Chaos by Lanie Bross

end of the hallway, a smudged door opened onto a boxing ring. Two people were circling the ring, sparring, occasionally throwing punches, while a man leaned on the ropes, yelling instructions. Heavy bags hung from the rafters, and a tiny older woman was pummeling the hell out of one of them.
    A kid Jasmine’s age was sitting behind a huge desk next to the door, and he waved her in with indifference, his gaze barely lifting from the magazine he was reading. She stepped farther into the room and saw, painted on the floor, a large circle with two crossed boxing gloves and the words CATHEDRAL STREET across them, just like on the T-shirt Ford had been wearing.
    As if thinking about him made him materialize, Ford emerged from the locker rooms. He was wearing athletic shorts and sneakers and no shirt. She hadn’t realized before how in shape he was; he had the body of a serious athlete. She noticed he wasn’t bruised at all—obviously, he had escaped Jas’s attackers fairly easily. He was walking next to a big guy with the face of a bulldog.
    Jasmine dropped to her knees in front of the welcome desk, pretending to tie her shoe. Though she had come hoping to find him, now she felt as if she was spying on him. Had he seen her? She didn’t think so. When she peeked up, his back was to her.
    “So this is the main floor,” the bulldog-looking guy was saying. “You can see that we’re pretty straightforward here. No treadmills or fancy equipment. Old-school, you could call it. Our clients are pretty hard-core, too. Even the earthquake yesterday didn’t stop us for more than a few hours.” The guy pointed to the ring, where the trainer was demonstrating a right-hook technique. “Since this is your first time training here, you get a free T-shirt.”
    Bulldog gestured to the guy behind the desk, and, barely looking up from his magazine, the guy tossed Ford a yellow Cathedral Street T-shirt from a stack. “You can start on the basic bag today, loosen up, test it out. We have pay-as-you-go pricing, but if you decide to commit, we can put you on a monthly training schedule. Just depends on what you’re looking to do.”
    Jas moved onto her second shoe, untying and retying it as slowly as humanly possible. It didn’t make sense;the trainer was obviously confused. The earthquake had happened two days ago, on Saturday.
    “I’ll just start with the day option for now,” Ford replied. “Not sure how long I’ll be here.”
    “You just move to town?”
    “Just this morning, yeah. Hell of a welcome.”
    Jasmine’s face was burning. Was Ford lying to the trainer? He couldn’t have gotten into town this morning, because she had run into him at the rotunda last night. And what about the T-shirt? He’d been wearing it at the rotunda. Hadn’t he?
    She didn’t understand. Her head was spinning and the smell of sweat and varnish was making her nauseous. And there were only so many times you could tie and untie your laces.
    She straightened up. Now Ford was on a bag, running through moves that the trainer called out. The muscles in his back rippled with every punch.
    “You’ve done this before,” the trainer commented. “Nice form.”
    She knew she had to make a choice: approach Ford and ask him what had happened at the rotunda, or leave. She couldn’t just stand there. But she found she couldn’t take her eyes off him. He moved lightly, almost as if he were dancing. He wasn’t even breaking a sweat.
    The guys in the ring watched him, too, while they wrestled out of their gloves and scrubbed their faces with towels. Soon they ducked out of the ring and headed to the locker room, and the woman stopped pummeling her bag and turned, wiping her face with her forearm.
    “Hey, Nick, I need to square up with you today,” the woman called out.
    “Keep working on the uppercut,” the trainer told Ford. Then he and the woman headed straight for Jasmine. Crap. When the trainer spotted her, he stopped short. “Can I help you?” he