Borderlands (15 page)

Most of the school turned out for it, even Coach Canellos, who was also the dean of boys and wanted to see this one as much as anybody. We both gave Rita our shirt to hold. She winked at me, smiled at Mato. I really thought I’d take him. We went at it for twenty minutes. I got in some good shots, but when my eyes were swollen nearly shut, Canellos stepped in and stopped it. Great fight, chachos, he said, then suspended us both for a week. Rita handed me my shirt and left with Mato. A few days later he stopped by the lumberyard where I was working and told me she’d left on a bus back to California to be a movie star. He thought the whole thing was pretty funny, and in spite of myself he got me laughing about the shiners we both still wore. But the truth is, even while I was laughing I wanted to put my fist through his face.

Around that time we both said the hell with school and took up training for the Legion smokers at Roberto Zavala’s Gym. Roberto put us up in the Nopales Hotel down the street with the rest of his fighters. It was a fleabag but it beat hell out of “home.” Ever since my folks were killed in a car crash when I was nine I’d been living with my Aunt Concha and her two pain-in-the-ass daughters, and I was happy to be shed of that house of nags. As for Mato, his old man vanished before he was born, and his mother was a boozer with a different bum in her bed every week. When he moved out he didn’t tell her where he was going and she didn’t ask.

We were both natural welterweights, but I was the better boxer. I had the sharper jab, the quicker feet. I could hit too, but Mato was the real puncher. His hook to the body was like a ball bat. In those days he was always coming at you, willing to take two to give one. Roberto predicted we’d end up against each other in the semifinals, and we did. Roberto always said a good boxer could beat a good slugger any day if he was careful not to get tagged, which is a pretty big if. Stick and move and keep your distance, he told me, and you can’t lose, not to a puncher, not even him. Roberto had trained us both but he worked my corner when we fought because I’d do like he told me. Mato always did things his own way.

I could’ve won it easy if I’d fought the last two rounds like the first, if I’d kept jabbing and staying away from his hooks. All the judges gave me the first. But in the middle of the second he dropped his hands and laughed at me, said
Rita
could give him a better fight. So I went at him. At the bell we were both whaling with both hands but he was landing the harder shots. Roberto was having a fit when I got back to the corner. Called me fool, pendejo, every name there is. Mato grinned across the ring and shook his head to let me know how little I’d hurt him. I knew Roberto was right, that I was a jerk to fight Mato’s fight, but I couldn’t help it. All I wanted was to smash his face. So we mixed it up again in the third and he wobbled me with a hook to the liver and an uppercut that broke my nose. I hung on to the end of the round, but the damage was done and the judges gave it to him. After the decision, he puts his arm around me and smiles for the cameras. The picture in the sports page next day called us “Amigo Maulers.” Jesus. I would’ve
danced
on him if he’d dropped dead. In the final, he put the other guy away in under two minutes of the first round.

A Dallas group gave him a pro contract and set him up at a training camp. I signed on with a manager who worked out of El Paso, so I went to live there. I roomed in a place on Stanton and trained in a good gym across the river in Juérez. A lot of the Mex fighters couldn’t speak English and called me pocho because I didn’t know but a dozen words in Spanish. But they smiled when they said it and we got along OK.

For the next two years Mato and me both kept winning and working our way up the ranks. Sometime in there I saw Rita in a skin magazine, a red-haired “starlet” now, calling herself Jill Somebody, five pages showing her titty tattoo and everything else to the world. I don’t know how to explain it, but the pictures made me horny and mad at the same time. I sent her a note in care of the magazine—”Looking good kid, Mr. Bad Ass”—and then felt like a jerk for mailing it.

They matched me and Mato in New Orleans on the undercard of a televised championship fight. They talked us up as dynamite comers with identical 14-0 pro records, 11 kayos each. Mato was already #4 in the federation rankings, I was #6, but the betting line had us even. He came down to the ring from the dressing room with a crowd around him, lights flashing, music on the PA, a whole show like he’s a champ already. Dances by my corner in his sequined robe and says, “Say goodnight, Rudy.”
Smiles
. For six rounds it was as close as the bookies thought it’d be. Then he butted and opened a hell of a cut over my eye. My guys couldn’t stop the blood. The ref called it accidental and the ring doctor wouldn’t let me go on. Mato was up by a point on two of the cards, so it was his fight. He comes to my corner and pats me on the shoulder, showing the crowd and the people in TV-land what a good sport he is. Leans in close and says, “Like they told us in school—use your head to get ahead.” I called him a bastard and meant it, and he laughed.

Fourteen months later we’d both won five more, and they signed us to fight again, this time for a shot at the champ. Mato was five-to-three favorite but there was talk the smart money was on me. I was training for that fight when one day I’m jogging past this adult video store and I slow down to check out the pictures and the new video boxes in the front window—and there’s Rita on the front of one called
Lila’s Luscious Love
, kneeling naked on a bed with a “don’t-you-wish” look on her face. I don’t know how long I stood there looking at it before I got back to my run. Every night for the next two weeks I thought about going down and checking out that video but I never did. It was bad enough just imagining what was on it. I wrote her a letter one night without mentioning the video, just “Hey, how are you, what you been up to?” But I didn’t know where to mail it, so I stuck it in one of my bags.

The fight was in Atlantic City and it was another close one. Most everybody scored the first five rounds even. I was at my best but Mato had come a long way. He was faster and smoother than I thought he’d ever be. He’d learned to put a twist on his jab and to use it backing up, to jump in with a combination and dance quick out of counterpunch range. He’d learned to
box
is what I’m saying.

He talked a lot the first couple of rounds, telling me how slow I’d gotten, laughing and shaking his head whenever I landed a shot, letting the crowd know it didn’t do a thing. In the third I started talking back, giving him the same kind of trash. My corner told me to shut up, just fight, but I couldn’t help it. Maybe if I hadn’t been running my mouth so much he wouldn’t have been able to snake the right over my jab in the fourth like he did. Ripped the eye wide open—same eye as before. I couldn’t see squat with it for the blood. My corner worked like hell on the cut between rounds, but then he’d open it right up again. He’d tie me up against the ropes and roll his head on it, rub his glove across it, give it short twisting shots, keep working it bigger and bigger. My blood was all over us. The ref kept saying he was going to stop it after one more round, and I kept saying don’t do it. Then Mato connected with the eye again in the eighth and I started seeing double. At the end of the round the ring doc took another close look and shook his head. The ref waved his hands and that was it.

Mato came to my corner and held my hand up in a grand sporting gesture. Says to me, “Gave it your best, mano, got nothing to be shamed of.” Giving me that
smile
! I wanted to kill him. But then I suddenly knew the truth: I
knew
he was a better fighter than I was. And I knew I either learned to live with it or I’d be eating my guts out the rest of my life. So I shook his hand and I meant it, and his smile went sort of funny, like it was the last thing he expected. I don’t know why, but his look made me feel like
I’d
won something.

A few weeks later the doctors told me the eye was ruined for good and I couldn’t fight anymore.

Mato went on to win the title like everybody knew he would. He was a popular champ, too, always gave the fans their money’s worth. The first couple of years, he defended the title every two-three months. Fighting that often not only made him rich, it kept him in shape so he didn’t have to train much for a match. Some champs feel about training the way most good-looking women feel about housework—you know, it’s beneath them. But after he’d beaten the top contenders, he was fighting one bum after another and putting them away inside the first couple of rounds. Those quick kayos look great to the fans but you can’t stay sharp if you’re training half-assed and fighting nothing but palookas. Especially not if you’re playing the role all the time like Mato was doing—partying, knocking over the chicks, lapping up the attention.

Me, I became a ref. Third man in the ring. Turned out I had a flair for it, what some would call a naturally theatrical manner. I grew a bandido mustache and the fans liked the way I danced around the fighters and shook both index fingers at the fighters like pistols whenever I gave a warning. They loved the way I mugged it up big when I gestured for a fighter to keep his punches up or for a couple of huggers to knock off the waltzing and
fight
, goddamn it.

I took to chewing bubble gum while I worked and would blow a big bubble every now and then when the going was slow, just to give the fans a little entertainment and let the fighters know they were boring hell out of all of us. When they heard a bubble pop they knew they’d best pick things up. Between rounds I’d feint and jab at the girl strutting around the ring with the round-card over her head, get a grin out of her and a laugh from the crowd. If she was showing her ass in one of those little thong numbers, I’d sometimes do a double-take and grab at my heart. That always broke the place up. Some of the sportswriters didn’t care for my clowning. Said it was “demeaning to the fight game” to have a referee carry on the way I did. Dig it:
demeaning
. To the
fight
game. Oh, man. The fact was, most of the fans and even most of the news-hacks got a kick out of my show, and the commission never did come down on me about it. Besides, I was a damn good ref. When I was in the ring I
ran
it. A fighter didn’t do as I said after I warned him once, I quick took the point. The pugs learned quick that when I said jump they better jump. One time a couple of sluggers kept hitting fast and furious after the bell and when I shoved between them to break them up I caught a wild one on the jaw. I just looked at the pug and gave him a big shrug—like, “
That’s
the best you got?”—and shook my head in disgust. The crowd loved it.

I traveled a lot, naturally, but home was in Houston. A buddy in real estate got me a good deal on a house on a bayou in Morgan’s Point. I took up sailing and every chance I got I was out on the bay in my boat. I’d have to say things were pretty fine.

Then out of the blue I get a phone call from Rita. She’d seen me ref a fight on TV, then tracked me down through a magazine sports guy in L.A. She was in town and wondered if maybe we could get together for dinner, talk about old times, have some laughs. Well yeah, sure. Talk about surprised. It’d been more than eight years. I was nervous as a kid as I drove to meet her at a steak house in Galena Park. She showed up in a cab, looking swell. She smiled big and warm when she saw me, gave me a tight hug, a kiss on the mouth. Turns out things had soured for her in L.A. It was practically a closed club out there, she said, strictly who you knew and who you blew. She’d been in a couple of “minor productions,” but her agent was straight from hell and she finally realized she was never going to get a break, not out there.

I didn’t bring up the skin magazine or
Lila’s Luscious Love
. What for? That was then, this was now. She was just passing through, she said, on her way to Atlanta to interview for a TV job. After dinner I drove her to the hotel and she asked me up for a drink on the terrace and a look at the great view she had of the city. One thing led to another. I wanted to
sing
after we made love. Next day she packed her bag and went home with me.

Over the next month I pulled out of a couple of fights just to stay home with her. We sailed, had picnics, went to the movies, talked a little, fooled around a lot. I’d say I was falling in love. Then one night we’re in a restaurant downtown and Mato shows up with his crowd. Sends a bottle of wine to our table, then comes over, all smiles and damn-small-world, long-time-no-see, how-the-hell-are-you. Wearing a white silk suit, Rolex, tie that probably cost two hundred bucks, his hair longer now,
styled
. But he looked fifteen pounds over the limit, and I figured he’d play hell making the weight for his next fight. He was in town for an athletic-shoe commercial they were shooting at the Astrodome. Get together sometime, he says, shaking my hand so-long and winking at Rita. It wasn’t till then I saw how she was looking at him, and my chest suddenly felt hollow.

I told myself it wouldn’t happen again, but I was just whistling. All the following week she already seemed more like a memory than somebody real and right there with me. I went off to Biloxi to work a fight, feeling empty, knowing she’d be gone when I got back. She was. Left a note on the fridge: “It was fun.”
Fun
. Not long afterwards I saw a picture of them in the papers. She was hanging on his arm at some charity thing in New York.

I wouldn’t say I got over it.

Two months later Mato signed to defend against Caballo Galvez in Vegas and I was picked for third man. I didn’t want a damn thing to do with Mato, but I figured he’d somehow be getting the best of me if I turned the job down, so I took it.

There were two other title fights on the card that night—flyweight and junior lightweight—but Mato’s was the main event, and the place was standing room only. Galvez was a brawler out of Guatemala who’d won his last seven by knockout and had come up the rankings like a rocket. He was no palooka, and Mato had his work cut out this time. Rita was at ringside with a bunch of Mato’s high-roller pals. She wore diamonds and a black dress cut to here. She gave me a smile just like Mato’s, and when I didn’t smile back she laughed.