Eyes widening, Lydia said, “What the fuck? You and Ana were the best students in that dojo!”
“Phil and Cliff have been at it longer, and Grandmaster Ken’s dojo is more physical, more emphasis on fighting. That was never my strong suit.” For the first time, Yona actually smiled, though she still wouldn’t look directly at Lydia. “It was more yours.”
Lydia snorted.
“So enough about me,” Yona said, even though Lydia had about fifty more questions about Grandmaster Ken, “what are you up to?”
“I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you. And I wish I was kidding. Seriously, the shit I’m into is so classified, I’m not even allowed to know about it, and I’m in the thick of it.”
“Okay.” Yona still wouldn’t look Lydia in the eye, but instead gulped more of her margarita, having already licked off all the salt. “It’s like your SEAL days all over again.”
“Hey, I owe you for that, chica. My life was one big assault-and-battery charge waiting to happen.” Lydia then grinned. “Now I get to beat people up legally.”
“Honestly, I heard some stuff in the office about the DMS. No details, but the congressman talks about you guys like you’re superheroes or something.”
“Yeah, they totally based the Black Widow on my ass,” Lydia said with a laugh. “You said this guy’s a crazy man?”
“Ah, not really. I mean, he’s not as awesome as the congresswoman was. Honestly, Betty Martinez is the one you owe, not me. I just made the introductions.”
“Bullshit. Look, chica, you don’t step in, I’m doin’ time in Dade. You put me in the dojo, and that put my ass on the straight and narrow.”
Making a show of looking at the bar stool, Yona said, “Your ass is anything but narrow.”
Lydia crumpled up a napkin and tossed it at Yona. They both laughed, but something was wrong with Yona’s tone. She was barely even chuckling.
And she still had yet to look Lydia in the eyes. She was also on her third cigarette since walking into the Schooner Wharf.
“What the hell’s going on, Yona? What’s wrong?” She put a hand on Yona’s.
She yanked the hand out from under Lydia’s. “Nothing’s wrong! Look, you haven’t been here. You’ve been off with the SEALs and DMS, you got no idea what it’s been like.”
“Then tell me!” In Spanish, she added, “Get your head out of your ass and talk to me!”
“What?” Yona asked, frowning.
Lydia shook her head. “What, you forgot Spanish in the last six years, too?”
“I only used it with you.”
“You work for a congressman in a state that’s got a huge-ass Latino population.”
“He needs to speak Spanish, I don’t.” Now Yona was staring at the stage.
Fed up, Lydia grabbed Yona’s jaw and turned her head toward her. “Look at me, for fuck’s sake!”
But Yona just flinched, and Lydia realized that she was in pain. “What’s wrong?”
“Sore jaw is all. From sparring. Look, everything’s fine, okay? I’m working my way back to black belt, I’ve got a good job. Everything’s fine. Really! Okay? So let’s cut the maudlin shit and get on to the serious drinking!”
To accentuate the point, she gulped down the rest of her margarita.
One of the perky young female servers that Key West bars seemed to have an endless supply of went by, and Yona flagged her down. “Refill, please?”
“I’m good,” Lydia said when the server flashed her a look. She still had half her tequila left.
By the time a year has gone by, the day you most look forward to driving up to Marathon is on Friday, because that’s the day you do kumite. The sparring class is your favorite, because you don’t have to get the details right. Doesn’t matter if your chamber hand is in the right spot, doesn’t matter if your fist touches your ear the right way before you do a down block, doesn’t matter how you cross your hands at your ear before an inner temple strike, all you have to do is punch and kick the person you’re facing while keeping them from punching and kicking you.
By the time you reach yellow belt, Kaicho is talking about sending you to kumite tournaments.
But Yona—or, rather, Senpai Yona, you have to remember to call her that at least when you’re in the dojo, never mind that she changed your fucking diapers—has something else in mind. She brings it up after you pound the living hell out of Senpai Albert one Friday night. Like Yona, Albert’s a Seminole, but he’s also built like a brick shithouse. He’s another one who gets sent to kumite tournaments.
You get a side kick to his ribs, a front snap kick to his groin (thank Christ he was wearing a cup), and a solid uppercut to his solar plexus that causes him to collapse to his knees, trying and failing to catch his breath.
Kaicho stops the fight after the groin kick with a lecture on how all techniques are to be above the belt. You don’t tell him that Albert’s got a foot on you and it’s really difficult to kick that high, but instead just are determined to make your kicks better.
After class, Kaicho addresses the students, all drenched in sweat after twenty rounds of sparring. “What is of most import,” he says in his quiet yet impossible-to-ignore voice, “is respect. Remember, this is not a street fight. The purpose of kumite is not to learn how to fight on the street. The purpose is to enrich our spirit through honorable combat. In the dojo, we are friends—we are family. We wear safety gear because the object is not to hurt each other.” Then a wry smile and a look at Senpai Albert. “At least not much.”
Everyone chuckles, Albert more than anyone.
The smile drops. “But if you are in a position where you must fight someone outside the dojo, then your first recourse should be to get away. Because if you are forced to fight, then you have already lost.”
“So Albert just talked to me,” Yona tells you in the parking lot after class. “He says he told Kaicho to make sure he pairs up with you at least three times per class.”
“Really? He that hot to get his ass kicked again?”
“He’s that hot to make you a better fighter. You got lucky tonight, but that won’t necessarily happen again—mostly because now he knows not to assume that you’re just some little yellow belt girl who’s just learning how to fight.”
“Yeah, right.” You just think he wants revenge next time. Whatever.
“Listen, what are you doing Monday morning?”
“Sleeping off my late shift at the bar Sunday night, why?”
“I want you to come up to Congresswoman Martinez’s office on Simonton.”
“Uh, okay. Why I wanna talk to some politician for?”
Yona smiles. “Just come to the meeting. Don’t you trust me?”
You have to admit to trusting Yona. In fact, even after a year at the dojo, Yona’s probably the only person you really trust.
Yona was in no shape to drive back to Miami—or anywhere else, for that matter—so they left her car parked on the street near the Schooner Wharf. Lydia double-checked to make sure it wasn’t a residents-only spot—they were everywhere, and not always clearly labeled—and after determining that it was safe to stay parked there, she stumbled back to the bed-and-breakfast she was staying in.
As she poured Yona into one side of the king-size bed, she muttered, “Tha’s s’m good t’quila.”
“Go the fuck to sleep, Yona.”
“Watcher mouth, chica.”
“Don’t call me chica, bitch.”
Yona was snoring a moment later.
Lydia, though, was still kind of wired. She opened her laptop and did some more research on Kenneth Coffey, aka Grandmaster Ken.
The martial arts sites were all pretty much hagiographies of the man.
A few news sources, though, and especially a couple of blogs, had some accusations, though no charges had ever been pressed.
Then she looked at the schedule for his Miami dojo. Tomorrow night was his adult color belt class, which Yona was probably going to be attending. The day af
ter was listed as an “open sparring class.” Clicking on that part of the schedule led to a page that claimed that anyone from any discipline was welcome to join in, as long as they brought their uniform and belt.
Looked like a trip to the storage unit was in order to retrieve her gi and yellow belt.
The next morning, she woke up around eight—which was luxury for her, since she rarely got up later than sunup since she started her SEAL training—but Yona was already gone.
Checking her phone, Lydia found a text from Yona time-stamped at a little after 5:00 AM: Thanks for the crash space. Gotta haul ass to Miami. Really good to see you again. Love you, chica.
Lydia stared at the phone. “I love you, too, bitch.”
“Ms. Ruiz, my aide speaks very highly of you.”
You’re in the Key West office of Congresswoman Bettina “Betty” Martinez, the person who represents the 26th District in Florida, which covers most of south Florida, including all of the Keys. Yona’s off on the side, leaning on the wall, while Martinez is at her desk, looking all prim and proper, like someone’s aunt.
You sit in the leather desk chair, wondering what the fuck you’re doing here.
“Well, ma’am, she’s about the only one who does.”
“Nonsense.” She opens up a folder, and you catch a glimpse of your high school yearbook picture. “Straight A’s all the way through to high school, and a 4.0 for all your classes during the one semester you were at FKCC. Why’d you drop out?”
“I’m gonna go back,” you say defensively, just like you say it every time to Yona, who stopped believing you would ever return to Florida Keys Community College about a year ago. “Look, even community colleges want you to actually pay the tuition. And I got this eating habit I can’t kick, so that’s what all my disposable income from working at three different bars is going to.”
“I also have an email from William Nakahara, who runs one of the most respected martial arts schools in south Florida. He says you have the potential to be his finest student.” She smiles. “I’ve known Kaicho Bill for thirty years, Ms. Ruiz. I’ve heard him speak that highly about maybe six students over those years. Seven, now.”
You blink in amazement at this out-of-left-field praise. Every time you step into the dojo, you expect to be unmasked as a fraud.
“I’m spearheading a new program for the navy, Ms. Ruiz. I’m trying to convince the secretary to approve an all-female SEAL fire team. I’m trying to find the best of the best from police forces and in the military, but I’m also looking for special people in martial arts schools. You have exactly what I’m looking for to fill out the team.”
“Uhm—” You squirm in the guest chair, the leather making strange noises in response. “Ma’am, with all due respect, there’s much better fighters just in our dojo.”
“I’m not looking for better fighters, Ms. Ruiz, I’m looking for smarter fighters. From what my aide tells me, and from what these transcripts tell me, and from what Kaicho tells me, that’s you.”
Lydia sat in one of the folding chairs set up near the front desk at Grandmaster Ken’s Martial Arts School of Miami, one of seventeen branches he had all up and down Florida from as far north as Tallahassee all the way down to a tiny one in Florida City. But the Miami one was his main headquarters—if he hadn’t completely eschewed Japanese terminology, it would be called the honbu—so this was where he taught. The adult color belt class had thirty students. Grandmaster Ken—a burly, broad-shouldered white guy with a shaved head and a goatee—led the class, with three black belts wandering throughout to check on individual students.
Kaicho Bill’s dojo had had lots of Japanese decor. There was the shinzen, the spiritual center, which was a tiny reproduction of a Buddhist altar. There were three flags on the wall, one American, one Japanese, and one Florida state flag. Japanese art decorated the entire place, and there was a wooden placard over the entrance to the dojo floor that had the words nanakorobi yaoki in kanji characters—it was a common saying among martial artists: “seven times fall down, eight times get up.”
Grandmaster Ken had none of that. The only flag he had was the Stars and Stripes, and the only decor was a big shelf full of trophies. The grandmaster himself wore a black gi while all the other students wore white ones.
The students were all in a fighting stance. “I want to see left jab, left jab, right cross, right roundhouse kick, left back kick. I want the back kick to be groin height. Go!”
Together, all the students did those techniques, with varying degrees of quality.
“Stay together! Go!”
Lydia noted that the higher belts—purple, blue, and black—were moving in perfect unison. The lower belts, not so much.
Grandmaster Ken went to several of the students to yell at them for not keeping up. But he seemed to be yelling only at the women. She saw two yellow belt men whose form was awful—they had strength and speed, but they got the sequence wrong several times.
At no point did Grandmaster Ken say a word to either of those two, but the one time that Yona was a second late with the roundhouse kick or another woman with an orange belt kicked too high or too low on the back kick, or a third threw only one jab, he was all over her.
After the fighting drill, he called out techniques and pointed at a student to perform that technique.
To a male purple belt: “Right side-high kick. No, that’s a regular side kick, side-high is to the side, and don’t bend your knee.”
To a female blue belt: “Hook block. Wrong! That’s a forearm block! Ten push-ups!”
After class, a sweaty Yona went straight to the changing room. Lydia noticed that they didn’t clean the floor for the next class.
Yona immediately went outside, with Lydia following, and lit up a cigarette. “Good workout,” she said weakly.
“That was some bullshit. For the whole year I was in Kaicho’s dojo, you know what word I never heard? ‘Wrong.’ Carajo, even my instructors at SQT weren’t this hard-assed! This asshole is always telling people what they do wrong. Kaicho tells people how to do it right.”
“Yeah, well, that was Kaicho. This is Grandmaster Ke—”
One of the black belts who’d been helping teach came out, still in his gi. “Hey, Yona. Grandmaster wants you to pick up his kid tomorrow at three.”
“No problem, Master Ethan.” Yona wouldn’t make eye contact with this guy, either.
“Good. And we’re still on for drinks after fighting tomorrow night, right?”
Before Yona could agree, Lydia stepped forward. “Actually, we got plans tomorrow night.”
Ethan looked down on her as if she were a fly that had gotten into his soup. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Senpai Yona’s friend in from out of town.”
Waving a hand in front of Lydia’s face, Ethan said, “Don’t give me that senpai crap, you’re in America. And she ain’t no senpai or master or nothin’. And if she wants to be one, she’ll go out with me tomorrow night like she said. Grandmaster Ken doesn’t like people who go back on their promises.”
Lydia looked at Yona, who was cowering near the wall of the dojo, taking a drag on her cigarette, and trying very hard to shrink herself into a ball.
Then Lydia turned back to Ethan. “She didn’t know I was coming into town—it was a surprise. And tell you what. I’m a yellow belt in karate”—she avoided saying what discipline—“and I’m a decent fighter. I was thinking about coming to the open fighting tomorrow night.”
“It’s for real fighters, little girl, not decent ones.”
“So you’re scared to bet me?”
Ethan rolled his eyes. “Yeah, ’cause I’m twelve.”
“You ain’t that old. What I’m sayin’ is, you get one solid punch or kick on me tomorrow night, then you can have drinks with Yona. If you don’t, I take her out and we toast what a pendejo you are.”
At the epithet, Ethan started to move toward her, arms raised, fists clenched.
Then Yona stepped
forward. “It’s okay, Master Ethan, it’s fine, my friend’s just a little jet-lagged from her trip.”
Ethan backed off, and then stared right at Yona. “I’ll see you tomorrow night, right after I kick your ass,” he added with a look right at Lydia.
He walked back into the dojo, and Lydia immediately turned on Yona. “Why’d you stop him?”
At the same time, Yona cried out, “What the fuck were you doing?”
“He was being an asshole, Yona. They’re all assholes, far as I can tell. And I’m gonna enjoy kicking his ass fifty ways from Sunday tomorrow night.”
For the first time since she arrived in Florida, Yona looked right at Lydia. Her eyes were wild, and intense, and scared. “Please, Lydia, don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t come tomorrow night!” Yona grabbed Lydia’s arms at the shoulder in a grip that was not nearly as firm as Lydia would have expected it to be. “Just—just go back to D.C. and forget about this, all right?”
Shaking her head, Lydia asked, “What did they do to you, chica?”
Yona looked away again. “Nothing. Look, just go.”
“I don’t get it. You were my mentor, chica. The dojo, the SEALs, DMS—I don’t do none of that without you. Shit, the first all-female fire team is ’cause of you. I know it was Martinez who took all the credit, but that was your project.”
“And where the fuck did it get me?” Yona turned angrily back at Lydia. “Martinez lost to some Republican asshole, she went back to her law firm, and I was unemployed. Your little SEAL team fell right off the damn radar after Betty left office. Dorian got her leg blown off, you and Luci both quit, Helene transferred, and Dayana got promoted. And the SEALs don’t do publicity unless they’re killing bin Laden, so nobody really gave much of a shit anyhow. And then Kaicho died, and I couldn’t even call you to tell you, and…”
Yona trailed off, the tears welling up in her eyes, and then she broke, her taller form collapsing against Lydia’s chest. Lydia held her up, wrapping her arms around her, feeling Yona’s body convulse with sobs.