Read Suckerpunch: (2011) for Free Online

yoga and Pilates a few nights a week in the gym and spent most of the time trying to keep her class from lying on the bloodstains on the mats.
     
    She had her head tilted to the side with a pouty lip. “Just once?”
     
    “Sorry.”
     
    “Come on!” Roth shouted from the ring. He and Terence had stopped sparring and were leaning on the ropes. Terence was from Detroit and didn’t say much, but he was grinning.
     
    “You two get back to work,” Gil said.
     
    “We want to hear it,” said Roth. “Say it, Woodrow. Then tell us what it’s like to be famous.”
     
    “Shut up.”
     
    “For me?” Jairo asked.
     
    “Okay. For you.” I wiped a handful of sweat off my face. I looked around the gym at the faces. Edson and Javier had recovered from the circuit and were rolling in their gis. They stopped in mid-pretzel to watch. Roth had a gloved hand cupped to his helmeted ear. I took a deep breath. “I am going to impose my will upon Junior Burbank and prove our first fight was
not
a fluke.”
     
    They all booed. Roth threw his mouthpiece at me.
     
    “Go take a shower,” Gil said. “You can’t be filmed looking like that. There are laws.” He turned to Roth. “And if you’re done in there, grab a mop and clean these mats.”
     
    I followed Jairo into the hallway at the back and down to the right, past the bathroom and then a left into the kitchen. He plucked an apple off the counter and offered it to me.
     
    “Not yet,” I said.
     
    He nodded and ate half of it in one bite.
     
    Some of us stay at the gym during training camp to limit distractions and keep Gil from calling us every hour to see what we’re doing, so the kitchen has a constant stock of protein shakes, energy bars, lean meats, raw vegetables, and enough ice cream to keep a fat kid quiet for a week. Gil passes out the ice cream as a reward, and if he catches you with any unsanctioned, you work until your stomach gives it back.
     
    I’d been sleeping in the back room, what we called the Hole, for the six weeks leading up to the Porter fight. Going back to when I started training with Gil I’d probably spent more time at The Fight House than at my apartment. Every month I paid the rent and wondered why.
     
    Jairo and I went past the fridge and through the door on the other side of the kitchen into the Hole. It was a big open space with high ceilings where they worked on cars when the building was a dealership. We had a card table and foosball and console video games on the big screen that usually ended with somebody getting submitted on the floor while the game waited for someone to push a button.
     
    I had my cot pushed up against the wall on the right, and past that in the far corner was the square of four showers sectioned off from the rest of the room with exposed framing showing and the drywall panels still taped together leaning against it. The inside was tiled and watertight, but Gil loathed drywall and thought if he let it sit long enough someone would get bored and hang it. I’d seen fighters in camp resort to lighting their leg hair on fire to pass the time, and no one had touched the drywall.
     
    Jairo looked over to the far left corner at the big-screen and the person watching it on the black leather sectional couch. All I could see was the top of a head poking up past the back cushions. The head was covered by a sweatshirt hood the same forest green as Jairo’s gi. Jairo said something in Portuguese to the head. The tone sounded a lot like, “Are you going to watch that garbage all day?” The reply was short and made Jairo stop walking. He turned to me and said, “Do you believe that?”
     
    I shook my head.
     
    Jairo muttered into the showers. I picked the stall diagonal from his and got clean and into a pair of loose cotton pants and a Fight House T-shirt for the cameras. The shirt also featured Arcoverde Jiu Jitsu and some sponsors I’d try to thank after the Burbank fight if I could still talk.
     
    When I