Undercard

by David Albertyn

  She turns to him, frustrated, wanting to come up with a clever lie or half-truth to deflect the question but instinctively being forthright, which frustrates her even more. “I was a bench player my whole career. I was never going to be a starter. The money’s not great in women’s sports, for most of us at least, even if the work is hard as hell, and I was thinking I might try to have a baby . . . What are you up to these days, Ricky?”

  “Shit, Naomi, you know I got like ten different hustles, don’t you? So you and Tara are tight these days, right?”

  “Yeah, we’re close,” she says.

  He nods knowingly. “What do you think about her?”

  “What do I think about Tara?” What is wrong with this guy?

  “Yeah. You think she’s —” He shimmies his shoulders. “— looking for a new guy, maybe?”

  Naomi stares at him. “Are you serious?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “You?”

  “Well, you don’t got to be mean about it.”

  “I’m sorry.” She can’t curb her giggles. “Did you meet her last guy?”

  “Couple times. Why?”

  She looks at him sideways. “He’s like the complete opposite of you in every way.”

  “Okay. Okay. Well . . . well . . . it didn’t work. It didn’t work with him, Naomi, how you like that? You trying to bring me down, you actually just making me more confident. You’re making me more confident.”

  “Oh, is that what I’m doing? I’m glad. I’m glad that’s what I’m doing.”

  “’Cause he’s the opposite o’ me — you just said it — he’s the opposite o’ me, and she don’t like him. So maybe — maybe — I’m the guy she’s been waiting for.”

  She had control of herself but this sends her into new bouts of laughter. “No one’s been waiting for you, Ricky.”

  He sucks his teeth and shakes his head. “You are just straight-up cold.”

  “I’m sorry. I really am. I’m sorry. I know you’re a good guy. I know you are. And you know what . . . you’ve convinced me. I think Tara would really like to go out wi— I’m sorry, I can’t get through it with a straight face. You’re just not her type, Ricky! You are a good guy, but you’re not her type. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  He shrinks into silence and she focuses on the ring again. The announcer climbs between the ropes, a microphone in hand.

  “Could you put in a good word for me?”

  She turns to Ricky, flabbergasted.

  “Please,” he adds.

  “Don’t give me no puppy dog eyes, okay? Do you even like Tara, or is she just the next prospect on your list?”

  “Are those two things mutually exclusive?”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “No, I’m playing, I like her. I genuinely like her. You want me to bare my soul? You want me to get all vulnerable? I want to be with her. I want —”

  The lights cut out. A spotlight opens on the tunnel entrance. This is it, she thinks. Despite her quickening nerves, she grins.

  “I want a rela—”

  “Not now, Ricky. Antoine’s coming.”

  7:56 p.m.

  “It’s time,” says the event handler as she sticks her head inside the dressing room. She has on a headset and carries a tablet. Antoine looks up at her. It’s time.

  He turns from the door and spreads his arms like he’s being crucified. Alejandro slips on his shimmering black robe. On the back, the head of a coyote, mouth open, fangs bared. The robe’s hood hangs low over Antoine’s face, leaving only his jawline visible beyond its shadow.

  Gloves on, he pounds the fists of Alejandro, of Carlos, and of his cutman, Simón. They nod to him, their faces grim, expressions sombre, but their eyes are filled with devotion and belief. He looks out the door and sees Keenan waiting in his ridiculous fake beard. Keenan nods to him with an uncertain smile of encouragement, but Antoine isn’t greeting anyone right now — especially not Keenan.

  Out in the tunnel, surrounded by his security detail and handlers, Antoine walks with swagger and purpose down the halls of the Reef arena. Even here, behind the scenes, the walls are sea blue and lagoon turquoise, stormy grey and seaweed green, the colours flowing and blending in waves. Hanging on these watery walls are paintings of the fighters who have won in this stadium, great champions immortalized with stylized brushstrokes. Hopkins, Ward, Mayweather, Suarez, Gibbons. Antoine doesn’t pause to look at the paintings. He doesn’t care who or what came before him. For Antoine Deco, the history of boxing begins and ends with this fight.

  The tunnel bends and up ahead he sees the opening to the arena. It is black, dotted with camera flashes, winking stars in the vast expanse of space. For all Antoine’s recent success, this is his biggest stage yet.

  He steps from the tunnel into the cavernous space of the arena. There is a roar from the crowd. Undercard, underdog, underestimated, he is still the hometown fighter, the object of their support. With the spotlight on him and the rest of the lights off, he can see the crowd only as silhouettes. But he can feel them. Their energy, the energy of thousands, and he feels like he could burst into flame. There is music playing, a reggaeton track his team supplied. He can hardly hear it over the din of the crowd.

  Inside the ring now. He doesn’t recall climbing through the ropes, which worries him. Stay here, Antoine, a voice inside him says. All the world could be watching, but it doesn’t change what you have to do. Stay here.

  You didn’t come here for this, he thinks. This is just another step forward. Stay focused. Do what you have to do. Execute.

  He leans back into his corner, spreads his arms wide over the ropes, and sneers with disdainful confidence.

  9

  8:05 p.m.

  Tyron thinks that Antoine’s entrance is good but Konitsyn’s is better. Yes, Antoine looks like an athletic grim reaper in his sleeveless robe, carved bronze arms and black tattoos on full display, but Kolya “Clayface” Konitsyn looks like a champion.

  His entourage is almost twenty people. It includes a world-famous rapper and a world-famous actor, not to mention two world-famous trainers and one of the biggest promoters in the sport. The Slavic-looking men on either side of him are giants, bearded monsters who glare at the crowd and the TV cameras, daring anyone to make a move on their champion. The entire entourage wear grey T-shirts with Clayface emblazoned in big auburn letters above an image of the Batman villain who inspired the name: a hideous creature with hands morphed into sledgehammers, soulless white eyes, and a wide, pugnacious grin.

  Konitsyn is so polished he almost shines. His body has been shaved clean, as has his famously indestructible chin. His straight hair has a plain, traditional cut, not too long, not too short, brushed to one side. His wide eyes exudes both benevolence and smugness. His skin is stretched taut over sinuous muscles and rope-like tendons. His abs, without a sliver of fat, are nevertheless wide and thick, the engine in the twisting of his torso. He is known for knockouts — nineteen in a row and looking for his twentieth. The man has fists and a face of clay. He has never lost. He smiles at the camera like a campaigning politician, and it is hard to imagine anyone that confident ever losing.

  Antoine looks menacing, but Clayface looks formidable.

  Tyron learns of Konitsyn’s history from the television commentators. With the match involving a local fighter, and with the Gibbons-Suarez showdown impending, the bar has turned off its music and turned up the volume on the TVs.

  “It is clear that nobody wants to fight him,” one of the commentators says of Clayface. “We now know that two fighters ranked ahead of Dex Deco were given the opportunity to be part of the biggest event in our sport, and they turned it down. It’s a big payday but it’s just not worth it to suffer the kind of trauma Konitsyn inflicts on his opponents. Credit to Deco for putting himself in harm’s way, and giving
himself a shot at a potential title fight, if he can pull off the upset . . . But what an upset it would be.”

  “Most definitely,” says a younger man, with a gruff, staccato cadence. “I like Antoine Deco. I like him a lot. He’s a great fighter. He’s got great speed, great hands, great defence. He’s worked hard to reinvent himself after incarceration. But no one, so far, has been able to withstand the power of Clayface, and as good as Dex is, I don’t see that changing tonight.”

  Tyron balls his own knuckles into a fist. He is amazed that Antoine has done it, made it to the pinnacle, beneath the bright lights and the flashing cameras, what they all dreamed of as kids. He still can’t quite believe it, how far Antoine has come.

  But then, look at Naomi and all she’s accomplished. Look at Keenan, and how far he’s fallen. It’s been a long road for all of us, he thinks. A long road. But where is the road taking us?

  Tyron doesn’t think Antoine will win. How could someone he used to whoop beat a title contender? Doesn’t seem possible. He even wonders if Antoine will make it out alive, judging by each new detail he learns of Konitsyn. It seems that every middleweight is ducking the man, including the belt holders in the division, which is why he has yet to climb to the very top. Antoine is the only one to jump at the opportunity to fight this knockout machine.

  Tyron doesn’t want to watch his former foster brother be beaten to a pulp. Lord knows, he’s seen too many disfigured bodies. Nevertheless it surprises him, this residual fraternal concern. For years he thought that the next time he heard Antoine’s name would be to learn that he was dead, and Tyron had accepted that, long ago. Instead, here Antoine is, against all odds, a success. Tyron wonders what Terrence and Viola would make of it.

  They would be proud of their son, he thinks. But worried for him, like Tyron worries now.

  The commentators quiet down as the sonorous voice of the announcer booms across the chic sports bar. “Next is a ten-round middleweight clash between two of the fastest-rising stars in their division. Our first combatant, fighting out of the red corner, wearing black and gold, officially weighing in at 159 pounds, his professional record: twenty-five victories, fifteen by way of knockout, and only three defeats. From Las Vegas, Nevada, on a fourteen-match win streak, Antoine ‘Dex’ Deco!”

  The crowd in both the bar and the arena erupts. Antoine doesn’t raise a glove. He doesn’t nod his head. He simply stands in his corner, staring at Konitsyn.

  Despite how certain Antoine looks, his opponent was born for this moment. Came from a family of boxers. A star from the beginning. Scouted, trained, and groomed to be the best.

  “And his opponent, fighting out of the blue corner, wearing white, and officially weighing in at 159 pounds, his professional record: twenty-seven victories, twenty-four by knockout, with zero defeats. From Tashkent, Uzbekistan, nineteen knockouts in a row, Nikolai ‘Kolya’ ‘Clayface’ Konitsyn!”

  Tyron is unsure if Antoine does have the support of the hometown crowd. Their cheering and applause for Clayface is at least equal to what it had been for Antoine; they know who is on the path to mega-stardom, best to get on the bandwagon now.

  The referee calls the fighters to the centre of the ring. As he recaps the rules, they stare each other down. Clayface’s smugness is gone. Eyes deadened, he looks like an assassin. They are both five-ten, both weighed in at 159 pounds although both are heavier now, and the difference in reach is negligible. Apart from the difference in skin tone, and the addition of Antoine’s gang and prison tattoos, their bodies look similar, though Antoine’s legs are slightly thicker and Clayface is heavier on top. Antoine also has more veins branching across the surface of his flesh. As for their faces, Antoine’s, shaded in stubble, is longer, more gaunt, and his brow is low, slanting up to his buzzed black hair. Clayface, clean-shaven, has a high, flat forehead and a thin, bow-shaped mouth. Both have thick noses, flattened more than a few times, but neither is misshapen. There seems a beam between their eyes, a meeting of lethal intent. Each looks like he has killed a man before, and the longer Tyron watches them, the more likely that seems. He cannot imagine any co-operation between them, but when the referee tells them to touch gloves, they do — a quick pound, the gaze between them unfaltering.

  Then they are back in their corners, and Tyron finds that his mouth is dry. The bell dings.

  8:20 p.m.

  Naomi leans forward, fingers digging deep into her thighs, and wishes she were closer. Not that much has happened yet. Two rounds of Konitsyn stalking Antoine around the ring in patient, calculated steps, feet never crossing — front foot up, back foot up, front foot up, back foot up — while Antoine is the opposite, springing backward, darting forward, fists flashing then defending. But for all Antoine’s activity he has not connected cleanly on anything — too wary to get in close, which Naomi can understand. Even from this distance, she can see how explosively Konitsyn can strike. Not on his jab feelers. Or on his feints to set up the real combination. But when he truly attacks, so sudden and powerful, it is preternatural. Each time he does it, her breath catches. But Antoine’s escapes are also animalistic and disconcertingly fast. Until an exchange when he is not fast enough.

  It happens in the third round. Konitsyn catches Antoine with a right hook to the jaw. A glancing blow, but enough to make Antoine stumble as he retreats, enough to make the crowd gasp and rise halfway to their feet, enough to make Naomi wince as if it is she who has been struck. Konitsyn rushes in for the kill. He sidesteps quickly to keep Antoine boxed in near the corner, and then he launches a barrage of punches. His fists are remarkably accurate. Each one seems to find the only hole in Antoine’s defence. Body. Face. Body. Clean shots getting through. And then Antoine slips a punch and connects on an uppercut to Konitsyn’s jaw. The man’s neck arches all the way back; his chin shoots skyward.

  The crowd pops all the way to their feet and cheers. There are none louder than Naomi. “Yes! Yesss!” she screams. “Wooo, Antoine!”

  He advances now as Konitsyn retreats. The favourite is not as agile as Antoine, and yet his defence with his gloves is near impregnable. Antoine throws combinations with vicious speed, his entire body rotating into them, but few punches get through. Then Konitsyn comes back with another attack of his own and the blows rain down, both fighters on the offensive. The crowd grows more raucous. There is a loud clap, and ten seconds of furious fighting later, the bell rings.

  8:23 p.m.

  The bell rings. Antoine bounces backward and turns halfway toward his corner, eyes lingering on his opponent. The man gives him a tiny nod of approval, commending him for that final exchange.

  Save your praise, Antoine thinks. You don’t know me.

  Sitting in his corner, Antoine tries not to gasp. His opponent is fast. He’d figured he would be but had hoped he was wrong. And Konitsyn can hit. It was all anyone could talk about before the fight, the cinder blocks in his gloves, and they were right: that hook did its damage. And a few of those jabs in the corner too. Not good to be hazy this early, Antoine thinks.

  He blinks his eyes, hoping that will clear them. Simón pours water over his head while Alejandro rubs petroleum jelly over his face. The actions revive him a little. He can also feel oxygen returning to his lungs and spreading into his shoulders. But it is too soon, the haze in the eyes, the burning in the chest, the lactic acid in the limbs. The pace is so much quicker than every other fight he has had. Attacking, defending, everything. Antoine needs something else. Something to separate himself. Otherwise his opponent is too strong. His technique too solid. Body blows don’t do much against layer after layer of wrought-iron flesh. And that’s when the shots get through. Is there enough time to tenderize it? he wonders. Got to try, regardless of outcome. An investment that has to be made.

  Got to take the fucker’s head too, he thinks. Use the head to set up the body. He felt that uppercut. Didn’t know I could pop like that.

  This is Antoine’s b
oxing obsession. Increasing his power. Between every fight he has raised his level. Tried to squeeze out every joule of strength he possesses. He can hit harder than ever, a true power-puncher now, to complement his defensive prowess. But even with his power additions it is not enough, he knows. His enemy is too good.

  Got to take his legs out. Keep him moving. Never let him rest. The body, the head, the legs, break him down. Forget the score, just break the pendejo down.

  He frowns, foreseeing the rest of the fight. Still not enough. Got to do it early, he thinks. The secret juice. Got to drink it now. Can’t wait till the sixth round.

  Antoine’s routine is to wait till the midpoint of a fight before he calls up the memory of his father’s murder. Or more specifically, the memory of his failure to protect his father from murder. The memory of his cowardice. It’s like being burned alive.

  When his opponents hit the wall, he is a demon. When they start to slow, he is faster than ever. When their will falters, he lusts for blood.

  True, he hates himself for days afterward when he opens this pit of self-loathing. And the fire it ignites burns away every last bit of fuel in him, so that it’s often weeks before he fully recovers. But it is separation — the holy grail when it comes to sports. This memory, the well of rage, is separation from his competition.

  I won’t sustain it, though, he thinks, as the referee calls time and Antoine pops back up to his feet.

  His enemy advances, gloves up, cold determination in his pale, ghost-like eyes.

  If you fade, you fade. Now is the time. No point waiting till you’re knocked out.

  Antoine slips a punch, darts forward, fires a jab and a straight right. Springs back and skips to the side.

  Coward, Antoine thinks. You let your father die.

  8:26 p.m.