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Copyright © 2015 by Erika Krouse
FIRST TRADE PAPERBACK ORIGINAL EDITION
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Set in Minion
ePub ISBN: 978-1940207643
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Krouse, Erika.
Contenders : A novel / by Erika Krouse.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1940207636
1. Thieves—Fiction. 2. Martial arts—Fiction. 3. Japanese Americans—Fiction. 4. Denver (Colo.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3561.R68 C67 2015
813.6—dc23
For J.D. and K.
Contents
Chapter Two: The Fox and the Rabbit
Chapter Four: Cops and Robbers
Chapter Six: Seven Times Down, Eight Times Up
Chapter Seven: Desires of the Heart
Chapter Eight: The Butterfly and the Flower Thief
Chapter Eleven: The Martial Forest
Chapter Twelve: Empty Your Cup
Chapter Thirteen: Not the Wind, Not the Flag
Chapter Fourteen: Heaven and HelL
Chapter Fifteen: How to Be a Human Being
Chapter One: The Job
If two tigers fight, one is bound to be hurt, and the other to die.
—Okinawan proverb
It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.
—Muhammad Ali
Nina Black waited in the alley for a fight. It was taking longer than she had hoped. Conditions weren’t ideal. A cool wind blew her hair sideways, and she jumped up and down to stay loose. She always forgot how cold Denver could get on summer nights. The graffiti on the bar’s back door was blurry; she couldn’t tell if it said Courage, Bondage, or Cabbage. She stopped jumping and squinted.
The door cracked open, and the word slid into the dark. A shorn head poked out. “There you went.” The man’s torso leaned out of the door and his legs scrambled underneath to keep up, until he stood in front of her. In the light from the streetlamp, his hair glinted orange. His souring breath wafted across her cheek. “Were you that woman in there? That woman at the bar? Staring at me?”
Nina pulled her hands from her pockets.
“I think you dropped something.” The man was tall, thick, like someone who had played football in high school and watched football ever since. A Rorschach birthmark blotted his face. His movements were exaggerated, yet careful. He reminded Nina of every drunken thirty-year-old she had ever met.
“I said, you dropped something,” he said.
Nina scanned the ground and patted for car keys, money. The man sighed and clutched his own T-shirt in his fist. It bunched and lifted until a crescent of belly gleamed above his belt. “It was my heart,” he said.
He licked his finger, pressed her bare shoulder, and made a hissing noise with his mouth. “You’re hot.” Then, “I came out here to puke. But now I don’t have to.” His fingerprint evaporated from her shoulder. “What are you, Filipino?”
“I’m American.”
“No, but what are you?” His face flashed a frown and went slack again.
“My mother was Okinawan. My father was a white guy.”
“Ching chong,” he said.
Nina tried to breathe evenly, but instead she hiccupped. Rancid cooking oil dribbled toward a drain hole from the open door of a Japanese restaurant, staining the night air with the scent of bitter, scorched fish. She hiccupped again.
“Gesundheit.” For a second, his face was fatherly. “Hey.”
“What?”
“You wanna blow me?”
She hiccupped again and pounded her chest with a fist. “You’re drunk.”
“Nope. I’m high on Jesus. Been saved and everything.” He stared at her like she was a twenty-dollar bill he found in the street. “You what? You wanna?”
Nina smelled him, his metallic beer breath, sweat, and the chemical smell of air-conditioned flesh. At some point that night, he had eaten celery. He breathed high in his chest. The canvas of his skin was uneven, with pale jade patches near the veins in his temples. His shoulders strained his jean jacket.
He reached for her. She stepped out of the path of his hand.
“Hey.” A sharpness rose in his voice. The alcohol cleared from his eyes, and the capillaries around his nostrils reddened as he sobered up. An updraft brushed their hair off their foreheads. High in the atmosphere, Nina smelled rain.
He said, “C’mere, you little bitch,” and grabbed her wrist.
Nina’s other arm whipped around and bit