The Fighter (36 page)

"How
do I look?"

Lou
said he looked like an elephant had shit him out sideways. "And you're
gonna lose the fight to boot. No other way this ends."

In
a voice so low Lou had to strain to hear, Paul said, "And you think

I
didn't know that from the start?"

Fritzie
yanked Rob's trunks open and splashed cold water over his groin. Rob saw all
the sweaty, booze-flushed faces standing like flowers in morbid arrangements
and behind those faces the fighters waiting in pockets of shadow, their bodies
shivering with terror or anticipation, and beyond them the discolored barn
walls rising to a rotting roof through which he glimpsed the vaulted emptiness
of the night sky.

"Just
go in there and put him away, quick," said Fritzie.

"I
hit him as hard as I've ever hit anybody. He's not going away."

"Then
hit him harder."

Rob
gazed across the ring. Paul stared back. Rob was repulsed by the damage he'd
inflicted. Paul smiled—a gruesome sight—and his eyelid closed over his working
eye: a wink.

For
a moment Rob thought Paul had been blinking blood out of his eye, but no: a
wink.

The
revelation was startling in its clarity: none of this had been about Tommy, or
about him, and never had been—this was something else entirely. Tommy lay on a
hospital bed, fighting for his life— and why? To afford this guy a means of
restoring some semblance of purpose to his pitiful fucked-up life. Fury
settled, a small black stone behind Rob's eyes. Spoiled selfish brat, winking
at him. Spoiled selfish brat with his purposeless, futile, fucked-up life.

"Cut
the tape off my hands," Rob told Fritzie.

"Why
the hell you want that?"

"Because
I want to feel it."

I'll kill him.
The notion arose from nowhere.
It's what he wants. So give it to him
.

"He
wants to feel it, too. I owe him that."

"You
don't owe this guy a thing."

"No,"
Rob said softly, "I owe him that."

When
the bell rang for the third round, Paul was thinking about his last vacation.

He
and a few university friends had stayed at a five-star resort outside Havana.
They'd lain on the beach drinking mojitos served by nut-brown cabana boys,
laughing at their silly white outfits that made them look like plantation
butlers. At night they'd gone to discotheques

and
hit upon the local women, pinching asses or grabbing tits until one reared upon
Paul and slapped his face, but he'd only laughed thinking the sting on his
cheek would be gone the next morning but her life would unfold in the same sad
unremitting pattern until one day she died. He thought of such episodes, the
indulgence and cruelty and extravagance and wastefulness. It seemed his whole
life was a patchwork of similar events, one callous escapade stitched onto the
next. He did not know how to make amends for any of it, to balance the karmic
scales—was it possible? But the throbbing ache of his hands, the swollen fiery
confusion of his face: this was good. If a man were to give enough, suffer
enough—maybe. And so he craved this pain, the knowledge and atonement only pain
could bestow, particular, intimate, and entirely personal, that pain washing
over him, washing away his every wrong.

The
next punch struck him square in the face and skidded him back on his heels. He
took a knee, balancing on his knuckles; then, with a great shuddering breath,
he stumbled in Rob's direction again.

He
swung and missed as another blow spiked the knot of nerves where his jawbone
met his skull and shocked the upper left half of his body into mute numbness.
Another blow, then another and another, so fast his body could register the
pain only after the fact, the way you'll hear the crash of thunder moments
after lightning has split the sky. He took a murderous shot in the gut and his
bowels let go with a mordant note like the groan of a ship's hull. "You
reeking
prick
!
"
someone
yelled and Paul was surprised at how quickly he'd moved beyond frustration or
shame...

…
as Rob's rage built, cyclical and
combustive, firing like the pistons of a supercharged engine. The thing facing
him was nothing but a bag of skin and bone and gristle and blood and Rob wanted
to inflict as much damage upon it as was humanly possible—as was
inhumanly
possible—smash and bash and crush and wreck until nothing of value remained.

The
sack of meat shambled forward. Rob rained blows upon it. The air shimmered with
blood. A few spectators looked away...

.
. . Paul came on awkwardly. Equilibrium shot, he moved as though his knees and
hips were packed with rusted ball bearings. He couldn't tell if he was smiling.
He sort of hoped he was.

Rob's
fist found his jaw and a cherry bomb exploded in the tin cup of Paul's skull.
Warmth ran down the inside of his leg and he had no idea what it was but still
it was oddly comforting. He was hit again and orange lights burned like
sunspots before his eyes, initiating wild riots in his head until one of these
spots mushroomed, bright as an A-bomb, blinding and beautiful and so incredibly
alive and as he fell a claustrophobic blackness replaced that light, the
airless dark of a deep sea cavern, then he came to on a bale of hay with spring
stars shining through holes in the barn roof.

Lou's
face swam above him. His features were a mask of wild panic. His mouth formed
words but Paul couldn't hear anything on account of the cycling roar that
filled his skull.

Lou
started waving his arms. "No," Paul said, though he couldn't hear his
own voice. Lou's lips moved; he might have been saying
Crying blood.
"Don't care." Lou's lips moved again:
Skull filling with blood.

"Don't
care."

Shit yourself
—

"Don't
care."

Die here
—

"Don't
..." Spit a sac of blood."...care." "This guy ..."
Fritzie was baffled. "I never seen anything like it. What is that guy
anymore—a punching bag, that's it."

"He's
got to quit," Rob said. "He's got to cry uncle."

"He's
not gonna do that. There's something the matter with him."

"Then
we keep going."

"And
you're sure you want to? Don't exactly look it." Fritzie wiped under Rob's
eye. "That's not sweat."

Rob
swiped his cheeks furiously. "Tell someone to ring the bell."

A
profound sense of peace settled over Paul. The workings of his mind flattened
out; his thoughts disintegrated. Like he was on a plane on a clear cloudless
day, staring out the porthole window as earth ceded to ocean: the houses and
roads and buildings, the patchwork quilt of farmers' fields, all that variation
giving way to a smooth blanket of water—green closest to shore, the white curls
of Queen Anne's lace turning to deepest blue and, where the water ran deepest,
flat ongoing black ...

...
while Rob's was consumed with
visions of slaughter. His hands felt hardened, lumps of rock, and his wish was
to drive them into Paul's face, across the bridge of his nose or into his
mouth, dislodge the rest of his teeth and slam his fist, the whole of it, deep
into Paul's mouth, down his throat, choking him, or instead cleave his skull,
crack it open like a fleshy nut and destroy the core of his brain. To step
through those barn doors was to enter a realm of violent imperatives and so he
let his fists go, beating a merciless tattoo on this creature who stared
balefully with his blood-filled eyeball ...

...
Paul could no longer feel his
arms or legs. He felt isolated from the fight: as though another man was taking
the punishment while he stood nearby, watching. He saw two men in a series of
frozen moments, the sort of stylized postures glimpsed in ancient Greek
friezes. It resembled less a fight than an aggressive coupling, yet there was
an odd deference:
May I place my hand here? May I
set my leg here, between yours? May I, May I, May I
and their bodies melding, fists
enveloped by the other's chest or face, arms and legs and heads uniting, flesh
bonding until they became a united whole, this faceless sexless creature that
might haunt a lunatic's dreams ...

...
until a hard stroke finally sent
Paul to one knee. He could not see the boards under his feet. Blood dripped
from his face, dripped from all parts of him. He raised one hand, that hand
trembling uncontrollably, and touched his face. He felt something beneath the
skin, incredibly hard. Harder than bone, even. He pushed three fingers deep
into the most gaping wound and touched these alien contours. New ridges and
planes that did not feel human—not entirely so. If his body were to be hit hard
enough, long enough, if it absorbed enough punishment, maybe this soft outer
layer would slough away to reveal whatever lay beneath. Imagine a cocoon, a
pupating bug. The prospect entombed itself in his mind. If he could just
weather the storm he would emerge as something infinitely stronger, harder,
more meaningful. No weakness, no fear, no misery or rupture or death.

Paul
came forward again, not protecting himself at all, walking straight into
punches. The smack of meat on bone snapped off the high wooden beams and a
queasy fan yelled, "Stop it. God, just ...
stop"
The
two men in the ring heard nothing: not the fans, not the lick of fists or the
sound of their own breathing. For a crazed instant Paul wanted to simply touch
Rob, to hold and breathe against him, to taste his wounds and know his skin.

And
when neither man could punch anymore they stood at arm's length, strength
sapped, holding on to each other: from a distance, it looked as though Rob was
teaching Paul how to dance a slow waltz.

Paul's
mouth opened. A single word passed over his broken lips:

"Please
..."