Mireya came through the front doors of the gym with her bag riding high on her shoulder and her towel folded over the strap, the cold hitting the sweat still sitting along her hairline. She crossed under the awning and turned the corner into the shared walkway that ran the length of the strip, past the smoothie place with its shutters half down, past the nail salon where two women sat in the window chairs with their hands under the lamps.
The studio took up the end unit. Its front was glass from the frame to the sidewalk and the interior lights were on inside, throwing the room out onto the concrete in a long yellow rectangle. Six poles stood in two rows down the middle of the floor with mirrors running the full length of the far wall behind them. A woman worked the third pole from the door with a white towel in one hand and a spray bottle in the other, blonde, mid-thirties, her hair knotted up off her neck and a zip hoodie tied around her waist by the sleeves.
Mireya stopped. The door was propped a few inches with a rubber wedge, the warm air coming out through the gap along with the alcohol smell, sharp enough at the front of it to sit in her sinuses.
The woman hit the pole with the bottle in two passes and came down it with the towel wrapped around her fist, turning her wrist as she went, the chrome coming up bright behind her hand where the film lifted off it. She worked the bottom eighteen inches twice, then moved her grip and started back up.
She glanced over her shoulder. She smiled. “Interested in our classes? I’ve been seeing you peeking in when you come to the gym.”
Mireya snorted a laugh. “I wouldn’t say this is my thing.”
The woman set the bottle down on the floor at the base of the pole and laid the towel across the top of it. She came toward the door in her socks, her hand already coming up. “I’m Kiersten.”
Mireya took it. “Mireya.”
Kiersten’s hand dropped back to her side. “I know that pole dancing gets a bad rap, but if you asked me I think every woman could benefit from doing a few classes. It’s empowering, healthy and gives women a way to feel sexy for themselves.”
“That’s not why I don’t think it’s for me.”
Kiersten’s eyes moved down and came back up. Her eyebrow went with them. “You’re a dancer?”
Mireya shrugged.
Kiersten’s mouth pulled at one corner. She leaned her shoulder into the edge of the door. “No judging from me, girl. I was. Nothing fancy. Small country towns, a few small cities. Louisville, Indianapolis, Charlotte.”
Mireya nodded. “I just worked here.”
Past Kiersten’s shoulder the floor ran back into the room. A speaker sat mounted in the corner above the mirrors. A rack of grip aids and knee pads stood against the side wall next to a folding table with a card reader and a stack of clipboards. “How much do they pay you for this?”
“I make like twenty something an hour. I do four or five classes a day, six days a week. It’s easy.”
Her eyes came back to Kiersten’s face. “Do you still dance?”
Kiersten shook her head. Her thumb went into the sleeve knot at her waist and worked it loose, then pulled it snug again. “I left that behind a few years ago. Had some motherfucker stalking me out in Albuquerque. That’s how I ended up here.”
Mireya nodded. “You should get yourself a fucking gun.”
Kiersten snorted a laugh. “That’s how you keep them in line?”
Mireya’s hand came up and tapped the side of her bag twice. “Seventeen reasons for weird dudes to leave me alone if they know what’s good for them.”
Kiersten laughed. “Hey, why don’t you take my number and we talk more? I could use someone to help me with some of these classes. They get a little rowdy.”
“The soccer moms?”
Kiersten’s hands came up between them. “They’re the worst ones.”
Mireya shook her head. Her hand went into the side pocket of her leggings and came out with the phone. She thumbed it awake, tapped through to a new contact, and held it out. “I don’t come cheap.”
Kiersten laughed as she took it.
~~~
Caine came down the airstair with his hood up and one hand riding the rail, the metal cold and wet under his palm from the air sitting on it. Bodies filled the steps above and below him, the line moving in the stop-and-go of a hundred and twenty men coming off a plane at once.
The air came at him damp. It carried the burnt smell off the engines, wet grass and standing water.
Past the wing the tarmac ran out under the light towers, three buses lined up nose to tail with their doors open and their interior lights on, a baggage crew working a belt loader at the cargo hold. Behind the barricade the photographers stood four deep along the rope. The bulbs went off in bursts as each player cleared the last step, the flashes coming in staggered volleys that put white spots in the wet on the asphalt and left them hanging in his vision after they cut out.
Caine’s shoes hit the ground. He moved off the bottom of the stair to clear it for the man behind him.
Cam came off the last step and threw his arm around Caine’s shoulders, his weight coming with it, the two of them going a few strides bound together before Cam found the rhythm. “Nigga, I done already told all the hoes that the drinks gonna be on us when we get back to LA.”
Caine snorted a laugh. He reached up and pulled his hoodie straight at the collar where Cam’s forearm had dragged it around, working the fabric back until it sat flat on the back of his neck. “Who money paying for that shit?”
Cam pointed at him. “You nigga. You about to win us a fucking national championship and then you going to the NFL. You the nigga with all the money.”
The rope line ran alongside them for the length of the buses. A photographer dropped to a knee and shot up at the group as they passed, the flash going three times fast, and further down two more tracked them with their lenses swinging on the pivot without either of them lowering the camera. Somebody behind Caine said something to the man on the ground. The man kept shooting. The bulbs kept going the whole way down the line, hitting the wet asphalt, the sides of the buses, the reflective strips on the vests of the crew working the loader.
“Y’all been saying that shit all fucking year. It’s time to get a new excuse for not coming out y’all pockets.”
“That’s part of being the fucking quarterback anyway. Your ass wouldn’t have won no fucking Heisman without your fucking receivers.”
Caine shook his head.
The doors ahead of them stood propped and an airport staffer in a reflective vest held one of them, waving the front of the group through with his hand. Caine went in with Cam still hanging off his shoulders and the terminal opened up around them, wide and bright, mostly empty at this hour, the shops shuttered behind their metal grates, a floor scrubber working slow circles down at the far end past the gates.
Derron came up on Caine’s other side and dropped into step with them, his duffel hanging off his shoulder by one strap. “Y’all find somewhere to celebrate when we win next week?”
Caine shook his head. “We not about to go to no fucking clubs in motherfucking Tampa, Florida. What kind of shit is you on?”
“He ain’t wrong, bruh. It’s just a bunch of nasty old white people here being swingers and shit.”
Derron’s chin came around and he leaned forward past Caine to put his eyes on Cam, his hand catching the strap of his duffel to hold it against his shoulder. “You would be the nigga that would look that up.”
Cam’s mouth opened and Caine got in ahead of him. “Because he trying to knock down someone grandmama.”
Derron’s laugh went up. Cam’s arm came off Caine’s shoulders. He got out in front of both of them, walking backward down the middle of the concourse with his hands out to his sides. “Ain’t your mama a grandma? Ms. Guerra fine on some shit.”
Caine got a hand into Cam’s chest and shoved him. Cam went back two steps and caught himself on the third, laughing before he had his balance under him. Two of the offensive linemen ahead of them turned around at the noise, saw who it was, and turned back.
“Don’t make me beat the piss out of you in these people airport. End of up on the motherfucking no fly list.”
Derron’s hand came up and landed on Caine’s back. “He ain’t wrong, though. And if you marry ol’ girl. Then they gonna have two fine Mrs. Guerras.”
“You’d think that this would be the time to make sure that we were together and y’all about to start World War III.”
Cam turned around and fell back in beside him. “Nah, we just trying to get you mad for them Bama niggas.”
“Nigga was reading the sports psychology books on the flight.”
Caine sucked his teeth. The three of them stayed in the middle of the pack as it moved toward the escalator.
~~~
Dre came through the sally port door into the visitation room with his hands loose at his sides and his eyes already moving. The room ran wide and low, two dozen round tables bolted down in rows with their stools bolted to them, the floor waxed enough to throw the fluorescents back up at the ceiling. Half the tables had people at them. A woman with two kids had the near corner, the smaller one standing on the stool with her hands flat on the table. An old man sat across from somebody’s grandmother with both of them looking at the tabletop between them.
He looked back over his shoulder at the CO standing at the door. “Who here for me?”
The CO lifted his chin toward the far side of the room, where a woman sat alone at a table with her back to the windows. “That white girl. Ain’t know you were rocking like that, Helaire.”
Dre sucked his teeth. He shook his head and started across the floor, past the vending machines, past the table where the little girl was still standing on her stool, his slides catching against the wax with every other step.
The woman looked up when he got close. She pushed back off the stool, stood, and put her hand out across the table. “Hi, Andre. My name’s Micah. I’m a journalist and I wanted to talk to you about a story I’m doing.”
Dre looked at the hand. Then he looked at her face. He shook his head and sat down, his forearms settling on the surface.
Micah’s hand hung there a beat. Then it came down and she sat.
He tapped the table twice with two fingers. “Fuck you want to talk to me about if you a journalist like you say?”
“I’m doing a story about athletes from New Orleans who were arrested for serious crimes and I see that your case was linked to Caine Guerra’s, the quarterback at the University of Southern California.”
The corner of Dre’s mouth pulled up. “Caine got to USC? Damn, I knew that nigga was gonna be something.”
Micah’s chin came forward a fraction. “So, you do know him?”
Dre nodded. “I know him from around the way. Just like I know anyone else from around the way. You wanna write articles on everyone I know from the Ninth Ward? Or just Caine?”
“For this story, just Caine, but we can do any other pieces if you have other information.”
Dre nodded. He lifted his hand off the table and pointed past her shoulder at the machines lined up against the wall in the corner. “Get me two cold drinks and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
Micah nodded and pushed up, her hand going to the pocket of her slacks. “What do you want?”
“One Coke, one Sprite.”
She crossed the floor to the corner. Dre watched her feed the bills in. The machine took one, spit two back at her, held the third. She pressed a button. The can dropped through the chute and hit the tray at the bottom. She bent for it, fed another bill, pressed again, and the second one came down.
She came back with both cans, set them down, slid them across to him. Then she reached for the small notebook by her elbow.
Dre held one finger up. “Let me enjoy my drink first.”
Micah’s breath went out through her nose. She nodded. Her hand came back off the notebook and settled in her lap.
Dre picked up the Coke. He turned it in his hand until the tab faced him, hooked his index finger under it, pulled. The seal broke with a short hiss, the aluminum sweating cold against his palm where the machine had held it. He brought it to his mouth and took the first pull long, holding it a second before he swallowed.
He set the can down on the table. He looked at the wired glass above the machines while the burn worked its way down.
Then he picked it up again.
The second pull came shorter. The third shorter than that. He worked through the can in his own time with his forearm resting on the table between swallows, the aluminum going lighter in his grip, the condensation running down over his knuckles and pooling in a ring under it. Micah sat across from him with her hands in her lap. She looked at the notebook once. The room went on around them, a chair scraping somewhere behind him, the little girl’s voice carrying from the corner.
He tipped the last of it back, the can going upside down over his mouth until it gave up the final drops. He brought it down and closed his fist around it. The aluminum folded in on itself, the sides collapsing under his fingers. He set the crushed can off to the side and pulled the Sprite over.
“Can we talk while you drink that one?”
Dre nodded. He hooked the tab and cracked it. “Yeah, ask your questions.”
Micah’s hand went to the notebook and brought it in front of her. “How do you know Caine Guerra?”
He tipped up the Sprite and drank most of it in a few gulps. “From the TV.”
Her eyebrows came together. “You just said you know him—”
“From the fucking TV. I don’t know that nigga beyond that.”
“Why are you changing your story?”
“I don’t know what you were told or who told you what but you wasted your time driving your dumb ass way out here. I don’t know that nigga.” Dre stood up off the stool. He put two fingers out at the cans, the crushed one and the open one. “Appreciate the cold drinks.”
“I know you’re lying. I have a good source that you were very close with him.”
Dre’s hands came up. “I told you. I don’t know him. Y’all dirty people so you might write something else for your little story, but my answer is I don’t know him.”
Micah’s breath went out of her.
Dre turned and walked back across the floor to the CO at the door. “We done. Bring me back to my house.”
The CO nodded. He reached behind him and knocked twice on the door.
~~~
Autumn turned her glass a slow half rotation on the bar top, the base leaving a wet arc in the condensation it had already put down, and brought it up for a swallow before she set it back in the same ring. Sena sat on the stool to her right with her own drink held between both hands.
The bar ran the length of the room in dark wood with a brass rail along the bottom and a mirror behind the bottles that gave back the whole floor in reverse. Half the stools were taken. Down at the far end a group of men in polos had pushed two tables together, talking over each other with a pitcher going between them, all of them in cardinal and gold, one with a Trojan head on his sleeve. A couple sat two stools down from Sena with their heads angled toward each other. The bartender worked the well with his back mostly to the room, the shaker going in short bursts.
Outside the front windows the street ran wet under the lights though the rain had stopped, the pavement holding it, headlights dragging across the glass every time a car came through.
“Never in my life did I think that I’d be following a nigga around for football games.”
Sena looked over and raised her eyebrow.
Autumn’s hand came up between them, palm out. “Don’t get me wrong. I’d still do it if the team was just winning, but I mean, being here days early.”
Sena’s chin dipped a fraction. “You mean when the here is Tampa and not somewhere like Miami.”
Autumn raised her hand and pointed at her. “Exactly.”
Down the bar one of the men in polos said something that broke the whole table up, and the one on the end brought his hand down flat hard enough that the pitcher jumped. The bartender glanced over and went back to the well.
Autumn took a sip of her drink, the ice shifting against her top lip, the bourbon going warm behind her teeth. “I guess that’s what feelings will do.”
“You’re preaching to the choir. I still don’t even really know Caine. I’m just here because Mireya asked me to be.”
Autumn laughed. “Yeah, I think you got me beat, girl.”
Sena shook her head. “At least we get free trips out of it?”
“But I’d still prefer it be in Miami next time.”
The door opened behind them and let a piece of the street in, wet air, a car horn a block off. It closed again. Two women came past their stools toward the back with their coats over their arms. Sena’s eyes tracked them in the mirror behind the bottles and came back.
“Can I say that I’m glad that you’re the person dating Caine? I feel like other women could be messier, making this harder than it already is.”
“The feeling’s mutual. It’s probably a good thing you’re a woman period. I don’t have to deal with any dick measuring contests between Caine and some nigga Mireya’s dating.”
A smile crept across Sena’s face. “Mine’s probably bigger.”
Autumn snorted a laugh before she had the glass clear of her mouth. She put the back of her wrist against her lip and brought the glass down. “You be putting the strap on Mireya, bitch?”
Sena laughed. She shook her head, her hand coming up over her mouth for a second before it went back down. “Do you think Mireya is a bottom? From what you know about her?”
Autumn turned toward her. “She’d be exactly the one I think would be getting dominated by a quiet chick like you. That’s the same reason all these politicians are either getting fucked in the ass or having some woman kick them in their shit.”
Sena’s mouth pulled at one corner. “I guess that’s a fair point. She’s not, though. Probably some overcompensating from not being a gold star lesbian.”
“Gold star lesbian?”
“One that hasn’t been with a man before.”
“So, you’re saying she’s an all-star eater because she’s trying to prove she’s really into it.”
“I plead the fifth.”
Autumn laughed. “Can I ask you something, though?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Autumn leaned over, her forearm coming onto the bar, her shoulder closing the space between the two stools. “What’s pussy taste like? Like clearly I’ve tasted my own but like, you know, never from the source.”
Sena’s head tipped back and the laugh came up out of her. “I don’t think we’re this close yet, Autumn.”
“I just want to know!”
~~~
Caine sat on the floor with his back against the front of the couch and his legs stretched out toward the coffee table, his head tipped back into Mireya’s lap, his eyes closed. Her knees framed his temples. She had a section parted near his crown with the tail of the comb. She took the loc between her thumb and forefinger and rolled it tight from the root, the pull running down the shaft in front of her fingers until the twist set. She clipped it flat and reached for the next one.
She misted the section and set the bottle down. The water went cool where it had landed on his scalp.
Caine yawned, reaching up to cover his mouth. “Sena’s sleep?”
Mireya’s fingers separated the next loc. “Yeah. The girls ran her ragged today.”
Caine laughed. “How you let an infant that can’t even crawl yet wear you out?”
Her thumb pressed the new growth down at the root and rolled. “Because that infant got a five year old sister and Sena still getting used to playing mama.”
Caine opened one eye. She had her chin down and her eyes on the section between her fingers, the lamp catching one side of her face and leaving the other in the dark, a jar of butter gel open on the cushion beside her thigh.
“That’s what she doing, huh? Playing mama?”
“Y lo hace mucho mejor que túya.”
He closed the eye. He shook his head against her thigh and the loc pulled out of her fingers.
Her palm came down flat on his forehead. “Stop fucking moving your head.”
Caine held his hands up off his knees. “My bad. But Autumn’s fine around the girls. Camila’s just more comfortable with Sena because Sena’s always around her.”
Mireya found the loc again and started it over from the root. She worked in silence through two more, the comb’s tail clearing a line each time, her nail running along his scalp where the part opened. She got to a spot above his ear where the growth had matted into the loc beside it and she stopped, working the two apart with the tail of the comb in small movements, her other hand holding the length of both so the pull stayed off his scalp. They came free. She combed the loose growth up toward the root and started the twist.
“Well, she should get used to it then, huh? Maybe she can come down to New Orleans, spend a few weeks with your daughters before you get her pregnant and start making your Brady Bunch.”
“I’m done for now.”
Her fingers stopped. Then they went again, slower through the twist, and her knee shifted a half inch against his ear. She rolled the loc down past where the twist had already setThen she came back up to the root and did it a second time. “Easy to say as a man. You have longer before your dick starts producing autistic kids.”
Caine opened his eyes. “¿Quieres tener más hijos?”
Mireya scooped from the jar and worked the gel between her thumb and forefinger until it went smooth, then brought it down into the roots at his hairline, her fingertips small and firm against the skin. “I don’t know. Not any time soon. But I figure I’ll keep the idea open.”
“If you go back to dick?”
Mireya snorted a laugh. Her hands kept working, the gel going slick between her fingers and the loc, the smell of it coming down to him. “I’ll use your fucking money for IVF. Get some Korean motherfucker’s shit so the baby looks like me and Sena.”
“You crazy. If it was me, and I was having more kids, Sena gotta come out that uterus. Take one for the fucking team.”
Mireya laughed. Her free hand clapped over her mouth, her thigh shaking under his head. She looked toward the girls’ door for a few seconds. She brought herself down, the last of it leaving her in a long breath. “Eres un maldito idiota. Does she look like the type that wants to be pregnant?”
“I said what I said. Call up Jorge with the turkey baster.”
Her hand went back into his hair. She clipped the finished loc flat against the others and parted a new section, the teeth catching once in the growth before they pulled through. The clip in her other hand tapped twice against her knee while she got the part where she wanted it. “You don’t want a son or two?”
Caine shrugged. “Want? Nah. If it happen, it happen. I’m happy with what I got. You know my girls mean the world to me.”
“¿Entonces te vas a conformar con lo que te di?”
Caine looked up at her. She had her eyes on the loc, her thumb and forefinger holding the twist where she had stopped it, the jar open beside her thigh and the comb across her knee. “Hm.”
He closed his eyes as Mireya rolled the twist down to the ends and clipped it.
~~~
Caine pushed up through the bodies packed along the sideline until he had open ground under his cleats and the circle closed at his back. Helmets ringed him at shoulder height, cardinal and gold under the lights, mouthpieces hanging off cages, hands already up on the pads next to them. The stadium came down on all of it from every deck, one continuous wall of sound that sat against his chest.
The lights hung in banks over the rim and washed the turf flat white. Across the field the white jerseys moved in their own current, coaches walking the numbers with their sheets rolled, a kicker swinging his leg through the air near the twenty. The chain gang stood waiting on the far sideline. Somewhere behind him the band ran the last eight bars of something and cut.
Caine put his voice through the noise. “Everybody watching tonight! Ain’t no fucking hiding tonight! Ain’t no motherfucking tomorrow! How many y’all want it tonight? How many y’all want a fucking ring tonight?”
The answer came back from every side of him at once, voices out of sync and landing on top of each other, hands coming down flat on shoulder pads and the crowns of helmets.
“We ain’t choose the time, we ain’t choose the place and we ain’t choose to play them bitches across the field. But you know what I choose? I choose violence! From the first snap to the last whistle, choke a motherfucker out and make him regret waking up this morning! Make these motherfuckers regret getting off that fucking plane!”
The circle pulled a foot tighter. Somebody’s facemask pressed into the back of his arm. The noise off the bodies around him had gone past words. It came up through the turf and into his cleats.
“Who we is?”
“TROJANS!”
“And we—”
“FIGHT!”
“And we—”
“FIGHT!”
“And we—”
“FIGHT!”
“And we—”
“FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!”
Caine raised his fist above the helmets. The bodies came in around it, the circle closing to a body’s width, pads pressing into his back, shoulders driving against him from three sides, arms going up until his fist sat in the middle of them. “Ring on three. Ring on me. One, two, three.”
“RING!”
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