Contenders. Erika Krouse. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Erika Krouse
Издательство: Ingram
Серия:
Жанр произведения: Криминальные боевики
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9781940207643
Скачать книгу

      THIS IS A GENUINE VIREO BOOK

      A Vireo Book | Rare Bird Books

      453 South Spring Street, Suite 531

      Los Angeles, CA 90013

      rarebirdbooks.com

      Copyright © 2015 by Erika Krouse

      FIRST TRADE PAPERBACK ORIGINAL EDITION

      All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic. For more information, address: A Vireo Book | Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 453 South Spring Street, Suite 531, Los Angeles, CA 90013.

      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 One: The Job

       Chapter Two: The Fox and the Rabbit

       Chapter Three: Acting

       Chapter Four: Cops and Robbers

       Chapter Five: The Theft

       Chapter Six: Seven Times Down, Eight Times Up

       Chapter Seven: Desires of the Heart

       Chapter Eight: The Butterfly and the Flower Thief

       Chapter Nine: One Thing

       Chapter Ten: Congratulations

       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 Sixteen: Live Forever

       Chapter Seventeen: Waking Up

       Acknowledgments

      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