The morning after my first official victory as a brawler, I woke sore as hell, muscles aching and back on fire. But I was jacked up and ready to train hard, see what Khajee had to show me next. Only the bedroom door stayed frustratingly closed, even as I paced back and forth in the living room fully dressed in the predawn light. Than’s coughing fits had woken me a few times overnight, and now he was racked by them at regular intervals. Every so often I heard Khajee speaking to him, low and urgent. If he answered, I didn’t hear. Finally, I knocked and said, “Anything I can do?”

Khajee cracked the door and the antiseptic hospital smell emerged. “You’re on your own this morning.” After a pause, she went on, “It was a bad night. I need to tend to him.”

The care in her voice, the no-nonsense this is what has to happen, it made it easy to picture her as a nurse or a doctor, someone to count on in a crisis. “I can help,” I said.

But she just shook her head. “I’ll get him settled and go to school. I won’t leave unless he’s all right. You jog, give the wall a shot, and hit the gym. Check on him around lunch, okay? And don’t let him smoke.”

“Sure thing,” I told her. I rubbed hard at my neck, where my muscles formed a knot that felt like a stone.

She vanished for a second and returned with the tennis ball, which she deposited in my upturned hand. It was wet with slobber, and I was certain Rosie had slept with it. Behind her, Than’s voice was thin, weak. “Kà-nŏm bpang mâi dtông. Ao kâe nám sôm gôr por.”

Khajee closed the door, and there was nothing else I could do. I knew the old man was sick, but I’d wanted to describe the fight to him myself. This was a silly and selfish thought, one I pushed from my mind as I readied for my run. Than was Khajee’s uncle, not mine. I shouldn’t be so desperate for his approval — or anyone’s.

The day passed easily enough. I made three attempts at the stone wall over in Seibert, each time getting a bit closer but never reaching the summit. At the gym, my win seemed to earn me some small additional measure of street cred. There was no sign of Badder, Maddox, or Dominic, but the few other brawlers didn’t crowd me. In fact, Santana shook my hand and said he was looking forward to our fight. The smile on his scarred face looked sincere. I wondered again if someone had cut him, or if those wounds weren’t the result of some crash, his face versus a windshield. Before stepping away, Santana touched his beard and eyed up mine, tossing me a validating grin. In between sets, I watched him jump rope, work the speed bag. He wasn’t as muscular as me or Dominic, and he wasn’t tall like Maddox. But the dude was rattlesnake fast.

Around noon I checked in on Than, and he was out cold. When I first opened the door and saw him motionless on the bed like that, I thought the worst. But up close, I could hear a raspy breath escaping from his open mouth, and I could see the thin sheet rising and falling across his chest. In the living room, I lingered by the corner table with the bronze Buddha and wondered if I should pray for Than. Would my Catholic prayers reach a Buddhist heaven?

I remembered praying as a boy, my fingers folded tight in the darkness, for Jesus to come and intercede with my father, calm his savage temper. One Lent, I said a rosary every night before bed. A lot of good that did.

I moved away from the shrine and sat on the couch, my head full of questions. All day during my workout, my mind had been crammed with thoughts — of the ref I hurt, of Leonard in the boxcar, and Sunday’s offer to be some sort of junior-level enforcer. Now I couldn’t stop imagining my mother with her arm in a brace, and the shame was too much. I needed to shut my brain down for a while, so I decided to try Than’s meditation again. I settled on the couch and gently, I closed my eyes. I summoned up a summer sky, blue like a robin’s egg. It was nice at first, pleasant and calm. I even felt a breeze brush my cheeks. Inevitably though, my worries returned. I concentrated my attention and made each into a small cloud, focused so that by force of will it dissipated. I tugged them apart as if they were cotton balls. But the troubling images began to gather one atop the next, and in no time, my blue sky was darkened by storm clouds. I heard a thunder clap, and a lightning strike opened my eyes.

I met Blalock at Pancakes and Porkchops for a late lunch. This time, I ordered one of those cheesesteaks myself, and yeah sure, it was damn good. Under the table, he slid me an envelope thick with cash. He explained that there was a little extra included, a bonus from Sunday, “to give me a taste.” This was clearly an attempt to encourage me to accept Sunday’s offer, and Blalock didn’t need to spell it out. Instead he talked about Santana, said he’d once seen him foot-sweep a guy to the ground so fast it looked like he’d been shot.

Just cause I was curious, I asked where the next fight would be, and Blalock got fidgety. He glanced around and leaned in over our empty plates. “That intelligence is disseminated on a need-to-know basis. As a security precaution it’s necessary to limit access to our actual whereabouts. Even the high rollers only learn the location the day of the fight. Loose lips sink ships.”

He looked deadly serious and I nodded just to let him know I wouldn’t ask again. Whatever. Like I cared.

Before we parted, he also explained that the advanced online betting was looking good. Despite my dominant first victory, Santana opened as the 5–1 favorite but a lot of the money was following me. I was curious about the offshore website, how big the organization was, where the high rollers fit in, but Blalock was edgy, so there was no point in asking.

When Khajee got home after school, she found me crashed on the couch. The TV screen was filled with an MMA fight tape I found mixed in with the box of Muay Thai. The closing door startled me, and I watched her drop her backpack and a white CVS bag on the table, then she turned off the TV and came to my side. “Trying some sort of subliminal training regimen?”

I sat up and she asked, “How’s he been?”

“Fine,” I said. “Good. He rested the whole day far as I can tell.”

She handed me a tiny octagonal jar that had “Tiger Balm” printed on it. “Strong stuff,” she said. “Massage a little bit into your neck and it’ll relax the muscle. But don’t get any in your eyes.”

She disappeared into the bedroom and I did as she instructed. The lotion was pungent and my flesh burned, but in a way I could tell was good.

When Khajee emerged, I thanked her and she said, “He’s hungry but sleepy with fever. A bath should revive him.” After she went in the bathroom, I heard the water running. The sound make me think of Khajee’s singing, something I hadn’t heard in a few days.

I asked if I could help get him in the tub and she shook her head. “We’ll manage. He’s a private man, very proud. You understand? You can find something in the freezer for dinner for us, yeah?”

“Sure,” I said. “Of course.”

My stomach was still full from that cheesesteak, but I heated up some frozen lasagna during the bath, and Than eventually made his way to the table with great effort, leaning heavy on his walker and hopping with difficulty. He greeted me and gave me a thumbs-up. “Good to get a first win under your belt!” he said. Khajee smiled, but I wondered if she’d told him about all that had happened, if he knew about the fire or how I lost control. Than ended up not having much of an appetite for the lasagna. Mostly he just moved it around with his fork and sipped some sort of protein shake that Khajee made in the blender.

Later, I did the dishes while Khajee paged through some math, tapping on a calculator. I wasn’t sure if this was SAT prep or homework. I settled Than in his easy chair and we started watching a VHS tape of Olympic judo. He was asleep by the end of the second bout.

After we got him back to bed, I joined Khajee at the kitchen table and asked something I’d been wondering. “How does samatha help him with his pain?”

Khajee cocked an eyebrow at me.

“He taught me the word. I’m coachable.” I winked. “Seriously, so like it helps him ignore it?”

She shook her head. “No. Meditation clarifies things. But it’s not a way to delude yourself. If you feel pain, if you have troubling thoughts, you acknowledge them, but then you move on. You let them go.”

“That sounds hard.”

“Yeah right,” she said. “And it’s harder than it sounds.”

I remembered my mom imploring me to forgive my father like she had done, to accept that we’re all sinners in need of Christ’s grace. But my anger at him was such a big part of who I was. If I let go of that, then who would I be?

Somehow, this must’ve been showing on my face, since Khajee asked, “You okay?”

“Fine,” I told her. Then I said something true. “I’m really worried about your uncle. I know how he feels about doctors, but I think he’s getting worse.”

“He’s stubborn,” Khajee said, looking his way. “Besides, doctors cost money.”

Quietly as I could, I stepped into the living room and reached under the couch cushion. I pulled out an envelope with the stack of cash I’d gotten from my fight. That afternoon I’d counted it on the kitchen table — $5,000. More than I’d ever had in my hands. “Money we got,” I told her.

Khajee stared at me for a minute. “I don’t —” she said. “I could never —” Then she dipped her head, swallowed, and looked back at me. “I’m not in the habit of taking handouts.”

“It wouldn’t have to be a handout,” I explained. “We could call it a loan or —”

“I don’t like being in debt. To anybody.” At this she abruptly turned away. Without saying another word, she slid on her sneakers and got Rosie into her harness, clipped on her leash. Sometimes in a fight, you’ve got to know when to keep pressing, so I got my sneakers too, and when Khajee opened the door to leave, I followed.

In silence, we walked along the darkened street, past the cans and bags set out for garbage night. Rosie seemed to want to sniff each one, and Khajee had to yank on the leash, urge her forward. She snapped, “Come on!” and Rosie trotted on obediently, head hanging from the scolding.

“Hey,” I finally said. “Don’t take it out on the doggo.”

Khajee flashed me an angry glare and we walked on, but she let Rosie linger more at trees and hydrants. We crossed Front Street and made our way along the bike path, trotting by a mom pushing a stroller. I took note of the “exercise stations” the city installed in the name of public fitness, most of which looked like misplaced pieces from some strange playground.

The lights were on over at City Island, which was weird since the Harrisburg Senators were surely out of season. In the summer, they shoot off fireworks after a win. Some nights when Mom didn’t have a shift, she and I would walk up to Negley Park overlooking the west shore. It was fun, trying to follow the game from afar, rooting for a win so we could watch them color the night sky. This memory dislodged another, one I’d lost track of: my father leading me by the hand to our seats inside the stadium, a special treat one year for my birthday. We shared nachos, did the wave, craned our necks to see the cascading fireworks. On the way back to the car, I was so tired he carried me.

Khajee paused at a bench I thought was already occupied. Then I realized the figure I saw was only a statue, another “improvement” the city made when they renovated the waterfront. The bronze man sat with his legs crossed, comfortably reading a bronze newspaper. I stood next to them and the Susquehanna flowed south. Two joggers padded by us wearing lights on their foreheads, like miners. The half-moon glowed plenty bright so we could see the ripples. I said, “Look how the water —” but cut myself off, remembering her odd reaction down at the creek.

Maybe Khajee sensed my thoughts, and I guess the evening was thick with the past, because out of the blue, she spoke in a quiet voice, facing the river. “When I was eight … one of my mom’s friends invited us to spend the weekend at Chincoteague Island down in Virginia. The first night, I remember, we all chased ghost crabs on the beach with flashlights. So much fun. But then Saturday —”

Khajee choked on the next words, and I had a feeling where this was going. I remembered that her parents had died, but she’d said nothing about them other than that. I wasn’t sure why she was telling me this, but I could tell it was costing her. The sentences were like stones she was heaving up from a deep well. She sniffled and straightened. “Saturday, even though the sky was gray, they took us out on their new sailboat, about six adults altogether and me. I can still feel my mom tightening the straps of my orange life vest, the same one she made me wear when we went tubing on the creek.”

She got quiet and I didn’t know what to say.

“The rest is murky. The waves got bigger, sharper, tossing us around. I threw up. Some of the adults started arguing. I remember lightning and my mother crying, my father clutching me, the ship pitching, bucking like a wild horse. Then I was splashing in the water, alone. It got really dark then, black as midnight.”

I imagined a child on her own in the ocean, and I wanted to tell her I knew something about that darkness. In the riverside air, impossibly, that familiar smell of the closet came to me on the breeze. “Khajee,” I whispered. I reached out for her.

“No,” she said, shaking away my touch. “Just let me finish this now or I might never get back to it. After forever, the storm subsided. There were lights in the sky then a rescue boat and a woman rubbing me with a towel, telling me, ‘Let’s get you warm.’ ”

“Sweet Jesus,” I said, a curse and a prayer.

“My uncle took me in,” she said. “He moved here from Atlantic City. He’s always been a sort of jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none kind of guy. He’s been a fisherman, a bricklayer, a bartender, an electrician. But he’s a terrible gambler, and he got in way over his head with Sunday. My uncle had no assets to take, and there was no use beating him, so Sunday put him to work. He was an errand boy for a while, then graduated to being his personal driver. When Brawlers got going, he started training fighters in Muay Thai at that ratty gym.”

I wondered how much they owed Sunday and asked, “What kind of debt are we talking about here?”

She knuckled her eye sockets. “The kind that keeps accruing interest. By the time my uncle’s health took a turn, Grunt was driving and my uncle was mostly training fighters, so Sunday said he’d keep paying our bills if I stepped in. If I were a boy, I’d be in the ring making real money, not just chipping away at what we owe.”

“No doubt,” I agreed. I was pretty sure that one-on-one, Khajee could take most of the guys on my wrestling team. “But this is crazy,” I told her. “Like you’re some sort of indentured servant.”

She shrugged. “No offense Mac. I mean, I like you and all, but still. You know I’m not training you for charity or to beef up my resume.”

That hurt, but the words I like you and all sort of glowed in my mind.

“Sunday pays our rent, gives us money for food and a little extra. I’m not even sure what we still owe or how long I’ll be paying it off. If I go to the cops, who will pay the bills next month? How will I buy groceries or medicine?”

Khajee was a proud girl, and I knew it pained her to tell me all this. I remembered my mom pulling the packet of food stamps from her purse at Karns, always keeping her head down when she handed them over.

“I understand,” I said, knowing I really couldn’t. Not fully. I wasn’t supporting an adult and trying to get through school at the same time. Khajee began to weep quietly, and Rosie put her head on her lap, which was more comfort than I could offer. But I knew she’d shared something important with me, and it felt wrong not to share something back. “I only saw him once.”

Khajee sniffled back tears. “What now?”

“My father,” I said. “You asked if I ever saw him in prison. The answer is just one time. And even that was across a parking lot, through a cyclone fence. After he was in there for like a year, my mom convinced me to visit him. But when we got there I sort of freaked. I refused to get out of the car.”

Khajee seemed to take this in. I wondered what screwed a kid up worse, having parents die like hers or having a dad like mine. I figured us both for pretty much lost causes.

“And you never went back?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Nothing there for me.”

She fixed me with those green eyes. “You father has nothing you want?”

“What’s he going to do? Explain how he’s sorry for what he did? That’s not going to happen.”

“How do you know?”

“People don’t change. Even as an inmate he kept screwing up, got a few years added to his sentence for fighting or something. Trust me. The only thing I’d want from him is a chance to kick his ass.” Sunday’s proposal drifted through my head. For Khajee, I added, “But that seems kinda unlikely, given the prison guards and all.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “I guess crime is frowned upon in prison.”

I stood. “It wouldn’t be a crime to give that man a beating. It’d be justice.”

She waited for me to say something else, and I heard the tone I’d used, the heat rising in my voice. “C’mon,” I finally said. “My legs are getting stiff. Let’s walk.”

In awkward silence, we retraced our steps. A dad with three kids was helping them climb over the bars of one of the exercise stations. A homeless woman in filthy clothes leaned against a tree, stroking a cat on her lap. Eventually we wandered back into the neighborhood, with Rosie sniffing every stack of garbage bags as we passed. We traveled along a row of bars, doors open and music spilling out. Some of it was live. Some lady was butchering the Johnny Cash tune “Ring of Fire,” and I turned to Khajee. “That better be karaoke. Nobody that bad should get paid to sing.”

“She’s not so bad,” Khajee said. “A little pitchy on the edges.”

“Are you kidding?” I asked. “You sound way better.”

Khajee halted, nearly choking Rosie. “I sound better?”

I searched for the right words. “You know. In the house.” I really didn’t want to say shower. “When you’re getting cleaned up.”

Khajee’s cheeks flushed and she started walking fast. I rushed after her. “You’re kidding me with this, right? The mighty warrior chick is embarrassed? That’s so sweet.”

She swatted my chest with a backhand, smiling. “Lay off. I didn’t think you could hear me. But of course you could. I won’t do it again.”

I set a hand on her arm, stopping her. “That’d be a shame. You have a wonderful voice.”

We held eyes for a second, then she looked away. “That’s not what everybody thinks.”

“Everybody like who?”

“Like Mr. Wertzman.” She tugged her arm free and said, “Drop it. I’m not interested in rehashing the past.”

A garbage truck rumbled by, and Rosie barked at it. I could tell Khajee was riled up by this Wertzman guy, whoever he was, but for the moment, I knew best to respect her wishes. To break the silent tension, I said, “So what’s so terrible about my elbow strikes?”

Khajee had a bit of a spasm, suppressing a laugh. She looked up at me and wiped her eyes. “Everything. The only nice thing I have to say is that you elbow strike better than you kick.”

I thrust a foot into the air, barely waist high, and she shook her head. “It hurts to see you try that. Please stop.”

I laughed and together we walked on. At the mouth of an alleyway, Rosie took a sincere interest in some scent and she dragged us inside. She sniffed at a leaky dumpster. There was nobody else around. I said, “Seriously. We’ve got Santana at the end of this week. How about some pointers?”

“Fine,” she said, and handed me the end of Rosie’s leash. She settled into a fighting stance with her knees bent slightly and her fists raised, close together up by her chin. “This is how you should be,” she explained. For emphasis, she snapped her elbows in a series of rapid uppercuts, then threw a few looping hooks. Lastly, she turned sideways and thrust her right elbow out, like you would to break a window. “All these begin with your hands close together. This defends your face and keeps the strikes tight.” She showed me again, resuming her initial stance. “But you,” she said. “You look like this.” Slowly, she moved her hands apart six inches. “This leaves a gap a mile wide, especially for a strike artist like Santana. It also kills the torque for your elbows, weakens their impact.”

She took the leash from me and secured the dog to a pipe running down the brick wall, then stared my way. I realized this was my cue. So I crouched down, shrugged my shoulders in, and brought my fists up the way she had. “Better,” she said. “Now throw some elbows.”

Even though we were right there in an alley and anybody walking by could see us, Khajee didn’t seem self-conscious about any of this. Me, I felt a little weird but decided to play along. As I swung at the air, she frowned. “Twist at your waist. You don’t just throw a punch with your arm — it’s your whole body throwing it … keep your hands closer together, it’ll give you more power.”

Figuring we were going to be a while, Rosie curled into a heap, still leashed to that pipe. Khajee began to bob and weave in front of me, and I understood she wanted me to echo her motions, so I became a living mirror image. When she jabbed with her left and followed with a right elbow, I did likewise. In slow motion, she floated a right hook across my face, and I pulled back on instinct. With her arm still extended, she said, “Even when you miss, sometimes it creates an opportunity.” She popped her elbow gently into my chin, and I knew if she really drove it home, it would have felt like a hammer shot.

“Set up your shots. A knee to the side will lower a man’s guard. Think in combinations.” She leaned in and lifted her knee into my left rib cage. I hunched into it, dropping my arm a bit, and her right elbow tapped my skull, just above the ear. “Flow from one action to the next. Don’t think of them as individual moves. Picture the whole constellation, not the stars.”

I straightened up and we began sparring again. She said, “Once you’ve hurt your opponent, a feint is as good as a strike, yeah? But you have to commit to it with your eyes, make him believe the attack is real.” She stepped into me and drove a fist straight toward my face. I leaned back and she dropped down, wrapping both arms onto one of my knees. She was quick as Santana. “A guy like you, with your strength and skill set, you can do a lot with a leg.”

“Ground and pound,” I said.

She released my leg. “Exactly. I’m telling you right now, you can’t stand toe-to-toe with most of these guys. In a straight boxing match, you wouldn’t stand a chance. Never mind the fact that they can kick too. But once you get them down, the advantage should be yours.”

I nodded because she was making sense. Like the best coaches, Khajee was finding words to express what my body already knew. But she was also helping me form a battle plan for my next match. Even though Sunday’s debt was forcing her to do this, she was damn good at it. “C’mon,” she said, lifting her hands. “Practice faking a strike and then sliding into a single or double leg.”

We began to circle each other again, falling into a natural rhythm, and our stiff movements melted into something fluid. Though she was half my size, Khajee was an awesome sparring partner, overreacting and staying open, letting me see my mistakes, but she was playful too, now and then tagging me on the chin with a slap or sticking a foot into my gut. “Your guard, your guard,” she’d say. “Stick and move. Stay on your toes. Don’t get caught flat-footed.”

We got lost in the action, like you always do when it’s good, and time passed without us noticing. Now and then when I did something right, she’d flash me a smile of approval, and I got distracted by how lovely Khajee’s face was. She always struck me as sort of cute, but somehow when she was fighting, her real beauty came out. This recognition mixed with what she said about liking me spawned a stray thought, the notion that me and her might be more than friends. This stole my attention long enough for her to slip in a swift jab to my chin, which she followed with a ferocious fist to my sternum. I stepped back, catching my breath, and she said, “Lose concentration like that in a match and it’s all over.”

I charged forward, driving her back into the side wall of the alley, grinning playfully as I posted my hands on either side of her, trapping her inside my arms. Our faces were close now. She tilted her head and looked at me sort of curiously, like she wasn’t sure just what I was thinking. Of course, neither was I really. But whatever was about to happen or not happen, we never got the chance.

Below us, Rosie snarled and got to her feet, tugging on her leash. Then I heard a deep voice ask, “What exactly are we looking at here?”

Through the darkness, I saw three figures silhouetted, just black shadows with traffic passing behind them. In the center, the tallest of the three spoke again. “Looks to me like a lover’s quarrel.”

I pulled my arms away from Khajee, and Rosie showed her teeth, hackles rising. Khajee bent to rub her head while I squared off, assuming the gunslinger’s pose. If my boyhood taught me one thing, it was the sound of a man’s voice when he’s itching for a fight. And judging by this guy’s tone, he was drunk and mean and on the prowl. Though I was sure I’d never met him before, his voice sounded familiar, and I decided right then that if he and his buddies were searching for trouble, they’d come to the right place.