Soul Standard

by Richard Thomas

  I’m stumbling at the Monolith again. He pulls his arm back and I step forward, land on his foot and stick two rights into his gut, sinking my knee into his. He tips back but he’s caught under my foot, and I dig down and try to ruin his chin with an uppercut. It skips off the side but sends him reeling.

  He reconstructs himself quickly, jutting out with a right. I slip it, find his kidney with two shots and as I set up to crush his jaw, I catch a flash and feel a stunning coldness spread through my cheek.

  I run my hand across my face and it’s deep red, wine mixed with cornstarch. So much it looks fake. I press fingertips to find the cuts and my index slips into my cheek. A jagged edge around the hole in my face. I turn to Shirley, like his confirmation will somehow make it okay. He’s already rushing through the ropes with gauze and adrenaline 1:1000 in his paws. He pushes me back into the corner. I swing around, lay a bead on the ref.

  “What the fuck was that? He stabbed me in the fucking face.” Shirley throws me back into the seat.

  “I couldn’t see what happened,” the ref says. The fucker won’t even look at me.

  “How much did they give you?”

  “Trainer, you have forty seconds.”

  “How much—” A fire blazes inside my skin.

  “Stop jawing so I can close you.” He presses my hand against the bandage, trying to dry it as much as possible for the Avitene. “He’s going to keep coming for you, I told you this.” A beige swatch in the middle of the red gauze. Detached skin. More stinging, Q-tips forged from fire. “Keep him at bay with a left. Couple quick ones. Wait till he pivots on his back foot, then slip. Hold this.” He drops a coil of black fishing line in my hand. “After you slip, clip his ear. He’ll bobble, so sink another two.”

  Pinpoints of bright white along my cheek. Skin stretched, pressed in and pulled out.

  “Remember, jaw first to make him wobble, then destroy his temple. Hit him till he stops twitching.” He pulls a lighter from his pocket, sets the flame under the line, thumbs the hot end into a flat stopper.

  “Ten seconds, trainer,” the ref says.

  I start to yell at him but Shirley smacks my ear, smashes a fistful of gauze on the side of my face and tells me to hold it while he winds tape around my head.

  “Time, trainer.”

  He kneels before me. “Keep him away. He’ll kill you, he gets a chance. There’s extra money on those.”

  I nod.

  “Now, trainer.”

  “Not till he stops twitching.” Shirley pulls me up. I catch a glimpse of the crowd over his shoulder. In the third row, Carissa stands with the rest of the bloodthirsty masses, screaming with her thin wrists waving above her head.

  The ref stops me, inspecting the tampon taped to my head. Speaking without looking at me, he says, “I’m not going to stop him.” He pushes down a loose end of tape. “I thought you should know that.”

  I tell him I appreciate the warning, then slam my forehead against his. A rainbow of dots float across the ring, scatter with a few blinks. The ref crumples on the canvas.

  What could pass as a smile materializes on the Monolith’s face. He nudges the ref out of the ring with his feet, not looking over the edge when he falls to the concrete floor.

  The primal window of advantage opens before me and as soon as I recognize it, I see a man grab Carissa’s arm, pull her to the aisle. One of Sal’s lackeys. My body flushes, the plug in my feet pulled and tossed aside. The Monolith turns to me, raises his hands, advances.

  I follow Shirley’s words, leading with lefts to keep him at a distance. When he tries a cross, I counter with my right. Twice more I connect with half-hearted shots, favoring repetition and placement over power. He doubles down and there’s a glow emanating from the back of his head, a soft yellow light like the kind I’d always heard precedes the long, quiet walk to death. I raise my fist back. No one will stop this fight. There’s extra money on death matches. He won’t see anything but blackness and an enveloping warmth.

  A soft jab on his shoulder, spinning him. Haymaker, death-dealer still cocked back, I wait for him to square up before I crush his jaw. Arcing blood from his mouth, a tooth twisting through the air. Another uppercut to his kidney, a flurry of hooks to his plexus, stealing his breath, keeping it for myself. The Monolith tries to stand, tries to breathe, but I collect all the rage of Carissa and Mona and focus it on his mouth. He tips to the side, jaw swaying loose, my hand dripping red. I pounce on him, lacing knuckle after knuckle into the soft separation between bone and flesh and bone. He tries to block, throws his hands up and spreads fire across my shoulder and chest. I shove them aside with an elbow and unleash an overhead right, crushing the bridge of his nose. His breath comes in great wet bubbles. Blood flings across me when he throws his head back, trying to keep his bearings and counter. I smear it across me, trying to wipe it away, and my finger catches.

  A long weeping slash across my chest. A dripping line down my shoulder. I look up at him, at the metal shard glinting on the underside of his palm.

  His hands raise before his face, elbows pinch in, but it’s more rote movement than a cohesive attack. I take two great bounds and use the momentum to drive my fist into his temple. Again. Again. Again. Again. My hand aches. Again. Again. My shoulder burns with broken glass and rust. Again. Again. His body creases at the waist, the elbows. Folds into a heaving mass of slippery red origami. Again. Again. There is no one to stop the fight. Again, and I feel a snap inside my hand.

  I roll off him, heart throbbing through my back pressed against the canvas. A pool of blood touches my arm. I try to raise my head, check for Carissa, but my body is broken and leaden, so I stare at the locust, perpetually circling the light.

  Needles dance across my fingertips, along the lifelines in my palms. The wooden bench rubs against the nubs of my spine. Arms crossed over my chest, seams of Avitene striating my skin.

  I have traded staring at one light for another. This one has a wire cage around it, though, and no locust. The barking crowd has dimmed, headed toward the train back home, toward bars to recount the way the Monolith’s jaw swung, toward a corner to find some girl and get out all the testosterone the violence stirred up. Down the hall, the door clangs shut. I have a sudden urge to get a drink with Clancy.

  After my fingers stop tingling, I pull myself upright, feel fluid lap against the inside of my skull. A click inside my hand when I move it. Feels like a broken pinkie, though I guess I’m lucky it’s not a metacarpal and I can tape it before the final bout. Rustling noise in the hallway. I push myself up off the bench, open the meat locker and pull out an old shirt. Unscrew the pipe with the wrench to wet the fabric. I set the sleeve between my teeth and peel back the bandage covering the hole in my face. Cool air stings the ragged edge. My jaw flexes, teeth feel like they’re bending outward, ready to snap. After the floating specks clear, I find a syringe of anesthetic and slide the needle under my skin.

  “You look like shit.”

  The quarters move in slow motion as I turn. She leans against my locker, pea coat draped over her, a green-and-white striped scarf tossed over her shoulder. Black bag clutched in her tiny fist. I nod and try not to smile, partly because it would tear my wound further, and partly because I can’t feel my face.

  “You should see the other guy.”

  “Oh, I did. He’s a peach.” Red rings around her eyes. Fingers weaving together, pulling apart, picking at dangling buttons. “You okay?”

  I laugh, then kneel down to keep from collapsing altogether. She comes over, crouches beside me, and pulls me close.

  “Sorry. Guess that should’ve been obvious.”

  “A little.” Old smoke and the hint of floral perfume on her. “You want to get a concha?”

  “Two, please.”

  I heft myself up to the bench, and she surveys my face. “He did a shitty job of closing this.”

  “He’s a hundred and five. What do you expect?”

  “Lay down and be quiet.” She folds
the shirt under my head, hangs her jacket on the locker door. Metal clinking in her bag. The light flickers inside its cage. Her face rises over me, a needle glimmering like a teardrop. “How much did you put in?”

  “Little more than half a syringe.”

  “Is it Lidocaine?”

  I nod.

  “You have more? For your chest?”

  I shake my head.

  “Sucks for you.”

  I nod.

  She threads the needle, leans over me, and goes to work. A blast of freckles on the bridge of her nose I never noticed. Her hair brushes my whole-cheek, sends a shock of electricity through my brain, lighting up lobes and crackling synapses in cortices long dormant, since before Mona’s attack. I let my tongue peek between my lips, touch the tips of her hair, taste her. Construct an idea of how her neck would taste, how the skin between hip and stomach would feel on my tongue, how her eyelids would depress beneath my lips.

  “What are you doing?” She pulls her head back, tucks her hair behind her ear.

  “I had something in my throat.”

  “You need to sit up?”

  I give a slight shake and she pokes the needle through my skin, pulls the thread taut, pinches flesh and pokes again, all the while humming to herself. A familiar tune, one I think she’s sung at the Gurney.

  “Are you all right?” I say.

  She purses her lips in concentration. “Fine. Why?”

  “You’ve been crying.”

  “I’m not crying.”

  “Then you’ve been slamming meth.”

  She looks to the side, pulls the thread taut again. Twice more and says she’s done, ties a knot. I begin to sit up and she presses a hand to my forehead. “You’ve still got two on your chest.”

  I lie back down, focus on the light again. “So what’s wrong?”

  “I get squeamish around blood.”

  “Right. Forgot.”

  “Cuts make me nauseated.”

  “You want to cut the shit and talk to me like a normal person?”

  She says this is going to hurt then pinches together folds of my chest and stabs the needle through.

  “Carissa.”

  “They extended my time.”

  “What?” I start to sit and she pushes me back down, more exasperated than compassionate.

  “‘Capitalized interest,’ they said. ‘It’s just business, sweetheart, so no need to take offense.’”

  I let go a long exhale and focus on the metal piercing my skin, the running sensation of thread pulled through my insides. “Can’t you pay them off?”

  “With what money?”

  “Don’t use money.”

  She holds the needle up, shakes it, gives me that favorite look of hers.

  “There’s got to be something you can give him. Trade him. Know any friends?” I gasp as she yanks on the thread too hard.

  She sighs. “You know Sal’s old school. How many people have you taken to the pig farms in the Outskirts?”

  “None.”

  “Well, the pigs squeal when they see him.” She pauses to clean the thread, thumbing off a glob of tacky blood that’s catching on skin. “They’ll never give up cash, even if it’s only wallpaper.”

  “What are you going to do? Keep working for him? Sing in a shitty parlor and wilt into a sad old fucker like the rest of them?”

  “I don’t know. Jump in front of a train?”

  “Really.”

  She slams her hands on my stomach, forgetting about the gaping ravine in my skin. “I don’t know, Marcel. What the fuck am I supposed to do? Walk the streets till I find fifty grand lying in a garbage can?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Can we not talk about this?”

  She leans over my chest, lips sucked in and eyebrows knitted into a severe V. I see her singing on a grand polished-hardwood stage, rouge velvet curtains cascading down either side, an archaic microphone before her scarlet lips. A satin dress the color of oceans I can only imagine undulating from her hips, masking her knotted leg as she pours herself into song after song. I see her, back knotted like her leg, limbs shriveling back into her body, disintegrating on a stool in the corner of the Gurney next to the guitar player and his arthritic hands. Cigarette ash matching her skin and hair. I see Mona sauntering down the Plantation’s drive, cherry blossoms and cascading hair. Her hands flitting over clay, nipping in and out of recesses, crevices, creating beauty from a mound of wet earth. I see her being dragged down the drive of the Plantation, escorts’ meaty hands clamped on her elbows, sets of black scabs scoring her forearms, dead skin under her fingernails. Those same hands polishing divots into the counters, the floors.

  “The purse for the championship is fifty grand.”

  “That’s lovely.” She doesn’t look up.

  I swallow, wince as the needle catches on a fold of scar tissue. “I could give you the money.”

  The stretching and poking stops. She looks up at me in disbelief or hesitation or caution. “You could do that?”

  Tapping footsteps pass behind us. I hear the rattle of Mona’s sculpting tools knocking against each other inside the rosewood box as she dusts the top, moves them aside to clean the shelf they sit on, her patterns and intensity never deviating, never diminishing. Throat clearing. I see Tug behind us, rustling a fingerprint-smeared envelope in his hands. He looks at Carissa leaned over me, pushes out his lips and nods. I tell him I’ll be up in a few minutes.

  My swollen hand envelops hers. “I could do that.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Beauty is a garden. Left untended it will wither and die.” I pat her hand. “And I’m not much for wallpaper anyway, so what else am I going to do with it?”

  Her lip disappears under her teeth, maybe trying to hide a smile or focus on something else to stem tears. She leans down, hair falling and brushing my chin, sweet breath covering my face. I let myself dissolve into her darkness. Her thin forearms press against my bare skin, her fingers gripping the back of my biceps, bringing me to her. Her teeth take my bottom lip between them, her tongue running the edge.

  Bright light, cool air. She wipes her face with the back of her hand, fumbles for the needle. Tells me, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t’ve. Twice she miscues the needle, her wrists trembling.

  I sink into the knobs of wood beneath me, let the caged light throw jagged shapes across the inside of my eyelids.

  “It’s going to be a sad day when one of them finally spills your brains,” Tug says. His usual denim shirt is now plaid flannel, though the stains and dried food is reminiscent. Bean and beer cans are the same. “I’m going to have a hard time maintaining the life I’ve become accustomed to if I don’t have people betting you’re finally going to get yours.”

  “Sorry to be a killjoy.” I touch the interwoven thread holding my cheek together. It feels like a child’s knitting project.

  He waves a dismissive hand. “On the plus side, Bishop, when the day finally does come, I’m wagering a whole flock on butterflies are going to come barreling out of there. Be like the final plague or something.”

  “As long as you can call the books on it, right?”

  He clucks his tongue, shoots me with his finger gun, says that’s why he loves having me around. With this, he slides the envelope across his desk to me. “I assumed you wanted cash?”

  “This is from today?” I give a quick laugh, smack the envelope on my hand. “And here you always tell me I’m an unprofitable model.”

  “You have me there, Bishop.” He pulls out another envelope, this one two inches thick. “Though this is for that other man.”

  “Oh.” I glance down at mine, which is thinner than a cigarette.

  “Might not have much left after he fixes up what you’ve imparted on him.”

  I raise mine in thanks, push back my chair.

  “You got a new cornerman?” He doesn’t bother to hide his smirk.

  “How so?”

  “Seen you around with that li
ttle darling, recently.”

  I look around the room because I don’t know what else to do. “Just a friend.”

  “Shit, wish I had friends like that.” He plunks his feet on his desk, craning his head back. “I can’t condone it, being a man of God and all, but if anyone deserves some tenderness, it’s you.” He nods to some vague point, a gesture I assume is supposed to indicate Mona.

  “She’s a friend, Tug.”

  “Try not to lose focus, is all I’m saying.” He leans forward, elbows resting on a wrinkled pile of photos, various grainy faces with ridged brows and cauliflowered ears, some with red slash marks, others with black checks. “You only got one more fight. I’d hate to see you go before that.”

  “Be hard to get envelopes like that without me, right?”

  Head bobbing side to side, he says, “Be careful. Eyes on the prize, yeah?”

  The chicken on my plate looks like it hadn’t eaten in more than a month before being cooked, and it didn’t have to be slaughtered so much as encouraged to jump under the axe. Sprigs of something I believe had once been rosemary jut from the breast at assorted angles. Gravy separates into grease and water as it soaks into the potatoes, but at least the potatoes now have some vague notion of moisture. Sliced beets are the one spot of color on the entire plate, but they’re discs of dyed leather from sitting in the oven for three hours.

  I scrape my teeth against the bone, partially to let none go to waste and partially to make the meat tender enough to swallow. The whole time my head is tilted to keep food from lodging inside the hole in my cheek. Mona stands at the sink, attacking the roasting pan with steel wool.

  “You sure you don’t want more?” I push the plate forward to get her to eat more, not that she’s in danger of wasting away. If I force anything else, I’ll throw up in my mouth and that’s bound to sting the shit out of my cheek.

  “Elias was over while you were out and we ate. The rosemary was a nice touch, I think.” She touches her fingertips to her wrist with a birdlike twitch, her skin tinted from handling beets. With no ceremony, she digs back into the pan. Steel wool scratches against metal and the skin along my spine turns gooseflesh.