The Boxer and the Poet, Something of a Romance: the first chapter.
She was a sorceress or a witch or a mesmerist, or maybe some nameless mix of them all. When I accused her of possessing otherwordly powers she would reply, "I'm only a poet," and then laugh in her throaty way.
I look back now, and believe that her laugh--deep ribbons of sound from the back of her throat, usually coming when she had me locked up in her gaze--was a source of her power over me. One of the sources. There were others, as you will see shortly.
She was there when I surfaced from the black. I heard myself breathe, a ragged, thick-tongued gasping. Then I tasted the blood and salt. Wood was against my back, so I wasn't still on the canvas, but was laid out on a bench. My lip was split. Blood had trickled into my right ear, filling it, making me feel like I was under water. My right eye was swollen shut, and there was pressure all along the right side of my face. Then came a searing sting from that same eye. My eye teared over, and the tears squeezed themselves out between the swollen tissue.
I had been wrecked. Bad this time.
Cranking open my good eye took some effort. I blinked, trying to bring things into focus, expecting to see chipped green paint and a bare bulb, the usual in these joints. Instead, she slowly formed above me. My swollen right eye felt as if it were on fire.
Her hair was as black as a crow's wing, and fell to her shoulders in wild ringlets and waves. The light bulb was above her, and the few rays of light that worked through her wilderness of hair made it sparkle with golds and whites, and cast her face in shadow so that for a moment--me in my grogginess trying not to cough, lest a rib was broken, which has happened to me beofre, and feels like a shive is beling slipped between your ribs each time you take a breath--I couldn't make her out, just a shadow framed by roiling dark hair.
Then her eyes switched on as if a current had been put through them, blue and gleaming, at once exotic and amused, slightly lidded with sweeping eyelashes and set wide in her face. I closed and opened my good eye. Her lips were painted red, and the lower one was more full than the upper, a slight mismatch suggesting mischief.
She smiled as she stared down at me. Her teeth were large, a shiny white grill. I had no clue who she was. I licked my lips, still lying there on the bench. My attempt to say something came out a groan. Still smiling, she leaned closer, strands of her black hair falling off her shoulder. She cocked an ear toward me.
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| "Please." My voice souding like the rasp of a wood file. "Get some water. Throw it into my eye." My words were garbled. My lips had been puffed up, too.
"Water? In your eye?"
My right eye felt like a wasp was sitting on the pupil, piercing it again and again with its stinger. I moaned.
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She disappeared. I licked my lips. I hadn't shaved for three days, so I had some stubble, which helped prevent cuts. My mouth guard was missing. I suppose it had been punched out of my mouth but I had no memory of it, nor of hitting the mat. My eye burned and tears poured down my cheek.
She returned, moving into my vision, blotting out the bulb's light again. She held up a paper cup.
My words were shaky. "Pry open my eye and pour the water in. Hurry."
She tentatively put two fingers on my face. She prodded a bit.
My voice rose uncontrollably. "Don't mess around. Shove back my eyelid and dump the water in."
This time she wrestled open the swollen tissue, then poured the water into my eye. The pain loosened its grip. I blinked. Water trickled down the sides of my face onto the tile floor.
She grabbed one of my elbows and helped me sit upright. She steadied me as I sat there slumped over, my mouth openeing and closing like a fish. My eye felt better. I would live, I decided vaguely.
"What was in your eye?" Her voice had a purr to it, a hint of the feral.
"Pepper sauce, probably."
"How'd it get there?"
"His corner man sprayed it onto his glvoe in the third. He blinded me, then he laid me out." I shifted on the bench. "I've been hurt worse, though, I suppose."
"Isn't that cheating, using pepper?"
"Yeah." I turned to stare at her with my good eye. "It's cheating."
"Didn't you tell the referee?"
My voice carried more emotion than I intended. "This isn't Madison Square Garden."
Indeed, it wasn't. Bowder's Hall in the swam town of Xanadeaux, Louisiana belonged to the Masons, and they rented it out now and again. The Southeast Boxing Federation had taken over the hall this night, and had put together an exhibition of three fights. My bout had been last on the card.
The Southeast Boxing Federation was owned by Billy Dupree, and consisted of him, his eight-year old Cadillac and his cell phone. He visited any given town twice; once to put up the posters and rent the hall, and the second time on the day of the show. If he had four hundred paid admissions, Dupree counted it as a success and bought himself a fifth of Jack Daniels instead of his usual Big Swipe Corn Liguor.
If the Masons were to get any rent from Dupree, they got it up front. Town citizens most likely never saw him again, nor did the local police, thought they often had questions for him. Dupree always stayed on the two-lane roads, never too far from the cypress adn tupelo gum trees, the egrets and alligators. He claimed to be from the bayou, but he could shift his accent here and there. When Dupree took his show into Texas, he called himself the East Texas Boxing Association. Sometimes I went with him.
She asked, "Don't you have someone who takes care of you?"
"I take care of myself."
She laughed then, and that's the first time I heard it, that rope of deep musical notes. "I mean, after a fight. Shouldn't someone be in here cleaning you off? A trainer?"
Some of a moan escaped me but I clamped it off with my jaw.
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She left the bench to search the room, then returned with a wet towel. She dabbed my cheeks. I closed my good eye. She wiped away blood, cleaning it from my nostrils and chin. Ring chalk was heavy on my cheeks, some of it streaked with the tears my eye had pumped out due to the pepper.
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She gently washed away the chalk, and was careful with my swollen eye, cleaning it with a corner of the towel. Then she touched the towel to her tongue to re-wet it, as if I were a child, and cleaned my split lip. I felt the gentle press of her fingers.
I could not remember the last time I'd been offered tenderness. And I had not often been touched by someone whose interst in my face coincided with mine. My brain was still puddled from the beating, but not so much so that I wasn't suspicious. This woman wanted something.
She asked, "Your name is Sonny James?"
"Today it is. Last week it was Kid Deutsch. I was billed as Return of the Blitzkrieg."
She hesitated. "The poster out front says Ring Magazine ranks you number six in the heavyweight division, and that you'll fight for the WWM championship next fall."
I laughed as best I could, more a ripple of my shoulder, which hurt my chest. "That's the promoter's idea of a joke. WWM, Wonder What that Means. Ringt Magazine has never heard of me."
She stared at me, as if she were a bidder at a horse auction judging lieage and musculature. Maybe she was going to roll my lips back to look at the length of my teeth. She said finally, "Maybe I've made a mistake."
"That's for sure." My voice was still ragged. "How about helping me out of my gloves before you go."
She dug at the knot on my left glove, me sitting there. She smilled of lilacs. I braved another look at her. She wore a ring on her right hand, a gold band with a rruby in it, a large red stone with numberless facets. On her necklace were three diamonds mounted on platinum. Her black slacks were tight, and she wore a black blouse under a black leather vest. She wore black boots with one-inch heels.
Working the knot, trying to loosen the Everlast glove's ties, she said, "You smell like a corpse, by the way."
Every inch of me hurt, even my hair. I deserved to be surly. "You try getting the hell beat out of you for seven rounds, you'll smell like this, too."
"Three rounds. I was there."
"Yeah, well, it felt like seven." I sighed, something I don't like people hearing me do. "It felt like seventy."
Her brows furrowed in concentration, working the lace. When it was loose, she awkwardly pulled off the glove. Protective tape was thick around my hand. She moved to the other side of me, trialing her scent, and began with my other glove.
"I'm looking for a fighter," she said.
"Let me know when you find one."
"Someone who will do what I tell him." She plucked at the ties. "And not ask a lot of questions."
"You want someone beat up, you've got the wrong guy."
"I didn't say that, and . . . ."
"I'm not anybody's hired muscle."
She looked up at me, raising those eyes. "Is it the beating you just ook, or are you aways goofy?" Her eyes were fathomless and arresting, a blue unique to the universe, a new and mysterious blue. She pulled at the laces.
I again studied her face with my mono-vision. Her cheekbones were so high they threw shadows on her face below. A slight notch was on the point of her chin. Her long Gallic nose gave her face purpose, though I was clueless as to what that purpose might be.
Billy Dupree walked into the locker room, his shirttails most of the way out, and his tie loose around his neck. He never paid more than ten dollars for a tie. His belly always preceded him by a good measure.
"Nice fight tonight," he said.
I didn't say anything.
"For the first twenty seconds," he added. "Then it went downhill."
He carried a wad of bills in his fist, and flipped through them. He had a blood pudding of a face, the skin mapped by adipose tissue and burst capillaries. His nose resembled a potato left too long in the field. His little eyes were sunk deeply and were always bright with self-interest. His shoes were scuffed to raw leather, and he wore a fraternal ring on his right pinkie.
"Who's the babe?" He had a cigarette voice.
"My fiance." Maybe I could make her laugh.
Billy eyeballed her top to bottom, then scoffed, "Dennis, you've got more chance of marrying me than you do her." He peeled off several bills. "Here's your three hundred." He pronounced it hunnert.
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I protested. "You said it'd be three-fifty, Billy."
"Had to deduct a fee for the cut man."
"Then where is he? I could use him."
He chuckled, sounding like a truck trying to start. "After the fight he told me your face was beyond his skills, so he left."
It was a lie, of course. Sometimes the so-called fee was for towels, other times for the ride to the hall, sometimes for ring clean-up, sometimes to grease the deputy sheriff--always something. The only time a boxing promoter tells the truth is when he calls another promoter a liar.
Then, the damnedest thing. The lady smiled grandly at Billy Dupree, rose from the bench and moved toward him, more a glide than a walk, sort of a sashay. Her smile could've peeled paint off the wall. Her eyes were merry and inviting. She had taken on the look of a coquette.
She sidled up to Billy, put a hand on his arm, went up on her toes and leaned close, like she wanted to share her perfume, and for a moment I thought she was going to nibble his fleshy earlobe, a revolting thought. He seemed paralyzed by her approach, as if he'd never before been close to a woman who didn't have gin blossoms on her nose or a black tooth.
Still smiling, she whispered something into his ear. Then she stepped away from him, bracing him with her gaze. She opened her hands, a gesture inviting understanding.
Billy's red face got redder. He chewed on nothing a moment. Her smile narrowed, and this tiniest movement of her lips hardened her face to granite.
Billy sputtered, his wet mouth working, indecision on his face along with a touch of fear. Then with a sharp inhale, he withrdrew several more bills from his wad and threw them on the bench next to me, pivoted on his heels and left the dressing room as fast as I'd ever seen him move.
She returned to the bench and my glove. "Return of the Blitzkrieg, what's your real name?"
"Dennis Jones."
"A prizefighter named Dennis? She laughed. "First time in history." She finally worked the laces loose and gripped the glove, but before she yanked if off, her gaze came up. She drilled me with those eyes. "I haven't stumbled upon a loser, have I?"
She might have, all right. I tried to growl, but my voice was still serrated. "Once you've got my glove off, don't let me keep you from the rest of your life."
She nodded, more to herself. She pulled the glove from my hand, and was about to rise, and I knew I'd never see her again, but then she looked at my taped fist.
"What's that in your hand?" she asked, pointing.
"It's ten dollars," I replied.
She reached over to open my fingers. Then she lifted out the roll and held it up like a trophy. She sounded like a district attorney. "It's a roll of quarters."
"Like I said, ten dollars."
She exclaimed, "You had a roll of quarters inside your glove."
"Didn't do me much good, did it?"
Her laugh rolled out of her, pouring over me and filling the dressing room. And then she stared at me some more. Up and down, my shoulders and arms, my legs, my belly, my battered face.
Her expression was of a schemer. "Maybe you'll do, after all."
I heard a crackling, as if electricity were jumping pole to pole, a sound that raised the hair on my neck. The air around the woman began shimmering and sparkling, throwing off tiny crimson and sapphire and gold particles, small lightning bolts and tiny comets. The air was shot with undulating colors, an aurora borealis surrounding her. The tang of ozone curled under my nostrils. She smiled at me and currents played about her face. Her eyes blazed blue.
I was hallucinating, surely. I had just taken a terrible beating to my head.
"Where are your clothes?" she asked, breaking the spell. The electric charges and colors faded to nothing. There she was again, just a woman, however peculiar.
When I nodded toward a locker, she opened it, took out my duds with two fingers like they might be contangious, then threw them back into the locker, keeping only my wallet.
She pulled me to my feet. "You come with me."
I tottered, pain coursing up and down, but she leaned into me, my arm over her shoulder, and she worked me toward the exit to the parking lot. She pushed open the door with her butt, then pulled me through. Weaving under my weight, she guided me across the lot.
She propped me up against her car, a black Mercedes sedan, then opened a back door. She shoved me inside. I hurt too much to resist. I sank into the seat. The smell of leather enveloped me.
She slid into the driver's seat, started the engine and off we went, the wheels squealing as we pulled away from Bowder's Hall and onto Xanadeaux's main street.
I was being rescued or kidnapped. I didn't know which.
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