“Since when do you smoke?”
“Since I started working for a lunatic. Look, how long you back home for?”
“Just a few days. We just finished an assignment that — well, it was kind of…” Lydia’s voice trailed off.
“Crazy?”
“Nah, chica, it needed to get a helluva lot calmer before it was as good as crazy. I got a few days to decompress, figured we could get together and hoist a tequila or six — maybe I come by the dojo and get in a workout.”
“Well, I’m still game for the tequilas. Look, tonight’s no good, but what about tomorrow at the Schooner Wharf? I’ll leave the office at five, should be there by nine or ten, depending on traffic?”
Grinning, Lydia jumped back into her Mercedes. “You are on.”
She pulled out of the driveway and turned right onto US 1 until she could make a U-turn, then headed back down toward the Keys.
The Seven Mile Bridge stretched out before her as she left Marathon, and as she always did, she found herself lost in the expanse of blue water on both sides of her.
There were no vampires (vampires!), no terrorists, no jihadists, no nuclear bombs, none of what had become the new normal since she joined the DMS.
No, there was just the bridge, the water, and the memories.
You struggle to thrust yourself upward into a push-up position, and each one is agony, your arms simply not up to the task of raising your weight off the floor.
Expecting Kaicho to yell at you or scream at you or call you a failure, you hear him say in a gentle but firm voice, “Keep trying. Keep pushing.”
And you do.
That first class has a total of thirty push-ups in sets of ten at various points in the one-hour class. You successfully do maybe eight.
You feel like a total fuckup. It’s a class for beginners, but the other three adults in the class all seem to at least have an idea what they’re doing. You look like a klutzy fool.
At the end of the class, after you all bow out and clean the floor as a courtesy to the next class, you expect Kaicho to tell you how badly you screwed up this trial class he let you do as a favor to Yona. You expect him to tell you to not bother showing up for the next class.
Instead he says, “Osu, Lydia, are you familiar with the Japanese word ganbatte?”
You barely remember to start your sentence with “Osu, Kaicho,” before continuing: “Only Japanese I know is what you said tonight in class.”
He smiles. “It is what we traditionally say before a student is about to engage in a difficult undertaking.”
“So it means ‘good luck’?”
“In fact, it does not. It means ‘try your best.’ That is all I ask of my students, Lydia, is that they give the maximum effort. It matters less if you succeed. It matters more that you make every effort to succeed, because without the effort, the success will never come.” He bows his head. “Osu, Lydia, you did well. I hope we will see you again on Thursday.”
Yona drives you home to Stock Island, and you think about what Kaicho said, which encourages you, since you sucked pretty hard in that first class.
But you’ll get better.
Yona finally made it to the Schooner Wharf Bar in the Old Town section of Key West at almost 10:30.
“Sorry,” she said breathlessly as she joined Lydia at a table near the bar that also had a good view of the stage, where a band was playing country music. Off the beaten path of the main drag of Duval Street, the Schooner Wharf was right on the water and tended to be calmer than the other bars on the island. That was what had drawn Lydia here in the first place years ago. People went to the bars on Duval to get drunk. People came to the Schooner Wharf to drink.
Lydia had already ordered Yona’s favorite so it was waiting for her when she arrived. For her part, the first thing Lydia noticed was that Yona pretty well reeked of cigarette smoke.
Holding up her strawberry margarita, Yona said, “It’s really good to see you, Lydia.”
“Likewise.” Lydia held up her neat tequila. “To Kaicho.”
“To Kaicho. Osu!”
“Osu!”
They clinked glasses.
After licking a bit of the salt on the rim and sipping her margarita, Yona put the big glass down and pulled out a cigarette.
“So talk to me, chica,” Lydia said while Yona lit up. “I Googled this Grandmaster Ken pendejo. Didn’t think he’d be your kinda teacher.”
“He’s kind of intense.” Yona looked away and stared at her margarita. Puffing on the cigarette, she grabbed the drink. “Four of us went over to his dojo after Kaicho died. I’m up to yellow belt now, so that’s good.”
“Wait, you had to start over?”
Yona nodded, after licking another bit of salt and gulping down more of her drink. “It’s no big deal, that’s what usually happens when you switch dojos.”
Lydia nodded. “So all four of you had to go back to white belt?”
“Me and Ana did. Senpai—Sorry, Master Phil and Master Cliff both got to keep their black belts, though they did have to go through a full black belt promotion.”
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.”