Unlikely Hero (Atlanta #1) (2 page)

She walked across the street for a soup and salad instead of eating something from the vending machine, sitting at her desk. She sat at an outdoor table under the shade of an oversized, brightly-colored umbrella and savored her meal. She wanted to write a bit more in her notebook. This still wasn’t a lunch outing with coworkers like most of her office participated in, but at least this was a step in the right direction, even though she kept herself safely alone. Her book would understand.

I really want to thank you for just being here. I’m surprised at what a difference it makes being able to write in your pages and feel better. My old shrink would be proud. When that thing happened in college, writing helped me get through it. My little empty feeling now is nothing compared to the horribleness of that time, but the writing still seems to help.
 

I guess right now I’m realizing just how much what happened back then is contributing to my emptiness now…but I really don’t want to go there. You’ll have to understand if I don’t share that with you. Another notebook bore that burden, and was cremated in my favorite old fire ring. It’s ashes are now scattered in the wind of my parent’s back yard. I mourned it, but I moved on.
 

Well, I think I’ve moved on. The hurt from it is not so acute, but here I am writing about it again, so I guess it hasn’t really gone away. It’s dull, but there. That’s a depressing thought.

But I don’t want to be depressed. The whole point of this is to feel happy! So lets find some happy together. I’m going to appreciate the taste of this lobster bisque, the light vinaigrette on my wedge salad, and my sweet tea. Actually out in the afternoon, under the shade, enjoying good food. Yep, there’s my happy for now…both the good food and the fact that I made it outside. Thanks for sharing it with me. And by the way, sorry for that drip of salad dressing you just got on you. Hope you can forgive me.
 

Erin laughed at the thought of needing forgiveness from her notebook, but treating this little stack of pages as a friend made sharing easier. She did have people around her she could talk to if she wanted, but only at work. And even there she had only one coworker she didn’t mind talking to, but any conversation centered on accounting. The relationship was professional, not the kind where you pour your heart out to a dear friend.
 

Regardless of
why
she personified her book, the arrangement worked. She was enjoying herself in the sun. Her food was better, her environment was better, and her mood was better. She was more comfortable than she would have thought. Still, she was ready for the cozy gray of her cubicle. She had her break, a chat with a “friend,” and now she was ready to return to her job.
 

Accounting wasn’t awful; the work was satisfying and predictable. She finished her calculations for the afternoon and left at about 5:15. That was the earliest she had left work in ages…maybe ever. Today, she bypassed her workout and went straight for the favorite, comfy outfit at home. Yoga pants and cami — more reasons to feel good. The clothes were safe and soft, and now that Erin made an effort to seek some sort of life improvement, she could appreciate such things.

So here’s another happy: COMFORTABLE CLOTHES! Who would have thought you could be so happy just thinking about your favorite pants. Cotton is wonderful. Thanks for helping me focus on something good. I’m cozy and I noticed and I like it.

Erin spent the rest of the evening writing to her purple book. She spent hours writing about childhood memories and happy moments. She sought out every happy memory she had, hoping to bring a piece of joy back to her current self.
 

She found herself writing phrases like “
the biggest lollipop I’d ever seen
” and “
the neighbor’s new puppy came over and licked my nose
” and “
I found the most gorgeous prom dress
.” Remembering so much happiness was a beautiful thing. Those memories filled her greatly and she fell asleep that night in complete and total peace.
 

She knew better than to think she had found a total way out of her emptiness, but she was glad to remember the happy foundation from which she came. Surely, that would carry her to her destination. She found interest and renewal in the journey so far.

Marcus shin-kicked the heavy bag for about the fifteenth time before his trainer told him to stop. The sounds of other fighters echoed in the gym as Bill said, “Good. Left leg’s gettin’ stronger. Grab some water and meet me at the speed bag. We gotta work those arms before you’re done.”

Marcus squeezed the water from his gym bottle into his mouth before cracking his neck and walking over to another wall of the dingy gym. He toyed with the tape on his otherwise bare hands and pummeled the speed bag with everything he had.
 

Even though he wasn’t in the cage and not fighting anyone at the moment, Marcus tore into every piece of training equipment like a mortal enemy. He let anger and rage fuel his workouts and his fights.

Bill made his way over to Marcus after giving pointers to a few other fighters. “You’re hitting hard again,” Bill said with his gravelly voice. “That’s good, that’s good. Keep it up. Remember that in the ring.”

Bill was in his late 50s, but still strong and toned. His gray hair was cut high and tight. His leathery skin was well tanned. He had the look of someone who had spent half his life fighting and half working outside. Marcus always knew Bill passed the years doing just that.
 

Marcus, on the other hand, was 25, tan, and had short, dark brown hair. He was six feet three inches tall, perfectly hard-muscled, and was on the fast track to becoming one of the city’s Mixed Martial Arts fighting greats. He was ferocious in the cage, even though his sister would swear he’s laid back and a laugh to be around: a real smart-ass with his friends, a real hard-ass in the ring.
 

“Do you know who’s fighting on Saturday yet?” Marcus asked Bill.

“Yeah. I got your name on the ticket. There’s 9 other guys total, 6 of them you could beat easily. The other 3 might be tougher. We’ll see what shakes out and worry about who you’re gonna trounce when they pull numbers.”

Marcus’s only response was to turn back to the bag and speed-punch with every ounce of hatred he could find in himself. In spite of his usual good nature, he found plenty of that hatred available. He had earned his share and used the under-the-skin boiling rage wisely.
 

Outside Bill’s gym, Marcus could never let himself acknowledge his rage or treat others like there was an animal ready to rip itself out from his body and attack. In the MMA ring, however, that’s exactly what he did. The fighting came from under his skin and bypassed his brain completely.
 

After several grueling hours in the gym, Bill instructed Marcus to hit the shower and go home. Only two days remained until Saturday’s event, and he needed to let Marcus’s body recover and be in top shape. Friday’s work out would be agility and cardio. The next round of deep muscle work would be in the cage.
 

Marcus went to the shower of the locker room and turned the water on as hot as he could stand. He leaned his tired frame against the tile wall in front of him and let the shower burn away the hate and anger he tapped into during his training. Every ugly shred of rage needed to be erased before he went home. He never let that side of him leave the gym.
 

His friends and family didn’t need to see him as the animal he became when fighting. They deserved better than that. When he fought, he considered himself to be less than human. That ugliness made him a damn good fighter because the animal didn’t care about who he hurt or what he did. All he knew in a fight was muscle, sinew, and rage.
 

When he finally finished in the locker room, Marcus tossed his bag over his shoulder, waved a backward goodbye to Bill on his way out of the gym. The sunlight was fading to evening when Marcus got back to his apartment. He had a few hours to sleep before heading to his third shift job. Every day he was a fighter. Every night he was a janitor.
 

The work wasn’t glamorous, but it paid the rent. He didn’t mind the guys riding him about being a mop-jockey. The basic work kept him humble and didn’t distract him from training.
 

He liked having a job he didn’t have to think about too much. He had the same list of duties week to week and he tended to them efficiently. He planned to keep things that way until the day he couldn’t fight any more. When that day came, he would become a trainer, he was sure. Fighting was his life, and had been the only thing he knew from the time he was a child.
 

He got back to his small apartment within minutes of leaving the gym. He lived just a few blocks away upstairs from a butcher shop. The proprietor, as a favor to Bill, had converted his old, unused office upstairs into a 1-room apartment for Marcus. Marcus was his tenant, and they took good care of each other. Marcus helped George out of a few scuffles with neighborhood thugs, and in return he had a never ending supply of good steaks and burgers to help him with his massive protein needs. Keeping that kind of muscle in tact and increasing wasn’t easy, but Marcus never took more than he needed. He and his landlord were a good fit.

He entered his apartment and walked past the faded-brown couch which also served as his bed. A hotplate, fridge and a few cupboards stood near a sink at one end of the room, and his couch and a tv occupied the space by the door. The wall color had faded long ago into a smudgy tannish-gold with more than a few cracks. The only other two features of the apartment were a closet and a bathroom.
 

His place was minimal, but Marcus didn’t need any more than what he had. His home was Bill’s gym, not this apartment. He took the steak out to the small grill on the fire escape and made his dinner. He downed some leftover fried potatoes from the fridge and a tall glass of milk while he waited for his steak to be done.
 

He turned on the tv and watch a Seinfeld rerun while he ate the rest of his meal. After that, he shut down the tv and the lights, and let himself sleep deeply after a good workout. He had his alarm set for 11:15 p.m. which gave him just enough time to put on the navy pants and light blue button down shirt of his janitor uniform and make it downtown for his midnight shift.
 

He was assigned three floors of a high rise there, all from some accounting firm. The type of office he cleaned didn’t matter. They all made the same kind of paper-and-food-wrapper garbage. The only thing Marcus was concerned about was his fighting. This job gave him the chance to train and fight as much as he liked.

When he got to the high-rise, he started on the eighth floor, just like every night. He made his rounds to every cubicle to dust, empty trash cans, and vacuum cracker crumbs from the carpet around the chairs. He worked his way from the bullpen section where all the low-end-of-the-totem-pole-workers droned along, and up the windowed side wall to the slightly larger cubicles where the higher-ups-but-still-not-high-eoungh-for-an-office people worked. There was only one real office on this floor at all.

Marcus shook his head, unable to imagine a life cooped up in a stuffy office all day with nothing to do but sit at a desk. At least he was free to walk around. These people had no fresh air at all, and worked in a gray little box, each of which may as well have one in a long row of mausoleums. There was no life in here.
 

He noticed something out of place that evening, however. Usually, his job was predictable to a fault. The guy in cubicle 12 always ate at Wendy’s. The lady from the corner-window cubicle had the same picture of her fluffy, squish-nosed cat in the same corner of her desk for the entire year he’d been doing this job.
 

Not a whole lot changed around here, except tonight in cubicle 15: the space had always been one of the most gray and drab of those little work boxes. No personal affects, no pictures, no life whatsoever. If not for the piles of work on the desk, he would have sworn no one occupied the space.
 

But tonight, there was something new. The little decoration wasn’t much, just a glass orb with metallic silver and purple swirling inside hanging from a little c-shaped silver stand. The desk lamp had been retrained to shine light on the little ball. He flipped the switch and watched the silver inside sparkle. He spun it around and smiled, not because he found the decoration cute, but because the person in this cubicle had finally made an attempt to brighten the space.
There might be hope for this no-life sap, yet
, he thought.
 

Friday morning found Erin refreshed and happy. Focusing on the positive, even if it’s borne from the past, made a huge difference in her entire outlook on life. If nothing else, the memories represented hope. If one has experienced happiness, one can let good feelings back in. The trick, possibly, was to find a way to break down whatever walls are blocking the positives out. That’s a difficult prospect: to find how and when the walls were made, then how to tear them down. Some walls, like the giant, concrete, stadium-sized barrier from the worst experience of her life, looked impossible to remove without some serious industrial equipment.

Erin refused, however, to let that thought get her down. She and her notebook could face the other little walls, and maybe build up some strength to find a metaphorical wrecking ball from within. There was hope in all of this, and she was proud of herself for working through her funk. She got dressed for work and grabbed her notebook before leaving her apartment.
 

She actually wore her hair down that day. The red curls fell in thick waves just below her shoulder blades. The softness framed her oval face nicely, and Erin was enjoying literally letting her hair down. This was as casual as she had ever allowed herself, even on Casual Friday. This notebook was helping find the cracks in the walls of her carefully-maintained stoic existence.