"Don't worry about how I'll get the sodding things off. Just lace them the fuck up." I had been in living in London long enough to be comfortable using British vulgarities, but part of me still clung to the brute simplicity of American curses. Besides, a girl had to employ variety when she cursed as much as I did.
Lil gazed at me with her reluctant, chocolate eyes and gave a little sigh. "I won't make any hard knots. That way you might be able to work them untied with your teeth, I guess."
Although Lil and I had fostered a comfortable symbiosis in the six months we'd been flatmates mustering our way through university, the look she bestowed upon me was not so much the gaze of a concerned friend as it was the hawk-like eyeing a survivalist cast upon the last locker of rations. If I broke my neck ricocheting off the stairs, my half of the rent would be absent come New Year's. And, seeing as Lil had lost two previous living partners since beginning her studies, I suppose I represented the proverbial third strike.
Or, I guess she might have been simply trying to avoid the fetid task of scraping my brains off the floor.
"I don't know what possible objection you could have to velcro, Jinn," she whinged.
"I like these gloves," I growled, pulling my hands away as soon as she finished her childish loop-swoop-pull double bows.
I didn't just like the gloves. I fucking loved them.
Ancient Keyston 9" sheepskin boxing gloves: exquisite, barbaric simplicity. True, their red luster had worn in places, but their fusty perfume was an invigorating musk to my nostrils. They stroked my senses, crying out with ripened antique creaks each time I insinuated my hands within them flexed my hands inside them. There was a charm to the hoodlum objects that gave them a character I preferred to their trendy little Tae-Bo vinyl-coated cousins.
My oversized mitts had known real pummeling. They had been used in a practice ring, or even in a bout or two. They had crushed lips against mouth-guards and teeth. They had slammed cheekbones and delivered hard-packed uppercuts to square-jawed men. Sweat and blood had permeated into the leather and toughened the hides.
I liked the tight, secure fit of real laces against my wrists. I liked the weight of them as they confined my angry hands. I liked the sound they made when I knocked them together. I loved the resonant whack they blurted out when I pounded them against my 150-pound durahide Everlast bag.
Lil followed me down the hall like a twitchy mother echoing the footsteps of an accident-prone toddler. She glanced around the box-room -turned-gym and rubbed her shoulders vigorously. "Crikey, it can't be thirty degrees in here. Don't tell me you aren't freezing."
I didn't bother to answer. I might have been cold; in truth, I couldn't tell. I felt my nipples strain against the thin cotton of my sport bra. I felt my bare midriff break out in gooseflesh, as did my thighs and calves. The white capri trousers did nothing to shield my smooth-shaven legs against the damp and chill. Cold was a state of mind, and my mind was toasty warm as it danced somewhere in the third ring of hell.
Lil made a grand gesture of resting a plastic cup filled with water on a shelf and sticking a straw into it so I could sip like a hamster if the need arose. She had a maternal streak in her. It was an instinct I sorely lacked, and her intuitive affection served only to increase my ire.
"Well, you've got water and hopefully you'll be able to chew your way out of those gloves." She was trying hard to inject her quiet tone with exasperation, but she didn't quite dare. There must have been something in my eyes betraying my homicidal thoughts. "I don't suppose it will do any good to ask you why you've got a face like a wet weekend?"
I didn't answer. The Everlast still hadn't bled out a spot that begged for the slam of my gloved fists. Nothing else was important.
"I'll be back in a couple hours," Lil huffed, pounding down the hall like a jilted lover leaving a candlelit bistro in some old film noir. "I hate it when you get like this, Jinn!"
She dared that only once she'd reached the safety of the stairs. The thump of a sharply closed door resounded through the quiet of our little first floor flat. She wasn't the door-slamming type. Though, I suspected, she longed to be.
Finally, there it was: the spot on the punching bag I'd been seeking. Like some fatally-flawed dragon from an antediluvian legend, the heavy sack yielded to me the secret of its Achilles heel. Just below the capital "E", a fantasy of reptilian scales began to glow and emanate heat in my mind's eye. I fixed upon that small space, and shoved my fist forward - all my strength in that first primitive punch.
The dam may well collapse, but the little Dutch boy was going down swinging.
Rhythm seized jurisdiction.
WHACK
BAM
ZOOM
I could almost see an audio balloon trail off with each earsplitting blow - like the psychedelic-hued flashcards that punctuated episodes of old Batman episodes.
ZOIKS
POW
KABLAM
Fly like a butterfly, sting like a bee…
Left
Right
Jab
Swing
"Jesus wept, Jinn! If you're going to be in here madly pounding away, you might leave a note on the front door."
My arms froze comically in mid-swing, violence suspended in time. The Everlast mocked my stone pose as it swung back and forth. I panted, gulping down air like it was free, but couldn't bring myself to speak.
"Am I mistaken, Jinn? Or did you break up with my answering machine last night?"
I had begun dating Argyle McLaughlin exactly one month prior to wandering into a Hackney charity shop and announcing that I needed a punching bag to work my out frustrations. The principal source of those frustrations was the sometimes-charming, always-illusory cad of a Scotsman now lounging against my box room door.
Being the arse-over-tits queen that I was, I'd backed into him at an end-of-term party amidst vomiting rugby players and beer-soaked pledges.
"I'm Guy," his thick burr of an accent had cooed into my ear as we inclined against a wall and sucked blissful clouds of nicotine. I inhaled Silk Cut through a Polo: adolescent, and simply the best combination of ills I'd ever hoped to succumb to.
"Jinn," I'd supplied with a cursory wave of my hand, indicating myself.
I expected one of the usual pick-up lines: "Great, I'll take you on the rocks," or some lame variation. He only inclined his head in a somewhat disinterested nod. Which, of course, sent me straight into the rambling explanation I claimed to be sick to death of relaying to every new acquaintance.
"It's short for Jinger. Only my folks spelled it with a 'J' and not a 'G'. I was the third child of dedicated hippies. Got off lightly, though, or so my sister Crystalline and brother Coptic keep reminding me."
Tusks of smoke billowed out through his white-toothed grin. "No worries. Guy's short for Argyle. Lucky for me, the cat was already named 'Socks'."
It was the sort of introduction that began Greek Tragedies.
Our eyes locked and it was lust at first sight, the predatory recognition of one prowler for another. We shared the same sickness of never-impressed wit, our egos bloated by the continual pregnancy of sarcasm. Our union was diabolical - the kind of thing foretold in ancient scrolls, most often a precursor to the arrival of some kind of antichrist.
In the three months we'd dated, he had proved to be the worst possible man for me, and the last influence I needed in my already debauched life. He dressed better than I did. He lied better than I did. And, worst of all, he fucked better than I did.
"Multi-orgasmic" had been little more than a catchphrase before he took his place on my futon. Damn him for it. And damn him for looking so sexy as he lazed his sultry eyes over me.
Briny sweat slithered down the arch of my back. I fought the urge to shiver.
"I'm glad you're here. This way you can just leave your key and pick up your toothbrush. I hope you don't mind that I used it to scrub down the loo this morning."
SMACK
ZAP
BLAM
"Is there any special reason you decided to dole this out as a Merry Sodding Christmas," he growled in a hoarse rasp. "or do I have the pleasure of guessing at the delightful drama which lies in store?"
THUNK
SPLAT
KAPOW
"Did you fuck some slut named Maria Chamberlain at the Christmas Eve ball?" My tone was casual, almost composed.
"Might have done," Guy mulled, stretching his long legs out before him. "What does she look like?"
My bare heels pivoted before my body could catch up and I hardly felt in control of my own arms when I delivered a hard right jab smack into his smug face.
The slap of sheepskin leather against flesh and sinew made a much more satisfying sound than the Everlast.
Blinking, and then straightening Guy dabbed at his bottom lip. It was bleeding from the crack against his teeth. His already-bruising lip curled as he stood to face me. "It's no news to you that I plow other fields."
"Bloody…shagging…wanker!" I screamed, taking another swing at him, which he quickly sidestepped. "In front the of the whole student bar!"
"She wanted an audience."
"Leave your key, and get the fuck out." I turned back to take my anger out on my second-hand sporting equipment. It was beginning to glow with weakness once more.
I don't know how long he stood there watching me clobber that durahide representation of him. Every ounce of energy went into every swing and thrust and jab. I felt my body soaked in sweat. I felt frosty December penetrate the room, but it was no match for the heat of my fury. And the more he watched, the harder I punched. Until my ligaments and tendons began to beg for a mercy I couldn't grant.
"We are pit vipers, Jinn," he began to purr behind me. I carried on as though I didn't take notice of him, but my body heard that tone and knew what that timbre meant. In our vulgar mating ritual, his iniquitous soliloquies always signaled the commencement of a round. "Pit vipers. We strike and spit venom and slither leglessly into the beds of others. We fuck and poison and bear fangs. It is what we do, Jinn."
"It's not what I do," I countered feebly.
Thick masculine fingers wound their way into my hair. "Copperhead," he hissed, easing his body behind mine, my russet-colored curls molded pliant around his claw. I made a move to turn, but he yanked my hair to keep me facing forward.
I didn't give him the satisfaction of a howl.
"You're not going to strike at me again, Copperhead," his reptilian lips promised in my ear. And I felt his hard body press into the back of my sweat-soaked form.
Pit vipers. Yes, in fact we were. My copperhead temper and his cottonmouth charm. One damned serpent bewitching another of its kind.
Abandoning my hair, his hands slid cautiously down my shoulders, along my arms to my curvy hips, which he grasped securely. Drawing me backwards, I felt the stiff crotch of his jeans grind into the firmness of my round bottom. Moving his hips in slow Elvis-esqe gyrations, he taunted me with the feel of him.
His inspection moved from my hips to my bare, sweaty belly. I had a gentle rise, not quite a roll, forming a plush tummy, which he gripped happily in both his strong hands. His fingers dug in tight. ON TO PAGE 2
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