I’m really sorry, Pavel, she said quietly.
He shrugged.
Is hard, this life we chose, he said. Is not for everyone.
Bonnie nodded seriously, but a frisson of delight passed through her at that we.
So…cheesecake, she said.
Pavel’s face split into his boyish smile.
Sometimes we need cheesecake, he agreed.
Pavel paid the bill, waving off Bonnie’s attempt to reach for her wallet. They stood up together and he held the door for her, guiding her through it with the slightest touch at the small of her back. Bonnie felt it then, a flutter of hope, like the lightest breeze, that life could be this way with him, so sweet and so simple. Breakfasts before the gym together, his hand on her, not to correct her, but simply out of tenderness, the two of them talking not as a trainer and boxer but as two people, conversations full of affection and laughter. They had walked together to the gym side by side, and Bonnie had let that light breeze carry her all the way to its doors. Then they had entered Golden Ring and Pavel had stridden ahead of her, instructing her gruffly over his shoulder to warm up quickly since she was late, and Bonnie understood that sometimes cheesecake was just cheesecake, and let the breeze die.
—
Bonnie brought her mind back to the pads Felix was holding. She needed to focus. Thwack, thwack, thwack, pivot. But from her periphery, Bonnie saw Pavel glance at them. His gaze was like a cool current in the air. Immediately, she hit a little harder, slipped a little quicker. Pow, pow, pow. As if pulled by an invisible tide, he wandered over to her side of the ring. Bonnie snapped through the combination, emboldened by his gaze. Hiss hiss hiss. But Pavel betrayed nothing as he watched her. The next time she glanced over, he had already turned away.
—
Bonnie returned home late to find Lucky’s long body curled on the sofa, her chin tucked into herself. Out of instinct, she lurched forward to check that she was still breathing, but Lucky’s chest was rising and falling softly. Bonnie exhaled. She perched on the side of the sofa, watching her sister’s supine form. Lucky reminded her of a sleeping fawn or fox, some elegant and mysterious woodland creature just out of reach of human companionship. This close, she could see that Lucky’s pale skin was covered in a damp film of sweat. Her face, even in sleep, was tense. She wore a threadbare white T-shirt, her spine protruding like a string of pearls. Bonnie frowned. Had she always been this thin? How could she possibly protect herself like that? The sister that had stumbled off the plane from London, unsteady as a toddler, terrified her. She knew Lucky was a prodigious partyer, had always secretly admired her for it, but there seemed to be no joy in Lucky’s drinking these days.
Bonnie’s gym bag was still dangling from her shoulder; she shucked it to the floor and stood to take a shower, but she found herself turning back to watch Lucky a little longer. Her youngest sister was not okay, she could see that now. But still, just having her close, Bonnie could feel herself relax. Some atavistic part of herself was never at peace until she was with one of her sisters. After Nicky died, Bonnie feared that she would never feel stillness, real calm, again. That was family, she thought sadly, the root of all comfort and chaos. But sitting here now, watching the slumbering Lucky, she felt it faintly, an old ease. She would take care of her. As long as she was near her, she would protect her. Forgetting the shower, Bonnie lay down on the rug alongside the sofa like a dog beside its master and, eventually, found asleep.
—
She was jumping rope the next day when Pavel approached her. She felt him coming, though her eyes were glued to Psalm 18, which had hung framed on the wall for as long as she’d been at the gym. The paper behind the glass was old and yellow, the words faded from sun exposure. It didn’t matter; Bonnie knew them by heart. The psalm was what she stared at while jumping rope, had been her point of focus year after year. The words were a part of her now as if she’d written them herself.
It is God who arms me with strength
and keeps my way secure.
He makes my feet like the feet of a deer;
he causes me to stand on the heights.
He trains my hands for battle;
my arms can bend a bow of bronze.
You make your saving help my shield,
and your right hand sustains me;
your help has made me great.
You provide a broad path for my feet,
so that my ankles do not give way.
This was Bonnie’s secret, the one she never told anyone in her family: She believed in God. Her father was a lapsed Catholic and her mother a staunch atheist; they didn’t baptize Bonnie and her sisters, and there was no discussion of faith, spirituality, or the afterlife in the house. When Bonnie’s pet hamster died, their mother had crisply informed her that a pet’s purpose was to teach her about death. But they had been sent to Catholic middle and high school, and something had clearly sunk in. It wasn’t that Bonnie believed in heaven exactly, or a God that looked like any human, but she believed in something.
It had started when she was in middle school. First, she’d started having panic attacks, shortness of breath and dark waves crashing in from the corners of her vision. It seemed to her that the only times her father wasn’t angry was when he had just started drinking or was watching Bonnie play sports, loudly instructing her from the sidelines to drive harder, dig deeper, be stronger. If she told her mother about the panic attacks, it would get back to him, and she couldn’t allow that. Eventually, she found a way to deal with them without involving anyone else; she would secret herself off to the only single-person bathroom in the school, situated on the top floor by the dusty art supply room, and pray. Bonnie would talk to God until her heart rate would slow, and her breath would become steady. Afterward, whenever she needed to find calm or courage, she would think of that quiet, listening presence and automatically feel an inner peace.
Over time, her God became something more amorphous and expansive than the punitive Catholic God they were taught in school. It was a feeling of stillness that lived inside her. And, eventually, if she listened carefully enough, it spoke back to her. It or She or whatever God was had a voice barely above the sound of wind through sand. Bonnie could only hear it when she was very, very still. This is right for you, it would say. This is wrong. And when it spoke to her, she felt so supremely looked after, so deeply and existentially okay, its source could only be divine. It was a soothing and a smoothing, a drastic internal reconfiguration from chaos to harmony. When she heard it, nothing had to change for everything to be different. But she had not heard it in over a year.
Bonnie bounced with a soft, balletic movement from foot to foot, expertly flicking the rope in a crisscross in front of her. Jumping rope, like everything else in boxing, was about skill, but it was also about style. When Bonnie swung the rope, deftly passing it from hand to hand while her feet barely skimmed the floor, she made sure she moved like a swan on water, all the effort beneath the surface. Pavel picked his way across the gym to stand before her, regarding her with his now usual expression of blank inscrutability verging on mild hostility.
“Danya’s sparring partner injured,” he said. “You want?”
Bonnie gave a quick nod without missing a beat on the rope. She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her excited.
“This afternoon,” said Pavel. “Six rounds. Eat light lunch.”
It was only after he had turned his back that she allowed herself a brief, ecstatic smile.
—
Bonnie came home from the gym for lunch, partly because it was cheaper to cook for herself, but mostly so she could check on Lucky. She called her name as the lock clicked behind her and heard a low, animal moan from the bathroom. Bonnie ran down the hallway to find Lucky curled around the porcelain base of the toilet. Instinctively, she dropped to her knees and began patting down Lucky’s body, feeling for injury.
“What’s wrong? Where does it hurt?”
Lucky lifted her cheek from the tiled floor and gazed up at her blearily.
“Do you…have any weed?”
Bonnie frowned.
