Page 12 of Liquids

And the same thing repeats over and over, neither of them giving an inch, each one getting more and more tired and more and more battered.

Then I don’t know what happens, but Rig delivers a punch and the collective gasp is audible. The Bear goes down, eyes closed. Charcoal, swirls of air, and dark lines. A man collapsed onto his knees. The sudden fierce surge makes my fingers curl. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Why can’t I tamp it down tonight? I haven’t felt the urge in years. The referee steps forward, bends down, raises an arm, and begins to count. Rig drops to his knees, breathing hard. As I’m staring at him, his eyes lift, vacant and hazy, but somehow they lock on mine in the crowd. The shock on his face takes my breath away, but the Bear moves in a split second, clearly faking whatever he was doing, and his foot connects with Rig’s jaw under the chin with a sickening crack. Rig’s neck snaps back and he goes down in the dirt.

Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck! I start forward, but the sound of sirens hits the air and everyone starts running. Men push past me, making for their cars as the circle dissolves and becomes a stampede. In the pandemonium, I lose sight of Rig, and Marni appears suddenly at my side.

“Hon, we have to go,” she says.

“But he … I have to …” I trail off as the crowd thins, eyes darting around. Where the hell is he? Then I spot four guys carrying a big body toward a truck. The Bear is nowhere to be seen.

“I have to go and check if he’s okay. I need to …”

“He’ll be fine. Come on.”

As I watch, they lever him into the back and a guy slams the door as two men jump up front. The truck fishtails off over the bumpy ground.

Marni grabs my hand and pulls me across the dirt, slipping and sliding, and thank God we arrived late because, although our car’s at the end of the row, we parked it off the gravel road. As we run toward it, we pass a blue Passat at the edge of the field.

“Crap, Dr. Moreno’s car! I said I’d take it back.”

She skids to a halt. “Shit, hon. We haven’t got time for that.”

“I’ve got to take it, Marn. I promised.”

She rolls her eyes. “Can you drive it across the grass onto the road?” She races off, not waiting for an answer, and all I can think is: Fuck, I hope I don’t get stuck.

I jump in Dr. Moreno’s car, fire it up, and go as fast as I dare toward the gate. A line of pickups is heading off down the track in the dark, away from the sirens, and I slot in behind them. I reach Marni’s car just as the cop cars hit the circle of dirt.

Marni reverses into the road in front of me, lights off. And we follow the trucks down the road, but being at the back we’ll be the first to be caught. Suddenly, she swings to the right, so I do the same, sending up a silent prayer. I make out an open gate in the shadows as we lurch past, bumping our way through a field and down a hill until a hedge looms up in the dark. Marni drives through a gap and parks behind it, and I pull in next to her.

I jump out of Dr. Moreno’s car and tap on her window. She gestures at me to climb in on the passenger side. “What the hell?” I say, sliding in beside her. “Where the fuck are we?”

She shrugs. “Some field. We’re gonna have to wait here until it all dies down.”

“How did you know you could drive down here? Won’t they find us?”

“Someone drove down here once when I was at a fight before. I don’t think the cops know that cars can get down here.”

She was probably down here giving somebody car head.

“Won’t they search the area?”

She makes a face at me. “Maybe. We should go and shut that gate we came through.”

We struggle out of her car and head off up the field. Torches are bobbing around up the road, the police shouting to one another as their radios crackle. There are four or five cruisers at the top of the hill now, and as we reach where we turned off, car lights are heading off across the gravel roads that crisscross the country all around us. We lift the gate over the uneven ground and push it shut. Two of the cop cars start down the road, and we duck down behind the hedge as they head down the hill past us.

“Jed’s a lazy fuck; I don’t think they’ll search down here,” Marni whispers. “They’ll have blockaded the road farther down, hoping to catch everyone as they leave. I don’t need no fine or warning from the cops. Let’s hole up for a bit.”

By the time we get back to the cars, I’m shivering and cold. I pull my coat around me and glance at the illuminated dial on my watch: 2 a.m. and I’ve got a shift looking after my little old ladies tomorrow morning. I groan.

Marni grins at me in the gloom. “Come and sit with me; it’ll be warmer. We can grab a coupla hours’ shut-eye here.”

This is the last time I let her persuade me into anything.

And of course he’s back and I knew nothing about it. For the umpteenth time since he left, I kick myself for even talking to him that night, never mind any of the other stuff we did.

After three hours of sleeping in Marni’s car, I drive Dr. Moreno’s Passat back to my apartment over Ketley’s and make my way wearily up the iron steps in the pitch black. 5 a.m. Is it even worth going to bed? And why did I think going to a fight was a sensible idea? All those injured guys.

“Where you been?” The growl comes from my right, and I start, swinging around to find Rig hiding in the shadows at the top of my stairs like I conjured him, face bruised and battered and a patch of white muslin over one eye.