The Real Thing

by J. J. Murray

  “Sure.”

  He slaps the green pepper on the butcher block and dices it as fast as lightning. In less than a minute, he has sliced and diced three green and two red peppers. He places them in a huge pot on the stove, stirring them in. He pulls a plastic spoon from a cabinet and dips it into the sauce. “Let me know what you think.”

  I take the spoon, blow on the chunky sauce, and taste…heaven. “This is good. This is really good. What all’s in it?”

  He crosses his arms and nods. “You tell me.”

  I look down at the spoon. “Green and red peppers.”

  He rolls his eyes.

  “Garlic. Sausage.”

  “What kind?” he asks.

  “The good kind?”

  He laughs. “It’s fresh sausage from a farm near here. What else?”

  “Well, tomato sauce, of course.”

  Red squints.

  “Homemade tomato sauce with real tomatoes,” I say quickly. “Um…” I only know one kind of tomato. “Roma?”

  He smiles. “Right. Been cooking it since sunup.” He leans in closely. “Let’s get this out of the way quick,” he whispers, handing me an apron. “I sent you the letter with this address, okay?”

  I tie on the apron. “Why?”

  “A few years back, you wrote some articles, including that op-ed piece where you said, let me get this right, ‘too many champions are spoiling the soup of boxing.’ Wasn’t it called ‘Alphabet Soup’?” He tosses me a head of lettuce. “For the salad.”

  I crack open the lettuce and let water run through it. “Yeah. I wrote that. I can’t stand all those stupid acronyms.”

  Red nods. “WBA, WBO, NABF, WBC, IBF, IBA…BFD.”

  I laugh. “I read a Ring article that said it better. It said that there’s only one world, so we should have only one world champion. I was trying to say that all those acronyms were metaphors for mediocrity. It seems as if every fighter has a belt. Isn’t there a midcontinental something belt out there, too?”

  “Yeah. Which midcontinent, no one knows.” Red starts skinning several carrots at once. “I liked that line. Metaphors for mediocrity. I told Dante, and he liked it, too. He also liked three other articles you wrote. He has them posted in his room.” He whips out a huge clear salad bowl from under the sink, setting it near me.

  I start tearing the lettuce and dropping it into the bowl. “I’m waiting for the ‘but.’”

  “But,” he says, dicing seven carrots at once with a weapon-like cleaver. “The last two you wrote…”

  “They were kind of harsh.” I drop the last shreds of lettuce into the bowl.

  Red scoops the carrots into the bowl and begins chopping radishes. “But they were honest. Dante values honesty. Don’t ever try to lie to him.”

  “I won’t.”

  He waves the cleaver in the air. “Dante liked those harsh ones, too.”

  I keep both eyes fixed to that cleaver. “He couldn’t have.”

  “He did. He said you have brutal honesty. He tacked them up in his room as well. I know he reads them every day and every night to motivate himself. What was that line? Oh yeah. ‘Dante Lattanza is not just over the hill. He’s at the bottom of the mountain and couldn’t see the top even with a telescope.’”

  I wince, wiping my hands on my apron. “I was just disappointed he didn’t unify the middleweight title. That would have been the only unified title that year.”

  “I liked the way you worked in Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘The Boxer.’ It was a classy piece,” he says.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “It wasn’t the usual boxing story, you know? It had a human element to it.”

  I still have it first in my professional writing portfolio.

  “How’d you, um.” He pauses. “You don’t strike me as the type to cover boxing matches. You’re a knockout, don’t get me wrong, but…”

  I explain about my granddaddy, and Red nods often. “I was also dating a guy back then who was really into boxing, so I had a bunch of working dates. Then I learned he was working one of the card girls on the side, so…”

  “Hawaiian Tropic girl?”

  Is this guy psychic? “How’d you know?”

  “My girlfriend Lelani was once one of those, and she’s really from Hawaii.” He looks out the window over the sink. “She ought to be back from town any time now. She’s getting more groceries. We eat a lot here.” He frowns at the salad. “Mushrooms.” He points to a closet. “In there, the portobello, sliced thick.” He opens a drawer, takes out a knife, and lays it on the butcher block.

  I go to the closet and find several varieties of mushrooms, one variety the size of my fist. I return to the butcher block and begin slicing the portobello.

  “You and Lelani will get along,” Red says. “You’re almost as jaded as she is about boxing.”

  There’s something strange going on here, but I can’t quite figure it out. “Um, Dante knows I wrote those articles, yet he’s letting me stay. I don’t get it.”

  “I do. I knew you’d motivate him. Just you being here will do that.”

  “How? How will my mere presence motivate him?”

  He smiles broadly. “You are, to put it bluntly, his worst fan. He’s already trying to prove to you that he’s not over the hill.”

  I push the mushrooms into the salad. “If he isn’t careful with Washington, he may be under the hill.”

  He nods. “Keep saying stuff like that, Christiana. He needs to hear it.”

  “So…you knew he’d give me grief about the interview, but you also knew he’d allow me to stay.”

  He nods.

  “You’re pretty shrewd, Red.”

  “One of us has to be,” he says. “For all of Dante’s good qualities, and he has a ton of them, he’s still a little naive. He thinks he can win by sheer willpower. We both know that’s not the case these days. I believe that Dante is letting you stay because he wants to prove he’s not only on the mountain but nearing the top again.”

  I look away from Red and roll my eyes. “You don’t really think he’s capable of beating Tank Washington, do you?”

  He rests against the butcher block. “Boxing is a young man’s game, and Dante has always been young at heart, but there’s only so much heart can do for you in the championship rounds. If he’s still standing after the final bell, that’s a victory in my book.”

  Hmm. Even Dante’s best friend has his doubts. “Tank has been on a tear, though. Seven knockouts in a row, all before the fifth round.”

  “Tank is fighting against inferior competition, and I think he’s finally realized it. Though he beat Dante the first time, he really hasn’t had a victory over an elite fighter since Dante.”

  I nod. It’s true. Tank has been fighting the “almost” champions.

  “Not one of Tank’s opponents had any kind of heart,” Red says. “Dante has heart enough for five men. But that’s also the problem. He doesn’t know when he’s licked. He can’t see that he doesn’t have the skills necessary to be champion. Instead of covering up, he’ll keep swinging and get his face peppered. You have never questioned his heart or his will to win in anything you’ve written about him. How’d you put it? ‘If heart were all a fighter needed…’”

  “‘Dante Lattanza would be the pound-for-pound best fighter the world has or will ever see.’” I look at the wood floor. “But I ended the piece badly.”

  Red nods. “‘Heart just isn’t enough anymore.’”

  “Yeah.” Yet, here I am, the one who wounded Dante the most with the truth and counted him out. I need to change the subject. “Red, how long have you been…What exactly do you do for Dante?”

  “Check the bread, please.” He hands me two huge white oven mitts.

  I open the oven, the door as big as the hatchback for a car, and see golden brown Italian bread—what else?—resting on long wooden paddles, hot garlic wind rolling over me. “I think they’re done.” I pull out the first paddle and rest it on the butch
er block where Red slices the loaves rapidly.

  “Butter’s in the fridge, top shelf, right side.”

  I find the butter and a butter knife and begin buttering the cuts in the bread.

  “So what exactly do I do for Dante?” Red says. “I’ve been cooking for Dante during his comeback, and even a little before that. Just after the divorce actually. I’m kind of his cook, trainer, guru, and gopher. Mainly, I’m his friend. He lost all his friends after the Cordoza fight. His former trainers, excuse me, ‘nutritionists,’ fed him all that roughage and bran, like he was already over the hill and couldn’t take a dump. All that bran slowed him down. And all that weightlifting Johnny Sears put him through at Gleason’s Gym only tightened him up. He was strong, but he was slow. Pasta seems to speed him up. So does the air up here. He works out so hard that he’s always three to four pounds around his fighting weight, so it doesn’t really matter what I feed him. Happy stomach, happy man. Can you cook?”

  This is beginning to feel like an interview. “Yes, I can cook.”

  “Do you own a microwave?”

  “Only for popcorn and hot tea.” And leftovers. I wince. There are leftovers in my fridge right now that I should have thrown out before I came here.

  Red smiles. “Good. That…that woman never did cook.”

  I don’t want to talk about the woman whose ass has been in my two-seater tub, maybe on both seats. “Red, I’m curious. Why did Dante hire you?”

  He turns to me with a withering stare. “I can cook. He can eat. He pays well. What could be better?”

  Oops. “I don’t doubt you can cook, I mean…You’re not exactly Italian, and here you are preparing an Italian feast.”

  He sighs. “I used to be one of his sparring partners a long time ago. Trust me, I had no ambitions beyond sparring. I’m too tall, too skinny, and I can’t keep an ounce to stick to me. That was when I was trying to make a name for myself in Manhattan. I was working as a sous chef at the Four Seasons when Dante hired me away and brought Lelani and me up here.”

  I blink. “The Four Seasons on Fifty-second Street?”

  “You know any other?”

  I shake my head.

  “Sous chef was as far as I got, probably as far as I could get. I mean, what restaurant would hire anyone named Red Gregory from Brooklyn for its main chef? Unless I changed my name to, oh, Benito—and only Benito, mind you—and I somehow turned my Brooklyn accent into something Mediterranean, I was stuck. After…that…woman divorced Dante, he called me up, Lelani and I moved up here, and I’ve been cooking for him ever since.”

  Now that’s a commitment. “Year round?”

  “Yeah.”

  I shiver.

  “It gets cold up here, right?” he says. “It’s a cold that has teeth and clamps down on you. We usually take most of the worst part of winter off to go south. Dante has a place similar to this down in Virginia.”

  At least Dante isn’t hurting for money. “So he’s still, um, financially stable?”

  Red nods. “Unlike some boxers whose promoters took unhealthy cuts from their purses, Dante has been in charge of his own finances from the beginning. He does all the negotiating, and he’s good at it. He can afford to be generous. He built me this kitchen from my specifications. Brick oven, the right pots, the right tools. He also built our cottage next door.” He checks a large pot of noodles, stirring them slowly with a wooden spoon.

  “And the guesthouse.”

  Red sighs and shakes his head. “That was a waste. There’s a carbon copy of it down in Virginia.” He seems to shudder. “I don’t want to talk about her. I don’t want to live in the basement tonight. I’m going to live in the balcony, okay?”

  A strange extended metaphor, but I get it. “Living in the balcony. I like it.”

  He nods at the lake. “You handle a boat well.”

  “Hey, I’m from Red Hook,” I say. “It goes with the territory. My granddaddy taught me.”

  “You must have done some fishing in the Hook, too, huh?”

  Not that I’d ever eat anything from the East River. “Yeah.”

  “Good. I hear you’ll be fishing in the morning. Dante takes his fishing seriously.”

  “So DJ told me.”

  He holds me with his eyes. “You have no idea. Serious to you and me is silly to Dante. He is as fierce an angler as he is a boxer. And he believes that eating fish is good for him. There will be smallmouth bass filets on the table tonight, at his end. He eats them like most folks eat potato chips, so I wouldn’t ask him for any.”

  “I won’t.” But I probably will. I like fish filets.

  Red starts getting out real china plates, not paper plates. “You’re just here for the interview, right?”

  What a strange question. “Of course.”

  “Nothing more?”

  “No.”

  He shrugs. “You just remind me of his ex, that’s all, except without the claws and fangs.”

  Hmm. Red obviously despises this woman, and the way he keeps bringing her up, he obviously wants to discuss her. “What was her name?”

  “Evil Lynn.”

  “Huh?”

  “Evil Lynn is what I call her. She tells everyone to call her Evelyn.”

  Still in the present tense. And what a pretentious name.

  “You’re Dante’s type,” Red continues, stacking the plates on the counter and rolling silverware in red napkins.

  “And what type is that?”

  Red smiles. “You’re a force of nature. You exude power. Dante gravitates toward clout and muscle.”

  And, I have a corpo provocante. “He likes a strong woman. Is that what you’re saying?”

  He nods. “You hang around here long enough, and you might get something more than you bargained for.”

  There’s that phrase again. Something more? I don’t want something more. If I have to flirt my booty off to get Dante to open up and give me meat for a better story, I will flirt like a champion.

  “Dante is…he just is, okay?” Red says. “There’s no one like him. He’s…he’s an amazing person. He’s as amazing as Evil Lynn is not, understand? When she visits, Lelani and I hit the road.”

  It’s official. Evelyn gets visiting rights, and maybe even conjugal visiting rights.

  “And Dante lets her, that’s what gets me,” Red says. “‘She will come back to me,’ Dante says. ‘She is my portafortuna, my good luck charm.’ It’s a complicated relationship and arrangement. They both raise DJ—she gets him for the school year—and DJ’s turning out fine. But when they get together…”

  I have to ask. “So they still…” I wince for good measure, as if wincing is the international sign for sleeping together.

  “Conjugate?” Red says. “Get busy?”

  I blush and nod.

  “No. Not that Dante doesn’t try.”

  Hence, the two-seater. Great.

  “Christiana, Dante still thinks they’re married,” Red says. “‘No papers will dissolve what God has blessed,’ he says. He’s old school like that. And when Evil Lynn comes up here to visit, she complicates everything. She throws off his training schedule completely. He’s far too generous with her, and she treats him like dirt. She has the ability to completely silence an Italian man without saying a word.”

  Frightening.

  “She wouldn’t even allow him to speak Italian in public or around DJ,” Red says with a shake of his head. “‘In English, please,’ she says. When he was winning, she was only part shrew. He lost to Washington and Cordoza, she started losing interest, and she became all shrew.”

  Therefore, that means…“Evelyn is a gold digger?” I say her name like a normal person does.

  “She was an RN making nice money,” Red says, “I doubt she was ever a gold digger. I just try to stay away from her, understand?”

  I nod. “Did she ever love him?”

  “Oh, I’m sure she loved him in her own way,” Red says. “But when the losses came…” He shrugs. “I
used to think the losses were what made him such a legend. ‘Blood and Guts,’ right? He had no nickname before that. Forty-seven fights without a nickname. He was just…Dante Lattanza.”

  “When did Evelyn finally give up on him?” I ask.

  “A month after the Cordoza fight and she gave up on him entirely. She moved back to Syracuse and filed for divorce the same day. As soon as he got the papers, he quit boxing.”

  “And DJ was what, six?”

  “Yeah. It was such a tough time for him,” Red says. “He’s come through it pretty well. They’ve kept it cool. Visits anytime anywhere. Lots of trips together. Christmases down in Virginia or in Syracuse. It has been a fairly peaceful life for DJ, you know? Almost a regular life.”

  I don’t know about that. “What changed? I mean, after ten years, he suddenly decides to start boxing again.”

  He sighs for the longest time. “It’s mostly Evelyn’s fault. Dante one day got it in his head to win her back by making a comeback. He even made a deal with her. For every win in this comeback, they go out on a date. Should he win the title, and he has an even shot if Tank’s off his game, Evelyn has agreed to try again.” He holds me with his eyes. “He’s fighting to remarry the shrew.”

  Now that’s crazy! “No way.”

  Red nods. “It’s crazy. The way she treated him, and yet…” He shrugs. “That’s Dante to the core.”

  I can’t believe this. “C’mon, Red. He can’t beat Tank Washington. Tank’s in his prime. Dante’s too slow, has no defense, and has nothing left in that left hook of his. He’s never had a jab.”

  Red smiles. “Your granddaddy taught you about boxing, too.”

  I nod.

  “Dante knows he’s up against it. He probably knows he’ll lose, too. He hopes the attempt will be enough to win her back.”

  Dante is dreaming the impossible dream here. “Is she, um, worth…No, I have no right to ask that.”

  Red shakes his head. “Is Evelyn worth the effort?”

  I nod.

  “She ain’t worth a damn,” Red scowls, “but there’s no accounting for love.”