by Ed Lacy
“Less than twenty dollars. But don't worry, I'll see my husband. This is what I've been waiting for. I'll see Thomas and within a month, we'll be able to pay you.”
Bertha finished her coffee, lit a cigarette as she stood up. Reaching inside her dress top to adjust her bra straps, Bertha okayed herself in the mirror behind the counter, said, “Don't keep me waiting too long, May. I'm doing you a favor and counting on that dough to take me to Fresno in style; you know?” Bertha glanced at the few customers, started toward the door, then stopped to ask, “Didn't you once tell me your old man was a leatherpusher? Tommy Cork?”
“Irish Tommy Cork.”
“I seen him on TV just now. What a beating he took.”
May's thin face paled. Looking up at the greasy ceiling of the diner for a fast second, she said, “Maybe this is all God's will. Even the beating will work in with my plans.” Then she added, almost fiercely, “Tommy was a good boxer, real famous—once. I have clippings in my room I can show you.”
“Honey, I believe you. He's your old man, not mine. Look, I got a couple runs to make. So it's a deal now, about the furniture?”
“Absolutely. God bless you, Bertha.”
After the blonde left May went about her work in a small daze, thinking how she could get in touch with Tommy. Tomorrow she'd go over to the gym, somebody there would know where to reach him. Or maybe that bar he mentioned, if she could recall the name. She called over to Butch, “Is that job still open at Mac's place?”
“What job?”
“I overheard him telling you last night he needs a dishwasher-porter. I... I may know somebody who will want it.”
“That job will always be open,” Butch said. “Who but a wino will work for twenty bucks a week and grub? Even a lush only holds it for a week or two. Mac's going to get himself in a jam with the labor commission.”
“Still, it might be a start, for the right man,” May said, turning to wait on a customer.
At midnight the diner was fairly busy as many of the market men came in for “lunch.” At a quarter to one May was astonished to see Tommy walk in. She was cleaning the counter and motioned for him to take a stool at the far end. Talking thickly, due to his big lip and a few ryes, Tommy said, “May, honey, I have great news! Seems like I'm getting that break, at last. Be like old times soon.”
“Oh, Tommy, Tommy, this is a miracle,” she said, stroking his puffed face. “I have such fine news, tool The truth is, I was thinking all night of how I could get in touch with you. Does your face hurt much?”
“Pay my puss no mind, I had an off-night. But all that is changing, so is my luck. I said to myself I'll eat here and tell you the big news. I got a...”
“Good news, indeed! Eat while I talk to you. Are you hungry?”
“I'm starved, honey.”
“I'll fix you a bowl of thick soup and the hamburger is good, and fresh. With plenty of french fries, the way you always loved them. Then I'll... No, I'll burst if I don't tell you the news now! Tommy, we can be together again. I've found us an apartment!”
Butch, who was busy chewing a toothpick behind the cash register, glanced at May and the little man with the bruised face and battered suitcase, the animated way they were talking. He started over to see if May was having any trouble with this red-headed bum, when she raced down the raised duckboards behind the counter, told him, “That's my husband there. Fred, will you make him a very special thick hamburger, no onions, but lots of french fries? I can't get over it, Tommy showing up just when I was thinking about him!” May's sudden coloring, her excited eyes, startled Butch: she almost looked youthful.
May beamed at Tommy as he ate his soup—taken from the bottom of the pot so it was thick with meat and vegetables—and went through several rolls. She was especially happy to see he was still wearing his wedding ring. Butch even waited on a customer to give May time to be with Tommy. Butch was puzzled. While he vaguely knew she sometimes spoke of a husband, it was hard to imagine her falling for this hard-faced bum, a lush who looked as if he'd just come from a street brawl, not a gentle, religious woman like May.
Waiting for his hamburger, Tommy began, “May, it was like a dream. A rich guy...”
“No, when you're finished we'll talk. Tommy, what news, what sweet news!”
He winked. “Like you when you're excited, May. Makes you look even prettier than usual.”
“Now stop that blarney,” she said, pleased. “Does your lip hurt?”
“Naw. I was in against some strong, lucky kid who... Maybe that's over now, all these quickie bouts.”
“Yes, thank God it's over, darling,” May said as Butch called out the hamburger was ready.
Tommy was barely able to put the thick meat patty away and when May said, “The pies are so-so but the bread pudding is made here and good...” He held up a hand, told her, “Hon, I'm stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey now. It was a swell feed but I've had all I can eat.” Tommy pulled out a five dollar bill. “Here—and keep the change. I always tip beautiful waitresses big.”
“Nonsense. I... Tom, have you money?”
“This and a ten spot. But that's all going to change. May, I'm going to take you out of this stool joint, no more working for you. See, I got a new manager interested in me. A rich cat. Welters are all bums today, and with him staking me, and he has to have an in, why I'll be on top of...”
“Thomas Cork, you mean you're going to continue fighting?”
He blinked. “May, this is my break. Sure I'm going to fight, but for folding dough.”
“I thought... you said... it was over? I heard you took a bad licking tonight. Tom, you're no longer a kid. I thought you were done with fighting.”
“What am I telling you except about this new manager I'm to see tomorrow? He don't sound like a false alarm, and with him backing me, why...”
“Tom, listen to me. One of the girls here is going to California in a month. She has an apartment. It isn't much, one room really, but it's a real apartment. The rent isn't high and she's only asking a hundred and fifty dollars for the furniture. Of course it isn't worth that, but for these days it's a bargain. We have a month to raise the hundred and fifty.”
“Peanuts. One semi-final and I'll have enough to...”
“No! I don't want you to fight. And I don't want any more of your big empty talk either. Tom, you're done as a fighter, we both know it. Look at you, a kid beating you up. I don't want you ending up hurt or crazy, going blind.”
“May, that's no way to talk. I ain't bragging, but you know how good I am when I'm right.”
May nodded. “You were good in the ring, the best. But that's yesterday, today prelim kids are cutting you up. Maybe I mined all that for you, but...”
“Don't ever think that way, May. It wasn't you or...”
“I don't want to discuss it. That's all yesterday. Tom, I've been thinking a lot about us. When you're lonely you think. My sickness, the army, you away training so much, we never had our chance at happiness, really being man and wife. You know what's the key to everything? A home—an apartment! We got to have the same roof over our heads before we can start a thing. I'm sick to death of rooms, sharing a bath, keeping food on the window sill, using somebody else's furniture. We have to have a place of our own, an apartment that's ours, where we can live like normal humans. A room is only a cage, and the street our living room. But with a real apartment, where we can cook and live and... God has been gracious to us. We can have Bertha's apartment, if we can raise the hundred and fifty within a month. We must save about forty dollars a week. Now I usually make about thirty-five dollars in tips here. I'm paying eight for a room, so I can hustle together about twenty-five dollars a week. I know where you can get a dishwashing job. It don't pay much, only twenty dollars a week with meals. But it's a start.”
“May, baby, I was once a contender for the title. I'm a pug with the best left hand in the business, not a dishwasher.”
“For once you'll do what I say, and I won't
hear any more talk about fighting! I can't stand it. All the worry and fear. Tom, Tom, don't you understand, this apartment is a gift from Heaven, our last chance! Once we get the hundred and fifty up, then with the both of us working, we can easily pay the rent, in time put a little aside. We'll be together, have some... security. But you have to forget the ring. I can't carry this alone. You have to get a job!”
“You're playing us short, May. I want nothing more than to be with you. But twenty lousy bucks for washing some stinking dishes. May, I once fought Robinson. You know what the TV cut is on a main event in Bobby's club? At least a grand, after my purse is pieced off. I haven't got many years left to grab that kind of dough.”
“Tom, you haven't got any time left, for boxing. All I ask is you get a job, like any other husband does.”
“Sure, people are dying to give me work. I'll tell you something, before I got this break tonight I was ready to quit. I was so broke I did look for a job. Once glance at my face and they said no dice. Or they asked what my “work background” was—and just to be a lousy messenger. The moment I said I'd been a pug, you'd think I'd said thug. I even got a Social Security card so I could deliver telephone books for a few days. Over the weekends I deliver for a liquor store, pull down a few bucks in tips. Okay, that's only marking time, temporary. I'm Irish Tommy Cork, and I don't settle for being a greaseball dish jockey the rest of my life!”
“I don't want you to be one for the rest of your life either, but until we're settled, at least get the apartment, we need money coming in every week, money we can count on. Tom, keep the liquor store job, too. In a year, you can look around, or maybe become a counterman, or short-order cook or...”
“May, I can't lay off a year from the ring. I'd be...”
“Can't you forget boxing? Can't you understand what a home of our own will mean? The way we've been... existing... one miserable room after the other, the both of us living as strangers in a lonely world. It was living in rooms that made us fight and separate. Tommy, we're no longer kids. We don't have too much time left to be... us. What I'm trying to say is, we have to think of our happiness not of the ring, or of anything else. We have to start living.”
“Don't you think I want that? What you think I'm fighting for?”
“I suppose you are trying, in your own way, but... Oh, Tom, I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but we do have to act now, we don't find apartments we can afford every month. That's why you must take this job. Darling, I feel this is our last chance to live as we should. We've been apart so long that... that if we don't take this apartment... well, life is closing the door on us.”
“May, don't put it like that. We're not finished.”
“How else should I say it? That's how I feel. We must take the apartment.”
“If a guy who should have been—and will be—a big money fighter has to settle for being a lousy dishwasher, God might as well slam that door on me right now!”
May reached across the counter and slapped his braised cheek as she said, “It's blasphemy to talk of suicide, Thomas Cork!”
He stood up. Butch was walking slowly toward them behind the counter. Tommy said, “I seem to be wide open for a right tonight. Guess you might as well take your turn. May, I rushed here to tell you about how you'll be able to stop working. Live in a real apartment, maybe a hotel suite, have people waiting on you, for a change. For two years I been trying to get any kind of manager backing me. Now when I finally get this rich buff, you want me to give it up. That don't make sense, May.”
“God forgive me for striking you,” May said, sobbing. “You're talking dreams, Tom. What I'm saying is real, what we have to do now.”
“May, listen to me. If I can have one good year in the ring, one or two big paydays, I'll retire with ten or twenty grand in my kick. You're right, it is something I have to do now. I can't afford to wait even a week. Next time you see me I'll have a pocketful of dough, really set us up.”
Shaking her head, May covered her face with her hands and wept softly.
“It will come true this time, May, it has to—the luck of the Irish and this is the last throw of the dice. It's now or never for me, my last break.” Tommy wheeled around, saw Butch watching them, snarled, “What you want?”
“No trouble in here is what I want,” Butch said gently, his hands fondling a large soda bottle wrapped in a towel. He'd bounced plenty of men in his time—big men, even battled a few stick-up jaspers—but the look in Tommy's eyes made him uneasy. “I don't want you hitting her, in here.”
“I never struck May in my life. There's a fin on the counter, take out what I owe and give her the rest. And don't come around the counter or you'll get hurt.”
Tommy grabbed his suitcase, walked out fast.
TOMMY
He was dreaming. In the stuffy darkness of his narrow room it was impossible to see the smile on Tommy's rough face. He was seeing May when she was sixteen—the pretty, wistful face under the soft auburn hair, her body blossoming with delicate curves. He was reliving a scene on the stoop of the tenement. May's eyes were big with delight as she fondled the wrist watch he'd given her. Tommy, fighting amateur and bootleg pro bouts then, had won the match for flattening some wild kid in an uptown club in the first round. It was a night for firsts—the first watch May ever owned, the first any neighborhood girl had, and the first time she let him put his arm around her, right out on the stoop. May's hand wags on his back, gently stroking him... gently....
Arno was shaking Tommy, standing over the cot, careful not to touch the empty pint wine bottles on the floor. On a string hung across the room Tommy's ring togs were drying. Drunk or sober he always washed and took good care of his ring clothes. Jake was near the closed door, face screwed up with the smell of the room.
Tommy opened his eyes, tried to bring the darkness into focus. He sat up, holding his head with one hand, reached over with his left to snap on the one light. (In the old days when this had been the maid's room in the ancient apartment house, it wasn't thought necessary to give a servant more than one light. A window was out of the question.) Tommy's bloodshot eyes hit Arno's good overcoat,, traveled up to the plump face.
“How did you find me?”
From the door, Jake asked, “What makes you think you're hard to find, Pops?”
Tommy ran his tongue around his mouth, flexed his arms —he was sleeping in his heavy underwear—and belched loudly. “What time is it, Mr. Brewer?” Except for the big head he felt okay.
“A little after six p.m.” Arno daintily touched one of the dead soldiers on the floor with his shoe, said softly, “I see why you didn't call at my hotel.”
“Don't get the wrong idea,” Tommy said, his brains rusty as he tried to think straight. “I'm not a rumdum. I really meant to be at your hotel. But I had a... a... run-in with my wife, tried to lose myself in a bottle. I guess you're sour on me?”
Jake said, “Let's get out of here before I puke. I'd open the door but it smells worse in the hallway.”
Without turning his head, Arno said, “Shut up.” Brushing off a corner of the cot, he sat on the gray sheet. “I don't give up on things easily, Tommy. You ought to move out of this fleabag.”
Tommy split the soggy quiet of the room with another long belch. “Yeah? With what? I'm not living here out of choice, Mr. Brewer.”
Arno took out a tooled leather cigarette case, offered the pug one. When Tommy told him he didn't smoke, Arno lit a cigarette, blew out a thick cloud of smoke as if fumigating the room, said, “That's good. You certainly know more about training than I do. I don't mind you hitting the bottle, but not too often. If I take you on I expect you to be in shape—when I need you. Otherwise drinking is your own business.”
“I never touch the stuff,” Tommy mumbled. “It was the argument with my wife. She wants me to quit fighting.”
“That what you want, Irish?”
“Hell, no.”
“All right. As I told you last night, I have money, so managi
ng fighters is merely a hobby with me. Sign with me and I'll pay your room and board, buy you some clothes, give you modest spending coin. But don't think I'm a sucker; it will be a loan. I'll get it back from your purses.”
“Know what I took down last night? Nineteen bucks!”
Arno shrugged. “Since it's my money and my hobby, let me worry about it. When you fight for me, you'll be well paid.” He pulled a folded contract from his pocket, then counted out two hundred dollars—an imposing pile of five-dollar bills. “I want you to sign this, after you read it. Legally I won't be your manager of record, for reasons I'll explain some other time. But this states that I'm staking you, buying a sort of interest in your career. You agree to give me twenty per cent of your purses until the money I loan you is paid. It's legal. Show it to a lawyer, if you wish. Take this money and pay your rent here, buy a suit, and be at my hotel, the Southside, at nine in the morning. We're leaving to train in the country for a few weeks. Buying that?”
