Makes a clicking noise with his tongue, “This was the left hook that done it.”
Yeah, it was. And it probably hurts. I just don’t feel it yet.
Adrenaline hasn’t fully flushed from my system yet.
Once it does, I better be on the painkillers.
“Just get me to the hospital,” I say.
He pulls back, crosses his arms and shakes his head:
“Tell me first, what is it that you’re fighting for?”
I lower my head, no reply.
“It must be something because it used to be for you. You fought to fight yourself. When you were two and zero, fresh out, you told me you wanted to fight to be the best you could possibly be. Now I look at you and I see someone bruised up and broken, looking to blow it all.”
He grabs my forearm, my hands still wrapped in tape, “What. Are. You. Fighting. For?”
I look at my taped up hands.
I look down at the blue gloves hanging slack against the side of a nearby bench. I look at the locker room door, open ajar, not a single invading source, typically we’d have to keep it closed, locked, because every media personality would be clawing at the door, finding a way in, wanting a sound bite, something, anything, but now, I see an empty hall and the lingering nuance of stale laughter. At my expense, at my loss.
I look up at Spencer, the only person that cares about who I am, rather than who I fought so hard to be, and I…
I can’t.
I have no answer to that question.
Likely the most important question to be posed at this point of my life and career and I haven’t a clue.
I have lost focus, lost favor.
“I can’t answer that question.”
Spencer relents, but still manages a sigh that digs under my skin.
“Let’s get you to a hospital. God forbid you’d want to feel the magnitude of your decisions.”
He’s right. I’m quick to act but last to understand the effects of what I’ve done. By the time you read any of what I’ve said, I will have yet to fully comprehend the telling. I might tell you everything, more than I want to tell, and it won’t hit me as reality for weeks, months; it might never register as reality. That’s another scar on the surface of my being:
Incapable of keeping private and public life apart.
I don’t know how much they know about me.
They probably know the whole story.
You probably already know what’s going to happen.
You know where this is going, right?
Wish you could point me in the right direction.
LAUGHTER
A CHUCKLE
Not quite cheery, more like the clearing of one’s throat. A sweet feminine voice, made to be sweet because it’s her duty to take care of me. Nurse of many, nurse of few, tends to my wounds while holding my hand, checking my pulse, scribbling notes onto my chart.
How am I doing?
I’m on painkillers.
Right about now, I’m doing swell. If you’re asking about later, we don’t talk about later. We let everything that isn’t the dozy trance of “right now” slip by as nonessential.
The nurse notices that I’m awake, “How are they treating you?”
By “they” she means the pills.
“Swell,” I reply, slurring the word so that it sounds more like “shwellp.”
“Oh boy you don’t need any more.”
No I don’t.
But she gets me feeling good, asking me if I feel this, feel that, scribbling more onto my chart.
I do my best to strike up a conversation, “I used to go twelve rounds and still have enough energy to hit the bars for another twelve!”
That’s what I said. I can’t be sure it’s actually what she heard.
Again, the painkillers.
She smiles and giggles because that’s what she does, as part of her ‘cute nurse’ routine. Says something like, “A lesser man would have tapped out.”
Whatever that means.
I just don’t want her to keep scribbling in my chart.
“I used to see that left hook from a mile away. I used to be the one that threw the hook just so that they’d see it coming and duck. I used it to get them into a position where I could land an uppercut right under the chin. Left hook, left hook, pause, assess, uppercut while they block, block, weave, duck, impact.”
“My my,” pandering, being nice, because, why not?
“Those were the days when I could really throw a punch. Never went down though, never got them down to the canvas for more than a five count. Power but I have a chin. Had a chin. Cast-iron, I’d say. Now I can hear glass shatter whenever I take one to the jaw.”
More scribbling, not really listening, but the nurse is nice enough and who really listens to anyone anyway?
“I’m ‘Sugar’ Willem Floures. Got to mean something right?”
The nurse nods, “My mom used to watch every single one of your fights. She always bet on Sugar.”
“What about you?”
Not understanding my slurred speech, she seems to say, “You had one of the best win-streaks I’ve ever seen.”
Again I ask, “What about you?”
“Me? Oh I always bet on the other guy.”
She looks at me, must have some kind of grimace on my face because she chooses to explain herself, “Don’t get me wrong; I love watching a good Floures fight but I always bet on the underdog. I watched every fight hoping that you’d surprise yourself, catch one and go down for the knockout.”
“Then tonight’s fight was good then?”
Oh, now she hears me loud and clear. “If you want me to be honest, yes—I enjoyed the fight. Executioner looks just like you when you were just starting out and the league fights were in those high school stadiums and broadcast on cable TV.”
I want to defend myself but my guard is already down and the nurse managed to jab her way right into the most fragile depths of my ego.
Not that there’s a whole lot left to maintain.
I go quiet. She continues scribbling into the chart and for a brief moment I consider what she might be writing down, what must be so important that she sacrifices legibility for the speed of the scribble?
IS MY CONDITION REALLY THAT BAD?
There’s something I don’t want to think about right now, not while I’m on so much medication. Think about the wrong thing and it becomes all you can think about. So I’m thinking instead about what I might do as a counter, saying something that will somehow make her regret her choice to cheer for ‘Executioner.’
I garble my words, not quite sure what I’m trying to say, when Spencer walks into the hospital room, instructing the nurse to leave.
“Yes, sir, I must keep a log of—”
“That can happen later. He’ll be here all night.”
Spencer glares at the nurse. She looks at me, “You feel better, okay?” and quickly leaves the room. Door squeaks shut.
Spencer pulls a chair up to the left side of the hospital bed.
Sits down and leans forward, “Don’t you talk to anyone. How many times have I told you, huh?”
I close my eyes, letting the nameless force pull me under, into a deep sleep more preferable than listening to yet another lecture, but Spencer’s voice cuts deep enough to sever that tether, and I rise back up, eyes opening, looking, focusing, Spencer asking me what I told the nurse.
“Nothing, just good times.”
“Good times? That won’t cut it. What did you tell her?”
I take a moment to recall what I had said.
Sure, fine, I tell him. You don’t need to hear it a second time.
Spencer shakes his head, “You never learn do you? Do not talk to anyone when you are under the influence of anything.”
A younger version of me would ask why.
For Spencer’s sake, he doesn’t manage a younger version.
He’s stuck with old and busted.
Old and busted he can deal
with.
Doze through the lecture, about how I am susceptible to disclosure of information that could leak to the media, ruining the prefight promotional junkets, which is, according to Spencer (really, according to anyone but me; I loathe it; loathe it all), the fight before the fight.
THE LECTURE
Lecture about how a match is divided into two, maybe three if you count the post-fight conference.
1) The interviews, the meet-and-greets, the spotlights on sparring, method, strategy; the celebrity mingling, etc.
2) The actual fight, the fight that I thought this was really all about but I guess not; more and more these days it seems like this is an afterthought. Who really trains anymore?
3) That post-fight conference where the media grills you on your performance, like anyone really needs that after going twelve rounds.
On and on and on he’ll go and I need to follow him, agreeing at the end of every sentence.
THIS IS HOW IT GOES
KEY ELEMENTS TO A PROFESSIONAL FIGHT
But it goes, and eventually he will stop.
Things settle down and I get to enjoy a brief but lovely period of recuperation.
That is, unless Spencer doesn’t stop and proceeds to tell me:
“And you’re good for it.”
“Huh?” Good for what?
I already know, and I can feel that knot of dread already forming, twisting, coiling up, somewhere deep in my stomach.
“Executioner v. Sugar II. I signed the contract. Word should be reaching the media…” he looks at his wrist, not that he ever wore a watch, “right about now.” Stops, looks around the hospital for the first time, and then asks me, “Excited?”
Excited is not the word.
I let the effects of the painkillers pull me back under in the nonsense of a drug-laced consciousness. Temporary escape.
Last thing I hear before completely letting go, falling into a coma-like sleep, is Spencer saying, “Let’s get you well. Got to get you back on the routine in a week’s time.”
But I am not there.
Partial consciousness. I play with the prospect of never resurfacing.
I will comb the nonspace and turn it into my home.
HOME SWEET HOME
I’ll be right here. Fine.
But loose escapes are little more than lingering.
Ask Spencer and he’d say it’s not far off from loathing.
I just want to sleep.
These days I fail to fend off the hours that used to be mine; I wake when I wake, frantically rising to my feet when I discover that I slept through to beyond the point where the day can be anything more than half of an afternoon. And the routine, it places me to the side of myself, incapable of keeping track of anything else but the pressures of every incoming promotional event. They all ask me:
“What does it mean to be Willem Floures?”
I had a statement prepared, but I must have left it behind, somewhere, maybe resting on a table somewhere.
Yawn and let it take me, for now, the drugged sleep.
I’d like to ask them the same question.
I’d like to reply by saying:
“You tell me.”
All I know is that I’m not the same person I used to be.
EXECUTIONER V. SUGAR II…
I signed the contract…
Word should be reaching the media right about now…
Excited?
Hear gasps, deep breaths.
Familiar, they are my breaths.
Tired, strained.
Let’s get you well…
Got to get you back on the routine in a week’s time…
THE ROUTINE
I can’t get back to myself, much less the day-to-day.
“Sugar, what happened back there? It appeared as though he gassed you by focusing on body shots. Would you say that’s accurate?”
Don’t ask me.
Ask one of them.
They know me better than I know myself.
THE LAUGHTER I FEAR
AUDIENCE LAUGHTER
Still have the scars on my face, the loose tooth in my mouth, the jitters so I have to hide my hands from the cameras. Anyway, it’s back to the routine.
The talk of every day until it happens is:
EXECUTIONER VS. SUGAR II
It used to be the other way around:
SUGAR VS. EXECUTIONER
What does it feel like to be the challenger?
That’s a question I’ve already been asked.
It’s a knockout of a question, first of many. Good thing Spencer sits at my side, different because most agents stay behind the scenes. Not Spencer.
He’s always been right there.
Field these questions, man. Please. Go right ahead.
I tongue the open laceration on the inside of my cheek. It’s the wound that wouldn’t heal quick enough. The mouth guard fell out of my mouth, Executioner failing to land a shot but no matter because I managed to clench my jaw, grind my teeth into the soft gummy tissue before the referee stopped the fight so that I might replace the mouth guard.
Memory.
Memory I’d rather forget.
Memory, a memory that is not a part of the media junket.
AUDIENCE LAUGHTER
What are they laughing at?
Oh it’s something Spencer said. Good of him to speak for me—
“Well then, last week’s fight is history and if I do say so myself it was a piece of history. The world saw the end of Sugar’s long-running win streak against what the media had called, in the weeks prior to fight night, a prodigy, a new era for Floures.”
Spencer the expert agent and publicist replies, “What’s the question?”
Thing about daytime talk shows is they tend to sensationalize and place opinion on the public. It is whatever their audience wants. Get them laughing, get them interested. As long as you get them, the truth and/or value of the coverage is less important.
The host winks, gloats, gets to the point:
“Will Sugar be ready for X this time?”
See what I mean?
They could care less about the harmful emotional effect of their questions; this is about entertainment.
Spencer ducks the question, retaliating with a bluff, “Every fight counts for something, I assure you. It is not that we aren’t ready for the fight; every professional is ready to exercise his or her craft. Every boxer fights with the sweet science in mind. Sugar is no different.”
“I am not denying that to be the case, Mr. Mullen, but the world wants to know if Sugar will be ready to face himself or will it be another blunder of a match?”
Relentless.
WOULD EXPECT NOTHING LESS
It doesn’t seem to faze Spencer though.
“What do you want to hear? You ask and I speak the truth. In specifics, I am confident enough to tell you that we have examined Executioner’s preferred strategies, where he’s coming from as a strategist, and everyone,” turns to the audience, the cameras, points at random faces, “every one of you should know that Sugar sees the math, the strategy, the one-two-duck-hook-low; Sugar used to fight like this. Let’s not kid ourselves. He’s got more experience than the entire league of them. He’s used to battling himself, be it ‘Ice,’ ‘Breakneck,’ ‘Kid KO,’ or, the ‘Executioner.’ They are just names, aliases; faces in the dirt of each step. Sugar has the record to prove that he knows every strength, knows every weakness. He understands their round-by-round strategy. A decade ago Sugar and I created it from the ground up, working in subtle psychology into the sweet science.”
Weigh in that answer.
See what the host has for us next.
COMMERICAL BREAK
Of course, to distill and strip away the bulk of Spencer’s reply, they cut to commercial. They want to focus on the negative rather than the positive. It’s what the audience wants. Drama, the dish, new shocking information to please.
DISAPPOINTED
They are di
sappointed in me.
I am disappointed in myself.
The host tells us, “Okay, I understand that it is in your best interest to maintain Sugar’s persona as it once was in a positive light; however, the light is no longer lime and it is no longer looking for you. It is in our best interest to paint the picture of a true loss. We get the audience to believe it and it makes for a better story.”
The host looks at me, “Win the rematch and you recoup not only what you lost but also double what you put into this. It’s your career, your identity, your life that’s on the line. It is in our best interest to pave the way for a comeback.”
BEST INTEREST
This is not good.
Spencer is offended by the host’s tone. He is silent, brooding, listening, acting the part, acting as if he agrees.
AND WE’RE BACK
AUDIENCE LAUGHTER
FAKE
ON COMMAND
“We are back with none other than ‘Sugar’ Willem Floures, one of the greatest fighters of all time.”
Spencer mutters under his breath, “He is the greatest fighter of all time…”
More talk about the loss, that loss, and how ‘Executioner’ was faster, more agile, capable of outpunching and outmaneuvering me around the ring.
“Might this be why you chose to stay on the ropes?”
Spencer answers, “It’s called rope-a-dope, a valid technique. It is how we stole three rounds on the cards from ‘Executioner.’”
“That very well may be the case but between the use of lateral movement to duck the mids, Executioner landed,” the host reads from one of his notecards, ninety-one percent of punches to the face. This is not healthy for a fighter your age, Sugar. We worry about the lasting damage one fight can do to your reflexes, your ability to defend yourself.”
I open my mouth to speak but Spencer beats me to it:
The Laughter of Strangers Page 2
