The night proceeded as they generally do at the club. The stream of members coming by the table to say hello eased when the singer and pianist took the stage, but other than that, nothing much happened until about ten thirty, when James and Imogen entered. Spotting them, I waved them over.
“You’re looking lovely tonight,” I said to James, giving him a handshake. “And you, you’re looking even lovelier,” I said to Imogen, giving her a little kiss.
“James, you remember my friend Ashley? Ashley, this is James’ wife Imogen,” I said, making the introductions.
“Have you two met?” Imogen asked her husband, surprised.
“Yes, last fall, while you were back east visiting your family, Leah and I went driving, and Ashley came along for the ride,” he explained.
“I do seem to remember you mentioned that Leah had a friend with her,” Imogen said.
“James, I never asked last fall. Have you guys known Leah for long?” Ashley asked after Theo had taken the Athertons’ drink orders.
“A few years now,” James replied, thinking about it.
“Emmy and Leah have become quite good friends in that time. And now Angela, as well,” Imogen said.
“Have you seen their mansion in New York?” Ashley asked.
“Yes, we’ve visited,” Imogen answered. “In fact, we’re thinking of following Leah’s example and buying a little pied-à-terre for ourselves in the area. We loved the restoration that Leah had done to bring the house back to its Pre-War glory.”
“Leah said that the view from the top deck is impressive,” Ashley said, giving me a wink.
“I don’t think I’ve been to the top deck,” Imogen said. “But the house does have a lovely view from the rear.”
“Yes, that’s what I understand,” Ashley said. “From the right vantage points, you get a lovely view of the rear.”
Seeing the looks on Imogen and James’ faces, I sighed. “Ashley is referring to the portrait incident. Did Emmy ever tell you about that?” I asked Imogen and James.
Imogen’s face lit up with amusement. “Emmy did mention something that happened while you posed for Luisa…”
“Right, so you’ve seen the painting?” I asked.
“In your bedroom? It’s hard to miss,” Imogen said, while James stayed silent on the subject, not wanting to step on any land mines.
“Ashley here,” I said, indicating the barely-clad girl, “Took away from that whole story that being confident in one’s own skin in front of a crowd is something to aspire to. Hence, her outfit tonight.”
“I see,” Imogen said, looking Ashley up and down.
“It’s hard not to see,” I agreed, which got a chuckle from James. This earned James a meaningful glare from Imogen, which then turned into a smile.
“Ah, youth,” Imogen said with a shrug. “How old are you, Ashley?”
“I’m nineteen. I’m a sophomore at Stanford,” she replied, doing a really good job of not turning defensive.
“So young,” Imogen sighed, although she couldn’t have been any older than her early thirties herself.
“Ashley, did Leah tell you that she has the Porsche I drove last fall?” James asked.
“The one that everybody stopped to take pictures of? Yes, she did,” Ashley said. “She told me that it’s not baby blue and orange anymore, though.”
“I know,” James said, his shoulders slumping. “I thought the Gulf livery was fun.”
“There’s no doubt about that,” I agreed. “It was just a bit too… flashy for me. You know I like understated.”
“Of course you do,” James nodded, smirking.
Later, when Ashley got up to use the restroom, Imogen leaned forward. “Leah, that dress of hers is positively transparent!”
“And barely there to begin with,” I agreed, sipping my Old Fashioned.
“I don’t think she’s wearing any underwear,” Imogen added.
“No, I’m pretty sure she’s not,” I replied. “Like I said earlier, she wanted to… let’s say, stress-test her self-confidence, and this is her way of doing it. That dress is so close to nude she might as well be naked right now. See the looks she’s getting?”
“I certainly do,” Imogen admitted.
“For her, walking through a crowded room like that, head held high and shoulders back, that’s a Herculean thing. She’s told herself that she can do it, and she’s now proving it to herself,” I said.
“This isn’t something she normally does?” Imogen asked.
“Who knows? It might be going forward, but no, this isn’t historically typical of her,” I said.
“The day she went driving with us, she wore jeans and a T shirt,” James said. “She was dressed like any other college student.”
“If she’s not careful, she’ll wind up working her way through school by stripping,” Imogen said, shaking her head.
“Have you ever met our friend Jen?” I asked. “She did that. Paid for her schooling at San Jose State by dancing naked.”
“And she’s a friend of yours?”
“Next time you guys come down to Los Angeles, I’ll make sure you meet,” I said with a smile.
“You really do know the most unusual people,” Imogen said with a laugh, as we watched Ashley make her way back to the table.
When I dropped Ashley off at her apartment there were other college-aged people milling around on the street, talking too loud, acting drunk. I walked Ashley up to her door, just to make sure she didn’t have to deal with anything.
“You wanna come in?” she asked hopefully, but I shut that down.
“Friend zone, Ash.”
“Hey, you never told me exactly who Angela is. Even your rich friends know her!” Ashley protested.
“I texted Emmy to call you,” I said. “She probably went to bed early and missed the text tonight, so I’m sure she’ll call in the morning.”
“Hmph,” she replied, giving me a McKayla scowl.
“Good night, Ash,” I said, turning to go.
“No goodnight kiss?”
“Nope.”
“Spoilsport,” Ashley said, sticking out her tongue.
When Emmy and Angela came home later in the following week, I was surprised at my own reaction. Of course I knew I’d been missing the two of them, but actually holding them close in a big three-way hug eased a sort of knot in my heart. I felt as if I was taking my first full breath since they’d left for New York. I just held the two of them, burying my face in Emmy’s hair and breathing her in, then in Angela’s and doing the same.
It was so good just to hold them, to feel them in my arms, that there was a very real risk I would never let them go and we would remain like that for the rest of our lives.
“I missed you two so much,” I finally said, my voice husky.
“We missed you, too,” Emmy said, and Angela nodded, her head pressed against my chest.
“Too much,” Angela said. “I don’t want to be away from you that long ever again.”
“It was far too long,” Emmy agreed. “Far too long.”
“Yeah, but you guys needed a break like that, and I couldn’t get away that long,” I said.
“It was nice at first, but two weeks too long,” Angela said.
“Well, we’re all home now,” I said.
“Yes, we are,” Emmy agreed, burying her face against me. Eventually we moved to the couch and just relaxed in a big cuddle pile, and it was just about the best thing ever.
Of course I was on the bottom, with Emmy and Angela laying side by side on top of me. I found the weight of their bodies pressing me down into the soft cushions of the sofa comforting, and soon fell fast asleep, more contented than I had been in weeks. ‘This is how it should be,’ I found myself thinking as I drifted off.
Life quickly settled back into a comfortable routine, but that didn’t mean that it was boring. The three of us all seemed to be busy all the time with our careers, but now that my school was done until September, at least we had our evenings together.
We’d finally hired a housecleaning service and a nutritionist chef to make our meals, and that freed up a lot of time, too. Angela had balked at hiring any sort of live-in help, wanting to keep our home solely to ourselves and our guests in the evenings. I understood, but it seemed odd to Emmy, who’d grown up surrounded by household staff and thought nothing of it.
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Emmy capitulated easily enough, so the cleaners only came in the mornings and the nutritionist left at six in the evenings after making dinner. I was pretty sure that the nutritionist was only going to last until Emmy could sweet-talk Marie-Anne into leaving her parents and moving in with us, but I didn't say anything. Somehow Emmy and Angela were dividing up the running of the household between themselves, and I was perfectly fine with that.
The two had definitely gone into some sort of nesting mode, and somehow, subtly, I was included out. Like I said, I was perfectly fine with that. In fact, I secretly loved the idea that the two of them were thinking so much about making our place even more homey, and there was no way I would ever do or say anything to prevent them from doing so.
I was working out one Wednesday morning at the MMA gym when I noticed this woman watching. She was about average height, so maybe six inches shorter than me, but sort of stocky. She looked strong and fit enough to be a regular at the gym, but I’d never seen her before.
When I stopped to take a break and drink some water she walked over. “I was told there was a chick here who knew her stuff,” she said, her attitude sort of belligerent. “You look like you fight. You ever fought?”
Taken by surprise by this out-of-the-blue question, I didn’t have a quick answer. Annoyed, she asked again “You ever actually fight?”
“Well, yeah, I have,” I responded. “Quite a few times, as a matter of fact.”
“How many did you win?” she demanded.
“Well, all of them,” I said, wondering what was up with this pushy bitch.
“How many by submission?”
“Um… None, I guess,” I told her. I just wanted this conversation over and done with.
“So they were all by decision?” she asked, staying in my face.
“No, none of them were,” I told her, trying to make it clear I wanted no part of this discussion.
“So, you’re telling me they were all T.K.O.s?” she asked, disbelief in her voice.
Just wanting to shut her up, I said something I shouldn’t have, and I knew it at the time. “No, they all ended when the other guy died.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, surprised.
“Look,” I said. “I don’t fight in competition. I only fight in the real world, and it’s always do or die. So far I’ve always won.” With that, I turned to go back to my workout.
“Wait!” she said. “Did you just say you’ve killed people street fighting?”
Turning back to face her, I explained “Listen to me. I don’t fight for some kind of sport. I fight because I have to, and when I have to, it always ends up very badly for the guy I’m up against. Now please, I’d like to get back to my workout.”
“Fight me.” She replied. “Let’s do it.”
“Look, I just told you I don’t fight in competition.”
“I’ll tell you what- I’ll give you a thousand bucks if you can beat me,” she offered.
“Not interested,” I replied.
“Five thousand,” she said, upping her offer.
“No, thanks. I’ve got enough money,” I said, dismissing her.
This time I did turn away and I just ignored her when she tried to cajole me into a fight. The last words I heard from her was “Yeah, we’ll see, bitch,” as she finally left.
I put in another hour of heavy bag work, then toweled off. As I grabbed my gym bag one of the guys at the counter said, “That chick you were talking to? You know who that is?”
“All I know is that she just wouldn’t leave me alone.”
“Dude, her name’s Linda Rubio. She fights in the U.F.C”
“Good for her,” I said, “but I have no idea why she wanted to fight me so bad.”
“Well, um, it might be my fault,” he confessed. “I was hanging with some bros, and I told a guy I know who trains at her gym that we have this chick here that kicks major ass. So he might have, I dunno, told her about you or something.”
“Thanks, Marco,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Feel free to not tell anybody about me, all right?”
Walking to my car in the adjoining fenced-in parking lot, I was only half surprised when Linda Rubio stepped out from in between a couple of cars. “Let’s do it, bitch,” she said as she rushed at me.
I tossed my gym bag aside and took a defensive stance, wondering what the heck I’d done in a past life to deserve this.
She checked up when she saw me ready for her attack, and closed in a bit more deliberately. I knew I had a huge reach advantage on her, so it was in my best interests to keep her away by a few judicious kicks and feints. We sparred like that for a little while until she realized that there was no way she was going to win that battle and she lunged at me.
I’d expected her to go for the take down, since it was her only real shot at staying in the fight. My strikes were taking their toll on her- she just didn’t have the reach, or frankly, the speed, to play that game. I got in a couple of really solid blows, hammering her kidneys repeatedly before she got me down to the ground.
We wrestled a bit, and it became obvious she had the advantage on me in this type of struggle. There was really nothing I could do to her that she couldn’t get out of, and eventually she got me in a vicious leg lock and it felt as if she were going to break my knee sideways.
I wasn’t going to give up and I wasn’t going to lose to this testosterone chick, so I did what came naturally to me- I fought dirty. I grabbed her hair and yanked her head back and punched her right in the face. I felt a satisfying crunch and blood poured out of her nose, which caused her to loosen her grip a bit. Yanking her head back even harder now I could get better leverage, I grabbed her throat in my left hand and squeezed hard. Her eyes bugged out and she panicked and let go of my leg, so I kicked her away and jumped to my feet. She was on her hands and knees, coughing and gagging, so I brought my foot down hard on the middle of her back and smashed her to the ground. I jumped on top of her with my knees and just started pounding away with my fists until she stopped struggling.
I stood up and looked around, but there was nobody in the parking lot and the whole fight had been blocked from view of the street by the parked cars.
Linda was pretty badly messed up and I couldn’t leave her like that, so I went back in the gym.
Marco took one look at me and did a double take. “What the fuck just happened to you?” he asked.
“Yeah, you should see the other guy,” I said. “Look, that Linda chick jumped me in the parking lot. I beat her up pretty bad, so I’m going to take her to the hospital.”
“You did what?” he asked, incredulous.
“I trashed the living fuck out of her, that’s what,” I replied, my sense of humor failing me. “Look, can you help me get her into my car? Where’s the nearest E.R., anyway?”
He signaled to one of the gym rats to come along, then followed me back outside where I collected my bag and directed the two guys to load the barely conscious woman into the coupe.
“Put this under her head,” I instructed, handing Marco my towel. “I don’t want her bleeding on the leather. It’s a bitch to clean.”
The two guys didn’t say much of anything, just did as I said. I drove her to the E.R. at a small hospital off Santa Monica Boulevard, getting some orderlies to help me pull her out of the car and into the E.R. proper.
I asked the admitting nurse if there was a police officer on site, and she got on the P.A. and summoned one quickly enough.
“What happened?” he asked, looking at me, all dirty and disheveled, with my work clothes trashed from fighting on the dirty asphalt.
“I’d like to report an assault,” I told him.
“Who attacked you?” he asked.
“The woman in the E.R., Linda… something,” I replied. His puzzled expression prompted me to explain further. “She pestered me at my gym while I was working out. She wanted to fight me, and I told her no. She left, but then jumped me when I was walking to my car. We fought there in the parking lot and I busted her up pretty good.”
Taking notes, the policeman asked “She jumped you, but you beat her up?”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much it,” I agreed. “I’d like to file assault charges against her.”
“But you beat her up,” he said.
“Yeah, but she jumped me first. I didn’t want to fight, but she attacked me in the freaking parking lot of my gym.”
“So you beat her up. Then brought her in to the hospital.”
“What was I supposed to do? Not fight back? Or are you saying I should have left her lying on the pavement after we fought?” I demanded, exasperated. “Look, Officer, I wasn’t about to just take a beating, and once the fight was over I also wasn’t about to just leave her there. I got some of the guys from the gym to help me get her in my car and brought her here because it was the right thing to do, even if she is some kind of psycho.”
“So there are witnesses?” he asked, again writing in his notebook.
“I don’t think anybody saw the fight, but I know Marco, the guy that manages the gym, saw her confronting me before she went outside and he was one of the ones that helped get her into my car.”
“I see,” he said, then asked me for the details on which gym and where, and so on. He then went back into the E.R. to get a statement from Linda.
“She really just attacked you, all out of the blue?” the admitting nurse asked. She’d clearly been listening in on the whole thing, so I didn’t bother to try to deny any of it.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “I guess word had gotten around that I was some kind of fighter, so she came to my gym, to, I don’t know, size up the competition or something. She offered me five thousand dollars if I could beat her, even.”
“Sounds like she owes you some money,” the nurse laughed. Then, changing into her professional capacity, she asked if I wanted somebody to look at my scrapes and bruises.
After a nurse cleaned up some of my pavement scrapes and a doctor examined my knee, I was released. I looked around until I found Linda’s bed. She looked pretty bad, and I kinda felt sorry for her. Then again, she’d attacked me, so she only got what she deserved.
“You owe me five grand,” I said, hoping to lighten the mood.
“No, I don’t. You cheated,” she responded, her voice sounding painful.
“I told you I’m a street fighter,” I said.
“You fucking strangled me! You could have fucking killed me!” she croaked, her throat still badly damaged.
I leaned in close so only she could hear me. “I told you that’s what I do,” I said. “You’re the first I’ve let live.” I let that sink in for a moment, then added, “If I’d really wanted you dead, you would be, now.” Yeah, I know it was melodramatic, but it had the desired effect. It took the wind out of her sails and shut her right up.
“You know, I’ve filed assault charges against you,” I added. “I’ll drop them if you go away and I never see you again.”
“I’m gonna sue you,” Linda threatened. “I’m gonna fucking sue you for everything you’ve got!”
“You think so?” I replied with a little laugh. “I have lawyers on retainer that make me look like a gentle pussycat. My lawyers will do to your lawyers what I just did to you, but worse. They will grind you mercilessly, and everything you now own will belong to me soon enough. You’re feeling messed up now, but just wait until I’ve set my pit bulls on you. No, really, you only have one choice. Walk away. Walk away and forget this whole thing happened. You do that, and so will I. You make me more trouble, though, and I will crush you.” With that, and without any further discussion, I left the hospital.
I stopped by the office, mostly to tell Brenda that I wasn’t going to be working that day.
She took one look at me, looking as if I’d just gotten in a street fight in a dirty parking lot, and asked, “What happened?”
“Things got a bit out of hand on my way in to work this morning,” I said, making light of it.
“You look like you got in a fight!” she said, looking me up and down. “I don’t think that jacket will be salvageable,” she said. “Or those pants. Or shoes. Seriously, were you in a car accident?”
“No, you were right. I did get in a fight,” I admitted.
Just then Jake walked by and did a double-take when he saw me. “Holy cow, Leah,” he said, taking in my torn clothes and bandaged hands. “How does the other guy look?” he joked.
“They’re going to keep her in the hospital overnight for observation,” I said. “I busted her up pretty good.”
“Wait- you weren’t joking about being in a fight?” Brenda asked.
“No, I really was in a fight. This UFC chick, Linda something, she jumped me in my gym’s parking lot after my workout today, so I beat her up.”
“Linda… Rubio?” Jake asked. By this time a couple of others had gathered, making for a small crowd.
“Yeah, that’s her,” I said.
“Are you saying you just beat up Linda Rubio?” asked Jake.
“Yeah, I did. And since I don’t really look or feel up for work today, I’m gonna head home and maybe spend some time in the hot tub, or maybe just ice my knee,” I said. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s a good idea,” Brenda said, looking sadly at my expensive clothes, now too damaged to fix.
“Do you need a ride?” Jake asked.
“No, I’ll be O.K. driving,” I said. “But thanks. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”
Jake followed me to the elevator. “Did this really happen? You got in a fight in your gym’s parking lot with the UFC ex-champion?”
“Yeah, it really happened,” I said with a sigh. “Look, Jake, she came looking for a fight and didn’t take it well when I told her to shove off- I wasn’t interested. She waited until I left the gym, then attacked me. The simple reality is that I’m a lot bigger and stronger than she is.”
He got in the elevator with me for the ride down to the parking level, still wanting to talk.
“Look, I know this is going to be all over the office, and that’s… whatever, but the important detail is that she attacked me, and I defended myself,” I said.
“No, the important part is that you fought one of the best fighters pound for pound in the world and put her in the hospital, and all you got were some scrapes and bruises. That’s completely badass,” Jake countered.
“Pound for pound,” I said. “I must outweigh her by fifty pounds. I had six inches on her at least. She’s a better wrestler than me, but she can’t take my punches or kicks.”
“I like a woman who can take a punch,” Jake said, joking.
“I don’t think I’ll tell HR you said that,” I said with a laugh as the elevator door opened.
“No, probably best for me if you don’t,” he agreed. “I’d offer to walk you to your car, but you’re probably safer down here than I am.”
“See you tomorrow, Jake,” I said. “And make sure to spread it around that I did nothing to provoke Linda Rubio to attack me. It was all her.”
“Yeah, will do,” he said. “Where- what hospital is she in?”
“The little one on Santa Monica,” I said as the elevator doors shut.