The Fighter (20 page)

"... Asset
allocation ... Cohiba coronas and their impact on bistro culture..."

A wave of cold
nausea ripped through Paul's guts. The room lurched, its reds and whites
transposing so that, for an instant, the spackled ceiling became an expanse of
curdled blood. An intense loathing welled up at the sight of these sons and
daughters of privilege. He saw them all lying facedown in the mud with slugs
riven through their skulls. He saw their bodies heaped pell-mell in a mass
grave with a dusting of quicklime eating their bones. He saw them not as bodies
but as vague unformed
shapes,
featureless faces smooth as eggshell.

"...
Cambodian sweatshop sanctions ... tennis elbow...

Then Drake's
body swelled and bloated until his face tore in two like sun-rotted fatback to
reveal the head of a massive quivering maggot. Paul's eyes went big; he choked,
averting Drake's gaze, and saw that
all
the children had turned into maggots. Giant greasy tubes sheathed in Donna
Karan dresses with nautilus-whorl hairdos and redwood-framed glasses and clutch
purses, tubes peristaltic-flexing across the lush white carpeting. A guest
leaned down and kissed his maggot-daughter and his lips came away with taffy
pulls of mucus clinging to them. A guest fed her maggot-son a stuffed olive canapé,
fingers disappearing into the dilated asshole of its mouth. Drake the Maggot
stood on its tail like a cartoon worm, body curled like an S and, revoltingly,
it continued to speak.

"...white-chocolate
truffles ..Maggot-Drake said. "... Jerry's Kids..

The
puckered balloon-knot of Maggot-Drake's mouth blurped and blorped and spewed
snotlike goo that stuck to Paul's face like gobs of gelatin.

"
Yakka-yakka-yakka,"
Maggot-Drake laughed,
"Hohohohohoho HOOO
!"

Paul's
own hysterical laughter ricocheted off the walls, so deafening all other
conversations ground to a halt as he gagged
HO-HO-HO
like a demented Pere Noel. The
toilet-paper plugs rocketed from his nose and his body quaked and the
television fire crackled and Rita MacNeil sang "O Tannenbaum"—

Paul
punched Maggot-Drake in its butthole mouth. His arm sunk in to the elbow and
Drake's maggot body went
sssssss,
deflating like a ruptured parade
balloon. Paul blinked and there was Drake Langley, crumpled up on the hearth.

The
DVD skipped. The TV fire went black.

Paul
sat on the back porch. He'd broken Drake's jaw. The sound of young Drake
moaning, the sight of those strings of saliva dribbling from his unhinged
puppet-mouth—it spoiled the seasonal
joie de vivre.
The party broke up quickly,
despite Socialite Barb's best efforts: "Please, everything's fine! Let's
all roast chestnuts!"

He'd
watched Drake Langley transform into a maggot. The Vicodin Sandercott had given
him—blotter acid? That, or he'd gone temporarily delusional. At this point,
either scenario struck him as completely possible.

His
father joined him with a bottle of scotch. "Well, thank god that kid's dad
isn't the litigious type." He sat, took a pull from the bottle, and set it
between his legs. "Maybe I should consider it lucky you didn't punch him,
too."

"It
may end up being the best thing anyone's ever done for him."

"You
know," Jack said, peevishly, "most people who get beat up aren't
changed for it. Blake will ice his jaw tonight and go to work in the
morning."

"His
name is Drake."

"I've
been calling him Blake for years. Drake. Isn't that a sort of bird?"
Another gulp. "So why'd you do it?"

Alas, dear Drake
had turned into a quivering blubbery maggot
.

"How's
Mom?"

"How
would you figure?"

Paul
reached between his father's legs for the bottle. Inside, some china shattered.

"I
should sleep somewhere else tonight."

"Tonight?
Think more like a week," said Jack. "So, figured out how all this is
benefiting you yet?" When Paul said nothing his father persisted.
"Why you're decking party guests?"

Paul
took a swig. If there was one thing he missed lately, it was good scotch.
"Dad, did you ever think, even for one fleeting moment, that maybe I
didn't want the life you'd staked out for me?"

Jack
looked like he'd been knifed in the guts. "Staked out for you? Is that
what you think? I only wanted you to be happy. I wanted you to go to a good
school—you did. I wanted you to go to university—you did. I wanted you to work
at a job you'd be happy with ..." He trailed off, confused. "I
thought you'd found that." Jack slugged scotch, breathed deep, another
slug. "But... you never showed the slightest ambition. Sports, academics, jigsaw
puzzles, ships in bottles—nothing."

"Fair
point. I'm a late bloomer."

"Blooming
into what? Into something that belongs up in a friggin'
bell tower.
Jesus, and now you're..." Jack hung his head."... bleeding."

Paul
wiped under his nose; his fingers came away bloody. He thought about the
cleanliness of Sandercott's instruments and considered the prospect of staph
infection.

"So
this is all my fault?" Jack went on. "You're blaming me?"

"Give
me a break. Self-pity doesn't suit you."

"I'm
drunk." More shattering noises from inside. "And in a few minutes I
have to go deal with
that.
So let me wallow, will
you?"

Paul
softened. "It's not your fault. I don't think you gave it any thought, is
all. You had a sense of how things should be, and I didn't make any waves, so
..."

"And
this is how you want it?"

"I'm
happier."

"No
you're not. You just think you are."

Inside:
stomping, another crash.

"Good
thing I got a snootful to keep me warm," Jack said dourly. "Conjugal
bed's bound to be a mite frosty tonight."

His
father went inside. Raised voices, a spectacularly loud crash, what might or
might not have been weeping. Paul shivered, coming down from the adrenaline
buzz.

"That
was quite a performance."

It
was Callie, his father's receptionist. She wore a puffy parka over a peach
blouse, short black skirt, nylons.

She
sat on the porch stairs. The smoke from her menthol cigarette mingled with the
smell of jasmine perfume. "Haven't seen you around the office. Jack thinks
you're having a breakdown. Quarter- life crisis."

He
reached out, suddenly, and set his hand on her face. She didn't flinch; her
eyes did not release from his. He ran his thumb down the center of her face to
her chin. Convinced she was not liable to split apart as Drake had, he let out
a shuddering breath and smiled.

"What
was that all about?"

Paid
brushed her question off. "What do
you
think?" he said. "Am I
having a breakdown?"

"I
can't say, exactly. You're... different. You've changed. Definitely."

"For
the better?"

"I
think so." The rapid beat of her heart pulsed her neck vein. "You
really popped that poor guy. Never seen anyone hit so hard. It was ...
wow."

She
butted her cigarette on the porch steps, leaning over to do so. Her blouse was
sheer and low-cut, her breasts just bigger than medium and firm. They were
about the most beautiful tits Paul had ever seen. This was his first sexual
stirring since his steroid cycle began and it broiled through his veins in a
galvanizing, all-consuming, full- barrel rush. She studied him with a knowing
half-smile, a few wisps of cigarette smoke curling from the sides of her lips.

The
two of them in the greenhouse with its long dusty tables, trowels, and boxes of
expired slug poison. Paul's hands clutched at Callie's ass as she bit his lower
lip, small pink tongue slicing the gaps between his teeth. He tore her blouse
off, buttons popping, his hands and mouth on her tits, groping her with all the
subtlety of an orangutan. Their bodies glanced off the glass; a pane fractured
in spiderweb cracks. She tugged his fly down and jerked his cock, her strong
farm- girl hands pulling so hard it was as if she were trying to yank a stubborn
weed; he shook her hand away and crushed his mouth to hers with such force he
thought their teeth would splinter. They maneuvered amid sacks of cacao shells
and blood-and-bone meal; Paul's toe struck the old Bowflex and he bellowed like
a gorgon. She moaned unintelligible words as he picked her up and dropped her
on bags of peat, the white plastic splitting in puffs of dust, and when their
lips met again they could taste the earthy grit of it on their tongues.

Callie's
pussy sopping, wet satin molded to her labia, and Paul hiked her skirt up,
hands and teeth shredding her panties and Callie's box neatly shaved, clitoris
poking from its hood hard as a polished pebble and she gripped his cock but
when she tried to contort her body to fit it into her mouth, panting
ravenously, he pushed her down and rubbed his cock over her pussy, which was
tight and hot and wet and when a flicker of dismay crossed his face she ignored
it completely, impatient now, grasping his cock and digging her nails into his
shaft—he went "Aaaah!"; she went "Come on, move
it..
."—she slipped him in and then Paul was pushing hard and fast, gasping and
dizzy as tree pruners and Garden Weasels shook off their hooks, the two of them
rocking together and Paul's fingers puncturing bags of peat—

And
there, under the tepid glow of a sixty-watt bulb with soil crumbling in his
bruised hands, Paul Harris saw a sleepy hillside village. Clapboard houses,
horses and mules yoked to hitching posts. He stands alone in the street, warm
breeze scrolling dust and dry leaves across the lane. With the toe of his boot
he drags a line in the dirt. Men come from the saltbox shacks rolling
shirt-sleeves to their elbows, swiveling their arms and cracking their necks.
The first man is huge but slow: Paul ducks his ponderous fists, answering with
stinging rights and lefts to his boxlike face, splitting it open until the man
goes down and is dragged away. The next guy fights fiercely, crushing blows to
Paul's liver and pancreas until Paul catches him a sneaky right on the temple
and he goes down twitching. He fights another, then another and another and
another; log-boom stacks pile up in the gullies. They fight in a ring of blood
and Paul breaks noses and crushes eyeballs from sockets. Hot blood coats his
hands the way nacre forms around a speck of grit and soon his fists are the
size of bowling balls, hard and heavy, yet he swings them with ease, crushing
ribcages and cracking skulls, pulverizing spinal cords and splattering faces
like rotted fruit, the men reduced to sticky pulp, to horrible wet noise, but
they keep coming, dozen upon dozen, and Paul dispatches them all without mercy,
reducing their bodies to chunks, to gristle and bone, sunk knee-deep in gore
and he's screaming for more, Bring it on, Bring it on,
Bring.. .It...
On.

T
he
Upper New York Golden Gloves qualifying tournament was held in the basement of
St. Michael's cathedral at the corner of Niagara and 12th. The day was December
31, 2005.

The
dressing room boiled with voices and bodies, bodies of men and boys, naked
chests and shoulders, black, white, brown, beige, yellow. Altar boy smocks and
votive candle holders were hung on hooks beside the weigh station.

Rob
stripped to his underwear and took his place in line. Irish guys with freckled
arms, Mexican flyweights who looked made of braided rope, black cruiserweights
with superhero bodies—muscles where there shouldn't be muscles—Cuban street
kids with scars marking their faces, Italian bruisers with marbled forearms and
squashed noses. They'd come from all over the region: Lockport and Erie,
Lackawanna and Tonawanda, a few driving north from New York City looking for
softer brackets. They eyed one another cagily, sizing each other up, laying
their own private odds.