This is a first draft, so as Hemingway said, it’s shit. But it’s my shit, so that’s how it goes.
“If you have to be here, do something useful and put on some gloves.” Stacey Oakes pounded a heavy bag as she spoke. The shock waves in her arms were visible as she worked the back, and she made it hop with each strike.
After I was exiled to Florida, Stacey had become the closest thing to my partner. She’s a six-foot, three-inch blonde who can probably crush a Volkswagen between her thighs. Her mood and invitation meant I could be in for an ass-kicking, and not the fun kind.
I chose instead to brace the bag for her the way she’d shown me when she decided being able to run eight miles in the Florida summer didn’t constitute being in shape for me.
She didn’t grunt, instead puffing a quick breath out with each contact made with the bag. It wasn’t hard to keep it from moving me, but it wasn’t as easy as you’d think, either.
Her arms were already slick with sweat and the tell-tale ring had started to form around the top of the ironically named wife beater she wore. Her cheeks were shiny.
I let her go, to work out the anger and frustration on the bag.
The plan was to be there for as long as it took for her to exhaust her rage, then be there if she wanted to talk. According to Robin, my ex, I didn’t spend enough time letting her get to the point where she talked. Stacey would never be Robin, but I like to think I learn as I go through life.
Except exhaustion came slowly. The beating continued as the sweat ring grew. As her lithe arms started to glisten. As the part of her hair that wasn’t in the braid started to become matted with sweat. Through it, I braced the bag, on the assumption that she’d eventually run out of steam or anger.
Instead, she kept up, sprinkling me with bits of sweat. The smell of exertion spread as she pounded away. Eventually, she spoke.
“You came here to say something, you say it.”
When I nodded my head, I knew she’d catch it, even if she wasn’t looking at me. Stacey didn’t miss much. Three tours in Afghanistan—usually away from whatever base she was assigned to—make you notice things without visible effort.
“Then why are you here?” She could speak at a normal volume and make her voice fill the room—or in this case, the covered area behind her house where she worked out all year in the elements—currently in the middle of a Tampa summer.
“Sparkling conversation,” I said.
She stopped and tried to burn a hole through me with her eyes. Her chest rose and fell, but only slightly, considering the effort she’d burnt over the last fifteen minutes. Her nostrils flared and a bead of sweat hung on the tip of her nose before eventually falling away.
She glared a few seconds longer and when I didn’t react, she went back to pounding the bag. The crisp, staccato breaths she punctuated the punches mixed with grunts. She started to turn her hips more. The bag wasn’t hopping quite as much, but I still didn’t want to take its place.
She pounded it with a quick three-jab combination. Usually, that would lead to some footwork, but this wasn’t about style. She followed up with a left hook, a right upper-cut, and a left hook, then she backed off and took a few breaths, bouncing around the way someone had taught her several years and countless beatings ago.
I stepped away from the bag. “Want a water?”
She nodded, not quite looking at me.
“Towel?”
Another nod.
I grabbed a water out of the fridge she kept against the structure’s only wall, and a rolled white towel out of the cupboard. By the time I turned back, she’d pulled off her right glove and was working on her left.
When I got to her, they were both off and set on a chair about five feet to her left. Before she finished, they’d be back in their place. Once the sweat droplets dried, she’d sweep the area. You could almost eat off the floor.
She drank nearly half the water, then walked to a bench next to the wall and sat down, dabbing at her face.
“Whatever you came to say, say it.”
I shook my head. “Came to listen.”
“Not in a talkative mood.”
I shrugged. “That’s okay.” Then I sat next to her.
“She’s in fourth grade, Shane.”
I nodded.
“And that asshole who left his sperm in Cheryl those years back doesn’t give a rat’s about her.”
I kept nodding.
“And he’s got the money and the lawyers.”
“Yup.”
“And she told me to walk away.”
I nodded. With most other women, I’d have touched them, or offered a hug. But this was Stacey and I’m not as sturdy as a Volkswagen.
“You once told me the reason you walked away from the military, from any captive employment, was so you could do what you thought was right.”
She spoke almost before the words cleared my lips. “You think I’d sit still if I thought I could move?”
I shook my head. “That’s what confuses me. I’ve seen you piss off cops. Politicians. The most prolific personal injury attorney in the Southeast. So I don’t understand why you’re cornered by a 112-pound girl who told you something she didn’t like that you can’t stand.”
Once again, I considered myself relative to a Volkswagen. Fortunately, she didn’t decide to crush me like one.
“When I left the military it wasn’t because I don’t like rules.” She leaned her head back on the wall. Splayed her legs straight out. They’re magnificent legs. Were I a lesbian, they’d intrigue me greatly. “I got to the point where I needed to follow my rules and not theirs—and that makes me a horrible soldier.”
Saying nothing seemed to be working, so I kept at it.
“I made a promise. A stupid promise as it turns out, but a promise.”
She drained the rest of her water and set the bottle down on the bench, then dabbed at her face with the towel. And then we fell into a silence.
“And because you won’t leave until I tell you, I served with her father.”
“Cheryl’s.” Cheryl had been the client.
She nodded. “Intelligence. Most of us—the women—couldn’t do much because of cultural considerations.”
“And you can be very persuasive when you need to be.” She’d told me this part of the story before, how she’d worked herself into intelligence by being too good to ignore. Even though she was a woman in the middle east.
“Cheryl’s dad helped me along. Colonel Horatio Briggs.” She smiled briefly. “Led with that first name, almost like daring you to make something of it. Said I was good enough for the work and if we weren’t there to help women break stupid barriers there wasn’t a point. So he cracked some doors for me, said it was up to me to kick them in.”
She rolled her head and smiled. “It was all I needed. I ripped the doors out of the wall.”
I smiled back, even as hers faded.
“It’s a cliché for a reason. He needed my help, said it was about is granddaughter. Said her father was a shitheel—his word—and it was my job to convince him not to be a shitheel. And failing that, to get him to walk away.”
It only took a second to put it together. “And then he—Briggs—told you to stop.”
She stared ahead as she nodded. “Called me an hour after I got done with Cheryl. When I pushed back, he said I owed him and this was collection time.”
There was more. There had to be. I’ve seen Stacey stare down people who aren’t usually intimidated. Something else kept her from disobeying him. If she got to it, I’d know. If not, eventually, I’d get the hint and walk away.
“The girl—she’s…I’ve been a surrogate Big Sister for her. She…” She snorted an angry laugh. “A kid was giving her shit at school. Third grade, you know? Probably likes her, but doesn’t know how to handle it. So I told her how to handle it. How to make it clear what the line was without getting in trouble herself or actually hurting him.”
“Do tell.”
She looked at me like I’d asked for her deepest secret. “I’ve seen how you look at me sometimes. I might have to use it on you.”
I didn’t argue the point.
She chuckled. “You know what she told me? He’s buying her snacks now. Stood up to some kid who gave her shit for no reason.”
She took in and let out a long breath. “Her name’s Bonnie. She’s a handful, but I love her. I’ve known that kid since she was four. And though I get to stick around her, I can’t do anything about the father.”
“If you do?”
“I don’t get to see her again.”
“What’s special about the father?”
She shook her head. “Other than being a dipshit, I got nothing. Not for trying, either. But he’s got enough sway to tell a retired Army colonel to back me off.”
Stacey and I had worked together here and there over almost three years. Most of it had been mundane, but not all. I’d saved her life and she’d saved mine. She’d also helped me build a client base when I first arrived as a disgraced former cop from upstate New York.
“You’re aware of the concept of plausible deniability,” I said.
“Everyone’s aware—” Then my meaning hit her.
She bit her lower lip. Closed her eyes. A bead of sweat dropped from her forehead to her right cheek and rolled down.
“I’d tell you I’m discrete and work without leaving tracks, but then you’d know something, so I’ll keep that part to myself.”
Her head fell forward. When she spoke again, I almost didn’t hear her. “You can’t fuck this up, Shane.”
I nodded.
“No, I mean it. If you aren’t almost positive you can do this without fucking it up, walk away.”
I waited a while, not speaking, before I said, “And here I am.”
She turned to me and it seemed like maybe all the moisture on her face wasn’t sweat. “If this looks like it’s going south, bring me in, plausible deniability be damned.”
“Sure.”
She smiled as she stood up and held out her arm. I took it as if we were going to shake.
“That shirt’s not dry clean is it?”
This was the woman who said she had socks worth more than my entire wardrobe.
“You know it’s not—”
When she pulled me to her, it smelled like I was buried in old gym towels. But in all the time we’d worked together, I’d never seen her hug anyone.
“Thank you.” Her whispered words were close enough to almost be in my ear.
When I first started working down here, I did some jobs on deep discount. Robin said I was a sucker and if I wasn’t careful, I’d wind up working for free. I guess she was right.
Copyright 2021, Chris Hamilton. All rights reserved.
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