“She always taking notes,” he said.
Bonnie could see Nicky sitting on the wooden bench by the ring, watching her train with that intelligent curiosity she brought to so much of her life. Even as a twelve-year-old, she was uncannily perceptive. She knew Bonnie was a boxer before Bonnie did.
“I needed you, Pavel,” said Bonnie. “This year, I needed you.”
Pavel raised his hands to his chest, as if protecting his heart. She knew he was not used to talking so directly with her, with anyone. In all the years they had known each other, he had remained stoic in the face of victory and defeat. He showed his feelings through actions, not words. Like Bonnie.
“But you left me, Bonnie.” He gave a pained smile. “You, who was everything to me.”
Bonnie’s eyes darted around his face, trying to understand.
“You knew how I felt,” she said quietly.
She had never acknowledged it aloud before, but she knew he knew. There was a joke at the gym that she was Pavel’s little wife. They did everything together. Everyone knew how she felt about him.
“It would not…It is not correct. You are so young. You have big career ahead.”
“Had,” said Bonnie.
Pavel shook his head.
“One defeat, one year, does not end career like yours. You don’t want to yoke yourself to old man like me.”
Yoke. For years, Bonnie had laughed at these little mannerisms of Pavel’s, the odd phrases he used that no native English speaker would. He collected these unwanted words and made them beautiful again, like a child gathering pieces of sea glass along the shore. But, this time, Bonnie did not smile. She was thirty-one and Pavel was forty-four. Their thirteen-year age gap, which had seemed so momentous when she was fifteen, was no longer an issue. Surely, he could see that? He obviously did not love her; he was simply making an excuse to spare her feelings. Bonnie nodded, defeated.
“I should go find my friend.”
She turned to open the club door, but a hot gust of wind encircled her in its fluttering, batting folds, urging her backward. It was the same wind that had blown through the city the night of Nicky’s funeral and scattered her sisters to their various corners of the world. Now, it was bringing her home. Bonnie let the swirling air nudge and bully her around until she was facing Pavel again. The most vulnerable fighter is the one who, behind on points in the last round, will do anything for the knockout. They have nothing to lose. Bonnie inhaled the hot night and looked at him.
“What if I do?” she said. “Want to yoke myself to you?”
Pavel shook his head softly.
“Bonnie…” he murmured.
She raised a hand.
“Don’t say what you think you should say. What would you say if you weren’t…If you weren’t afraid?”
She gazed up at him imploringly. His face was alive with shadow and light, like the sea. He dropped his cigar at his feet and his gaze went dark, the tide of his eyes tossing and fretful. For fifteen years, Bonnie had followed his moods. They had sculpted the shape of her life, as waves carve cliffs of limestone rocks, harassing and caressing them into extraordinary forms. That is what a trainer does. Her body bore the marks of his attention; its beauty, or deformity, was of his making. He held her in his still, cool gaze.
“Close eyes,” he said softly.
Without hesitating, she closed them. No longer able to see him, she could feel him. For a moment, they were back on solid ground. They were like two animals snuffling in the dark, feeling their way toward each other. She felt him move closer, then pause before her. She could sense the weight of his hesitation, but she kept her eyes closed. She forgot to exhale. Then, she felt his breath on her face. He pressed his lips to her eyelid, the one that was bruised. His lips were dry and cool. He kissed the thin skin above one eye, then the other. It was so tender, she shivered.
“Is okay?” he whispered.
“Yes,” she said, or maybe just thought, knowing he would hear her. Yes.
She kept her eyes closed and felt his lips fumble across her brow, her temples, her cheekbones, her throat.
“Bonnie,” he said, his voice barely above a breath.
He tried to say her name again, but she stopped his mouth with hers. He had swallowed her sweat, blown her nose, mopped her blood, sunk his fingers into her jaw, oiled her skin—but never this. She could taste the smoke of his cigar and beyond that something cool and oceanic that was simply him. He kissed her and it felt like trying to stand still in a great, billowing wave as it crashed over her head. Pavel wrapped himself around her, and Bonnie, who had been taught all her life to ground her feet, lost her balance and surrendered to his arms.
Chapter Twelve Avery
Avery woke up the morning after the fight with her sisters with the worst emotional hangover of her life. She’d checked into a soulless Midtown hotel the night before to avoid seeing anyone and woken up, jet-lagged, at five a.m. with a relentless headache and a palpable sense of shame. She’d spent the early morning mindlessly watching television in bed, disassociating for hours at a time as she flicked between channels. She remembered an anecdote she’d heard about David Foster Wallace, who had considered television, not drugs, to be his primary addiction; during book tours, he apparently had the staff remove the TV from his hotel rooms before he entered, the same way, in early recovery, Avery would request the minibar be emptied ahead of time. Avery rarely watched television at home and had forgotten what a remarkably effective opiate it was. When she finally forced herself to turn it off, it was still only midmorning and the empty day yawned ahead of her. She could not go home, not to London, not the apartment. From her window, she stared up Lexington Avenue to the familiar sight of Grand Central Station. It was then that it occurred to her what she should do with her day: She would visit their mother.
She opened her phone and drafted a text. Hey, Mom, have a free day in New York. Can I come visit you upstate? She read it over, then slowly deleted each word. Why was she asking permission? If her mother was too cowardly to interact with her daughters when she knew they were in the city, she didn’t deserve the dignity of a request. Coming upstate, she typed instead. Will text ETA once on train. She pressed send and watched. Almost immediately, the three dots to indicate her mother was typing appeared on the screen, then disappeared, appeared, then disappeared again. Finally, a single thumbs-up appeared on her message. Avery knew better than to go before lunch, the hours in which her father was most active; by the afternoon he was usually asleep, which was how Avery preferred him. Her best chance of getting uninterrupted time with her mother was to wait until midafternoon at least. Avery turned the television back on and let her mind return to comforting blankness.
—
At Grand Central Station, Avery crossed the main floor and stepped into the Hudson News. She picked up Vogue, a magazine she had only ever looked at to see if Lucky was in it, and flicked through its pages, keeping one eye on the woman behind the register who was ringing someone up. She could feel her heart rate quickening, that glorious rush of adrenaline that eclipsed every other feeling. It occurred to her briefly that the only times she felt truly present in her body were when she was smoking or stealing, the exhilaration of transgression enlivening her every breath, making her aware of every pump of blood from her heart. With practiced nonchalance, she wandered over to a shelf farther from the checkout and placed a chocolate almond bar and a packet of spearmint gum inside the magazine. Then, without looking at the register again, she ambled toward the exit at an unconcerned pace.
Only then did she notice the little girl staring at her. Her mother was fussing with her younger brother, so the girl was momentarily unattended, her gaze fixed on Avery with eerie stillness. Avery was never good at guessing children’s ages—a six-year-old was indistinguishable from a ten-year-old to her—but she’d estimate the girl was closer to ten. Despite the fact it was midsummer, she wore a pink T-shirt with an illustration of a kitten above the words Meow-y Christmas! Avery knew she had been clocked, but it was too late now. She was almost at the door. Would the girl say something? Call out to her mom that the bad lady over there had taken the magazine without paying? The blood was roaring in Avery’s ears by the time she made it to the exit. Don’t look back, she told herself, but, like Orpheus, she couldn’t resist. The girl had not moved or taken her eyes from Avery.
Avery made it to her platform and took a seat in the first car, her heart still hammering, and looked down at the magazine in her lap. She still had ten minutes until the train departed. She was about to rip open the almond bar—she hadn’t eaten dinner or breakfast and, combined with the jet lag, she was hungry—when she stopped. What kind of person steals in front of a child? Is that who she was, who she was meant to be? A hypocrite, Lucky had called her, and she was right. Enough, she muttered to herself. Enough. She stood up and propelled herself off the train, hurrying toward the newsstand. The child and her mother were gone. There was no one else checking out, so Avery marched herself to the counter before she could change her mind and placed the magazine, gum, and nut bar on the counter.
“I stole these,” she said. “And I’d like to pay for them.”
The young woman behind the counter had dyed jet-black hair and the glazed expression of someone who would rather be in bed. At Avery’s confession, her eyebrows shot up in mute surprise. Avery fumbled a twenty-dollar bill out of her stolen Chanel wallet and placed it on the counter.
“Actually.” She slid her credit cards and receipts out of their leather holders and dropped them in her bag, placing the now empty wallet on the counter. “If you wouldn’t mind taking this too.”
“You really don’t—” began the woman, but Avery dismissed this with a flustered wave. A couple had come up behind her and were waiting to pay; she glanced back to see them watching this interaction with astonishment. Avery could feel her cheeks burning.
“I have a problem,” she said. “I’m sorry.” If she was speaking to the woman behind the counter, the couple behind her, the little girl from earlier, or to an invisible God above her, Avery didn’t know; she only knew it felt good to say it out loud. She gathered up the magazine, nut bar, and gum, shoving them into her bag, and left the wallet and a twenty on the counter. The woman opened her mouth to protest but Avery had already turned, sidestepping the couple behind her, and hurried away.
