I paused. “Yes?”
“You’re like, an old friend of Charlie’s, yeah?”
“Yes.” I looked into her midnight eyes and porcelain face and imagined a man could could get sent direct to Hell for the lustful thoughts they caused.
“Well, like why don’t you call him ‘Charlie’ like everyone else?” I tried to focus on her face and not look down inside the low cut or her black velvet dress, or at the carved ivory legs exposed by its shortness, which I’d already noted looking through the glass desk.
“Old Army habit.”
She started to say something else, and I gave her the time to, but she never said what she was thinking and I didn’t help her along. There was Beth still in my thoughts although I wondered how meaningful that was, or how monogamous, under the circumstances.
“Later,” I said, with a nod of my head, my eyes avoiding hers. I opened the door and stepped into Chan’s office. Just like the layout in the old office the view behind his empty desk was of the West side of town, but because he was now in a corner office one could look out and see the North Side of Fort Worth. To the right was a door that led to the gym.
I opened it and was greeted by the warm humid air caused by the hot tub, which was not only full of steaming hot, roiling water, but with Chan and two ladies that might have been sisters of Vicki’s.
Chan smiled and waved towards the other end of the room, a long narrow space with weights lined along the walls and a hardwood floor for a more ‘martial’ kind of workout.
At the far end of the room was another gentleman of Asian descent. He was dressed in nothing but kickboxing shorts and a fine film of sweat. He stopped kicking and punching a heavy bag and looked over at me, waving with his hand like you do when you teach a baby to say ‘bye-bye’.
“Knock yourself out, Clyde,” Chan said. He smiled, and the girls in the tub tittered.
Yeah, I thought. This really out to relieve that old stress, huh?
CHA YU
Over by the weights were four lacquered chests. In Chinese script, gold inlay of course, were the names Chan, Shinn, Klick, and Guests from right to left on the four boxes, Chan’s being the first on the right. Chan had claimed the right-to-left order was a compromise. A show of respect to his roots - although the Chan’s had been in America four-or-five generations already - that allowed him to get out of showing favoritism to his friends, Shinn and me. Although Shinn was listed in second from the right, I was second from the left, in a conventional English order.
I didn’t believe that crap either. Chan had said it to soothe my hurt feelings. Like I cared. To Chan we were all like brothers, and like blood family there was no order in the ones you helped out. Chan would back me up as much and as quick as he would Shinn.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
I opened the chest with my name on it and stripped down to my underwear, tried to ignore the catty whistles of the ladies in the hot tub. I glanced over at the stranger and decided to put on kickboxing shorts, too. Black, of course, with my name spelled out in Thai in golden thread. I slipped on a black tank-top. Then black feet-and-shin pads. Last was a pair of black kickboxing gloves, with fingers instead of the hand padding of a boxing glove. Sort of like the ones Bruce Lee wore in the opening sequence of ENTER THE DRAGON.
I went over to the bag and lightly punched and kicked it. Going a little faster and a little harder as my body warmed up. A sheen of sweat built on my brow. I finished with a few simple round kicks, then trotted over to the windows and stretched.
The stranger watched me with what can only be described as anticipation. The kind of glint you see in the eyes of a cat watching a mouse scurrying across the floor for a stray bit of cheese.
As I approached him the man held out his hand. We shook.
“I am ‘Cha Yu’,” he said. His voice was thick with accent, and he spoke slowly, his mouth moving in exaggeration with each word.
“‘Free Way’?” I asked.
“Nay nay,” he said, Korean for ‘Yes yes’. Then he went off on a spiel of Korean, excited that he could speak in his native tongue.
I waited politely. When he was through, I said, “Sorry, I only know a few words of Korean.”
“No, I am sorry for assuming wrongly. Presumptuous of me.”
Damn. Pretty good vocabulary, even though he spoke as slowly as a first grader in spelling class.
“I am Clyde,” I said.
“So I’ve heard,” he said smiling.
He went into a fighting stance and then I heard one of the girls shout, “Si Jak.”
Cha Yu feinted a left, then spun and caught me flush with a spinning back round-kick. There was a crack and I fell like a sweaty dumbbell.
‘Si Jak’ means, in Korean of course, ‘begin.’
THE TRICK
The girls in the tub took turns counting to ten in Korean. “Hanna.”They counted very slowly. “Dool.”Apparently they didn’t want to ruin my new friend Cha Yu’s fun or workout. “Set.” He was dancing around like Bruce Lee on speed. “Net.”
I waited patiently for ten to come around. I wasn’t waiting for my head to clear. Or for the rubber in my legs to tighten back into muscles. It wasn’t the sparks dancing in my eyes that made me stay down.
Sure.
Even if I stayed down at ten, Cha Yu wasn’t going anywhere. Having too much fun. His face was a slate again, except for those eyes, more life in them than any black eyes I’d ever seen before. Fire.
I got up and stood flat-footed. Gloved fists just barely up to my chest, well below the chin as any pugilist worth his leather should do. Flat-footed is a no-no, too. Brown eyes dull, slow blinks. I stepped slowly to face Cha Yu as he moved around me.
He came in quick, two short feints, then the straight left behind them. I blocked the first two, palmed his left down , rolled my elbow into right as he tried to counter-punch. I used a straight push-kick to get him back.
Cha Yu stopped dancing and stared at me. A hard stare. Serious. He shook his hand. Even with the padding my elbow should have stung his fingers good.
I grinned at him.
Dancing around him with small steps I popped him with two back hands. He tried to play tough guy with the first, stood there and took it. The second smarted and he jumped back and got into a serious fighting stance. Shaking his head like Bruce Lee - that slow side-to-side move with the eyes planted on the opponent - he held a hand up. Like a challenge from ENTER THE DRAGON.
Chan’s voice invaded the scene. “I forgot to mention Cha Yu’s a little bit into Bruce Lee.”
I said, “Forgot to mention he’s a mean bastard, too.”
“And good,” Cha Yu said slowly.
I smiled. Working my feet slowly I edged up into the same stance, let my right forearm lick his, and waited.
He snatched my hand like a ferret attacking a cobra. Reeled it in. His left coming in quick. I squatted underneath his punch and jabbed my left fist into his thigh. Cha Yu still gripped my right so I lurched up and in, twisted my arm around quickly and smacked him with the right elbow.
Then I pushed him back with another straight kick.
I showed my teeth in a feral grin.
The girls in the tub clapped and I turned around to bow, but froze as I saw them standing, the water just below their…. I blinked. I tried to think of Beth, but lately I didn’t think Beth had been thinking much of me since I’d hardly