There were few photos of my brother. The last picture I had seen was one taken when he was
fourteen years old; one of those fake school pictures—awkward smile, neatly gelled hair, green
and yellow cardigan worn only once for five seconds. This picture was stacked with the rest of
the family stuff that my father strategically kept on one shelf in his office behind his desk—
the clients could see the pretense of a family man, but my father’s back was turned away from
the shelf.
The worst thing about this was that I couldn’t remember what Bill looked like as a grownup. In
my mind he had been forever fourteen. Now I had a picture of my brother … as a man. He looked
more tired as an adult, but at least he hadn’t lost his curly blond locks.
Griff looked over my shoulder at the ID in my hands. “I wonder who that is? I haven’t seen him
around here.” He stepped away and added in passing, “A thug like the rest of them, I’m sure.
”
I should have, could have, defended my brother, but there was a water balloon in my throat
threatening to explode at any second. And deep down, I knew that Griff was probably right.
Griff made his way to the back of the room and disappeared behind another wall where a stairwell
led to a second story. I stuffed Bill’s—or rather Buzz Killington’s—driver’s license in my
pocket, put the plastic bag back on the nail, and hurried after Griff, who had already climbed
up the stairs and waited for me at the top on the second story. As I climbed up to meet him, he
smiled and, with a finger to his lips, motioned me to be quiet.
The second story was one big open space, covering the whole length of the garage. The space was
dim, with curtains of black garbage bags and bedsheets covering up the six-foot windows that
flanked both of the elongated sides of the floor space. About a dozen cots were lined up in
rows, one row on each side of the room. Four of the cots were occupied by sleeping men, one of
whom I recognized as a night guard. The sound of snoring and heavy breathing eerily echoed off
the walls.
We tiptoed over to one of the cots in the middle of the room.
“This one is mine,” he whispered, color appearing on his cheeks.
Griff had things strewn everywhere under and around his cot. I sat on the empty cot that was
next to Griff’s bed while he rummaged under his bed, and I noticed a box of magazines on the
floor. The one at the top was called Cage Fighters Weekly with a caption in large red letters
that read, “Griffin ‘the Grappler’ Conan: Best Pound-for-Pound Fighter in the World?” Under
the caption was a picture of a black-eyed, bruise-faced, threatening-looking Griff, shot from
the waist up. He had his gloved fists up and muscles seemed to bulge out of every part of his
body, including his neck, which looked like it was the size of parking meter. One by one I
picked up the other magazines that were stacked under it, most of which had Griff pictured on
the front, in similar stances as the first magazine, or with him holding golden belts.
Griff finally reappeared from under his bed, pulling out fighting gloves similar to the ones
that he had been pictured with on the covers.
“This is you,” I murmured, holding one of the magazines up. Griff sat next to me on the bed
and peered at the magazine in my hands.
“Yeah. It was me,” he said somberly. “It’ll be me again once I get back on my feet.”
“Don’t you need to be out there if you want to get back on your feet?”
Griff pressed his lips together. “There are a bunch of dodgy people who are waiting for me to
pay them. I have to pay off all the bad debt before I can do anything else—otherwise I’ll turn
up dead before I ever get a chance to hit the gym.”
“Don’t fighters make a lot of money, especially those who win?” I asked, tapping on the cover
of the magazine where he was holding up a title belt.
“They do and I definitely did,” he told me. “But I also made a lot of stupid mistakes while I
was on top. I got too used to people serving me wherever I went. You should have seen it,
Ginger. I could walk into any hotel, and they’d put me and my buddies up in the executive suite
right away. Gambling. Unlimited booze. Chicks. Whatever I asked for. I thought that I could get
away with anything and that the money would never run out. That was true, for a while,” he
said, his eyes distant. “I was spending more time partying and forgot all about fighting …
especially training for fights. I started showing up in the ring unfit and hung over. Then I
started borrowing money to keep up with the lifestyle. I lost all of it.”
He took the magazine from my hands, throwing it on top of the others and kicking the box back
under the bed. He lifted his head and strained a smile. “Working for these crooks will get me
the money I need to pay off what I owe. At least no one can come find me here, and I can stay
alive long enough to get the dough.”
We got up and tiptoed past the sleeping guards, making our way back downstairs and outside in
the bright sunlight. We walked up to the house and into the kitchen. Rocco was sitting at the
table, halfway through a loaf of bread and jar of peanut butter. I fixed some lunch for Griff
and me while Griff handed the black gloves that he had dug out from under his bed over to a
thrilled Rocco. Rocco tried the gloves on, but they were one size too big.