Free Suckerpunch: (2011) by Jeremy Brown Page B

good?”
     
    “I’ve won more than lost.”
     
    “That could mean anything. Two and one?”
     
    Marcela sighed. “Five-time national champion and undefeated in three weight classes. I got my black belt when I was thirteen.”
     
    “Jesus Christ.”
     
    “No, no,” she said. “Woody, you can’t say that. It’s disrespectful.”
     
    I liked how she pronounced it.
Woo-dee.
I apologized and said, “Do you have a nickname? For when you compete?”
     
    “Not for that. My family calls me Cela sometimes.”
     
    “What does that mean?”
     
    “Mean? It’s part of my name. Marcela. Cela.” She held her hands together, then separated them. “See?”
     
    “Right, yes.”
     
    “The ones with meaning, that’s for you boys. You all want to be superheroes with secret identities. You should fight with capes on.”
     
    “Easy to choke somebody that way.”
     
    “Not for you,” she said and hid behind her shoulder. She was a rascal.
     
    Stephanie returned, and we scrambled to figure out what to order. To buy us time she refilled my water and got Marcela a Diet Coke. We both decided on grilled chicken salads, and Stephanie did a good job of making it seem like that was worth all the time it took.
     
    When she was gone, Marcela said, “Why did you pick Woodshed for your name?”
     
    “I didn’t. Someone else gave it to me. You can’t pick your own nickname.”
     
    She sipped her drink with a frown. She freed the straw long enough to ask, “Why not?” Then was right back at it.
     
    “I don’t know. It’s tacky. Like a smart person going around telling everyone to call him Einstein. It’s not spontaneous. Everyone will end up calling him Whinestein or something.”
     
    “So at the gym, the loud guy—”
     
    “Roth,” I said.
     
    “His nickname is Cut Snake, he told me. Which means crazy, right?”
     
    “Right. Australians are . . . unique.”
     
    “He didn’t pick that for himself?”
     
    “He says his mom’s called him that since he was a baby.”
     
    Marcela said, “It’s a good name for him.”
     
    “The best one I’ve heard so far is Adrian’s, a guy from Greece who trains with us sometimes. Over there they call him
Akoniti,
which means ‘no duster’ in Greek, from the old pancration days. They used it to describe a fight that was over so fast it didn’t raise any dust from the arena floor.”
     
    “I like that one,” Marcela said.
     
    I was going to add something about how I hoped he hadn’t earned it in the bedroom, but I drank water instead.
     
    She said, “So who gave you Woodshed? And why a building?”
     
    I told her the story, then explained, “There’s a phrase when you really give someone a good whipping. People say you took them out to the woodshed. For a beating.”
     
    Marcela frowned.
     
    “The guy said I took the other fighter to the woodshed and beat him with it.”
     
    She nodded, probably so I would stop talking. She said, “Okay, so you’re a building where beatings happen.”
     
    “Kind of. Maybe.”
     
    Our food arrived, and we spent some time arranging our napkins and sampling the salads with small bites that wouldn’t leave anything on our faces. We both wiped after each nibble just in case.
     
    Marcela said, “Did I hear one of the fighters introduced as a goat?”
     
    “
The
Goat,” I said around a mouthful that almost ended up in the booth behind Marcela. I kept it in and withered under her disapproval. I got some water down and wiped my face. “The Goat. It’s an acronym for Greatest of All Time.”
     
    “Of all
time?”
she asked. “Is he?”
     
    “I’ve never seen him fight. He lost his last two, I think. And he’s just a jiu jitsu guy, so he can’t be that good.”
     
    Her mouth fell open. “I am going to kick your face.” She reached across the table and put a crouton in my water.
     
    I gulped it down and crunched with a smile.
     
    The place was filling up. Every half hour the staff would pick one of