate.

  Felix nodded. “One thing at a time,” he said. “When do you see the judge?”

  “A few months. Things go slow.”

  “Is there anything you can do in the meantime?”

  “No. I’ve done everything.”

  “Then you need to let it go. When’s the last time you thought about taking a drink?”

  Rosie hesitated. “Today,” she said finally.

  “How bad was it?”

  “I got past it,” Rosie said.

  “But you wanted it.”

  “Yes.”

  The waitress came back and Felix ordered a chicken-fried steak with gravy. Rosie opted for a hamburger, knowing she would probably have two bites and leave the rest. She was even less interested in food now than she had been before. She took a sip of her Coke. Ordering it had been a mistake. Rum and Coke had been her drink, and she did not need a reminder now. When the waitress returned, Rosie would ask for something different.

  “What have you been doing outside of work?” Felix asked her.

  “Nothing. I go home, I watch TV.”

  “You don’t go anywhere? You don’t do anything?”

  “I don’t have the money for anything. The lawyer’s taking everything I make. I don’t even know how I’m going to get the rent paid.”

  She hoped Felix would not offer her money. He had given her a little in the past, but she didn’t want it now. All of a sudden, she felt weak for being here with him. This was something she should have been strong enough to handle alone. She could not handle it alone.

  Felix let the silence grow between them. He knew when it was right to talk and when it was better to be silent. It was something else good about him.

  The food came eventually, and Rosie picked at it the way she knew she would. The burger tasted like nothing in her mouth and the fries were too salty. Across the table from her, Felix ate with gusto, carving up his breaded steak and stuffing huge forkfuls into his mouth. Rosie asked for a Sprite to replace her Coke. When it came she didn’t touch it, either.

  Felix noticed. “Eat,” he said.

  “I’m not really hungry.”

  He looked at her again, his expression neutral. “Rosie, don’t go beating yourself up because you had a moment. They happen to everybody. They happen to me, too.”

  “I thought after three years it would be easier.”

  “It does get easier. Eventually. Time and patience is what you need.”

  “Okay.”

  He seemed to consider for a long moment, and then he nodded to himself. “You need something else to concentrate on,” Felix said. “Something positive.”

  “I have Jess.”

  “You need more. You have to have something when she’s not around and you don’t know what to do with yourself. Something that’s going to keep you from going for a drink.”

  Rosie looked at her Coke. She pushed it away.

  Felix went on. “Do you have time after this?” he asked.

  “I guess.”

  “Well, do you?”

  “Sure. I don’t have work tomorrow.”

  “Okay. Let’s eat first and then we’ll go. There’s somewhere I want to take you. I want to show you something.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just wait and see.”

  ROUND 5

  After dinner, Rosie got in her car and fell in behind Felix in his truck. He led her away from the café, angling eastward until they came to a neighborhood with clean streets and neat, old row houses that were not as dilapidated as the ones near Rosie’s apartment.

  They passed close by the water where train tracks fed off shipyards that lived by day and slumbered by night. The streets were lined with vehicles, old and new, and the city was under a darkened sky. Rosie saw Felix pass a line of businesses — a hardware store, a laundromat and a Chinese takeout place — and turn into an alley. The alley opened up into an unlit gravel lot behind the buildings where cars nestled up against one another as if for warmth.

  Rosie stopped and killed the engine. She got out into the deepening evening cold. Her breath fogged in the air. She was still wearing the nice clothes she’d worn to the meeting and they did not protect against the weather. “Where are we?”

  “Come and see,” Felix said, moving toward the back door of the building. A single bulb in an aluminum shade provided light and showed the beaten metal of the door and the padlock hanging from an open latch on the frame. There were no markings or numbers painted on the door itself.

  They went in and immediately Rosie smelled the sharp odor of sweat. A short hallway led past doors marked LADIES and MEN. The men’s door was propped open slightly and she heard the sizzle of a shower in use. It was blood-warm inside and immediately Rosie felt her skin prickle with perspiration inside her jacket.

  “This way,” Felix told her.

  The hallway opened up into a broad space encompassing the entire interior of the building’s first floor. The place was brightly lit, every corner illuminated. Dominating everything was a great round cage made of chain-link fencing and padded steel uprights.

  There were weight benches and racks of iron plates to one side and men in workout clothes spotted one another as they lifted. Mats littered the rest of the unbroken room, with a trio of punching bags hung along one wall. On the mats were other men in shorts and t-shirts commanded by a short, wiry man in sweats. As Rosie watched, the men worked their way through a drill that included punching and kicking. Then they broke into pairs and sketched blows at one a
nother.

  The walls were hung with pictures and posters and an American flag. There was one other woman in the place, lying on an inclined sit-up bench and rapidly cycling through the motions of the exercises. Rosie saw her make note of Felix when he entered what was clearly a gym.

  Rosie looked at the cage again. “What is this place?” she asked.

  “It’s my place,” Felix said. “Ground Control MMA. The best mixed martial arts dojo in the whole state.”

  “Mixed martial arts?” Rosie asked. “Is it like ultimate fighting?”

  “Yeah. You’ve seen the shows?”

  “A couple times. I’m not into fighting.”

  “Me, neither,” Felix said, “but it’s into me. I was a welterweight contender once a long time ago. Been about fourteen years now. Great times. That’s Danny Mann over there leading the class. He and I used to beat the hell out of each other back in the day.”

  Rosie saw the woman unhook her feet from the sit-up bench and stand. She was Latina and dark like Felix, with long arms taut with muscle. Her shirt was cut short to expose her belly and her abs were perfectly defined beneath the skin. She rounded the cage and closed the distance between them.

  “Ah, here’s Tina,” Felix said. “My sister’s kid. Tina, say hello to Rosie.”

  Tina came close and offered her hand, Rosie took it. Tina’s grip was solid, like her body. “Good to meet you,” she told Rosie. “You’re my tío’s friend, right?”

  “That’s right,” Rosie said.

  Felix hugged Tina. “This is Rosie’s first time in the dojo.”

  “Oh, yeah? What do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Rosie said. “It’s … something.”

  “Best dojo in the state,” Tina said.

  “That’s what Felix said.”

  “It’s true. I’m gonna go shower off, Tío. See you in a few.”

  “All right. I’ll be in the office. Rosie, come on.”

  The office was a small box in the corner of the gym with large windows on two sides. There were two desks inside and Felix sat down at one from where he could see the instruction going on in the gym. He waved Rosie into a spare seat.

  “You never said you were a fighter,” Rosie said.

  “I was, yeah. The drinking got me, though. You can’t be in love with the bottle if you want to make it in this sport. But fighting still saved me. It gave me something better, like this place. I don’t need a drink anymore.”

  “Why did you want to show me this?” Rosie asked. Outside, on the mats, the wiry man had his students on the ground, rolling around and grappling. He clapped his hands at them and shouted encouragement until the veins popped in his neck.

  “I think you should come here,” Felix said.

  “Here? Why?”

  “It’s like I told you – you need something else. MMA gave me a whole new life. You can come here and train and it’ll be good for you. It makes you strong, inside and out. It’ll change your life.”

  Rosie shook her head. “I don’t want to fight anybody.”

  “Then you don’t fight. There’s a difference between learning how to fight and fighting. It’s about discipline and self-control. Just like in the program. And if you’re worried about how you’ll pay me, don’t. If you never pay for anything it’s okay. You get some extra cash sometime and want to help out, go ahead, but I don’t need it. We have plenty of students.”

  “I don’t know, Felix.”

  “It’s my gift to you,” Felix said.

  Rosie found her eyes drawn to the cage. It was implacable, simply waiting for two to enter. She’d seen men in cages just like it, but never a woman. The idea itself seemed strange. She looked back to Felix. “I can quit whenever I want?”

  “Anytime”

  ROUND 6

  The alarm sounded and she was awake. Immediately she cast back the covers and rolled off the couch. She ignored the February cold and went directly to the chest of drawers tucked into the corner. She took out fresh sweats and socks and, without turning on the lights, put them on along with a pair of worn running shoes. When she was done, she clipped a pedometer to her pocket and let herself out of the apartment.

  On the street, she made a sharp right turn and veered off the sidewalk into the roadway. She picked up from a quick walk to a jog. The neighborhood slept, and not a single car passed her on her run. Snow had fallen two weeks before, and though most of it had melted there was still black ice packed against the curbs and clinging to the cracks of buildings like frozen moss.

  When she’d first started this routine, she’d had no set route, meandering between blocks until she ran out of gas and had to walk the rest of the way home. Now, she’d settled into a mental track stretching west under the Jones Falls Expressway, past Mount Vernon Place, and then onward and upward into a gentle hook that switched back to her neighborhood over the course of five miles.

  If she timed it out correctly, and if she kept to a steady pace, she could almost make it back to the apartment before she had to slow down and suck air on the last two blocks. But there was more.

  She came inside into the unheated stairwell at the back of the building and ascended rapidly up six flights, passing her floor on the way. At the top she reversed direction and went down two steps at a time, only to turn back and rise again as quickly as she was able. Three repetitions of this and her legs burned, but she pushed through to six and then to ten, even though the last four were done at a painful walk.

  In the apartment she went to the bathroom and threw off her sodden sweats to stand on the scale. She was at 135. In two months, she’d stripped off twenty pounds. Her reflection in the mirror showed it all: the layer of fat she’d seen form over the course of years was gone. Inches had fallen from her waist.

  Her legs showed the difference even more. They were in agony, but her calves had begun to show definition they hadn’t possessed before, and her thighs had leaned out with the rest of her. Those muscles trembled as she showered.

  After she toweled off, she packed workout gear into an athletic bag and stopped off in the kitchen only long enough to fix herself a large protein shake. It was cold like the streets outside were cold, but she guzzled it down and washed out her cup. She left it drying on the rack when she went out the door.

  It had lightened by the time she reached the gym and parked out back in the little lot. Felix’s truck was already there, and Tina’s car. No matter how early Rosie arrived, they beat her to the gym floor.

  She heard Tina as soon as she stepped through the door, and the pop of fists against leather. Tina and Felix were on the mats, faced off, Tina dropped into attack form with her hands up. Felix held up punch mitts and Tina went for them, jab following jab following cross. Felix called the punches, left and right, and Tina obeyed.

  Rosie stepped off the floor into the modestly appointed ladies’ locker room and changed into her fight clothes: Clinch Gear shorts and a Ryu TKO sports bra. She had two sets of Everlast gloves in her bag and black cotton handwraps. She took them all to the floor.

  Neither Felix nor Tina acknowledged her arrival or her reappearance. Rosie stood barefoot on the mats watching them. Despite the cool of the gym, Tina was bright with sweat. She was fixed on the punch mitts, and Felix on her. They continued for another minute and then another, until Felix called time and Tina fell away from him tired.

  “Hey,” Felix said to Rosie. “You’re finally here.”

  “It’s still early.”

  “The sun’s coming up! A good fighter hits the dojo before the sun rises.”

  “I guess I’m never going to be a good fighter.”

  “We’ll see. Wrap up. I want you on the heavy bag to start and then we’ll work on things.”

  Rosie did as she was told, wrapping her hands with the black fabric tapes until her fists were tight and hard. She put on heavy-bag gloves and went to one of the dangling targets, squaring up on it as she’d been shown, and bringing her hands up.

  “I don’
t hear any punching!” Felix called.

  “I’m doing it!”

  She threw her first punch, following it quickly with a second. As she’d been taught, the punches lifted off her toes and came up through her hips – driving power to the shoulder and all the way down to the striking spot between the knuckles of the index and middle fingers. There was just one inch to contain all that energy. Impact rippled through her.

  While she worked the bag, she was dimly aware of Felix and Tina on the mats running ground drills. She kept her focus on her form, following through with every punch, striking through the target. The bag swayed with the blows and came back for more.

  She didn’t notice Felix beside her until he stepped forward to still the bag. “Okay,” he said. “That’s plenty.”

  Rosie was drenched with sweat again, but the heat from the workout kept her from feeling the chill. “How am I doing?” she asked.

  “You really want to know?”

  “Am I no good?”

  Felix shook his head. “No, you’re good. You got heavy hands, which is what you want.”

  Rosie smiled. Heavy hands meant she punched with power. All her form created that power. She wanted to work the bag more.

  “I want to start putting you up against Tina,” Felix said. “She needs a new face in the cage and you could use the practice.”

  Rosie’s smile faltered. “Me in the cage?”

  “Yeah, sure. Why not?”

  “I don’t know if I want to.”

  “Hey, you gotta start putting those punches to work. And we have to have a look at your ground game. That’s where we’re falling behind.”

  Tina was on the weights, on her back beneath a bench press, raising the ceiling with strong arms showing lean muscle. Rosie looked at her for a long moment before she turned back to Felix. “It’s just sparring, right?”

  “Right. It’s not real fighting. We already talked about that. You don’t want to fight, you don’t fight. It’s that simple.”

  Rosie nodded. “Okay. We’ll do it.”

  Felix punched her lightly on the arm. “You’re gonna tear it up in there,” he said. “Punches like that… you’re gonna do all right.”