“This is the third time you’ve kicked my ass.”
“I must owe you a beer,” I said, and we both grinned at each other.
Turning back toward the crowd, I was bombarded with faces and hands poking through the fence as well as cries of congratulations as I stepped through the cage door. I high-fived a couple dozen people on my way back down the ramp to the make-shift locker room on the lower floor for a moment of peace before I had to go out and meet the public again.
As the door closed behind me, the noise was at least partially cut off, and my head throbbed less as I made my way to the sink. Wincing a bit, I splashed cold water on the cut above my eye. It wasn’t bad and only barely bleeding. There was a place on my back where I hit the cage that was likely worse, but I couldn’t see how bad the cut was. Vanity was my main concern; I hoped it hadn’t fucked up my tattoo. That shit cost me a lot of money.
I stripped and headed to the single stand-up shower in the locker room. The water wasn’t hot enough to feel very good or relax my muscles, but it was certainly better than nothing. I washed quickly and grabbed one of the little towels folded up on a table next to the wall. They weren’t big enough to be considered actual bath towels, so I just ran one of them over my chest, ass, and crotch before tossing it in the corner. It wouldn’t fit around my waist, so there was no point in even trying to cover myself. Crouching down in front of a group of metal lockers, I started rummaging through my gym bag for clothes.
“Nice...”
Yolanda waltzed in without knocking, as usual, and emitted a low whistle. I glanced at her over my shoulder before going back to the items in my bag. She just kept eyeing me, clearly checking out my junk as I squatted down in front of my locker.
Whatever. I didn’t have anything to hide.
Grabbing a pair of boxers, I stood and slipped them on before turning around and sitting on the little bench against the concrete wall. Yolanda knelt down in front of me and deftly removed the tape from my feet and ankles while I unwound it from my wrists. Once that was done, I grabbed a pair of ripped up jeans and pulled them on.
“Turn around,” Yolanda ordered, and I did as she said. “Sit. I can’t reach you from there.”
I sighed but couldn’t really argue. She was maybe all of five-two, and I was nearly a foot taller. She wouldn’t be able to check me out if I remained standing. I sat on the bench and she looked at my shoulder.
“What’s the damage?” I asked. “Tats okay?”
“Just a scratch,” she confirmed. “Tats survived.”
Yolanda pulled a bottle of rubbing alcohol out of her bag. Aside from being a cage fighter before she tore her ACL, she claimed to be a registered nurse. She certainly seemed to know what she was doing and even stitched up my side once when someone pulled a knife on me after losing a fight. The stitches weren’t pretty, but they kept me from losing a lot of blood on the way to the hospital. Yolanda tipped the bottle upside down with a piece of gauze over the opened lid and rubbed some of the alcohol on my shoulder, which made me hiss.
“Don’t be such a baby.” She clicked her tongue at me.
“That fucking hurts.”
“You’ll go nine minutes getting punched in the face, but a little alcohol always makes you whine.”
“I’m not whining,” I insisted, shrugging her off. It didn’t work, because she went after the cut over my eye next. Once she was done with her mothering, I opened my locker, located the small felt bag on the top shelf, and dumped the contents into my hand—two round silver earrings. I slipped them both through the matching holes in my left ear. “Don’t you have anything in there that doesn’t fucking sting like a bitch?”
“Pussy.”
I snorted, rolled my shoulder a couple of times, and then reached into my gym bag for a T-shirt.
“Don’t put that on,” Yolanda said with another exaggerated sigh.
“Why not?”
“Well, for one, you’ve got a lot of female fans out there tonight,” she explained. “You know they want you half naked, and you also know you love to show off the ink. Besides, you just pulled that nasty, wrinkled thing out of your gym bag.”
“So?”
“So, it smells like a dead dog.”
“Nice.” I tossed the shirt back in the bag and zipped it up. “Let’s do this.”
&n
bsp; Back inside the bar, it was a madhouse. I shoved my way through, using my bulk and notoriety to get myself through the crowd and up to the bar. I maneuvered up to the very end to keep from being completely surrounded and stood next to a big poster on the wall. It depicted an old guy with a long, white beard holding up a rat. At the bottom it read:
“Feet first, Arthur. It’s the only way out of here!”
I had no fucking clue what it was supposed to mean, but Dordy, the owner of the bar, thought it was hysterical. He was a short, lanky guy with black hair and eyes. He was from the Philippines or maybe Malaysia; I could never remember exactly. He was behind the bar nearly every night and apparently bought the place because he liked talking to drunk people though he never had a drink himself. He used to work on a cruise ship and made killer frozen drinks.