Page 81 of Mean Machine

The masseur kept one hand on Brooklyn, reached for his little caddy thing, and offered Brooklyn a wad of tissues. “Do you need a break?”

“Yeah.” Lying on his back while sobbing was shit, so Brooklyn slowly rose up, slid both legs over the edge of the table, with the masseur immediately moving to stabilise the table so it wouldn’t slide around or overturn.

“Slowly. Sit on the edge.”

“Wow.” Brooklyn kept wiping at his eyes, but that wasn’t doing any good. “What the fuck.” Brooklyn took a few deep breaths. His eyes were still watery, but the sobs at least had stopped. He blew his nose into the wad of tissues and, like a little boy, let the masseur take it from his hand and give him a new one. Except for the fact that he couldn’t even remember anybody doing that to him even as a child. “The audience is going to be so pissed off if you broke me before the fight.”

“Do you feel broken?”

“I don’t know. I feel… really emotional. Like you’d show me a cat video or something and I’d cry again.” Just saying that made him tear up. “I got to box at the Garden tomorrow.”

“By then you should be back to normal, only better.” The man reached to his caddy once more, retrieved a half-litre bottle of water, uncapped it, and offered it to Brooklyn, who finished it with a few big gulps. “When your body realises that it’s getting care and attention, it tends to take whatever it needs.”

“You’re saying I needed a good cry.”

“In my experience, the body has a memory. If we suppress emotions, they can’t release, so we store them in the tissue. A massage can shake them loose, release whatever’s holding them, and then clients sometimes cry. It’s perfectly natural.”

He stretched out a hand and straightened up Brooklyn’s towels, then wiped his hands with antibacterial wipes and oiled them again. Thankfully, he finished that whole waist and side area without triggering any more weird feelings, and by the time he’d arrived at the knees, Brooklyn was back in the zone and half-asleep. The work on his feet and toes felt really good again.

Nothing hurt, everything buzzed with blood flow and warmth. The masseur covered Brooklyn’s legs with the towel, then cleaned his hands with those wipes before he returned to Brooklyn’s head. He first cupped the back of his head, gently holding it, the heat from his palms absolutely unreal, before he used his thumbs to press on a point along the midline of his skull. Then he moved on a little and pressed another point, and then all the way forward to the point between Brooklyn’s brows, taking his time, and that completely relaxed his head and face, but still, with only the tips of his fingers, the man set to work on his temples and jaw muscles, relaxing them with slow, gentle circular motions. Again, something weird happened—this time it felt like a wave of heat that made Brooklyn’s heart race, something jagged and hot.

“Good, let that go,” the masseur said and kept doing what he was doing until the sensation faded. “Very good.” He rested his hands left and right of Brooklyn’s skull, and for a moment, nothing happened, nothing moved, and Brooklyn floated while the masseur stood over him like a polo-shirted guardian angel.

“Jesus Christ.”

The masseur stepped away from the table, possibly sensing that Brooklyn wasn’t keen to move, and went to the bathroom to wash his hands properly, then closed his oils and wipes. Brooklyn may have drifted off, but he was awake when the man touched him on the shoulder. “Let’s get you up again. Slowly.”

As guided, he wrestled himself into an upright position, convinced he didn’t have—didn’t want to have—enough body tension to stack all the constituent areas of his body on top of each other, but he managed in part because he also couldn’t find enough resistance in his body to refuse.

He managed to keep one of the large towels around his waist and got up, legs still liquid, but not weak or shaky. The soles of his feet felt like they had to be twice as thick as they normally were.

“I didn’t go very deep into the tissues because I don’t want you to be sore when you fight tomorrow. We might have wanted to do deep tissue work two days ago, but there were no pressing issues. Make sure you drink a lot.”

“I will.” Brooklyn walked up to him and offered a hand. The masseur had appeared tall and lean, but this close, Brooklyn realised he had at least four inches on him. And strangely, his palms seemed almost normal temperature now when they shook hands.

“Great. I’ll just take the table down and let myself out.”

“Thank you.”

Brooklyn grabbed a couple of bottles of water from the kitchen and dropped them on the couch, where he planned to sit while trying to find something to watch for an hour or so to pass the time. He caught his own reflection in the window glass and lifted his hands, lightly curled to fists, and met his own stare.

The Mean Machine is ready.

Round 8

THE CONTRACTstated that Brooklyn was going to enter the ring first. Compared to some other boxers who, thanks to pyrotechnics, music, light show, and fog, took their sweet time to get to the ring, and might be mistaking the whole thing for some kind of rock musical that was conducted gloved up, he knew Thorne wasn’t that type. His rap song didn’t last more than five minutes, and he usually made sure he was in the ring by the time it ended, rather than queuing up another song.

Ultimately, Thorne was old-school like that.

It suited Brooklyn, standing in the tunnel, his team around him. Up until the last minute, he’d wavered on the song, but when he heard the first drum salvos of “Hell Patrol” ring out in the darkened hall, his heart leapt. Good choice—the Judas Priest track sounded awesome on the Garden’s system.

Joseph reached out and adjusted the hood of the robe over Brooklyn’s head and gave him a thumbs-up. Brooklyn nodded in return and stepped into the dark hall. With light beams all trained on him, he barely saw a damn thing, but the path in front was still very clear, and hall security kept an eye on both him and the cheering people.

Brooklyn broke into a light trot, keeping loose and limber, barely noticing the sounds from the crowd, but there seemed to be a heavy British contingent—thousands of fans had followed him across the pond, which at least guaranteed the audience wouldn’t be entirely hostile. The preshow marketing had made a big thing out of previous British-American title matches, and compared Brooklyn with some of the British greats. Not helpful in the ring, to think of himself as the latest in a long line of pugilistic ancestors.

Somebody commented about how “collected” he looked, but that was while he was surrounded by his crew—the ring walk was always half-thrilling and half-terrifying, and this wasMadison Square Garden.

He climbed up to the ring, and Joseph pulled the ropes apart so Brooklyn didn’t end up tangled in them. He straightened, bounced a few times on his feet while the announcer gave a rundown of his fighting stats, weight, stance.

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