The Hurting Circus

by Paul O'Brien

  “Tighten up on these cunts,” was the director’s supposed reaction.

  Tad didn’t need to be told twice. He was sitting in his home, waiting for 9:00 a.m. to come. He had given his shoes an extra shine that morning, and his tie was pressed perfectly and tied meticulously. The executive director wanted tightening and Tad wanted to impress. No coffee was needed and his push-ups were completed for the day. Well, that was what he’d tell the boys at the office. Truth be told, he loved the Raquel Welch fitness video. There was something about the breathless voiceover and synchronized breathing that pepped him up in the morning. His mustache was groomed and trimmed; his breakfast was squashed and scrambled.

  This was going to be an awesome fucking day.

  Tad Stolliday couldn’t wait to talk to parolee number one: Mr. Lenard Long.

  “Hey, hey! Stop that guy. Stop that guy!” roared the overweight taxi driver as Lenny jumped fences and cars and cut through lanes to get away. He felt like an asshole running out on a fare, but he had no choice.

  After he bolted from Babu’s house, Lenny stayed awake all night, moving from bus shelter to bus shelter. He waited for the morning before making his journey back to Queens. He didn’t want to knock on his father’s door in the middle of the night. Waiting till morning would make everything seem a little more normal, or as normal as it could be.

  Lenny had written the address hundreds of times, but he’d never been there before. Long Island City didn’t look like the safest of neighborhoods. Its riverbanks were strewn with twisted metal and forgotten debris. It looked to Lenny like an industrial area that had been hollowed out.

  He turned the corner and walked through the morning smell of bakeries setting up for the day. Lenny walked up to the small, rectangular garden and knew right away that his father lived there. There were seashells pressed into the grass as a border, and in the middle was the faded gnome Bree had given Lenny as a joke present one Christmas. Seeing it made Lenny well up—it was the last piece left of his own home, and his father had kept it.

  Lenny approached the door and knocked on the flimsy frame.

  “Hello?” asked Edgar from inside.

  “It’s me, Pop,” Lenny said.

  There was a slight pause from inside. “Lenard?”

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  Edgar took another couple of seconds to process Lenny’s words.

  “They let me out,” Lenny said with his head pressed against the door.

  Edgar hurriedly twisted some of the locks the wrong way, and some the right way. “I can’t … wait, son,” Edgar said. “I need to get …”

  “It’s okay,” Lenny said, looking behind him to see if he was being followed.

  Edgar opened the door, but not too wide. He had glasses on his face, and his hair was thinning. He was smaller, his shoulders narrower.

  “Pop,” Lenny said with a smile on his face and a tear in his eye.

  Edgar was totally confused; he’d thought that his son had many more years to go. “Lenard?”

  Edgar opened the door and he and Lenny hugged on his porch.

  “Come in, come in,” Edgar said as he moved his son indoors.

  “I got out,” Lenny said.

  “What happened to you?” Edgar asked as he looked at his son good and proper.

  Lenny had forgotten about his face, and the dry blood stains on his ripped clothes. He had never felt more self-conscious. “I … got … it’s nothing. Honestly.”

  “The place is a mess,” Edgar said as he closed a couple of the interior doors in his small hallway. He didn’t want his son looking around too much.

  Lenny could see into the kitchen where the table was set for breakfast. Three settings. “Are you expecting someone?” Lenny asked as he walked from the hallway into the kitchen.

  “Yeah,” Edgar answered. “I am.”

  Lenny could hear voices fast approaching his father’s front door. “Who is it?” he asked. The look on Edgar’s face made Lenny instinctively stoop down and look for a way out. “Is that my family?”

  Edgar nodded.

  “Fuck,” Lenny said as he looked for a place to hide.

  “Don’t you want to see them?” Edgar asked.

  Lenny wanted it more than anything in the whole world. “Look at me, Pop,” he replied. “I don’t want them to see me like this.”

  The front door opened and a voice called “Granddad” from the hallway. Lenny was boxed in. Edgar walked toward his front door and greeted his visitors like nothing was out of the ordinary.

  “Thank you so much, again, Edgar,” said another voice from the front door. It was her voice. Bree.

  Lenny quietly slipped into the tight, dark pantry and closed the door. The new sounds of footsteps into the kitchen meant she was only a few feet away from him—but she would never even know that he was there. He couldn’t see her, but her voice was soothing; it took everything Lenny had not to open the door to just see her one more time. But he knew what he looked like, and that he had nothing to offer her. He was a broken man, looking for his father to hide him, while he ran once again from the wrestling business.

  He was Lenny Long. Still wrapped up in trouble. Still in danger. Still confused as to what to do.

  “Can I put this down in my room?” Lenny heard a young voice ask. He knew it could only have been James Henry.

  “Not right now, Jimmy,” Edgar replied. “Wash your hands down the hall.”

  Lenny heard the boy’s footsteps leave.

  “You look really good, Bree,” Edgar said.

  “You too,” she replied.

  Lenny ran his squinted eye all around the door to see if there was a hole or crack he could see her through. He could hear Bree and Edgar pass plates, open bags, and pour drinks as they talked.

  Edgar asked, “Was it a long way down? I miss you guys around the place.”

  “Just a couple of hours,” Bree replied. “It’s not that bad. We haven’t got the TV or phone installed yet, so Jimmy’s still a little restless. I understand him wanting to stay here. He feels like he’s cut off from the world with me, for now. He’ll settle down when he gets to know the new kids.”

  “I would have come up there and got you guys,” Edgar said.

  “Thank you, but I have some other things to do in the city before I head back, anyway,” Bree replied.

  “Coffee?” Edgar asked.

  “You doing okay, Ed?” Bree asked. “You look a little distracted or something.”

  Lenny froze. So did Edgar for a second. “I think I’m coming down with a little cold or something.”

  “You want us to get out of here?” Bree asked. “Let you get some rest.”

  “No, please. I like having you guys here. And this breakfast isn’t going to eat itself.”

  Lenny could hear a chair being scraped along the floor. He thought he could smell her perfume.

  “As long as you’re sure,” Bree said.

  “Of course. Have a seat.”

  Lenny stood silently in near darkness and listened to his family eat, laugh, and look after each other. It was still like a prison dream to him—being so close to his family again, but not being able to see them, see how they’d changed. But even their voices made him feel content. It made him want to be better, be accepted by them. He heard them pass each other juice and ask if anyone wanted more of anything. They talked about Bree’s new place, and about another school for Jimmy. Their older son, Luke, was a man now and living in the city. It was a morning of catching up, and small talk, and it was all that Lenny needed to feel better.

  Nevada.

  Joe ordered the meeting, and the other bosses followed. The room was quiet, but full, except for one chair. It was dark and smoky, just how Joe liked it. It reminded him of the younger years of the National Wrestling Council, when he had been surrounded by some of the most ruthless promoters of all time, unlike this new batch. These promoters weren’t nearly as plugged in to what was happening. The new NWC was made up of a few older, m
ore tired bosses, and the rest were subpar relations of the bosses who were no longer around.

  Joe couldn’t have planned it any better for himself.

  “Where is he?” Gilbert King, the Florida boss, asked. “This is very disrespectful, to you and the position of chair.”

  Joe shrugged. In a flash he remembered Gilbert’s father, Proctor King, who had been dangerous and wily. Gilbert, his pampered son, was not the same animal at all.

  “How much longer are we going to wait?” asked Hal Yellow from Texas. He reminded Joe of a train inspector, but he didn’t particularly like him. “If Tanner is too good to show up, I think we should consider other options.”

  “I’ll call his room now,” Joe said as he left the table. He walked to the back of the room and picked up the pay phone. He pantomimed dialing a number and put the phone to his ear.

  This was the kind of game that Joe Lapine had come up on. When he had been a young man at the NWC table, he’d watched boss after boss get eliminated from the game by stealth, technicality, or sheer politics.

  To Joe, using force was a tool of the ignorant. He much preferred to ruin someone the good old-fashioned way: from the shadows.

  Tanner awoke alone in his hotel room. Long flights used to knock him out, but now they nearly killed him. His phone had been ringing for about a minute before he came around and answered it.

  “Yes?” Tanner said.

  “Your wake-up call, Mister Blackwell,” said the nearly undecipherable Irish accent on the line. “Your group is waiting for you downstairs.”

  Tanner hung up the phone. He dropped his legs over the side of his bed and rested his rough, wrinkly face in his hands. He felt around his cheekbone, where Lenny Long had slapped him the day before. It was still tender and sore.

  He wasn’t a big eater, anymore. He used to prefer a coffee in the morning, but now he didn’t really feel like having anything to eat or drink. The cancer must have been in his stomach, too, he decided.

  He shuffled around and farted as he bent over for his socks. There was a time in his life when he could pick up his socks with his toes and place them in his hand. Now he spent many more days just slipping his bare feet into his shoes—it was easier that way. His belt told him that he had lost even more weight. It was rapid now; a difference could be seen every day. Tanner was wasting away. Sometimes he pitied himself, but often he was too tired for even that. On other days, he bullied himself for being a fucking sissy who had gotten sick. Tanner had known that this day was going to come. It was something he had thought—he’d even talked about it with Minnie, when she was alive.

  It was a day he knew that he deserved.

  He put on his coat, even though he knew he wasn’t going outside. His back was hunched, his reflection was frail, and his body was dying. Tanner checked his fly one last time before he opened his door to see a tall, young, freckle-faced concierge waiting for him. It was then that he knew for sure.

  “They’re waiting for you downstairs, Mister Blackwell.”

  Tanner nodded and walked ahead. The concierge followed behind him silently. Tanner couldn’t rush, even if he wanted to, so he and a man half his age moved slowly down the hallway.

  “That’s some accent you got there,” Tanner said.

  “It’s a little hard for you people to understand sometimes, alright,” replied the concierge.

  Tanner’s body was leaving him, but his mind was still very much his own.

  “You been working here long?” Tanner asked.

  “About a month only.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  They approached the elevator, and Tanner couldn’t help but notice the squeak that was coming from the concierge’s brand new shoes.

  “That’s out of order, I’m afraid, sir,” the concierge said.

  Tanner smiled to himself, before feeling a little insulted. “The stairs?” Tanner asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Tanner turned toward the stairwell door, and began his slow steps. “Can I smoke?” Tanner asked, as he stopped and reached into his jacket for his cigarettes.

  “You’ll be late, sir.”

  “I’m not rushing to get there, and you know what I mean.”

  The concierge lit his lighter, and Tanner put his cigarette to it. The smoke bounced off Tanner’s face as it rose toward the ceiling.

  “You can tell Joe that I understand,” Tanner said.

  The concierge opened the door to the stairwell. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said as he looked anxiously over his own shoulder.

  The young man’s accent just served to remind Tanner that he was a long way from home. “You know, I always wanted to come to Ireland.”

  The concierge replied, “You’ll have a great time here, sir.”

  “How much more of it do you think I’ll get to see?” Tanner asked as he walked toward the open door that lead to the concrete stairs and raw brick walls.

  “As much as you—”

  “Tell Joe that I got the point,” Tanner said. “And that I’m done.”

  The concierge moved Tanner closer to the stairwell. “They’re waiting for you downstairs, sir.”

  Tanner shrugged off the concierge’s attempt to move him along by the arm. “You tell Joe to leave me alone. Tell him that I’m out. I’m gone. Do you hear me?”

  The concierge could see just how agitated Tanner was becoming.

  “Do you fucking hear me?” Tanner shouted.

  Before the concierge could do anything more to upset Tanner, Donta Veal appeared from around the corner and tapped the young man on the shoulder. The concierge quietly left.

  Tanner tried to place Donta’s face. He knew it, but he didn’t know how he knew it. Then it hit him.

  “Fuck,” Tanner said, as he sat himself on the top step of the stairwell. Donta joined him.

  “You just couldn’t leave it alone, Tanner,” Donta said as he lit his own cigarette.

  Tanner could hear the squeak of the concierge’s shoes moving away down the corridor. Knowing the way Donta worked, Tanner figured that the odds were high that the concierge wasn’t a concierge at all. Donta would have no loose ends—no one to testify if it all went wrong.

  “Every year you pushed the New York thing further and further,” Donta said.

  “That’s because I knew that Joe was running it. He was telling the world one thing, and doing a deal with those snakes in New York to do the other.”

  Donta slid his hand into his jacket; Tanner waited anxiously to see what Donta was reaching for.

  “I don’t know why, because if it was up to me, I’d kill you. He just wants you out of the business,” Donta said.

  Tanner took another pull from his cigarette and thought about all the years he had been in the wrestling business, all the money he’d made, and all the birthdays he’d missed because he was on the road.

  “Tell Joe I’m too weak to fight. I’m done.”

  Donta stood and moved behind Tanner in a deliberate attempt to frighten the frail old man some more. “Next time, you won’t see me,” Donta said.

  Tanner understood completely. Donta’s orders from Joe had very clear. The setup was perfect: no one was around. But Tanner was just an old man in a stairwell.

  Donta was having a hard time walking away. “Hey?”

  Tanner looked up from his seated position, and Donta hammer-fisted him across the face. Tanner moaned in pain as he covered himself up on the ground. Donta got a stomp or two in for his travel back to the States, and he felt better.

  Nevada.

  Joe knocked his knuckles on the table to call order. He acted annoyed that Tanner’s chair was still empty, but he wanted to show the other bosses that the wrestling business waited for no man.

  “We’ll start without Tanner Blackwell, if there’s a consensus in the room.” Joe said.

  “Where is he?” asked Gilbert King.

  Joe took a second, like he was processing what he could and couldn’t say. He wan
ted to look political—measured—like this wasn’t personal.

  “Fuck it,” Joe said, as if he had just decided to be honest. “He didn’t check in. As far as I can tell, he never even came to Vegas.”

  “What?” asked Gilbert. “You try to give him the chair, and he has one of the world heavyweight champions, and he doesn’t even show up?”

  Joe sighed and played along like he’d never asked his secretary to book a meeting room in Vegas for them, and a separate room out of the country for Tanner. Joe’s plan was if Tanner became stubborn and refused to leave the business, then something would have been done to him—but outside of America, outside of New York, and it would be made to look like an accident.

  Joe’s other option was that Tanner would leave quietly, and Joe would “suspend” him from the NWC for not showing up. One way or another, Tanner was either dead and out or suspended and out. But he was fucking out. And that gave Joe a clear line to New York, and a room of bosses who just moved firmly behind him.

  No war. No drama. No more dissension.

  “To be honest with you all, this is the last straw for me. This disrespect toward you, the council, and the position of chair can’t continue. It makes us all look weak,” Joe said, as the trained seals in front of him clapped. “Add that to the fact that Tanner tried to secretly buy New York, again, yesterday …”

  Joe waited for the outrage and mumbling, which came just on cue. “Yes, that’s why I called you here today,” Joe continued. “I just learned myself this morning. So Tanner was never going to get the chairmanship of this great council here today. I was going to fucking suspend him indefinitely for breaking our rules, for going behind our backs, and for putting all of our territories at risk. Again!”

  As Joe looked at the other bosses, he could feel the grip that Merv used to have before him as chairman. Joe talked about how the sky was falling, and how he was the only one who could protect the business from it. He had them all wide eyed and scared.