Takedown Teague (Caged #1)(3)
“Turn around,” Yolanda ordered, and I did as she said. “Sit. I can’t reach you from there.”
I sighed but couldn’t really argue. She was maybe all of five-two, and I was nearly a foot taller. She wouldn’t be able to check me out if I remained standing. I sat on the bench and she looked at my shoulder.
“What’s the damage?” I asked. “Tats okay?”
“Just a scratch,” she confirmed. “Tats survived.”
Yolanda pulled a bottle of rubbing alcohol out of her bag. Aside from being a cage fighter before she tore her ACL, she claimed to be a registered nurse. She certainly seemed to know what she was doing and even stitched up my side once when someone pulled a knife on me after losing a fight. The stitches weren’t pretty, but they kept me from losing a lot of blood on the way to the hospital. Yolanda tipped the bottle upside down with a piece of gauze over the opened lid and rubbed some of the alcohol on my shoulder, which made me hiss.
“Don’t be such a baby.” She clicked her tongue at me.
“That f*cking hurts.”
“You’ll go nine minutes getting punched in the face, but a little alcohol always makes you whine.”
“I’m not whining,” I insisted, shrugging her off. It didn’t work, because she went after the cut over my eye next. Once she was done with her mothering, I opened my locker, located the small felt bag on the top shelf, and dumped the contents into my hand—two round silver earrings. I slipped them both through the matching holes in my left ear. “Don’t you have anything in there that doesn’t f*cking sting like a bitch?”
“*.”
I snorted, rolled my shoulder a couple of times, and then reached into my gym bag for a T-shirt.
“Don’t put that on,” Yolanda said with another exaggerated sigh.
“Why not?”
“Well, for one, you’ve got a lot of female fans out there tonight,” she explained. “You know they want you half naked, and you also know you love to show off the ink. Besides, you just pulled that nasty, wrinkled thing out of your gym bag.”
“So?”
“So, it smells like a dead dog.”
“Nice.” I tossed the shirt back in the bag and zipped it up. “Let’s do this.”
Back inside the bar, it was a madhouse. I shoved my way through, using my bulk and notoriety to get myself through the crowd and up to the bar. I maneuvered up to the very end to keep from being completely surrounded and stood next to a big poster on the wall. It depicted an old guy with a long, white beard holding up a rat. At the bottom it read:
“Feet first, Arthur. It’s the only way out of here!”
I had no f*cking clue what it was supposed to mean, but Dordy, the owner of the bar, thought it was hysterical. He was a short, lanky guy with black hair and eyes. He was from the Philippines or maybe Malaysia; I could never remember exactly. He was behind the bar nearly every night and apparently bought the place because he liked talking to drunk people though he never had a drink himself. He used to work on a cruise ship and made killer frozen drinks.
About fifteen people tried to buy me drinks, holding out long neck domestic beers and other shit I wouldn’t touch. I did hand two of them to my now bandaged opponent, who seemed to need them more than I did anyway. I politely declined the rest of the drinks until Dordy placed a rocks glass with a single malt scotch in front of me—neat. When I looked up at him, Dordy motioned to a guy at the end of the bar, sitting there with a similar drink. His neatly styled dark hair was slicked back over his temples, and as our eyes met, he raised his glass.
I copied his motion and sipped at the whiskey. It was top shelf—well, for this place, anyway—and went down pretty smooth. I raised an eyebrow at him before turning away and smiling seductively at a young woman in leather shorts and a tank top. When I had enough of being pawed at by various women and barraged with enough questions about my fighting style from various men, I snuck out back for a smoke.
I climbed up the half dozen stairs that brought me level to the street, jumped over the side rail at the top and into the enclosed area behind the bar. It was well past two in the morning, and the street was completely devoid of traffic. Most people in this neighborhood didn’t have cars, and those who might have been passing through had done so in the safer hours of daylight. There wasn’t much of anyone around except a small group of guys sitting on the steps of an abandoned warehouse on the other side of the street, passing a bottle in a brown paper bag back and forth between them.
Subtle, I thought with a snort and lit up my cigarette.
The back part of the bar was supposed to be used just for deliveries and taking plastic bags brimming over with bottles to the dumpster, but since it also connected to the locker room, I found it convenient to come out here to smoke, away from the crowds that gathered outside the front doors. The area was surrounded by a chain-link fence, which was not unlike the one that made up the fighting cage inside. There was a large poster on it, displaying a picture of me advertising fights twice a week.
Takedown Teague
Cage Fights
Tuesdays and Fridays 10PM
I leaned against the chain-link fence next to the poster and wrapped the fingers of one hand through the holes. I pulled against it a couple of times and listened to the rattling sound it made while I watched the fight run through my head again. I inhaled smoke and blew it out my nose, trying to mask the heavy scent of garbage, vomit, and urine in the street.