by Tom Schreck
“Remind me to stay away from the frankfurters here,” Kelley said.
AJ was holding the half pack of hot dogs over his head like it was the Holy Grail. He started to heft himself over the bar but he crashed his shin into the brass railing and yelped in pain.
“Jesus H. Christ!” he yelled and instinctively grabbed for his shin, dropping the hotdogs. Al scurried over, scooped them up and went back to the fort created by the four legs of the barstool. “Son-of-a-bitchin’-bastard-hound!” he yelled.
“That’s basket hound,” TC said.
“You all right, AJ?” I asked. He just made a face and went back to cleaning glasses.
“Pierre H. Christ, that had to hurt,” Jerry Number Two said.
I decided to help Smitty out in the corner Friday night. It kept me close to the fights and it was a good show of support for Vinci. It also got me in free and kept me out of the grandstand with all the drunks and wannabees. There were 6 fights on the card, three four rounders, one six and Vinci’s fight was an eight. It wasn’t Hagler vs. Leonard at Caesars’ Palace and the armory was barely half full.
I went out ringside and looked over the crowd. I saw Shaheem and his brother Sammy and Shaheem gave me another one of his “Understandings”. They were about ten rows back in the armory’s equivalent of the VIP seats. Shaheem took good care of his older brother and he made sure he was dressed in hip street gear—baggy pants, hockey jersey and a brand new red Yankees cap with all the tags still on it. Still, Sammy spent most of the time playing some sort of little hand held video game and seemed to be oblivious to the fact that there was boxing matches going on.
Kelley was doing the cop thing, just strolling around in uniform being a human deterrent to the nonsense that can occur at a fight. We exchanged waves and I headed back to the dressing rooms.
The first three bouts were mismatches and ended early. This is always a danger at a fight card, especially when it’s poorly matched with a lot of unknown fighters who are making their pro debuts. The promoter made the situation worse by delaying the start of the next fights to draw the evening out and make it seem longer. What it did was piss of the fans who were pretty drunk to begin with and who were now getting drunker ...and meaner.
Paying attention to the fans goes against the fighter’s code. You’re supposed to have more important things on your mind and you are supposed to have enough respect for the game and your opponent to be focused on the matter at hand—not the attention from the spectators. Back in the dressing room I held the pads for Vinci as he loosened up for his bout. He was slow, he was telegraphing his punches and he kept his head high when he threw. These weren’t good things for any fighter but for a pro going up against someone who could fight it was all very, very bad.
Vinci had his game face on and Smitty gave him the pre-fight talk. Smitty finishes every speech before every fight the same way and it always gets you focused.
“This ain’t no bingo game tonight. This is as much about what’s inside you as it is about muscle and fight. Show me what you got inside,” Smitty said.
I loved hearing it.
Vinci was the first out of the dressing room and he got a lukewarm response. He wasn’t a known fighter and he had a crummy record so that was how the crowd greeted him. His opponent came to the ring to Eminem music and he had a shiny new black satin robe covering his head. Across the back of the robe it said Jeff “No Mercy” Williams.
The fighters went through the ritual of introductions and instructions and Vinci made the Sign of the Cross. The bell sounded to start the fight and the two boxers circled each other. Vinci looked slow on his feet and unbalanced and when William’s first jab landed on Vinci’s nose he staggered a little bit. Vinci tried to counter but he was so slow Williams wasn’t even where Vinci’s punch went. Williams came back with a jab-cross-hook combination and all three punches landed and they all had some steam on them. Vinci was in for a long night.
“Nice move Martinez!” I heard come from the crowd. It was a small enough crowd that hecklers could be heard throughout the armory. You could hear laughing.
Vinci threw a wide hook that didn’t come close and Williams countered with a left-right. “Hey, Vinci, nice catch!” came the voice from the crowd again. Williams was starting to pick up on the crowd and started to showboat. He did an Ali shuffle and then hit Vinci with a wild uppercut. Then he mugged for the crowd. “Way to go Vinci!” the heckler mocked. The round ended and Vinci came back to the corner. I helped Smitty with the bucket and he called for the Endswell, a metal bar kept on ice in the corner. Trainers press it to the face when swelling starts and Vinci was needing it in three spots.
The next two rounds were more of the same except worse. Vinci was tiring, Williams was totally aware that his opponent had nothing and that fueled the younger boxer’s aggression. The heckler had also picked up the pace.
“Keep blockin’ em with your face, Vinci?”
“Time to call it a career Vinci!”
“Keep to the cookie factory!” Williams was mocking Vinci in the ring and I think that encouraged the heckler. It was getting bad and I looked at Smitty who just raised his eyebrows and kind of shook his head. Vinci was getting tagged but more humiliated than beat up. Smitty didn’t want to stop it because that would’ve done a whole lot more damage to the man’s self image than getting punched in the face.
Vinci kept on losing every round. By the seventh, Williams was openly laughing while he scored on him. The heckler was getting stupider, louder and drunker.
“Nice going genius!” He yelled.
I knew I should’ve kept my focus in the ring but this heckler got my attention and I turned to see who was doing all the yelling. It was a big blond haired guy, probably 6’3” and built like a college football player who left the game seven or eight years ago. He was in the good seats and standing with a beer in his hand. He saw me looking at him and he yelled.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” and then he laughed long and hard along with a whole row of buddies who had joined in. I bet in his whole life this guy had never been in a ring and had never once taken a shot like all the ones Vinci was taking tonight. That didn’t matter to him but it should have and he kept right on yelling.
The bell rang for the end of the seventh and Vinci came back to the corner.
“Don’t stop it Smitty. I want to finish. Don’t stop it,” Vinci was pleading.
Smitty let him out for the final round and Williams went right back to work on him.
“That’s it, genius keep fighting!” the heckler yelled. I looked over my shoulder and saw him laughing and I felt something inside. “Bum! Bum! Bum!” I looked over and saw Kelley and our eyes met. I could tell he was as disgusted as I was.
He was a few rows back of the heckler, just being a presence. Vinci took an exaggerated fake and then got hit with a right hand that staggered him. “Nice going retard!” the heckler yelled. Something went real bad inside of me. I left the corner, hopped the metal gate that separated the ringside from the crowd and headed straight up the stands looking for the loud mouth. I could taste the hate in my mouth.
He was in the last seat in the aisle. “What the fuck do you—” he never got finish. I threw a six-inch hook to his body that landed square into his solar plexus. He made a half groan, half yelp and fell on his ass. His head hit the back of the chair and he doubled over and started to barf. He was retching and groaning and the only thing that kept him quiet was when another wave of vomit would pass through his mouth.
My heart was pounding, my vision was narrowed and I could barely hear. I heard the bell ring ending Vinci’s fight and I looked up and all the guys in the row who had been laughing along side the heckler were in shock. Then when of his cronies yelled.
“Hey officer, this guy just assaulted my friend!”
“Shut up asshole, your friend got off easy,” Kelley said.
I didn’t even see him come up. “Duffy, get back to your corner and take care of your fig
hter.”
I ran back to the corner and ran up the stairs and started to help Smitty towel off Vinci. I gave Vinci a hug and congratulated him on a good fight. He hadn’t seen what I did to the guy in the crowd.
The crowd began to file out without waiting for the official results from the ring announcer. Vinci lost every round on all three cards but there were very few fans around to acknowledge William’s victory. As I helped him with his robe Smitty continued to hold an ice pack to Vinci’s forehead.
“You got it inside,” Smitty said. “No question about that.” Vinci smirked and headed down the stairs toward the dressing room.
The crew was already starting to disassemble the ring and I started to head back when I heard someone call my name.
“Yo, Duff!”
I turned and looked up a few rows and there was Shaheem. Sammy was next to him playing his little video game. Shaheem just looked at me for a while then he touched his heart with his fist, gave me the horizontal peace sign and made a fist at me. Sammy never looked up from his game and Shaheem had a very serious look on his face. I flashed his “Understanding” right back to him and all at once realized the kid was right.
Sometimes you got to put a motherfucker in his place.
* * *
Sassy is her name
and cuteness is her game – thank
goodness for rescue!
—Ginny Tata-Phillips
Photo: Sassy by Vicky Andrews
* * *
Al and the Mexican Guy
By Tom
I was in the Moody Blue, nursing a Schlitz hangover and flipping through cable. Sportscenter was running through 900 hockey and NBA scores, the pretty anchorwoman’s French manicure was annoying me and the Kardishian girls were, well, I didn’t stay on the channel long enough to tell you.
I landed on National Geographic channel hoping for something on CIA conspiracies and not something on pygmies stretching their necks or Aboriginals sticking skewers through their eyeballs. Instead, it was a Dog Obedience marathon.
The show featured this short Mexican guy with a Fu Manchu, impossible white teeth and way too much self confidence. Apparently, Oprah had a dog that was disobedient, needed to lose weight or was in a co-dependent relationship or something and the Mexican guy helped out. Now, presto! He’s got a show and I’m sure enough money to air condition hell.
Al waddled into the room, did a three sixty and collapsed in a puddle of drool in front of me. On the screen, the Mexican had this Great Dane on a short leash and was running him up and down the hall of this office building. The poor dog somehow had gotten phobic about shiny floors and refused to walk on them.
The Mexican asked the Great Dane’s owner about her self esteem. She kind of whined a bit and said she didn’t like telling people what to do. She said she didn’t want to make the dog go on shiny surfaces because she felt bad whenever he got scared. He said to be the pack leader and be in charge.
Al started to do that pre-bark thing. It’s like a bark only muffled but it’s kind of an advance warning that soon he would commence with the full barking routine. I could wait if I wanted to do but the chaos of the barking would be inevitable. I didn’t feel like getting up but with the hangover I didn’t feel like hearing the trailer walls shake either.
I went and got Al a dish of food and slid it in front of him.
I got back on the couch and rested my elbow on the bare arm. Al had long ago chewed the fabric off it. The Mexican guy was walking down the street with the Great Dane at his side. He had a short leash and the little guy looked silly walking with his chest all puffed out and his head up in the air. The white teeth kept distracting me and the little flip to his frosted hair propped up with mousse kind of pissed me off.
Al farted out loud.
“C’mon Al!” I yelled and Al sort of hummed a bit as he rested his head on the coffee table. He was turned away from the TV kind of half sitting but his eyes were closed and the table supported his head. Drool seeped out of both sides of his mouth.
Al began to snore and I had to turn up the TV.
“Calm assertive energy—head up, chest out and feel your self confidence. If you don’t feel it the dog won’t feel it,” The Mexican said. The woman looked skeptical.
Al farted again. He opened his eyes briefly to make sure I knew and then closed them and went back to snoring.
God, it smelled. It was like some sort of agricultural product industrial accident.
“Geez, Al” I said. He opened his eyes for a moment, stretched and yawned.
The Mexican guy had on roller blades and was skating down some busy street in LA with a Rottweiler on a leash.
“Exercise, discipline and affection!’ he said toward the camera. He put the accent on the wrong syllable in every word.
Al had come around the table and now was looking straight up at me and doing the pre-bark again. It was if he was saying “I got this bark, don’t make me use it!”
I could tell by his positioning that he wanted to be lifted up on the couch. The vet had said jumping up on the couch was bad for Al’s back. I got up and leaned over the 85lb beast and hoisted him up onto the couch. I felt my lumbars spasm and I wondered if I could afford to go to a doctor if he’d tell me it wasn’t good for my back leaning over a 85 lb short legged fart machine and lifting him up. Some physical therapy doctoral student could do a doctoral dissertation on the ergonomic mechanics of the Basset Hound clean and jerk.
Speaking of jerks, Al took my place on the couch and forced me to sit on the couch cushion with the loose spring. The coil ripped through the fabric one afternoon when Al and another hound who I was pet sitting decided to get romantic on the sofa. I had left the room and returned just in time to see Al’s eyes roll back in his head and hear him hit a baying falsetto high note. The young lady hound appeared unimpressed and just plopped off the couch. Their up and down, rock ‘n rolling however broke one of the springs that now stuck me in the ass every time I sat down.
I did my best to get both cheeks to the left of the bad spring but that only meant it pricked me in the thigh. Speaking of pricks, Al, had spread himself flat and now was encroaching on my side of the couch. He was dead weight and immovable.
Then, he farted again.
“You need to be the pack leader for there to be calm assertive energy in your house. Otherwise there will be a constant state of anxiety,” my Mexican buddy was saying.
He was at the Rottie owner’s house doing therapy on its owners.
The couple began to weep. They were so grateful to the Mexican dude for his help. Skippy, the Rottie, was much calmer and so much happier since they started to employ these principles. They exchanged hugs with the Mexican guy and then he walked to his jeep with his head high and his chest all pushed out while he gave the camera a big thumbs up.
It amazed me how freakin’ gullible, needy and goofy people were.
* * *
Old dogs are the best;
hearts and souls as constant as
the pull of the tide.
—Ginny Tata-Phillips
Photo: Charles by Beth Elliston
* * *
The Right Choice
By Tom
“Christy’s missing,” Trina said. It was Wednesday morning and I hadn’t nearly enough coffee in my bloodstream. That and the fact that I felt like someone kicked me down the Empire State Building’s stairs made this news a little tough to digest.
“It’s in the paper, it’s on the news and three reporters have called for you this morning,” Trina said. She didn’t wait for me to respond to her first comments of the morning. Trina’s been the secretary at Jewish Unified Services as long as I had been here.
“Missing? Like abducted or like runaway to get high?” I said. Drug clients “disappeared” all the time and it never made the news. Of course, they all weren’t Senator’s daughters.
“Look, genius, if I tell you she’s missing doesn’t that kind of imply that I don’t know the ci
rcumstances? I mean if I said ‘She’s missing and she’s at the market.’ Then she’s not really missing is she?” Trina said.
“Who says ‘went to the market’ these days?” I said.
Trina stared at me.
It was probably only for a few seconds but it seemed longer. Then she shook her head, rolled her eyes and tossed her straight hair back in exaggerated exasperation.
“Go check your messages,” Trina said without looking at me.
I walked past her with more self-satisfaction than the situation warranted and I could’ve sworn I saw Trina glance up from her message log as I walked by. It wasn’t much but it was enough.
The Union Times was folded and centered on my desk and the headline read: “Troubled Senator’s Daughter Missing,” Senator Sheila W. Montgomery was finishing her first term and was facing reelection next Tuesday. She was forty something, very pretty and relied on a lot of clichéd rhetoric that pandered to the voters who liked one liners about mavericks, good ‘ol boy networks and family values.
The kid had a drug problem that made the news six months ago. The senator made a big deal of telling her constituents that she wasn’t going to “enable” her daughter and that she would get treatment on her own at a state funded city clinic and not as some fancy for-profit rehab. That was all well and good but the senator made such a deal out of it that all the other clients here knew who she was and it was impossible for her to participate in any group therapy because none of the other clients ever forgot she was a senator’s kid.
The newspaper article made a point of bringing up that she was pregnant and strongly hinted that Christy probably didn’t know who the father was—a point they made every single time the kid appeared in the paper. The senator took her daughter’s unexpected pregnancy as a talking point to let her right wing followers know that Christy had every intention of having the baby and making sure the child was raised properly. I had a signed release to speak to the senator like I would for any parent whose kid was in treatment but she hadn’t called me and I didn’t feel the need to get her involved yet.
