The Real Thing (8 page)

Chapter 10

S
omeone very nice lets me sleep in, and by the time I roll out of bed and get to the kitchen, it's close to lunchtime. Wisps of fog and mist dance on the water, fluffy white clouds barrel across the blue sky, and the pines outside sway in the stiff breeze of pure pine heaven.

I could get used to this place.

Red pulls a plate from the oven, and I chow down on a cheesy omelet and some thick slabs of bacon while Lelani flips through some fashion magazine. “Where is everybody?” I ask.

“Getting ready,” Red says, sipping some hot tea.

“Is it time for Dante's workout?” I whisper to Lelani.

Lelani nods. “He wants to get an early jump and train longer today because of yesterday. ‘I'm a day behind schedule! ' he says.”

She has one creepy Dante impersonation.

Red sighs and stares at me. “You sure you want to do this?”

No. “I'm sure.”

He looks at my sweatpants and tight T-shirt. “Once this wind dies down, it's going to heat up, so I'd get into some loose shorts and a much looser T-shirt if I were you.”

I pose for him. “What are you saying, Red?”

Lelani reaches over and tries to pull the T-shirt's fabric from my back and can't. “I think he's saying that he's afraid that when you throw your first punch, you will come out of this shirt like the Hulk.”

“Oh.” I shake my head. “I'll be fine.” I hope.

“You have any running shoes?” Red asks.

“No. Just my boots.”

Lelani looks from her tiny feet to mine. “I have nothing that will fit you. I doubt Evelyn's ‘Canadian' shoes will fit you either.”

“I didn't come here to wear Evelyn's shoes,” I say, taking one last delicious bite of omelet, cheese dripping onto the fork. “I'll do just fine in my boots.”

I need those boots for the hike up the muddy hill behind the cottage to a clearing where a full ring and all the toys appear. They cut the ring right into the hillside. Heavy bags sway from tree limbs, and a speed bag and two long mirrors have been mounted directly to trees. It's so . . . Robinson Crusoe or something, so . . .

Okay, okay. It's not Gleason's Gym. It's just so rustic. If I were to take photos of his training area and publish them, Dante would become a laughingstock overnight. At least it smells nicer than Gleason's Gym, and that crisp breeze is heavenly. I look toward the lake and can't see even a single wave. The only way the paparazzi could get any shots of this place would be from the air.

Red talks to me while I tighten my shoelaces. “We always aim for fifteen four-minute rounds. The first five rounds are skipping rope.” He hands me a jump rope.

No problem, chief. I got this.

Though DJ and Dante are more adept and efficient than I'll ever be, effortlessly twirling their ropes to near invisibility, I ain't no slouch. I learned a thing or two on the mean streets of Red Hook. After a rough start, I feel the old rhythm and do tricks like cross crosses, front back crosses, leg overs, and side swings at a steady pace. I ain't crazy. This is only the beginning of the workout. I need to pace myself. I feel like chanting “Hello Operator” or “Down in the Valley,” but I don't. This is serious work here. I used to do the Rump Jump but not anymore. At my age, I might not get back up.

After four minutes, Red says, “Time,” and DJ and Dante stop.

Screw that.

I keep jumping at my relaxed, easy pace. DJ and Dante see me and start jumping again. I skip a little closer to where they are and face them doing a series of front back crosses and side swings. Red yells “Time!” four more times, but we don't stop for a second.

Dante is so intense! It's like a game. I do a leg over, and he does a leg over. I do a side swing, and he does a side swing. My legs are on fire, my arms are numb, my wrists are calling me names, and my lungs are screaming by the time Red hollers, “
Time!”

I stop.

DJ stops.

Dante jumps for four more minutes.

I let him. He's the boxer, not me.

“You need to pace yourself more,” Red whispers to me.

I bend over and try to find the air. It was just here a minute ago. Where did the air go? I know I just worked off breakfast, lunch, and dinner from yesterday.

“I'll be fine,” I whisper. “What's next?”

“Three rounds of shadowboxing,” Red says.

I watch sweat drip off my forehead.

Shadowboxing? No sweat.

Since there are only two mirrors, DJ and Dante go to work in front of them. I face Red and start throwing as Granddaddy taught me, left hand high, right hand tucked, jabbing mostly, dancing, circling, and ducking. Red calls time again, but I keep throwing. I add uppercuts and a couple horrible hooks and notice DJ and Dante kicking up dust behind me.

I am going to die here.

I somehow complete twenty minutes of nonstop jumping and fifteen minutes of shadowboxing. I must be crazy.

“Time!”
Red hollers again.

I can't feel my back, my arms, or my shoulders. I feel blisters forming on my ankles from these hiking boots.

I wonder if they can just bury me here. I'd smell like pine trees for all eternity.

I see DJ and Dante move toward the heavy bags, wrapping each other's hands and sliding into white boxing gloves. Red hands me a wrap, and I wrap my own damn hands, thank you very much.

Red has to help me with the red gloves he was working on yesterday. It's scary, but they barely fit. I have some big hands.

“Six rounds,” Red whispers, “and you better rest
every
time I call time.” He puts on some big mitts and stands in front of me.

Six rounds. Twenty-four minutes with five minutes of rest. I doubt I can go twenty-nine minutes straight on the heavy bag, but I don't even have a heavy bag to hit. I don't want to hit birch trees or take potshots at Red.

I walk over to the other side of the heavy bag Dante is using and start throwing, trying to stay directly opposite of him. He knocks it to me, and I pop it back. It's as if we're playing tag and hide-and-go-seek at the same time. Red calls time after the first round, but I keep pounding, my shoulders threatening to secede from my body. Dante tries to get around the bag to me, but I'm too fast. He jukes right, and I go right. He feints left and goes right, and I nearly punch him in the stomach.

I only last two rounds before I rest a minute.

Not Dante. He continues to pop the bag.

I wearily move to DJ's bag and stay fairly still for the next four rounds, throwing jabs and overhand rights at the rate of, oh, one per minute. It's the strangest symphony. Dante's hands go
pop-pop-pop-pow-boom,
DJ's hands go
pop-pop-boom-pop-pop-boom,
and I merely go
pop
.

I look down at my chest and see my breasts staring up at me. I have sweated so much I look as if I'm in a wet T-shirt contest. I am seriously melting out here, and I'm giving Dante an eyeful.

And I don't give a damn.

We then remove our gloves and do one round of sit-ups—I do some weak-ass crunches instead—and then two rounds of push-ups, facing each other in a triangle. Dante's eyes lock with mine. If I go down, he goes down. When I come up, he comes up. If I hold my form, he holds his form. My triceps choose to die agonizing deaths after only twelve push-ups, and I flop to the dust in a sweaty heap.

Dante smiles.

Jerk.

And he does one
hundred
more push-ups before Red calls time.

“Last round!” Red calls.

My body rejoices.

“Ropes and stretching,” Red says.

For some reason, the jump rope weighs a gazillion pounds. I can barely pick it up, much less swing it over my head. Dante and DJ begin windmilling like before, and though the breeze they give me is nice, I am embarrassed I can't even move the damn rope.

“Stretch,” Red says.

I am usually a limber human being, and after I work out a kink in my lower back, I'm able to bend at my waist and grab under my feet.

Dante and DJ can do it, too.

That's not . . . normal.

I attempt a split and almost make it.

Dante and DJ do
full
splits.

That's just plain creepy.

I stand and pull a leg up over my head despite my tight shorts.

Dante does the same. DJ tries but loses his balance. Ha!

“Up to sparring today, Dante?” Red asks.

Dante nods, his leg still over his head. He lowers the leg. “I am up to anything today.”

Jerk.

While he and DJ go into their wrapping routine and put on their gloves, I step closer to Red. “Wasn't that fifteen rounds?”

“Of exercise,” he says. “Now we practice.”

“He spars with DJ?”

“Sometimes with me, sometimes with DJ.” He smiles. “But not today.”

He begins wrapping
my
hands rapidly.

And I stupidly
watch
him wrap my hands. “You mean . . .”

He slides my sweaty gloves onto my hands, and I can't believe I'm not resisting. I mean, I'm trying to resist, but it's hard to resist when you can't feel your shoulders and your body is one large lead weight.

“You're kidding, right?” I protest.

He shakes his head. “You got anything left?”

I shake my head. “I had nothing left half an hour ago.”

He tightens my right glove. “You're close to Tank's height. DJ and I are too tall. And no offense, but you're closer in weight to Dante than either of us.”

“I am
not
,” I hiss. “I don't weigh a hundred and sixty pounds.”

“Close enough.”

One forty-five, maybe one fifty if I'm a lazy ass, but this pisses me off! My shoulders are coming back to life, and my back quits complaining.

“Look, Christiana,” Red says softly, “from the skills you've been showing me, I know you can hang with him for a round or two.”

“One round?”

“Three rounds.”

How did “a round or two” become “three”?

“Nine minutes,” Red says. “We don't spar much to protect his hands and keep him from getting
dementia pugilistica
.”

Punch drunk. Granddaddy told me that Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Willie Pep, Sugar Ray Robinson, Muhammad Ali, and Floyd Patterson all had it.

“Dante doesn't have any of the symptoms yet,” Red says, “but he
has
fought fifty-two pro fights and had close to a hundred amateur fights. I don't want to risk it.”

He fastens on an incredibly uncomfortable headgear that smells like motor oil.

“You don't think I can hurt him, do you?” I ask.

“No one has ever hurt him, Christiana.”

Except
Eve
lyn.

Red holds out a mouthpiece, and I back away. “Don't worry. It's never been used.” He places it inside my mouth. “Just jab him to death, okay?”

Suddenly, I don't feel so winded, tired, or sore. Red doesn't think I can hurt Dante. Red thinks I weigh 160 pounds. Red wants me just to jab him.

Well, Red doesn't know diddly.

I climb into the ring and pound my gloves together. “Let's get it on,” I mumble through my mouthpiece.

Chapter 11

I
can do this.

I think.

I hope.

Ow. I have a cramp. In my entire body. Ow.

Feet comfortably apart, my weight on the balls of my feet, I am balanced. My knees are bent, but I'm not crouching. I stand slightly sideways, my left hand up, my right fist close to my chin, elbows tight to my ribs, my neck and shoulders relaxed.

Granddaddy taught me well.

DJ holds up an egg timer, turning it to three minutes. “Ding,” he says.

Nice bell.

I circle Dante, who wears no headgear, several times, measuring him up, looking into his eyes. He throws no punches for thirty seconds, so I get bold. I extend my left foot and throw my left hand, rotating my fist and bringing it back. I have a decent jab, and I snap it close to his face, grazing his chin. I pop the jab again, thudding it off his chin. Geez, I just hit him hard! He doesn't blink, though, throwing a lazy jab of his own. I twist away from it, popping him in the nose with a short right. He throws a jab that falls a foot short, and I pop him in the nose again.

“I can see it coming,” I mumble, popping him in the left shoulder with a jab.

He jabs and falls short again.

“I can time that jab with a calendar,” I say, jabbing him twice on the right cheek.

I stick out my face. “Pop it.”

He flails with a right and misses.

“Use your jab,” I hiss.

He winds up and throws a straight right, but I duck and hit him with a right to the body, dancing away because the pain in my hand is excruciating. What is this man made of, granite?

He tries a right cross, but I duck under it and throw a right uppercut to his chin. Backing away, I chant, “Too slow, too slow.”

“Time!” Red calls.

And just in time.

I'm about to throw up, collapse, and die.

I return to my corner where DJ has a stool waiting for me, but instead of throwing up, collapsing, and dying as I should, I stand and stare Dante down. I am amazed I still remember what to do. I am also amazed I'm not barfing over the top rope. I am
not
amazed I can't feel my right hand. I'll have to throw a lot more lefts this round.

“Ding!” DJ yells, smiling. At least someone out here is having a good time. I know that wasn't a minute just now! Geez!

I stalk Dante as best as I can, jabbing, circling, bobbing, and staying away from the left hook I know is coming. I check his feet, waiting for him to transfer his weight to his left foot. I see him transfer his weight! Here comes the hook! I step in close, the hook whooshing behind my head. Since his right is down at his waist, I hit him with a right uppercut to his chin.

Backing out, I know I've hurt him. He has to be hurt. My right hand is one fused bruise. Why isn't he blinking or even wincing?

As he moves in on me—he is relentless!—I go into a peek-a-boo stance, both gloves covering my face, my elbows glued to my sides. He feints with another weak jab, then dips to throw a right to the left side of my body and—

I'm dying.

Oh, shit!

I cannot breathe. Who stole the air?

I know my ribs are broken, but I'm not going down.

“Time!” Red calls.

I stumble back to my corner and hit that stool this time.

“You all right?” DJ asks.

I nod, though I'm not all right. My kidneys and pancreas have congealed into one big blob, and my lungs are just now reinflating. I have no feeling from my waist to my neck. My calves are on fire. My pinkie toe is one large blister. One more round. I just have to stay away from him.

“Ding!”

Damn Canadians and their crazy units of measure! Was that a metric minute or what? Sixty seconds is
way
too short to rest.

I pop my jab and move away, dancing left and right, my legs lead weights, my arms and shoulders weeping with pain.

He pops me with a jab.

Ow.

Where'd that balloon on my face come from? It wasn't there a few seconds ago.

The word “better” forms on my lips for a millisecond but vanishes when he hits me with that left hook of his.

I now know what the interior of Halley's Comet looks like. I now know what is at the end of the tunnel. I now know what it feels like to have a hundred paparazzi taking my picture.

I stagger toward the ropes and hold on, my eyes filling with tears, my head pounding, my whole face swelling, a voice from a movie somewhere in my past exhorting me to “run to the light, children!” I'm not sure where the ground begins and the sky ends.

“Time!”

I slump onto my stool, my right cheek throbbing like a bass drum.

“You can stop any time, you know,” DJ says, squirting water onto my face.

“Tenere provare,”
a voice says weakly. Hey, that was my voice. Why is it speaking Italian? Has Dante knocked me all the way to Palermo, or what?

“DJ,” Dante says.
“Andiamo.”

DJ jumps into the ring.

“No,” I say, and I stand, or at least I think I'm standing. I'm a few feet higher than I was before. That's the definition of standing, isn't it? I'm taller than the stool anyway. Why isn't my left leg working? I spit something from my mouth. Oh. My mouthpiece. I won't need it. They don't bury people with mouthpieces. “You haven't knocked me down yet, Dante.”

Dante and three others who look just like him move a few feet away from me. “And I have not hit you hard yet,” the four of them say. “DJ,
andiamo
.”

I take a step to grab DJ's shoulder, but I fall face-first to the canvas. I like gravity, I really do, but right now, I don't. Gravity is standing on my back. Both my legs won't work. Talk about a delayed reaction. Why is the world spinning counterclockwise? Am I in Australia? I thought I was in Palermo. I catch my breath and stand, my right leg shaking uncontrollably. C'mon, leg. Move. The other one is moving. Get your ass in gear.

Walking like the Mummy and dragging one leg behind me, I will myself toward Dante.

“I do not want to hurt you,” Dante says.

“I'm not hurt,” I lie. I wave him to me. He stalks to within an arm's length, and I throw out the weakest jab. I watch it fall onto his shoulder where it stops and rests. I try a right and it drops like a rock to my thigh. I fall forward and bang my head on his chest.

Ow.

“Okay, okay,” I say. “I'm done.”

Dante picks up my chin with his glove. “Who taught you?”

Even my chin hurts! “My granddaddy.”

“He is a good trainer.”

“Was,” I say. “He died a few years ago.”

How am I? Isn't that Spanish? I thought I was in Canada fighting an Italian. Or was it an Australian in Palermo? “I have a headache. How do you say that in Italian?”

“
Ho mal di testa
.” I put both gloves on his shoulders. “I haven't sparred in a long time. How'd I do?”

I blink, but I'm not rude like Evelyn, and don't say, “In English.”

“You are going too fast,” he says. “You must pace yourself.” He smiles. “You have had a long layoff, yes?”

I nod, focusing on his
chests
until the world stops spinning a little. “I didn't, um, hurt you, did I?”

“Your first jab,
sì
.
Pericoloso.
”

“Dangerous, huh?” Ha! “The uppercut didn't rock your world?”

“Certamente!”
He smiles again.

I like this Dante. He smiles a lot. I just wish he didn't have two of them. No man should have sixty-four teeth in his head.

“But I deserved it,” he says, guiding me to my corner. “I left myself open. I did not expect it. The unexpected ones hurt the most.”

I sit. “I didn't see that hook coming either.” The act of sitting clears my head a little. DJ squirts water into my mouth this time and helps me remove my headgear. “What's next?”

“Oh, you must rest now,” Dante says.

“What's next?” I repeat.

“More shadowboxing,” Red says.

Where no one can hit me. Unless shadows suddenly have developed lightning left hooks, I can do that. I grab for and latch on to the top rope, pulling myself to my feet.

“Are you sure?” Dante asks.

I look him square in the chest. “
Andiamo,”
I say.
“Andiamo
.”