Soul Standard

by Richard Thomas

  Still on tiptoes, I make my way around the bed, stepping extra slow so I don’t kick something and startle her. I lower my body down beside her. A hundred thousand feathers are simultaneously plucked from my skin. Her body radiates heat and I curl beside her like a cat, not touching but close enough that I can inhale her. Long-dormant lobes of my brain light up. I hold it in for a moment, exhale when she does, matching our breathing. Strands of hair tickle my nose, and I remember the early morning sunlight in our first apartment turning those hairs electric, my face nestled in the crook where her neck slopes into her shoulders, where she loved to be kissed. My cells scream out for her and I loop my arm over her chest, skin on fire as soon as it touches hers and a scream pierces the night, sucking air from my lungs.

  Palms slam on my chest. Nails rake across my face, a corner snagging in the woven thread. Feet rain down on my thighs.

  I say it’s okay it’s okay it’s me so fast and so many times that it loses all meaning and I have to wonder if there was any in the first place. Her body is a random assortment of thrashing limbs and her fist tags me in the eye before I’m able to cinch her arms against her chest, white noise in her ear. Aftershocks run through her body. I tighten after each one, make the white noise louder until her raging ocean is a windy lake, lay her back in bed and swaddle the sheets around her torso so she’ll feel secure and be able to sleep.

  When her breathing has returned to a normal rhythm, I make my way back to the living room, grab my boots and jacket, and head out into the night.

  A man comes to me on the corner, starts to ask, do you know where the train—and I uncork a vicious right that unhinges his jaw, a left, a right, a left, and on and on, and it’s only the warm pool of piss at my knee that brings me back to the frozen sidewalk, to the lump beneath me, sputtering blood and breath. I grab a newspaper from a nearby bench, press on his cheeks like I’d actually be able to stop the bleeding, then hurry away.

  I peel back a strip of tape, tighten it around my palm and throw a half-speed jab. Old Man Shirley hasn’t shown his mug yet, but I asked Tug three times to bring him in for me. A double stock of supplies sits in my bag, but if one of the invalids pulls my name from a hat, none of that preparation will matter when they splash saline on my gushing forehead instead of 1:1000. Still, I have some variation of faith in Tug. He needs to make his money, after all.

  Ropes of scars crawl across my chest, the puckers of extracted thread still tinted red. The cuts themselves look healed enough though, and I hope to fuck they won’t split with a hard right. Another round of tape and my left feels stable, ready.

  For a flash I see Mona rounding the corner, pills of my cheek dried beneath her fingernails, her dress long and flowing and pristine white. I blink and focus on wrapping my right when her voice sings out.

  “Boa sorte, meu guerreiro.”

  I tip my head up. She sways back and forth, the hem of her sapphire dress fluttering when she moves.

  “A little overdressed, aren’t you?”

  She shrugs. “It’s a special night.”

  I try to get a read on her intention, on whether Sal coerced her into forcing my hand or if she’s honestly excited for me, but keep getting distracted by the sight of her in that dress. “Right. Forgot.”

  She frowns. “That’s the best you can do?”

  Tape travels twice around my wrist, knuckles, fist flexing, muscles manipulating flesh. “You’re stunning.”

  A short curtsy and she says thank you. “How do you feel?”

  I tear the last strip with my teeth, smooth it down and stand, throw a few combinations at the meat locker. I bounce on my toes. “Feel ready.”

  “Do you think you’ll win?” Her look isn’t guarded, nor searching. She’s not blank-faced, but doesn’t have any discernible expression. Her face is a non-face. None of this makes me feel any better about Sal’s offer. Not even offer: demand.

  I come to rest on my heels, letting her question echo. “I don’t know.”

  “I thought you were the best fighter around? Isn’t that what you said?”

  I bend down and grab my ankles, not so much to stretch as to avoid her for a moment. I tell her that best is always relative. “It only depends on the night.”

  She leans forward, presses her soft lips to my stubbled cheek, inhales through her nose, exhales, inhales again, then pulls back. She leaves a hand on my forearm, her fingers just holding an iced drink it feels like, looks straight into my eyes, into the gray matter behind, the ridges where fantasies of me and her lurk.

  “If you’re not the best tonight, don’t get yourself killed.” She squeezes my arm. “If you are, just don’t kill him.”

  She gives me a quick kiss on the lips that lingers long after she’s gone.

  Making my way down the hallway, I focus on my footwork, keeping my feet moving, never crossing over, skipping around him, staying out of his range. My hands fly in violent bursts, fingers cupped lightly. Waist bends, slips left, dodges right. Elbows drop, pinch in, knock away blade shots and lye fists.

  Individual people in the crowd are now visible. From my limited viewpoint, it looks like the warehouse is already full. I throw my fists forward, keep shuffling to the ring.

  Clancy snags me before I exit the hallway, lays his hand on my shoulder. In his left is another eggplant bottle. “That little one don’t exist anymore.” When I start to say there is no little one, he shakes his head and repeats himself. “It’s just you and that boy out there. Nothing else exists outside you two. Get it all out of your head, okay?”

  I step into the warehouse proper and the sheer volume of people and their noise makes my hair stand on end. Clancy and I make our way down the roped-off gutter from the quarters to the ring. A glass bottle breaks behind me, and it’s nice to know this shit has started already. I look to Clancy and see both his hands are free. Twenty feet from the empty ring, just the tops of heads on the opposite side. I catch a look from the Indian sitting in the crowd. He manages to weakly tip his hat with the arm I’d damaged. I make it to the corner and Shirley comes from around the other side of the ring. He claps my shoulder, asks how I feel.

  “I don’t.”

  As I climb up into the ring with the light shining down on me and all these people watching, I’m overwhelmed by a crushing loneliness that Mona isn’t here to watch, even just once, to comment on the fluid lines of punches or how muscles striate into stunning geometrics during an uppercut. All of these anonymous faces have seen my primal self, my self stripped bare of all pretensions and defenses, my most honest self. They know more of my soul than my own wife.

  And then I see Carissa, sitting in the third row, literally on the edge of her seat. She claps maniacally, her face radiating in some way I’ve never seen. Not like when she sings, nor when she’s removing body parts. Something about it that’s pure, if that’s even the right word for it. Transcendent, maybe. I wink at her and she points, claps harder. Two rows behind her, Tug lounges in a double seat, nods down to her and smirks. I turn to the middle of the ring as the other ropes spread, and into the ring steps Ezekiel.

  Shirley grabs me and slaps my face before coating my forehead in petroleum jelly. “Keep moving, keep tight, and don’t get hit.”

  “That’s your game plan?”

  “You got something better?”

  The ref calls for both fighters. I straighten my back walking out. We meet in the center, the ref giving his normal spiel that no one listens to. Ezekiel extends a taped hand to me.

  “I been waiting long time for this,” he says. “It’s a privilege to face you, Mr. Marcel.”

  I nod, look at his hand enveloping mine. “Same, kid. Same.”

  “Don’t you worry. I’m up. I’m all up.”

  “Good.” I let my arms hang loose, feel the crowd drift away until it’s only Ezekiel and me, the bare light warming our skin. Our fists wrapped in pristine ceremonial garb. Our brows scarred by other men whose spirits find solace in swollen faces and broken jaws. Who bap
tize themselves in split cheeks, take the Eucharist of dislodged teeth. Ezekiel shakes my hand again, says best of luck to you, Mr. Marcel.

  The bell clangs and his fists are cocked before I can blink. He doesn’t throw one, though, as mine are still at my sides. Instead he nods at them, tells me to raise them and fight.

  I take a step back, throw my neck side to side, and flex my fingers. I bring my fists to my face and advance.

  His jab sends shockwaves through my chest. My organs vibrate at a low frequency when he lands a cross. I manage to turn at the last second and take most of it on my shoulder. I throw two cheap lefts, neither close to landing, and with my arm extended and torso open, he strikes with a pair of uppercuts.

  From the canvas, I can see Sal, sitting half a dozen seats from Carissa. He smiles and claps, as if he’s got me all figured out, and what falls from his mouth is the Gospel we feast upon. Salvadore, the savior. His fucking Christian name is Marshall, so says Clancy. The ref counts five, six. Get up, Ezekiel screams. Sal looks over to Carissa, back to me, claps even harder. I bring my knuckles under me and push myself to my feet. The ring tilts for a second, levels itself. The ref snaps his fingers in front of my face, asks if I can continue. I push him aside, approach Ezekiel.

  He is no longer a teenager. His face is wood contoured from years of exposure, his fists like chunks of rock collected in metal nets. I slip a jab and counter with my own, followed by a cross that skips off his shoulder. We circle, keeping to the balls of our feet, bouncing and swaying, staying limber to strike with a quickness, my hip twisting and powering a fist to his face. He eats my knuckle, stumbles back for a second, then rights himself. Smiles, his teeth rimmed red. Quicker now, he steps forward, unleashing a fury of cross-jab combinations. I block the first two—left-right, left-right—but he switches orientation with a preternatural fluidity that I can’t bring my arms over fast enough and my side explodes in colored dots. I hunch over, guarding the area while pushing him away with my left. Let the blood settle before I try to stand and stretch the organs back to their place.

  I should go down. Get Carissa free from here. If I were in a position to leave, I wouldn’t be here to begin with.

  Cautious short-range jabs protect his face. He circles me, prodding and poking more than attacking. His hesitation opens up two slight windows, enough for me to sink a jab and uppercut into the small bit of soft tissue the boy has. The second one brings a grunt and moan, and the bell rings before he can counter.

  Two more rounds and I’ll go down. I can’t handle watching another disintegration like Mona. In my fists is Carissa’s future, the future Mona should’ve had but never will. Two more rounds and I’ll lie down.

  Shirley tosses water down my shorts.

  “I’m still alert. Christ, save it for later.”

  “Just making sure.”

  As he tends to the few tape burns on my forehead, I ask for any advice.

  “Stay on your feet,” but he says it more like a question than answer.

  I look to the side, over to Carissa, whose throat is elongated and flushed red. I imagine her twenty years older, hair a mixture of ash and mahogany, wrists swollen by free drinks.

  The bells ring. The punches misshape bodies. The blood leaks and sweat shatters. The rounds pass. He splits my lip with a sharp cross in the third. At the end of the fifth, I sink two shots into the right side of his face. We’re sent to our corners for the break, and I catch Sal leaning over Carissa, whispering in her ear. I squint to see better but can’t decipher her expression. When Ezekiel returns for the sixth, he has a dripping slash below his eyelid. Between every round, I check over to Carissa, who continues to cheer and clap. Two more rounds and I’m done.

  At the opening of the ninth, Ezekiel rallies from the bell, unleashing every combination his trainer has ever shown him. Two minutes in, he bursts my chest open with a series of glancing blows, none landing squarely but each with so much power it tears the newborn skin from my body. My chest is slick with blood. He attacks again. I slip each shot, not landing any on him but avoiding him doing serious damage to my body, until I tire for a step too long and he throws an unholy uppercut, knuckle tearing from my navel nearly to my collarbone. As he returns to stance, a crinkled ribbon of skin hangs from his fist.

  The ref sends us to our corners. Before I’m even sitting, Shirley’s pressing gauze against me, applying adrenaline and Avitene and rubber cement straight from a glass bottle. I lean back on the rope and my gaze falls to the side. The crowd flickers in and out of focus. I raise my head to look at Carissa even though it feels like the weight will snap my neck in two. The ref calls for us. There’s something resembling a crucified snake on my red-smeared chest.

  Shirley puts his hands under my jaw. “You don’t have to go out.”

  Balancing on the ropes, I bring myself to my feet.

  “Just please don’t get hit in the chest,” he says. “It will not be good. Trust me.”

  I approach him in the center. Some dangerous type of euphoria flows through my veins. I lift my hands and they are weightless. They are autonomous, they are someone else’s hands, someone’s I stole with Carissa. One more round.

  Ezekiel surveys me as I catalog the damage I’ve done to him: bottom lip split in two and swollen like baby’s arms, an eye that is so black it’s blue with a steady stream of blood flowing over lumps of cement and coagulant, a small lump on his left side, the protruding end of a dislocated rib, an empty black gap between blood-caked teeth where the gum now breathes freely, the ring and pinkie finger of his left hand bent the wrong way. I believe I’m better off than he is because I have all of my teeth, anyway.

  Despite all of this, he remains standing. He will not go down until I put him down. I will not go down until he puts me down. For a narrow second, I glance over toward Carissa and Sal and white spots bloom before me. I blink and duck his cross a few inches before it shatters my eye socket. I lash out with a right, pushing him back a step, and advance. He blocks every other punch, parries cross for cross, hook for hook. I feel his nub of rib when I land a quick left and the sound of breath leaving him cuts me. He throws a wild right that clips my jaw, spins me to the side.

  We both rise from defensive crouches using anything remaining inside our bodies. Hooks become arcs and jabs fade to pushes as blood and fluids drain from us. He wobbles before throwing a haymaker and I duck down, bring myself up leading with my right and connect with my whole body following. Clear vomit explodes from his mouth, his body curling then tipping, falling. I tumble forward but stay on my feet, stave off darkness to avoid a double KO if nothing else.

  He lies crumpled on the floor, his left leg twitching. I crouch forward, lay my hand on his neck to check the steady, if labored, pulse. I crawl to the ropes and work my way to the corner.

  The crowd is screaming. Shirley waddles through the rope and pulls me to my feet in a bear hug, throws my arm over his shoulder and drags me to the corner. I flop back against the piling while he tries to patch me up, keep me from losing too many fluids. People in the stands are jumping and screaming, reveling in the after-fight glow, and I search the crowd for more than fifteen seconds before getting a clear view, and see that Carissa’s seat is now empty.

  I slump against the meat locker and trace the contour of her face in my palm. The empty seat vibrates in my bones. Sliced wrappings laid beside me, I shudder at the image, her flayed skin draped around a room. Sal leaning over to her. Her screaming and cheering and clapping like a mad monkey.

  Something about that look, though. Like she’d known about the conversation the whole time she was back here and refused to bring it up. If she’d known, she certainly wouldn’t have stayed. I caught a glimpse of Sal in the crowd, which doesn’t mean one of his lackeys didn’t nab her, but I can’t remember the last time I saw her. Before the ninth? The seventh? It’s all a blur of adrenaline and dripping blood. She’d have to move quickly. Knowing her, she excused herself to the restroom in the middle of a vicious volley o
f punches, and snuck out to the alley, on her way to a better, more well-lit stage. She’s gone, but that’s good. That’s what she needed. What I needed.

  Using the bench as a lever to pull myself from the floor, I make my way up to Tug’s office. He’s facing the bracket when I walk in. I knock anyway so I won’t surprise him and catch a jumpy-fingered .357.

  “Yeah,” he says, waving his hand.

  “Came to collect.”

  He spins on his heels. “You are one brawling motherfucker. My god, man.”

  I shuffle over to his desk and let myself collapse in a chair. My legs throb from the few minutes of walking.

  “Jesus, I don’t know if we’ve seen one like that for—since ever, I guess. Shit,” he slurps from a tin, still pacing the brackets, “I get you two in here every other week, we can own half the damn City.”

  “I do this twice a month and I’ll be dead next week.” I stretch a cramp from my left shoulder. “I’m thinking about throwing it in after this, just doing one-offs.”

  He turns, frowns, and rests his hands on the back of the chair. “You’ll have a title to defend next time.”

  “I don’t give a fuck about the title. I get to win and Mona gets her help. This year. That’s all I need.”

  “What about your little sweetheart?”

  A long exhale, tired of repeating this, but at the same time sad I won’t be doing it any longer. “She’s just a friend, Tug. Just a friend.”

  “Don’t know how things happen up your way, but I don’t give a shit how nice my friends’ tits are, I don’t give anybody fifty grand. No. Thank. You.”