The Downfall only had one night in Denver- it was the only city that Stephanie hadn’t managed to book a second day at the venue once it became obvious that the band could sell out eighty thousand seats in a major city. Next stop was Phoenix, and we’d already ascertained there wasn’t a whole lot to do as tourists there. It made the decision to head home for a few days an easy one- in fact, pretty much everybody that could made the same call. Even Stephanie headed back to LA, if only for a couple of days.
“I can only spare maybe a day and a half, then I really need to be there in Phoenix to make sure everything goes smoothly,” she explained when I asked. “But at least Stephen is going to come with me this time. Yeah, I’ll be busy, but he has a lot of friends he can visit, so it’ll be cool.”
"That’s the only thing that’ll be cool,” I said. “Highs for the two days of the shows are supposed to be nearly a hundred and ten degrees,” I told her.
“Yeah, but the ballpark has a roof and is air conditioned,” Stephanie replied. “It’s not like anybody actually does anything outside during the days in Phoenix in the summer, anyhow.”
“True,” I admitted.
“But we still need to get through tonight,” Stephanie said. “You have no idea how relaxing it is to work with adults like Emmy and the boys. I handle a lot of skater pop bands, and they are all, every single one, a bunch of immature assholes who don’t have the basic understanding of professionalism.”
“Like that Murder Ballad band?”
“Murder Ballot. And yeah, Zach is like a giant hemorrhoid. He is such a pain in the ass it isn’t funny,” Stephanie grumbled. “I’d fire those idiots in a moment if they didn’t make me so much money.”
“You said you’re making bank on this tour.”
“Oh, God, am I ever,” Stephanie said, smiling. “It’s gonna be a real downer going back to babysitting Zach and the rest of them. I’m seriously considering staffing up and opening a real office, you know? Handing all these jackasses off to my poor, unappreciated minions while I keep The Downfall to myself.”
“What about the Sons?”
“I’ll manage them personally until we all die,” Stephanie said. “Sure, they’re slackers too, but their hearts are in the right place and at least they know not to get drunk and stoned until after the gigs. Those guys… I’d say I owe them everything, but they owe me everything too, so it sorta works out, if you know what I mean. You know, they’re gonna open in LA, right? They are so freaking stoked to play in front of ninety thousand people they’d have been happy to do it for free, you know? When I told them how much they were gonna get paid they just about shit their pants.”
“They’re doing O.K., though, right?”
“Oh, yeah, they aren’t hurting for money. They aren’t out there buying private jets or anything, but they’re doing just fine,” Stephanie confirmed.
The Denver show was excellent. Emmy didn’t use her stool at all, but she did keep her movements onstage minimal. Obviously the fans didn’t know how much progress Emmy was making, but those of us who saw every concert could certainly tell.
Well, I guess if the fans were hardcore enough to have been watching the live streams they’d know, but whatever.
Grace hadn’t seen any of The Downfall’s Big-Ass Arena Rock Tour, so she was thrilled by the whole backstage experience, and then getting to sit in the VIP section for the actual performance.
She was buzzing with excitement when the show concluded and we returned backstage afterwards.
“Dang, Jackson,” she said. “As many times as I’ve seen you guys play, this was something else.”
“Well, kid,” he replied, knowing full well she’d never liked it when he called her that. “This here was a big-ass rock show, you know? Lasers, pyrotechnics, video screens, dancers, extra musicians… All you’ve ever seen us do is gigs with just the three of us playin’.”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“No ‘well yeah but’,” Jackson countered. “It makes it a whole different experience. It’s different for us, too, you know. It’s been a lot of fun playing for giant crowds like this, but to tell you the Lord’s truth, I’m glad it’s almost over. I’m lookin’ forward to gettin’ back to playing clubs where I can see individual faces, you understand?”
“How can you even do that?” Grace asked.
“Real easy,” Jackson said, his Texan accent laid on thick. “We don’t let on who we are.”
The next morning Grace left after breakfast for the eleven hour drive back to Flagstaff. Emmy had asked how her car was doing and she’d said that it was getting to be pretty high-mileage and showing it a bit, but still ran great.
“Let me know when you can part with it for a few weeks,” I told her, knowing the emotional attachment she had to her Toyota. “I’ll have my guys go over it with a fine-toothed comb.”
“Your guys?” Grace asked, glancing at Nick seated at the next table.
“Different guys,” I said. “Car guys. Really unbelievably good car guys.”
“Rosie and me were talking about going to Europe for spring break- would that work?” Grace asked, hopeful.
“Let me see what I can set up,” I replied.
“Where in Europe?” Emmy asked.
“Rosie wants to see everything, but we’ll only have two weeks and I told her that’s maybe enough time to really see two cities, you know? So we’ve mostly settled on London and Paris for now.”
“Our place in London will be ready by then, and you can always stay with my parents in Paris,” Emmy said.
“Your place in London?”
“We bought an apartment there and it’s being remodeled,” I told her.
“Cool! But Em, I hate to say it, but your parents… I’m not sure Rosie is ready to meet them just yet. They can be a bit… intimidating.”
This got a little chuckle from me, so Emmy turned to me and said, “I think you get along better with my father than I do,” in an accusing tone.
“That’s only fair,” I countered. “Since my mom likes you more than she likes me.”
“I have you both beat,” Grace said. “Both my parents still hate me.”
“Yeah, Grace… I’d bet less than you might think. You’re still sending money to your mom, right?” I asked.
”How did- yeah, I still send her a couple hundred twice a month,” Grace admitted.
“And she cashes the checks, right?”
“She does.”
“So she’s at least willing to accept your help in that regard,” I said. “That must mean something.”
“For all I know, she turns around and gives that money to her bigoted church,” Grace said, but without any real heat.
“I think you ought to visit her sometime,” I said, resting my hand on hers on the table. “Maybe wait until your dad is out of the house, though.”
This got a chuckle and seemed to lighten the mood. “Yeah, maybe,” Grace conceded.
“Arcata is only a six hour drive from Davis,” I said, getting a groan in response.
Back home in Los Angeles, all Emmy wanted to do was flop down in bed and sleep. I wasn’t tired, though, so I went up to my office to catch up on my emails, figuring I’d head into work in the morning. I got distracted by the racing sim rig on my way up to my office tower and fired it up to do some virtual driving.
Tiffany must have used it last, since the cockpit was set up for somebody much smaller than me. Once I’d gotten it adjusted and everything in place and the game booted up I had a moment of heartbreak when I saw it was set to the rally game that Tiffany enjoyed so much. Of course this made me think of Angela, and her plans for the two of us to go racing together.
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Accepting and wallowing in my grief, I dug around in the menus and found a setting that had a woman’s voice for the co-driver. There was an option for a Porsche Carrera for the car, too, and even a pavement race in Eastern Canada that I figured must have been the one she was talking about.
Once I got it all set up and ready, I settled down into the driver’s seat and took a deep, calming breath before bringing my car up to the starting line. This was as close as I was ever going to get to the dream Angela had of us racing together, after all. It deserved a bit of respect and solemnity.
As it turned out, I wasn’t very good at it. I kept sending us off into the woods, or the ditch next to the road. I blew a lot of turns until I started to understand what the co-driver was actually saying, but even then I was still in epic fail territory. Getting better, but far from good. I ran the stages over and over until I could get through them cleanly and not wind up upside-down in some field, but I never got anywhere near the podium.
When I finally shut the rig down and climbed out of the seat I was surprised to find Emmy standing there. She told me that she had been watching for a while and hoped that I drove better than that when I went out with my friends.
“I don’t drive anything like this,” I told her, gesturing at the rig. “The thing about this setup? I can’t actually die or kill any innocent bystanders, right? That means I can push it way beyond what I ever would in the real world.”
“That race you were doing- is that the kind of driving that Angela spoke of?”
“Actually, I’m pretty sure that was the exact race, and the car was as close to our car as I could get it.”
“But the woman giving you instructions- that was not her voice,” Emmy said.
“No, there was no way to get that any closer than what it was,” I replied, looking down at the simulator.
“I miss her very much,” Emmy said.
“Yeah, me too,” I agreed, wrapping Emmy in my arms. “Me, too.”
Actually being home really drove how much we both missed her. Every time we used the Japanese kitchen knives she’d been so proud of, or saw the Colombian food in the pantry, or any number of other things like that… They were all reminders of the beautiful life that we’d shared with such a wonderful person.
The elephant in our room, so to speak, was Angela’s section of the closet. She had twice as many clothes as Emmy or I did, after all. It was a daily reminder that we needed to deal with all of that, but neither of us wanted to bring up the subject so we simply avoided even thinking about it as much as we could.
Six thirty Monday morning found me at Clancy’s Fight Gym, waiting for Eddie to open up. It took him a moment to recognize me with my new short brown hair, but when he did he did a double-take.
“I didn’t think we was gonna see you around here anymore,” he said, opening the gate to I could pull my car into the fenced lot. “You know you been the talk of the gym since… well, you know.”
“I can imagine,” I said as he unlocked the gym proper.
“Everybody’s seen the video,” Eddie said. “They’re all gonna want to talk about it.”
“Do you think threatening to kill them all will get them to shut up?” I asked, only half joking.
“It might. You know they’re all totally convinced about the government killer thing now, right?” Eddie said as he turned on the lights and fans.
Shaking my head, I said, “If they ask, tell them the government thing isn’t true. I’m not a professional killer. It’s more of a hobby of mine, that’s all.”
Eddie barked out a lille laugh. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m gonna say.”
Guys started to trickle in as time passed, and they all stayed well away from me once they recognized who I was. The lone exception was when Richie came in at about eight or so. He came right over the moment he spotted me.
“I didn’t think we’d ever see you in here again,” he said.
“I keep getting that,” I told him, taking a swig of water and wiping my face.
“So, um, Leah…” he said, looking anywhere but right at me.
“You read the news. You saw the videos,” I told him. “Yes, I really did kill six armed guys in Atlanta.”
“You know, I timed it. You know that day when I asked you how long it would take you to take me out, and you said ten seconds to kill me dead? I timed you in that video. It was a hundred and four seconds from the time you saw the bad guys to the moment you, um, finished the last one. Leah, that was a tiny bit more than a minute and half. You totally weren’t joking when you said you could take me out in ten seconds,” Richie said.
“I mostly was,” I protested weakly.
“Huh. ‘Mostly’. Leah, don’t take this wrong, but your whole ‘not really an assassin’ thing isn’t gonna fly anymore.”
“Well, now that you know, I guess I’m going to have to kill you after all,” I said resignedly.
“Those jokes aren’t as funny as they used to be,” Richie said.
“Jokes?” I asked.
“Har har,” Richie said.
“I really am going to have to deal with this,” I groaned. “Alright, let’s see if we can get everyone together.”
“That’ll make it easier to massacre everybody,” Richie said, following me to the middle of the gym.
Standing in the middle of the main part of the gym, I yelled, “O.K., everyone! It’s time we had a chat! Quit whatever it is you’re doing and come over here!”
Everyone was curious enough to do just that- even the ones that really hadn’t heard me soon realized that something was up and so they followed the crowd.
“Alright,” I said when everyone had gathered around close enough to hear. “You guys all know who I am. I’ve sparred with a few of you. Even if we haven’t directly talked, you know me as a regular here, right?” Everybody signaled the affirmative one way or another, so I continued. “My name is Leah. You may have discovered from recent events in the news that I’m married to Emmy De Lascaux. You may also have found out that I’m a real estate investor. These things are true. I am not and never have been a hired assassin, government agent, or anything like that, despite the rumors."
“But you are a killer,” somebody said loud enough for everybody to hear.
Looking in that general direction, I said, “Yes. I am a killer. I’m certain you’ve all seen the videos. From what I understand there are four of them floating around online. The shit in the videos? That actually happened. We actually were attacked immediately after a concert in Atlanta, and in fighting off the bad guys I wound up taking six of their lives.”
“You made it look easy,” Duane said.
“When you suplexed that one guy into the pavement, you slammed him down so hard I felt it!” said a guy whose name I didn’t know.
“Not nearly as much as he did,” I said drily, getting a nervous laugh. “So, yeah, in about a minute and a half I killed six people armed with knives. It’s not like I wanted for us to be attacked, but when I saw the danger I reacted. Even as fast as it all was, I wasn’t fast enough to save Emmy from being kicked in her pregnant belly, or our other wife, Angela, from having- from being killed,” I said. “And yes, you’ve probably heard that we were in a poly marriage. That’s also true. Angela was also pregnant, carrying another baby of ours, too. So that night, I lost my wife and two babies. Emmy is still recovering physically from the damage, but neither of us will ever be able to fully recover from having our wife taken from us. The people that attacked us all lost their lives that night, too. It was a truly terrible thing on all sides,” I said.
Taking a moment to consider what I was going to say next, I looked around at the group assembled there. “I didn’t want to be a killer. I never set out to take peoples’ lives. But at that moment, in that circumstance, it was the only option. Those guys weren’t there to play nice. Now you all might have seen the press conference we gave the next day. A reporter asked me how I managed to, um, respond with such speed and violence, let’s say. I told them that I started kickboxing as cross-training, but then when a couple of skinhead guys attacked Emmy in San Francisco I fought them off using what I’d learned. This convinced me to take it seriously. I’m sure you’ve all seen me working out, right? Do I look like I take my training seriously?”
“Fucking Hell you do,” Joey said. “Every time I feel like slacking, I imagine you working out and that, um, shames me into gettin’ my ass back in gear.”
“That’s no lie,” somebody else said.
“Right. Well, now you know why. Emmy has been attacked before, and might be again, so I always have to be ready at any time.”
“I don’t wanna be the one to point it out,” Coach Lawrence said loud enough for everyone to hear, “But what you did there in Atlanta ain’t MMA.”
“No,” I admitted. “I’ve also done a whole lot of other training.”
“You were serious when you said you went to Thailand for knife combat training?” Richie asked, amazed.
“And now you know why I also said I trained with an escrima champion. I want to be the very best when push comes to shove,” I said. “If somebody’s going to come at me with a knife in their hand, they’d better be ready to eat it.”
“No shit,” somebody said, prompting a bunch of nervous laughter.
“So now you know what my deal is. I’m here to train to be the best I can be when shit gets real. You’ve all seen the videos. You know what I mean. That said, I’m still the same person I was last time I worked out here. I’ll still happily spar with anybody who wants to, same as before. None of that has changed,” I said.
“Not for you, maybe,” somebody else whose name I didn’t know said. “But I’d have a hard time stepping into a ring with somebody that I know for a fact killed six guys bare-handed in about a minute.” This got a certain amount of agreement from the crowd, but I waved for them to be quiet.
“Look, I’ve sparred with Richie there, and Joey a few times, and Duane a couple of times, too. They’re all still alive, right?” I said.
“I dunno, man, I ain’t seen Duane for like a week now,” the same guy said, getting a laugh, but my point was made.
“Any of you, if you were attacked like that, would give it everything you’ve got, right? You’d fight to the best of your abilities. Well, that’s what I did, same as any of you guys would have.” I paused a moment, then added, “It just happened that my best was better than theirs.”
That got me the little bit of laughter I was hoping for, so I capitalized on it. “Now, look, you guys,” I said. “I just want to go back to the way things were. Back to my same old, comfortable gym, and with the same old regulars. I may not know all your names, but I know you guys are all here for the same reason I am- to train, to work our asses off to get better, stronger, faster. Look at this,” I said, pointing to my short brown hair. “I had to get my hair cut and dyed so every asshole on the street who’s seen those videos doesn’t recognize me and treat me weird. But you guys? You were good about not spreading the story around about when Linda Rubio jumped me in the parking lot, so I’m asking you, as one fighter to another, please keep quiet about me working out here and especially about my haircut. I want this all to just blow over, you know?”
“I can understand that,” Joey said. “Like, seriously- if some dude came at my family with a knife, you know I’d dig a hole and bury him in it, and fuck me if it was caught on video.”
Looking around, I could see a lot of the guys nodding in agreement.
“You heard the lady,” Coach Lawrence boomed out. “We all seen it- it was self defense, and like she said, she lost a wife and two babies. I think we can all agree that Leah here was in the right to jack them fuckers up. She’s also right that, here at Clancy’s, we respect each other. So don’t go telling nobody that Leah fucking Farmer trains here. We ain’t exactly family here, but close enough.”
“Thanks, Lawrence,” I said, and looking around, I saw everybody nodding in agreement. “Thanks, guys. I know it sounds funny to call an MMA gym a safe space, but thanks for making it one for me. It’s good to know I can come here and sweat my ass off and earn my bruises just like always.”
As the crowd broke up to go back to their workouts a few of the guys came over to tell me either that they were impressed by my moves in the videos, or that I was right to take the attackers down, or merely to tell me that it was good to have me back in the gym.
Once I’d gotten through all that and went back to my workout, the mood in the place was less tense, to my relief.
I had my wig on when I emerged from the locker room after my workout, which got me a few curious looks. At one guy’s unspoken question (he raised his eyebrows and pointed to his own hair) I said, “Yeah, when I go out in public with Emmy, or go to work or anyplace anybody would know it was me, I wear this blonde wig so I look like I used to. That way the paparazzi aren’t looking for a woman with short brown hair.”
“Makes sense,” the guy admitted. “It’s a real pain you gotta think that way.”
“More than you can imagine,” I agreed.