Free Suckerpunch: (2011) by Jeremy Brown Page A

of people talking and laughing and not screaming (which was alarming)—it was because she was really nowhere near me.
     
    The music was some anonymous thump and squawk with an orchestra in the background playing out of sheer terror. I glanced down to make sure I was on the floor and saw that at least the heavy fog was there with me, paying attention to the rules.
     
    Marcela started forward. When she didn’t disappear forever, I followed her into the abyss. About five steps in, the mirrors started to make sense, but I still didn’t want to reach out to lean on anything in case it wasn’t there. The bar became horizontal, and the people at it stopped being magical. I wanted to shake hands with every one of them.
     
    A blonde woman in a nice suit and a purpose walked over. “Woody?” She did a good job of sounding familiar, but there was a slight undercurrent of worry that I wasn’t the right guy.
     
    “Yes,” I said.
     
    “I’m Bonnie. We’re so glad to see you and . . . ?”
     
    “Marcela,” I said, presenting her.
     
    “Of course,” Bonnie said. “If you’d like to follow me, your table awaits.”
     
    We trailed her between more mirrors and floating people, but I didn’t wobble or act too amazed. We came out into an open area with a nearly empty dance floor straight ahead and another bar along the left wall. She turned right and led us up a short flight of stairs to a row of booths along the right wall that overlooked the dance floor.
     
    A woman wearing a small white dress and a laurel wreath in her hair waited next to an empty booth. Bonnie waved us into it.
     
    I took the far seat so I could see the doorway. Old habits.
     
    “This is Stephanie. She’ll be taking care of you this evening.”
     
    Marcela smiled. “Thank you so much.”
     
    “Okay, bye now.” And Bonnie was gone.
     
    Stephanie poured us waters and said she’d be back when we’d had a chance to review the menu.
     
    I took a look around. The only mirrors were behind the bar, and I vowed to stay away from them. The room looked like a billowing Roman tent, maybe something the senators would use to host debauchery and assassinations. Six brass poles were spaced evenly down the center of the dance floor, parallel to the booths, with faux torches banded near the tops sending flickering light into the overlapping canvas of the ceiling. The poles were thin enough to be at home on a stripper runway, and there were a few girls out there taking pictures of each other hooking legs around the poles and pulling their bottom lips down with one finger. A few of the bartenders were having a serious discussion about the girls, probably conspiring over which kind of shot would get their tops off the quickest.
     
    “What is this, marble?” Marcela rapped on the table and tried to move it back and forth.
     
    “I think it’s concrete, made to look like marble.”
     
    “I think it’s marble,” she said and picked up her menu. She was fun to watch, everything right there on her face. Her eyes drifted over to the dance floor, came back, and squinted at me. “Do you dance?”
     
    It was a trick question. “I have danced before. It’s a lot like my jiu jitsu.”
     
    She put her hand over her mouth. “Oh, man. No dancing tonight, then.”
     
    “Come on. It’s that bad?”
     
    Marcela sipped her water and wiped the residue of her lip gloss off the rim with her napkin. “You try too hard. You’re always pushing and pulling and squeezing. Sometimes you just have to relax and be patient.”
     
    “I tend to lose my patience pretty quickly when someone is elbowing me in the face.”
     
    “It’s different when you can punch and kick each other. But not that different.”
     
    “Do you compete down in Brazil?”
     
    She said, “Yes, of course, and other places. Wherever we go.”
     
    “MMA or just jiu jitsu?”
     
    “Just
jiu jitsu? Please.”
     
    Like I’d asked Sinatra, ‘You only sing?’ I said, “Are you any