Joey shot him a third time in the chest and Teddy jumped.
“Jesus Christ!” he yelped. “Why’d you have to do that? Can’t you see the man’s dead?”
“Hey,” said Joey. “What do I look like, a doctor?”
59
BY THE FIFTH ROUND, Elijah’s strategy had become clear. He was going to stand in the corner and let Terrence hit him until his arms got tired.
“YOU’RE BREAKIN’ HIS HEART, CHAMP!” John B. shouted. “YOU’RE BREAKIN’ IT IN TWO!”
In the meantime, Terrence was hitting him with every punch in the book: body shots, double hooks, battering rams, more rattlesnake rights, slithering lefts, jabs that came out like crocodiles to snap off little pieces of Elijah. At one point, Terrence stood back in the middle of the ring and looked at him, like: “You sure you wanna do this, old man?” But Elijah just pawed the air with a beckoning motion as if to say, “Come on and fight. This is what we came for.”
All that kept Elijah up was his ability to take a punch. His arms were like picket fences and his gloves were big meaty loaves for absorbing punishment. When a blow did get through, he knew how to move his head just a fraction of an inch to lessen its impact. Like John B. said, he’d learned to take three for every one he gave back.
But still Terrence kept coming. Jab. Jab. Jab. Each shot a little brushstroke of pain. Finally, toward the end of the round, Elijah dropped his hands and Terrence smashed him in the mouth with a devastating right hand. Just the sound of it was terrifying. You could almost hear the ocean breaking in Elijah’s head. Blood sprayed over us like water coming over the side of a boat.
And for the first time all night, John B. stopped talking.
Elijah fell against Terrence and staggered out to the center of the ring, trying to hold on to him. And just when I thought he was about to collapse, the bell rang.
He came back to the corner and sat on his stool. Dark red blood was gushing from the back of his mouth.
“Somethin’ the matter,” he mumbled. “I can move my jaw with my tongue.”
“Might be broken,” said Dr. Park, the ring physician, who’d climbed up the ring steps.
There were five of us clustered around Elijah. Me, John B., Victor the cut man, the doctor, and this cop Farley working for the boxing commission.
There was less than half a minute until the next round began. Elijah’s face was mashed almost beyond recognition. His lower features were so lopsided that they no longer matched with the upper ones. John B. was looking back and forth, unable to make a decision. Victor the cut man was busy with a cold-iron trying to reduce the swelling in Elijah’s jaw. The doctor hung back, maybe waiting for someone to promise to pay him off later.
I looked up at the spot where I’d seen Tommy Sick before. But he wasn’t there. I wondered if he’d moved down to a lower level to be closer to the action.
Elijah spit more blood in the bucket.
“He’s gotta keep fighting,” I said.
“You gotta go out there again,” I told him.
“He’s hurting,” John B. said plaintively. “I’m gonna throw the towel.”
“No, no, don’t take it away from him!” I panicked. “Let him decide. If he quits now, he’s through forever.”
The rest of them just looked at me like I’d suggested putting his head under an eighteen-wheeler.
“Brain damage last forever too.” John B. stared through me.
But no one could make Elijah do anything he didn’t want to do. The way he’d fought so far proved it.
“You all right to do this?” I said.
Elijah pushed himself off his stool and somehow managed to stand again.
“Just point me in the right direction,” he muttered through his wreck of a jaw. “I’ll find him.”
60
AS SHE DUCKED THROUGH the ropes to begin herpromenade around the ring with the Round 10 card, Rosemary heard the assholes down in front make that “alley-oop” sound again.
A thousand dollars a seat and they behaved like the morons back at the club. CEOs, heads of insurance companies and law firms, for God’s sake. Men who’d built successful businesses. You’d think they’d never seen a half-dressed woman before. It didn’t help that her sequined red swimsuit was riding up her butt again and giving her a wedgie in back.
The television cameras swung past her without much interest. Her arms ached from holding the giant card and the hot lights were melting her makeup. The ring smelled from sweat and desperation. When she’d first agreed to put on this ridiculous costume, she’d somehow convinced herself it would impress Kimmy watching on TV at home. Not like being a soap opera actress maybe, but something for her daughter to be proud of: “My mommy was on TV.” But now she was starting to accept that she looked like a cheap Vegas showgirl. Hoping Kimmy was already in bed, she affected a hotsy-totsy walk like her pussy was a bowl with boiling soup threatening to spill over the sides.
She passed Elijah Barton’s corner and saw Anthony. Would he be around later to give her what he owed her? She wondered. She finally understood that nothing he’d ever told her was true. The run-in with his wife the other day had finished it forever between them. Forget it. Kimmy had enough stress without strange women lurking around her front door. When this was all over, Rosemary would take whatever money she could get and move to the West Coast, whether she could afford it or not. If she could put up with this headdress, she could survive on food stamps. Whatever.
She looked back at Barton’s corner. The fighter literally looked dead. It was as if someone had scraped out his insides. All that was left was a husk. The cut man shoved wads of cotton into his nose and took them out all violet and wet with blood.
Is that what being a man was all about? Taking physical punishment? Forget that too. She’d caught a few beatings in her time and the pain was nothing compared to childbirth. Men talked about blood and guts and going to war, but having a baby was more than that. It was war in reverse. Shoving all your guts aside to make room for the life and vital organs fusing, pulsing, and growing in your belly. What was the pain of losing a fight compared to the pain of losing a child?
But pain wasn’t the point of it, she was beginning to see. It wasn’t enough just to get by. The point was surviving with some part of yourself intact. And making it. Making it for yourself. Making it so your kids wouldn’t end up giving blow jobs in the back of Honda Preludes. She looked over at Terrence’s corner and saw his father and trainer Terrence Sr., trim and graying, kneading his son’s shoulders like he was trying to mold him into some exact replica of himself. Perhaps that was the main difference between men and women. A man was always trying to teach his son to be as tough and brutal as he was, so that one day he could turn around and say the kid just didn’t measure up. Leaving women to try and protect their daughters from these ferocious, frustrated boys.
What had she said to Anthony’s wife, that sad girl with the gun in her bag? You couldn’t depend on anyone else to rescue you. Rosemary had known that before. But she was only truly feeling it now.
She crossed one foot in front of the other and felt the muscle stretching from her hip to her thigh go as taut as a fishing line. She hoped she’d shaved high enough so there wasn’t any pubic hair showing at the bottom of her outfit. A couple of guys in the fourth row were pumping their fists in the air and making ape noises, so she wasn’t sure.
Fuck them. She was a survivor. She bared her teeth and jutted her hips out. Not even caring if her stomach bulged anymore.
She was coming up on Terrence’s corner. She wished she could climb out through the ropes right there, but then she figured he was too busy to notice. After all, he hadn’t said anything up to this point. His father was still giving him orders. Terrence had his mouthpiece out and his head turned half away, as though he wasn’t really listening. He was looking right at her now and his eyes narrowed a little.