“How you feel?” The referee, with a jagged line pulsing in his face and his chin out of alignment, was scrutinizing him.
“Okay.”
“He’s fine,” said Ruben. At the bell he thrust Tully up off the stool.
Lucero rushed across the ring, and Tully set himself, covered, was battered and then had hold of the struggling arms. He leaned and held, kept his cut away from Lucero’s head, butted him once and was pulled off. He was struck again and once more had Lucero by the arms. The referee tugged and pushed; they were separated. Urged on by the crowd, the Mexican charged, and Tully retreated, ducking, weaving, rolling with punches. Near the end of the round the jagged line was gone from his vision, and Lucero, breathing through the mouth, had slowed. Tully hit him hard in the stomach just before the bell.
In the rounds that followed, Lucero slowed even more, fighting now as if not primarily to win but mainly to last, lashing out when pressed, often not punching at all when Tully jabbed him at long range. Satisfied to gain points with little punishment, Tully hit and moved away. In the tenth round Lucero’s pace quickened, but Tully slammed him with a steady report, and after the bell Lucero stood holding the top rope in exhaustion, his face tilted down toward the canvas.
At the announcement that Tully had won, Ruben pulled him to his feet, grasped him around the thighs, and staggering, lifted him up to a reception of moderate applause and scattered but passionate jeering. The towel fell from Tully’s head as the two reeled sideways across the ring, Tully’s arms rising and falling like wings in an attempt to right his balance. His feet thumped back to the canvas, and Lucero, eyes swollen to slits and nostrils caked with blood, embraced him around the neck. Head to head, grinning through bloody lips, they faced the photographer from the local press, Tully’s weary arm held up by the referee and Ruben at his back attempting to drape him with the purple satin robe, his heavy face looming over Tully’s shoulder toward the camera.
The ring lights were already off, the crowd no longer seated and the aisles congested when Lucero, again in the black robe with the sequin image, stood with bowed head and raised fists to final meager applause from his disappointed countrymen. He left the ring followed by Tully, and separated by several yards the two plodded with their handlers back to the dressing rooms.
His nose thick and sore, a row of adhesive butterflies closing the wound on his swollen brow, Tully walked out to the lobby, where the night’s boxers and their managers had congregated. Arcadio Lucero, now in camel’s-hair overcoat and yellow gaiter shoes with cowboy heels, his dark face puffed and solemn, stood with Gil Solis, Ruben, Babe and Owen Mackin. An elderly man with a hearing aid and a large twisted nose, Mackin was patting him on the shoulder, shouting: “You good boy. We like. You good boy.” And seeing Tully he shouted: “You put on a good fight, Billy.”
“He was great tonight,” said Ruben.
“You get it?” Tully asked.
“Everything’s fine.”
“What’s it come to?”
Ruben raised an assuring hand. “It’ll be all right, we’ll take care of it in a minute.” He leaned toward Tully’s face. “Looks good. That’ll heal up fine, it’s nothing.” Then he spoke again to Owen Mackin. “Few weeks he’ll be set to go again. It’ll be a sell-out next time. This guy’s great. I defy anyone to say this guy’s not great. First fight in two years and he got himself in perfect condition. He don’t smoke, did you know that? Never touches tobacco. This fight was just what he needed. He’s ready for anybody now. We got a winner here. He’s the most colorful lightweight in Northern California. What did you think of my kid in the opener? Wasn’t he fantastic? Ernie, come over here.”
“Let’s go,” said Tully.
“We’ll go. Just a minute.”
Ernie Munger, who had been waiting near the entrance with Faye, ambled over with his hand on her back, her gray jacket unbuttoned and her belly tremendous in a yellow maternity dress. She stopped a few steps from the group, and Ernie came on alone with his hands in his pockets. “I better be going.”
“You did great. Wasn’t this kid something? First pro fight and he’s cool as ice in there. This kid’s got heart.”
“Guess I better get rolling.”
Taking out his wallet, Ruben stepped aside with Ernie.
“Don’t give it all to them baby doctors,” said Gil Solis, his strained combative face grotesquely smiling, his narrow eyes fierce.
Tully watched Ernie and his wife go out through the open doors. Beyond a dark plot of city lawn and fallow flower beds, a line of headlights was passing through the fog up El Dorado Street.
“I got a good boy there. Home early with the wife. He’s got all the moves. He’s got class. Ask Tully. He’s the guy that discovered him. Am I right?”
“He’s okay.”
Ruben gave him a pat on the back. “But this boy here — off two years and he’s as sharp as he ever was.”
“Guess we’ll be going,” said Gil, his pitted cheeks scored with deep merciless lines, like a bayed ferocious monkey’s. “Vámonos, eh?”
Lucero shrugged, shifted his bag, and with an amiable show of white chipped teeth, offered his hand all around.
Outside in the cold, Ruben told Tully he had earned $241. “You been off too long. Next time you’ll draw three times that.”
“What’s my cut come to?”
“Well, I gave you all those advances. I got to collect on some of that, but I don’t want you fighting for nothing, either. We got you on your feet now. Three, four weeks you’ll be ready to go again. I’ll tell you, why don’t I just keep paying your room and board?”
“I’m not drinking any more.”
“I know, I know.”
“I’m not going to blow any of it. That divorce is what messed me up. Now I’m fighting again I want to get back with my wife and I got to have money. Just take your cut and I’ll pay my own bills.”
Double-parked at the side of the Oxford Hotel, Ruben counted out a hundred dollars. “It’s not worth the goddamn trouble,” said Tully, and opening the door, looked back at the traffic coming up the one-way street.
“I gave you those advances with the agreement they’d come out of your purse. I got four kids. But once we get another match made I’ll stake you. Don’t get out on that side, you’ll get run over. Shut the door. Get out over on this side.” At the same time that Tully stepped out on the traffic side, Ruben left by his own door to make room for him. They confronted each other across the hood. “What did you want to get out on that side for? Why didn’t you slide over?”