The fist coming at his face was narrow, crooked fingered, and knob-knuckled.

  It was a roundhouse. A right handed roundhouse, possibly a failed jab, and it was coming for the left side of Aaron's face. It would hit his jawbone or his cheekbone, though not both. The taller guy had narrow shoulders, skinny arms, and spidery long-fingered hands that might be great at reaching into tight engine spaces, or hooking crate handles to throw and stack in one of the warehouses like the very one they were facing each other in right now. He had much longer arms and was a head taller than Aaron, but Aaron guessed he outweighed the guy by 25 kilograms. Taller guys always tried to throw punches from far away. It was one of his first lessons. Get close. Keep the fight in your range, not your opponent’s. And that was his plan. Make the guy throw useless effort over and around him while Aaron pulped his ribs and pushed his stomach up into his lungs.

  He lunged, stepping forward to get inside the swing and turn his body to face the guy’s body, hoping the guy’s jagged little fist would miss his melon entirely, and Aaron would just get slapped by the guy’s long, ropy forearm and inner elbow.

  Greg, his boss, had been asking Aaron about his boxing classes for the last few weeks. Nothing really obvious to Aaron, but Aaron would be the first to admit to himself he was not the smartest kid. Sixteen was a stupid age for most young men, and while Aaron thought all of his peers were idiots, he would have to say in all honesty that his own intelligence in comparison to those other hordes of sixteen year olds was a very low bar to have cleared. In retrospect, many things come to us all that we never see when it's standing in front of us and wiggling its big, awkward ass and singing the Hymn of A Thousand Suckers in three part harmony.

  Greg had wanted to know all about his boxing lessons and even about the Judo he had been made to study for the last few years. His parents wanted him to be safe, but Aaron was always being picked on at school. The Judo Dojo had closed as the Sensei had been active duty, and was shipped off to another post Fall a year gone. The boxing lessons on the naval base where his father was stationed had been new this last year and a half.

  His boss always brought the conversation back around to either boxing or the Brown Belt in Judo. To Aaron’s surprise, the old man had been deeply interested in Aaron’s training. Some days, while Aaron washed, or bussed tables, he would get caught by the boss staring at one of the waitresses when he thought no one was watching. It always made Aaron blush, and Greg always immediately would distract him with conversation about food, or fighting. More usually about fighting, though.

  And being sixteen, Aaron thought about sex more than a later version of Aaon, an Aaron of, say, thirty, would believe was healthy. But three of the waitresses were younger women, and Aaron was a young man who was too obvious with being distracted by young women. At a certain age, most of what any young man thought about could be distilled down to "Curiosity on the Topic of Young Women."

  The boss, despite his advanced age, remembered being young and hormonal, and used Aaron's distraction as an in to chat with him about all of the things guys Aaron's age loved to gab on about for as long as they could. Greg also had a granddaughter Aaron's age. An amazingly beautiful example of sixteen year old young womanhood, who had been in many of Aaron’s classes in three different schools since fifth grade.

  When his parents, who played poker with Greg weekly, had told him they had gotten him a job working at the restaurant Greg owned, Aaron hadn’t been too enthusiastic. If truth be told, Aaon loved the food at The City Chef. It had the best Greek food he had ever eaten, though he would also admit that his experience in that field had been very narrow before, consisting mostly of food court gyros, and street cart pilaf with lamb kabobs. But he otherwise had no interest in working for his parents' friend, Greg.

  That was, until the first shift. He had worked as the busboy and dishwasher, when up to his arms in suds as he washed dishes Misty walked into the kitchen to speak to the head chef, a tall, gangly guy named Joe. Aaron had been about to quit, possibly at the end of this shift, but seeing Misty just wander into the kitchen changed his mind like hitting that secret reset button in the local arcade on the back of the Galaga machine. He had briefly hoped that she was one of the waitresses and that they would see each other regularly.

  Aaron had even started concocting a rich dreamworld scenario where he would slowly charm the lovely Miss Misty, they would find out they both loved sci-fi movies and fantasy novels, and someday, maybe after college, the two would get married. Wild and crazy sexual escapades may have figured in these developing daydreams, it's true. Aaron had a little experience, and was greatly hopeful of the prospects of exploring those far off land of "Regular, if not daily, Boinking-Like-A Doorstop." Teens... their minds are never under their own control.

  Reality had a much different path for him to follow, however.

  With Misty, it was apparently no dice. Not only were there no dice, but there wasn’t even a single coin with which to even attempt to flip here. It turned out that Misty wasn’t “staff.”

  Nor was she even a pleasant person. Certainly not one to waste any kindness upon her grandfather's various interchangable kitchen thralls.

  The second time he had seen her in the kitchen, the very next night in fact, she had walked in and asked him where her grandfather had gotten off to.

  He had been confused, until she had cleared it all up by looking at him like the idiot he was, and saying, “My grandfather. Greg. Really fat, short guy with a walrus mustache? The owner here?” An awkward pause, and then, "He pays you?"

  “Sorry, Misty.” He said, giving his head a quick shake, hoping to gather what wits he had and pointed down the hall to the back door that let out into the alley behind the shopping center. “He went out the door about thirty minutes ago. Carrying a box.”

  Misty had looked at Aaron with a little surprise, and then demanded to know how he knew her name.

  “We go to the same school.” Aaron had told her.

  Her wide green eyes crinkled and squinted at him. And then her wide, beautiful lips pursed in confusion, the bright red of her lipstick playing a colorful counterpoint foil to the bright copper of her hair.

  “We do?”

  “Yes. Lots of the same classes, too.”

  She continued to stare.

  "Miss Genevar's Marine Biology?"

  Green eyes continued to stare.

  And now a mild, slightly offended anger set in. “Since fifth grade, when we both went to Old Donation School for the Gifted... Miss Gleddel’s class.”

  She stared at him for another few incredibly awkward seconds before saying “Daaaavid…”

  “Aaron. It’s Aaron. Shit, Misty, we may not be friends, but you could at least learn the names of other kids you’ve been in school with for literally years.”

  “Ah. Uh, yeah. Whatever. Sure.” She said, and then turned and walked off in the direction of her grandfather’s office. The disinterest and dismissal in her voice were more cutting to Aaron in those few moments than all of the taunts from the worst bullies he had run into at school in the last year, all at once.

  As he had turned back to his dish washing, Aaron heard a chuckle. Standing behind him was Gloria, an older woman who was acknowledged as “the Head Waitress” by the rest of the wait staff. The rest of the wait staff being two Greek sisters who Aaron had learned were nieces of Greg’s, and another niece of Greg’s who was not a sister of those first two.

  (He had also learned that Greg’s name was actually “Grigoros.” Eh. Live and learn.)

  He hadn’t stepped in far enough, and the dainty handed bastard had clipped his left ear. It was better than taking the shot to the jaw. The upper rim of his left ear now burned with pain. A quick and thorn-filled flair that spiraled up into the limits of Aaron's tolerance before going numb. It was a bracing wake up call.

  Tight in with the guy, Aaron torqued his own torso left and then right as he delivered a matched pair of uppercuts to the guy’s abs, throwing as hard as he could with his body. Half measures in a fight meant you either liked pain or had a losing fetish. Aaron didn't think either applied to him. The first hit felt like he had struck a thick rubber mat; his opponent had tensed and flexed his abs to keep from getting his innards rearranged. He must not have been expecting the second shot though, as Aaron’s second uppercut drove so deep into the guy’s stomach that the the taller man doubled over, his hair flying wildly as it brushed past Aaron’s cheek.

  Greasy McSpideryArms was then noisily sick in the middle of the “ring,” as the fight organizer pretending to be a ref ran up to where the guy crouched, retching, and checked on him while trying to not get the guy’s chunder all over his own shoes. From off to his right, Aaron could hear his opponent's corner man yelling something. It had lot's of the term "FUCKING" mixed in, whatever else he might have been trying to say.

  The fans, such as they were, were screaming and shoving at each other as Aaron hopped back a pace to be certain the guy didn’t change at him.

  Gloria had been standing in the passthrough to the bar, and saw the entire embarrassing thing. Smiling at Aaron she had said, “Misty can be rude.”

  Aaron grunted at that as he grabbed another pot and returned to his scrubbing.

  “She’s pretty, talented, gets good grades, and she knows it. She also has her grandfather wrapped around her fingers.” The older woman said frankly as she added some more plates to his pile in the left side of the double sink. “Trust me, you shouldn’t take it personally.”

  And as she walked back out to the dining room floor to check on her tables, “She talks to me like that, too, and I’m just her mother.” In the distant dining room, he could hear the chiming, bell like sound of Penie' laughter. She was one of Greg's neices who waitressed for him, and had already made Aaron feel less like a peon and more like a coworker than the other waitstaff had.

  Later that night, Greg had told him they would be running an errand to the docks together. “I need some young arms to help with the crates.”

  Aaron nodded, and said, “Yessir. Whenever you're ready.” More scrubbing of pots ensued.

  They had driven to a warehouse by the waterfront, and Greg had made a deal with one of the men in the warehouse. Money was handed over as Aaron stood next to his boss. A pallet of ten crates was rolled out by a bored man using an elderly pallet jack.

  Ten minutes of concentrated effort, and Aaron had the crates tied down in the back of his boss’s catering van, and they slowly made their way back to the restaurant while Greg talked more about boxing. He let Aaron know that there were some fights that happened at the warehouses. If you knew where to look. Some certain nights.

  Not all the time, though.

  But regularly, if Aaron was interested in stopping by and watching some Greg would be happy to spend some downtime watching a match or two.

  And just like that, the guy lunged up at him. But Aaron was a few paces further away than the guy thought he would be, and so instead of wrapping his arms around Aaron, he took a pair of flailing, unbalanced swings at his shorter opponent before making a stubling, storklike run past him. He even did that weird "grunt-roar" that some guys did to show you how much of an animal they were. Useless pagentry.

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  Realizing he had missed, Greasy swung around and tried another stumbling run at him only for Aaron to duck the first awkward swing, though as he tried to do a half step to the side, the second wild swing clipped him in the temple. Unexpectedly, the glancing shot hit him like a freight train.

  As Aaron stumbled from the hit, his right foot swung out, and the guy tripped on it, making him lunge weirdly forward before landing face first on the smooth concrete of the warehouse floor with a resounding CRACK!

  More "FUCK!"s came from Greasy's corner man in a rapidfire, staccato that made the curseword into a meaningless chant.

  This guy has to have a brain made of concrete too, Aaron thought as the guy slowly stood up, shaking his head to clear his vision, and snorting out a spray of blood to cover the mass of vomit that was already on his grimy t-shirt.

  The ref pulled rang a bell and pulled Puky McBloodynose aside, and the guy's corner man ran out with a wet towel. Less than 30 seconds, and they were squaring up again.

  He wasn’t squaring up right, his shoulder was drooping, and his right leg was way too far out from his stance.

  Another three months had gone by of Aaron helping Greg do pickups at the waterfront. Five shifts a week, one of which was on each weekend, as Aaron worked to make money to keep his car gassed up, and be able to put a little away each week for the possibility of college.

  Several times in the last month they had watched some fights at the warehouses. It was illegal, and all off the books. But, Aaron didn't think much about it in that context. It was boxing, and he was watchin it instead of throwing around crates of seafood in a catering van, all while getting paid. But, "illegal?"

  Teenagers, hey whatareyagonnado?

  At least once a week he saw Misty come into the restaurant. Sometimes as often a three nights a week. Usually to talk her grandfather into giving her money. She had a dress that she needed, or her (new) car needed gas. And every time, the "dishboy" had been avoided like a plague rat. An unpopular one, at that. Not one of those cool plague rats, that played sports and had fancy cars. Aaron was definately not one of those lucky and incredibly improbable Nowegian Brown rodents.

  The waitresses, the sisters Penie and Lydia, and the non-sister-niece Daphne had become familiar and friendly to Aaron. Like a trio of older sisters, or young aunts, they took him under their collective wing. To Aaron their accents, all variations of Greek accented English, were as exotic and alluring as any he had heard in his life, and more so than any he had heard from movies or TV, because these were real, and being spoken to him. Spoken directly TO him! By REAL women!

  They often chatted with Aaron when they had a few moments to lean and rest while not on the floor waiting on customers.

  These three women were the ones who taught him more about how to both be friends with and comfortably talk to actual women than anyone else in his life had ever taken time to do. His father had always just told him, "Don't say anything to a woman that you don't want coming back at you like a torpedo. From her, or anyone else." Followed by the oh-so-helpfull advice of "And don't be creepy... or weird."

  It was fine advice, as far as it went, though Aaron always thought it didn't go nearly far enough. It was right up there with his father's all time favorite, "Say stupid things, do stupid things, and people will rightly think you're stupid, boy." Watch the fuck out King Solomon.

  He had learned that Penie and Lydia were fraternal twins in their mid twenties, and that they were both hoping to see Lydia get married to her boyfriend, Nico, sometime in the next year. As much as she might love her sister, Penie couldn’t wait for Lydia to move out of the small apartment they shared. Penie also baked. For the restaurant, and as a side job. She smelled like olive oil and rosemarie more often than not. Sometimes like orange peel and cinnamon, and mixed with her natural sweat after a long day of work... it was honestly the best perfume Aaron had ever smelled. He wondered why anyone ever bought that bitter, bottled trash from stores when THIS was out there in the world.

  Both Lydia and Penie joked with him daily, but Penie would occasionally good-naturedly punch his arm and call him “Dummy!” whenever he said something she thought deserved the fee. That usually made Lydia snort. Loudly. For a woman with such a small nose, she could snort-laugh like a braying donkey.

  Daphne however was just about to graduate from college with a degree and an unscratchable GPA that she hoped would get her into graduate school. She wanted to be an architect. She had plans. (that was her little joke.) When she wasn’t waitressing, or at school, she spent all of her time down at the beach. She knew that where she was headed for grad school was landlocked, and wanted to get in all of the beach time she could now, while it was available. Some days she would come running into the The City Chef smelling of salt and trailing sand. It made her uncle Greg furious.

  Gloria, who was not only Misty's mom but also Greg's daughter, was kind to him, and usually shared whatever joke she had heard that day with Aaron. One time, as they both stood by one of the prep counters, laughing like fools, Misty had come in and asked her mother where her grandfather was. Gloria was laughing too hard to answer. Misty walked away with a look of disgust that made Aaron and Gloria laugh all that much harder. The joke had been about an angry groundhog, and the look on Misty's face struck a chord with both Gloria and Aaron.

  By midsummer, Greg had been promising to move him from “dishboy” to doing prepwork for the chef and other cooks. Some days he would start his shift by learning how to clean squid, or to section up chickens. How to prep smelt to be fried. Other days, he would learn to make gallons of sauces, all at once. His ability to peel garlic, and to measure flour for dough by sight became automatic, almost second nature.

  But, Greg would inevitably drag Aaron to the docks to pick up fresh smelt, squid, and cod… after they watched a match or two in the back of one of the warehouses. Greg loved to bet on the fights just as much as he liked to watch them. Aaron's eyes sometimes bulged at the sight of the all the cash that Greg would put on matches. The man would pull out his billfold, and peel off several large notes to bet on a single round. It was more than Aaron made in a month, flying away in moments.

  And then came the night that Greg convinced him to fight.

  It was going to be “Amateur Night” at the warehouse, Greg had assured him. All new guys, young guys. Greg had even said he would stake Aaron’s entry fee, and even split the cash on the bet… if he won. All he had to do was win, and think of how much money he could get for his college fund? You could pay for a lot of books with this kind of money, he had told his young dishwasher as they drove to the docks. You plan on studying Marine Biology, right? That means you want to go tio grad school too. Nobody with just a bachelors in marine bio works in that field. It was a sharp argument, Aaron had to admit.

  It had been a feint. A fucking sucker’s lie. His boxing coach had taught Aaron about the idea that every fight is two people lying to one another. I’m not going to hit you here… I’m aiming way too high for that... I'm so far out of range right now… What do you mean? I don’t even have a left hand… All lies that you try to convince the other fighter of while you attempt to not fall for all of their lies.

  And Aaron had fallen for the guys lies that he was too hurt to stand properly. Too tired to put up a real defence. “Oh, I’m much too punch drunk and loopy! Hi, sailor!”

  And Aaron had stepped right into a mean left hook while watching the guy’s drooping right shoulder. He saw stars, and the air suddenly tasted wrong. Another shot, they called it a cheap jab, because it cost the guy throwing it nothing but knuckle skin. Aaron’s head spun, and the heat on his upper lip was proof his nose was now fountaining.

  As he reeled back from that first hit, the guy thought he would finish Aaron with a ridiculous haymaker. Seeing the shift in the lanky bastard's posture, and then the wide, looping swing had begun to trace its way to Aaron's face through the air.

  Aaron dropped at just that last instant. He felt the bottom of the guy’s fist graze the top of his head, dragging against his scalp at his hairline as it passed by.

  And the uppercut Aaron had ready felt like it came up from his toes to pile into the guy’s jutting jaw. The guy hit the floor as though he had been dropped from the ceiling.

  People were yelling, but it sounded wrong to Aaron. And his right eye wouldn’t open enough, so his view of the cavernous warehouse was hampered. The man pretending to be the ref got up with an excited jump from the prone form of the other guy. He shouted, and pointed.

  Looking down, Aaron saw two teeth lying on the ground near his foot. As the ref tried to raise his arm up, Aaron bent and grabbed the two teeth, and a surprising third, gueststar tooth from the floor before he allowed his arm to be raised.

  One fist raised, his other hand holding a selection of teeth, his tongue moved about his mouth looking for gaps, but, oddly, finding none.

  "Those your's kid?"

  "I guess they are now..."

  The ref laughed. "he guesses they are his now!" the man shouted to the attendies.

  The crowd roared. It laughed. A chant started somewhere near the back, and swept toward the ring, washing over Aaron, the ref, and Greasy, who lay on the floor.

  Aaron smiled with the right side of his face. He wasn’t sure the left side would be able to respond correctly for a few days. He knew that waking up the next morning would suck.

  Sitting in the catering van as it pulled up to the back of the restaurant, Aaron pulled the back of frozen bag of smelt from his face, and looked at the swelling in the side mirror. It could have been worse. When she saw what damage Aaron had recieved tonight, his mother was going to lose her absolute shit.

  Again.

  It could have been much better. Aaron’s shirt was covered in blood. He hoped it was all his own. The idea of the other guy’s blood being on him made Aaron feel uncomfortable. It wasn’t just because the guy was filthy at the beginning of the fight. He had been greasy, and his nose was as misshapen by acne as it was by previous breaks. The guy’s shirt and pants had been gross and grimy. And now he might have blood from THAT guy all over his shirt.

  That guy had lacked any sense of personal hygene.

  But, he had made it all worse.

  The guy would be worse, every day, forever, because of Aaron. Even if he healed completely from tonight’s beating, the guy would always be slightly worse off than he would have otherwise. There was an angular lump in his right pocket. It poked into his upper thight through the pocket fabric of his jeans. There were three of the things in there, he knew. Three teeth he had shoved into his pocket at the end of the fight as he had been led back tio the van by his boss.

  Reaching his sore hand, fingers aching and knuckles bleeding, into the pocket he pulled out the three teeth. Two molars and an incisor. The pink nerve and blood vessel chord hung out of the incisor, gleaming wetly in the low light of the little bar. One of the molars had a huge silver amalgam filling.

  He put the bag of smelt back on his face, and the teeth back in his pocket.

  There was now a large wad of cash in his back pocket. Not actually IN his wallet. But his back pocket bulged now with a wodge of cash larger than he had ever had on-hand in his young life before now. And all it had taken for him to get that cash was some other guy's teeth. Maybe his right hand, too.

  A part of his mind cried out that if it hadn’t been Aaron, it would have been someone else. But, to Aaron’s mind, that was a large part of that exact point; it wasn’t someone else, it was Aaron. The restaurant had been closed for a half an hour as they had rolled up, and Aaron wondered who had to clean up his area. Would he have to do it? I might have to do it, he thought.

  It was a depressing thought.

  And then he was sitting at the small, now dimly lit bar. He now held an actual bag of ice to his face as other people yelled at each other back in the kitchen. Greg had poured him a short glass of ouzo. He had never had ouzo before, it tasted like floor cleaner and sharp, sunny laughter.

  Periodically someone would come by, and lift the bag of ice from his face to check the swelling. It was usually Penie, who mumbled “Dummy,” to herself each time. Her accent made the word clipped. Almost as sharp as the clear liquor he was sipping.

  He could hear Gloria yelling almost as loud as Greg. Lydia, Joe, and Jim all yelled too, though what they were all yelling about didn’t make much sense to Aaron. Something about a mugging, and how dangerous the docks had gotten in recent years.

  Later, after a change of icebags, and another glass of ouzo, Daphne and Penie led Aaron out to his car, and Penie asked, "Where are your keys palooka joe?" Aaron though the reference was hilarious, and said, "Left pocket."

  Penie looked at Aaron as he chuckled, icebag to his face. She then handed her own keys to Daphne before she reached in and scooped the keys roughly out of his own pocket. Her hand was in and out before he could even notice the contact.

  He sat in the passenger seat of his own little car as Penie drove. The towel wrapped ice pack felt amazing on his right eye and right cheekbone. It felt even better on his left eye. He was ecstatically happy through his pain and exhaustion when both nostrils had cleared enough to breath. With a ripping snort, he expelled a wad of curdled blood and snot into his pocket hanky. He was about to put it back into his back pocket, but looking at it, he just tossed it out the window as they drove over a canal.

  He must have fallen asleep during the short drive.

  Penie shook him awake, and led Aaron into a small, clean, and well lit apartment that he had never seen before. It certainly wasn’t his parents’ house. He didn’t think it was anywhere he recognised as being near his neighborhood.

  But, he had then been guided to a couch, and pushed down onto it, immediately being swallowed by the deep cushions and the piled up drift of small embroidered pillows.

  The ice pack was pulled from his face, and Penie stood in front of him with a worried look on her face and an absolutely giant bottle of paracetamol in one hand and a large glass of water in the other.

  He took several, and drank off all of the water.

  His shoes were off, and a blanket was wrapped about him like a fluffy and well tucked straight jacket.

  She pointed to a bathroom door left cracked open, light spilling from it. “Bathroom if you need it. Water in the kitchen, anything in the fridge or cabinets is fair game.”

  She turned toward the hallway, and had just made it to the corner, turning off the lights when Aaron asked, “Penie…?” It wasn’t easy to talk around the fat lip he was sporting.

  “Yeah, Aaron?”

  “I need to know…”

  “What? What do you need?”

  “Is your name short for Penelope?”

  “...dummy…go to sleep. See you in the morning.”