It’s July Fourth weekend. Everywhere’s closed.
Bonnie sighed. Poor Nicky, it was terrible timing.
The emergency room? she offered.
And lose the whole day? You know it will be a shit show there. Nicky took a deep breath down the phone. Do you think…you could get some from the gym, Bon? I don’t need much. Just a few pills to get me through the weekend.
Bonnie frowned. Most boxers had some kind of painkiller on hand. Bonnie herself had gotten a cortisone shot earlier in her camp after injuring her rotator cuff during a sparring session, but in general she avoided taking anything that could cloud her mind or slow her reflexes. She had seen guys exchanging pills before, though she had always stayed clear of that kind of thing. It was a slippery slope and, anyway, pain was part of boxing. Bonnie could ask, but it would risk her reputation with the other fighters. What if Pavel got wind of it?
I don’t know if that’s a good idea…she began.
I’m asking for, like, two pills, Nicky snapped. Please, Bonnie.
She hated to disappoint her sister, but she was also surprised by Nicky’s tone. If she was honest, Nicky had been different recently, peevish and quicker to anger.
If it’s that bad, maybe you should go to the emergency room? she tried again.
It’s fine, said Nicky. Don’t worry about it. Look, don’t tell the others I asked, okay? I don’t want them to worry.
She hung up before Bonnie could say goodbye.
That afternoon, Bonnie was working with Pavel on defense drills. Pavel held a foam pool noodle in each hand and used them to tap Bonnie’s shoulders, head, and body while she slipped, rolled, and parried to avoid them. It was a classic exercise used to improve a fighter’s head movement and hand speed, but Bonnie’s head was elsewhere. Thwack. The pool noodle hit her ear as Bonnie reacted too slowly to slip its trajectory.
Move your head! called Pavel over the swishing of the foam tubes. Thwack. Bonnie took a noodle to the other ear, then to the cheek. Thwack, thwack. The blows were soft, but Pavel delivered them in a quick flurry that disoriented Bonnie. Hello! he called, hitting her in the head again. Anyone in there? Bonnie rolled to miss the deluge, but Pavel intercepted her with a swipe to the body, then back up to the head again.
Stop! she shouted suddenly, grabbing the noodles from his hands and tossing them across the floor.
Bonnie never ended drills early. Whatever Pavel asked her to do—another minute of plank, another round on the bag, ten more seconds in the ice bath—she did it. She never quit; that was what made her great. She slumped onto the bench and took a long pull of water. Pavel came and sat beside her. He turned and tapped the side of her head gently with his finger.
What going on in there, hmm? he asked. He’d been in America for years by then, but his Russian accent was still as thick as ever.
It’s Nicky, she said eventually. She’s in pain again.
Pavel nodded silently and clasped his hands in front of him.
You know, I did not go home to Moscow for six years? he said. Even when my mother died.
Bonnie glanced at him. She did not know that, but she could have guessed. Pavel rarely mentioned his family.
Boxing is sacrifice, he said slowly. Is pain. Most people, they could never do what we do.
I know that, said Bonnie impatiently. She didn’t need him to tell her about sacrifice. What else had she been doing all these years? Why else had she been suffering with these feelings for him in silence?
There is boxing. Pavel cut his hand through the air with one hand. And there is everything else. He placed his other hand below the first. Bonnie sat quietly for a moment.
But my sisters are— She took his second hand and lifted it, so it was parallel to the first. Pavel shook his head and moved the hand back, returning it below the other.
We are not like other people, Bonnie. He spoke softly but his voice was firm. We are the lonely hunters.
Bonnie looked at Pavel. Was she imagining it, or was he sending her a message? Could it be that he felt the same way for her as she did for him, and this was his way of saying that never admitting their feelings was the sacrifice they both must make for greatness? Or was he simply talking about boxers in general? Pavel always said that the longest distance in boxing was from the dressing room to the ring, not because of the crowds watching or the commentators judging, but because that was how long a boxer had for the belief they could win to travel from their head to their heart. It was one thing to think you were a champion, another to feel it. The head to the heart, Pavel said, was the greatest journey a boxer could make.
But what if I’m not like you? she asked.
What if I don’t want to be lonely forever? she did not add.
You not, he said. He placed his hand on her knee, then quickly removed it again. You better.
—
“How you doin’ tonight, sister?” asked Fuzz, offering his fist for a bump. “You feel that earthquake this morning?”
“Sure did,” intercepted Peachy. “I was with a lady friend. Not the worst timing.” He gave Bonnie a quick wink. “Added a bit more rock to my roll, if you know what I mean.”
“What time was it?” asked Bonnie.
“ ’Round five,” said Fuzz. “You should have heard my wife. Yelling at me to save the kids. Got all four of them out of bed and then what? Nuttin’. Nightmare to get the little ones back to sleep.”
Bonnie smiled ruefully to herself.
“I thought someone was trying to break into my apartment,” she said.
Fuzz laughed and spat between his feet.
“Lord help the guy that tries to rob you, Bonnie Blue. He be knockin’ on the wrong door.”
The first revelers began to arrive and within an hour a line was snaked around the block. People tumbled in and out of the doors, growing increasingly vociferous as the night wore on. Though thirty-one years old, Bonnie had never been drunk, never even smoked a cigarette. At the age when the rest of her peers discovered the wonders of inebriation, Bonnie won her first bout and experienced the intoxication of victory. As she grew older, she never felt the tug toward experimentation that seemed to lure others. She had watched drugs almost destroy Avery’s life before she got clean and became the faultless perfectionist she presented herself as today. Even glamorous Lucky and her carousel of parties didn’t make staying up until four a.m. seem more tempting than waking up at that time to work out. And watching people stumble and swerve out of the bar each night didn’t do much to convince her that she was missing out. It always seemed like a waste of time to Bonnie, a person who for years had had no time to waste.
And, of course, there’d been Nicky. Nicky liked a glass of wine every now and then, but she’d never been much of a partyer. She, like Bonnie, preferred a clear head. But the pain of her endometriosis had changed her. At twenty, when she was finally diagnosed, she had laparoscopic surgery to remove the damaged tissue from around her uterus. For a few months, she appeared to be better. But then it came back, even worse this time. The only solution doctors could offer was managing the symptoms with more pain meds or a hysterectomy, a surgery to remove the uterus altogether, thereby ensuring Nicky would never have a child. For Nicky, it wasn’t a choice.
