Iron Fist (Part Two)

Iron FIst - Part Two

Act 2

"Welcome, Ghost"

~1~

Anj stepped into a world transformed. Like most cities, L.A. became a different beast by night. Final washes of pink and orange lay low on the horizon now, breaking up, fading, as the sun let go its hold and the city's lights, a hundred thousand impatient understudies, stepped in. Three guys with skinned heads and baseball caps flanked his car. Couldn't have looked like much to them. An unprepossessing 80's Ford. Without popping the hood they'd have no way of knowing what had been done to it. But here they were.

Anj walked to the door and stood waiting.

"Cool ride, man," on of the young toughs said, sliding off the hood. He looked at his buddies. They all laughed.

What a hoot.

Anj had the keys bunched in his hand, one braced and protruding between the second and third fingers. Stepping directly forward, he punched his fist at alpha dog's windpipe, feeling the key tear through layers of flesh, looking down as he lay gasping for air.

In his rearview mirror he watched the young tough's buddies stand over him, flapping hands and lips and trying to decide what the hell to do. It wasn't supposed to go down like this.

Maybe he should turn around. Go back and tell them that's what life was, a long series of things that didn't go down the way you thought they would.

Hell with it. Either they'd figure it out or they wouldn't. Most people never did.

Home was relative, of course, but that's where he went. Anj moved every few months. He existed a step or two to one side of the common world, largely out of sight, a shadow, all but invisible. Whatever he owned, either he could hoist it on his back and lug it along or he could walk away from it. 

Anonymity was the thing he loved most about the city, being a part of it and apart from it at the same time. He favored older apartment complexes where parking lots were cracked and stained with oil, where when the guy a few doors down played his music too loud you weren't about to complain, where frequently tenants loaded up in the middle of the night and rode off never to be heard from again. Even cops didn't like coming into such places.

His current apartment was on the second floor. From the front the dedicated stairway looked to be the only way up and down. But the back opened onto a general gallery, balconies running the length of each level, stairwells every third unit. 

A claustrophobic entryway just inside the door broke off to a living room on the right, bedroom to the left, kitchen tucked like a bird's head under wing behind the living room. With care you could store a coffeemaker and two or three cookpans in there, maybe half a run of dishes and a set of mugs, and still have room to turn around.

Which Anj did, putting a pan of water to boil, coming back out to look across a blank windows directly opposite. Anyone live over there? Had an inhabited look somehow, but he'd yet to see any movement, any signs of life. A family of five lived in the apartment down below. Seemed like whatever time of day or night he looked, two or more of them sat watching TV. 

A single man dwelled to the right, one of the studio apartments. He came home every night at five-forty with a six-pack and dinner in a white bag. Sat staring at the wall and pulling steadily at the beers, one every half hour. Third beer, he'd finger out the burger and munched own. Then he'd drink the rest of the beers, and when they were gone he'd go to bed.

---

Hours after Impact…

Anj sat in silence, icing himself down, contemplating his win. He stared off and got lost in his thoughts for a moment. 

He didn't hear someone approaching, they paused in the doorway to the trainer's room.

"Hey, asshole," the voice said.

Anj didn't answer at first. Instead, he slowly allowed his eyes to drift from the boots of the stranger, up to his worn denim jeans, to his face, covered in gray whiskers.

"One hell of a win out there," the voice said.

Anj nodded.

"I don't have to tell you that it's going to get harder from here on out."

Anj nodded again.

"I suppose you already figured that much out."

"Sure did."

"I just came by to pass on my congrats, and to see how you were doing."

"I'm good," Anj said finally.

"That's good, kiddo. That's real good."

Anj leaned back in the tub and closed his eyes.

"I hope you know that if you ever need my help, you just gotta ask, you know where to find me."

"I do," Anj said, eyes still closed.

"Well, I'll get outta your hair now. I'll see you on down the trail, kiddo"

The voice started for the door, but stopped.

"For what it's worth, I'm proud of you. I hope you're proud of yourself too."

"I am," Anj said, and when he opened his eyes he saw that the doorway was empty.

---

~2~

For a week or two when Anj first moved in, a woman of indeterminate age lived in the unit to the left. Mornings, post shower, she'd sit at the kitchen table rubbing lotion into her legs. Evening, again nude or nearly so, she'd sit speaking for hours on a portable phone. Once Anj had watched as she threw the phone forcibly across the room. She stepped up to the window then, breasts flattening against the glass. Tears in her eyes -- or had he just imagined that? He never saw her again after that night.

Returning to the kitchen, Anj poured boiling water over ground coffee in a filtered cone.

Someone was knocking on the door?

This absolutely did not happen. People who lived in places like Palm Shadows rarely mixed, and had good reason to expect no visitors.

"Smells good," she said when he went o the door. A younger girl. Jeans looking as if small explosions had taken place here and there, outwards puffs of white showing. An oversize T-shirt, black, legend long since faded, only random letters, an F, an A, a few half consonants remaining. Six inches of darks hair.

"I didn't know you lived here. I just moved down the hall."

A long narrow hand, curiously footlike, appeared before him. He took it.

"Roxie. I don't think anyone at work has introduced us."

He didn't ask what a girl her age was doing living in a place like this, though he had wondered the same thing about why she was working at the bar he bounced at. Where was her accent from? New York?

"Heard your radio, that's how I knew you were home. Had myself a batch of oatmeal all ready to go when it came to me that I didn't have a single egg, not a one. Any chance --"

"Sorry. There's a Korean grocer half a block up."

"Thanks… Think I could come in?"

Anj stepped aside.

"I like to know my neighbors."

"You're probably in the wrong place for that."

"Wouldn't be the first time. I have a history of bad choices. A downright talent for them."

"Can I get you something? I think there may be a beer or two left in the fridge."

"Some of that coffee I smelled would be great, actually."

Anj went back into the kitchen, poured two mugs, brought them back.

"Kind of a strange place to live," she said.

"L.A.?"

"Here, I meant."

"I guess."

"Guy below me's always peeking out his door when I come in. Apartment next to me, their TV's going twenty-four hours a day. Spanish channel. Salsa, soap operas with half the characters getting killed and the rest screaming, godawful comedy shows with fat men in pink suits."

"See you're fitting right in."

She laughed. They sat quietly sipping coffee, chattering on about nothing in particular. Anj hadn't developed the capacity for small talk, could never see the point of it. But now he found himself talking openly about his parents and sensing, in his momentary companion, some deep pain that might never be lessened.

"Thanks for the coffee," she said at length. "For the conversation even more. But I'm fading fast."

"Stamina is the first thing to go."

They walked together to the door. That long, narrow hand came out again, and he shook it.

"I'm in 2-G. I'm off Wednesdays and Sunday nights. Maybe you'll come by sometime."

She waited and, when he said nothing, turned and walked down the hall. Hips and rear end a marvel in her jeans. Growing even smaller in the distance. Carrying that pain and sadness back with her to the lair where it, and she, lived.

---

Episode Seven

Subject: Angelus

Date recorded: 1/18/13

Location: Undisclosed

"Chaos Theory"

Yeah, that's a picture of me with a velociraptor.

I figured it was fitting metaphor since on Saturday I'll be in the ring with two dinosaurs and a guy who doesn't look like he should be allowed within fifty feet of schools. I'll let you decide which is which.

But dinosaurs are extinct. The world has moved on without them and it doesn't matter how many times Hollywood tries to recreate them. They are dead and gone.

Kinda like Sebastian Duke's career.

Kinda like Michael James' career very shortly.

Mike, I'm real proud of you. I think this time you only wasted about three hours of my life that I can't get back.

I guess that's an improvement. I'll take a win where I can get it.

Let me make one thing clear. I don't have a quote unquote delirious fixation with you, Mike. You're lucky I even know your name. You look like the guy selling Chinese food off the back of a truck at 2am in Queens. 

Try not to flatter yourself.

Also, I'm curious about these so called better things you have to do with your time, Mike. Find a new pair of Raybans that don't make you look like a tool? Teach your girlfriend, Velveeta Cheese, or whatever her name is, to read? Get your back hair waxed off? What is it?

All kidding aside. I think you need to take a look around at this apparent A-Team you have assembled. We got you, the Personification of Pussification. We got another guy with his little nursery rhyme of a name, and we got The Count running around trying to cast spells on people.

Wow, yeah, Mike. That sounds like ideal candidates for flagship players.

It really looks like you guys are one, big, undivided unit.

By the way, when was the last time Duke won a match?

Oh, over Brett Rayne? That must have been for a championship of some kind, right? Since Duke is a flagship player and all that.

It wasn't? You mean he just beat some nobody on live TV?

Mike, you're right. I totally see it now. You got a future legend rolling in your posse. I was just too blind to see it before.

What's that smell?

Oh yeah, it's your bullshit, Mike. I can smell it all the way from Japan. 

So keep telling yourself that you're needed here. That you matter. That you are this big shot like you dream about at night when you finally look at yourself in the mirror.

But we both know, as we always have, that you're none of those things.

You're an old, broken down ride, Mike.

You're not the future.

Hell, you're not even the present.

So keep trying to use your little insults, and your name calling, and keep trying to get the word douche nozzle over like the unhip, fifty something that you are.

You can talk about respect and admiration all you want. I don't need you to tell me when I've earned it or when I have it. I never back down. I am the best at what I do, Mike and that's why I am the… 

….whole...

…damn...

…show…