Going Fast (5 page)

“I'm worried about my dog,” Ownie told the fireman. “You see, them geese, they're not so waddly as the ducks, they've got better balance. The legs are farther forward on their bodies so they can get up speed. One of those bastards comes after me, and I'll deck him, goose or no goose, but Arguello, she is timid.”

“I noticed that,” said Louie, who sensed that Ownie, after years in the ring, was just waiting for a reason, even half a reason, to deck someone, anyone, even a goose.

The TV fight was not on for an hour, so they had time to kill. They talked about the geese, they discussed the weather, chilly for late October. Before long, Johnny steered the conversation to his favourite topic, his one fight in New York City, which seemed to symbolize Broadway, Times Square, and a sweat-soaked cathedral named Stillman's Gym.

In the fight, he had beaten a guy named Lopez, whom Ownie had described as “a horizontal fighter, a million-dollar hitter with a ten-cent chin.”

“I've got the tape with me,” he told Ownie, who shrugged. “I'll put it on.”

Unlike Ownie, Johnny lived life unguarded, celebrating
everything that gave him pleasure, never fearing it would be snatched, unfamiliar, it seemed, with suffering and penance. Johnny popped the tape in the VCR and smiled as the ring announcer introduced him in a dramatic crescendo.

“First, in the red corneeer in the black trunks with red trim.” Voice building. “He weeeighs in at one-hundred-and-sixxxty-pounds. This young man has twelllve wins with seeeven KOs, and he hails alll the way from Daaartmouth, Nova Scotia. Ladies and gentlemen, let's welcome to the Biiig Apple, Johhhnee LeeeBlooong.”

On the screen, Johnny lifted his hands and then threw air punches. In the other corner, Lopez was rocking his head like he was trying to remove water from his ears.

“With LeBlong, we'll have to see how well he trah-vills.” The commentator's accent placed him squarely in the Bronx. “It's his first faght out of Kan-a-da. Some faghters get stah-struck, tight when they're on the road.”

The camera panned from the ring to the front row, zooming in on a man with a handlebar moustache and a sketch pad. Turmoil, who had been quiet up to this point, bolted upright and shouted at the TV: “Thass the mon. Thass the mon. Some day I hab him do mah picture.”

“That's Newman,” Ownie offered. “No, Neiman,” correcting himself. “Neiman.” He repeated the name to make sure he had it right. “He was at the Ali fights. He's a very famous artist.”

Turmoil nodded his agreement. The camera zoomed in on Lopez, showing the back of his head, which had been carved up like a jack-o'-lantern.

“I he-ah that LeBlong's a country singa,” the announcer continued.

“They have them up there in Kan-a-da?” asked his colour man.

“Oh yeah, they got country singas in Sweden.”

“I'm writing a country song now,” Johnny informed Turmoil, who looked unsure of how he should respond. “It's called ‘The Earth Moved but You Were on Mars.'” Johnny looked at Ownie for approval, but the trainer ignored him. On the TV, round four had started with Lopez hanging on like a marathon dancer, a dehydrated zombie with rubber legs.

“A good fighter, he comes out and sets the pace,” Ownie whispered to Louie. “You've got to truck and pretty soon, if you can't keep up, he knows he's got ya. He lands two jabs, you land one, he gets a hook and you don't. Pretty soon, if you don't do something special, you're on Queer Street.”

Ownie could call Johnny's fight in his sleep: a six-round decision that was about as special as a wedding suit from Sears. The real champs were the guys who went for broke, the guys who put it all on the line, like Tommy Coogan.

The Kid had been a beautiful little boxer, a slam-banging welterweight who came from nothing and almost had it all. Tommy was raised by his grandmother, who worked as a cleaning woman. A lifelong resident of the North End, Vera had lost an eye in the Halifax Explosion. She was gone by the time Tommy fought the world champion in South Africa, fifteen brutal rounds that ended with a split decision in an open-air stadium full of rich, misguided Afrikaners. Maybe if it hadn't been for the head butts in the fourth round, it could have been Tommy's fight, Ownie told himself, before admitting, with an honesty that hurt, maybe not. The South African could fight like hell.

“Okay,” Johnny urged. “Watch this!”

The fight was over. On the screen, Johnny was standing mid-ring draped in a white towel, which Ownie removed as the announcer read the judges' numbers: 80-78 . . . rubbing Johnny like a race horse . . . 82-76 . . . 84-74. Thrilled with the win, Johnny hugged Ownie and kissed him. Ownie whispered instructions in his ear, and Johnny leaned in to the camera, so
that his handsome face was distorted. Sweat dripping into his eyes, he smiled a convex smile — “Yee-haw” — and strummed the air guitar of a country singer.

“That was genius, the guitar,” Johnny laughed. He looked at Ownie, who smiled.

After a couple of moments, Louie, who was always eager to ingratiate himself with Ownie, turned the conversation back to the geese and Ownie's neighbour. “I know O'Riley,” he volunteered. “He was a cop, right?”

“That's him,” said Ownie. “He did thirty years on the force.”

“Was he big in the church?”

“Yeah, the whole family was into it heavy. The sons were altar boys, and the wife played the organ. O'Riley used to read the gospel and carry around the collection plate.”

“All right,” Louie blinked.

“I'll tell you a little story,” Ownie offered, and Louie blinked again.

“O'Riley had a brother named Frankie, who was a couple of quarts low. Frankie hung around the church too. He'd shovel the driveway and take out the garbage. Every year they'd have a St. Patrick's Day show in the church basement. They'd put on these worn-out skits, sing ‘Danny Boy,' and sell fudge. O'Riley was always the emcee. Anyway, one year they put Frankie in a skit; they made him a leprechaun on accounta him being so short. Someone made him a green suit, and he grew whiskers. Everybody thought it was swell.”

Louie, who usually didn't like short jokes, smiled.

“A week after the show, he was still wearing the suit. Another week went by, still in the suit. Finally, it dawned on them there might be a problem, so O'Riley goes up to him and says, ‘Now, Frankie,' and Frankie cuts him off right sharp. ‘Don't call me Frankie no more. I'm Larry the Leprechaun.' He had a little poem to go with it: ‘He has lots of secrets I'm told, he even has hidden a fine pot of gold.'”

“When was this?” Louie asked.

“Ten years ago.”

“Is he still a leprechaun?”

“Yeah, you see him downtown all the time. The suit's shabby and full of holes. O'Riley said the doctor figures it was a combination of things. First, the fact that it took place in a church gave Frankie idea that it was God's plan. Also, it got him attention, and then, the doctor said, deep down Frankie might've been getting back at his brother for being a cop
and
so prominent in the church.”

“That right?”

“For a while, O'Riley couldn't bring himself to go to church because Frankie, or Larry, would be there in his old green suit. So when O'Riley didn't show up a few times, Larry got his job taking around the collection plate.”

“No shit.”

“That hit O'Riley as hard as a death, but Larry had the time,” Ownie shrugged. “He could do the morning mass as well as the weekends. He and the priest got pretty tight.”

By the time Ownie had finished, Johnny was telling Turmoil a story about New York, about how they couldn't find the gym when they first arrived, and how Ownie had pulled the mattress off the hotel bed and said, “There's your heavy bag. Go to it.” Johnny laughed, and Turmoil looked confused.

Hours after the TV fight, after Louie had driven both Johnny and Turmoil home, Hildred awoke Ownie in the rec room. She had a book in her hand. In his half-sleep, Ownie remembered the first time he'd met Hildred, a tall blonde in a belted green dress, with natural curls and a saucy demeanour. Hildred was with her sister, Pearl. Pearl, who wasn't bad-looking herself, was one year younger than Hildred. Pearl and Hildred were boarding at a minister's house when they met Ownie outside the five-and-dime. One of the Dartmouth Arrows, a handsome first-baseman from Boston, was sweet on
Pearl, but in a tiff, she left him and married Harold, a night manager at a hotel, and one of the most annoying human beings Ownie knew.

“Look at this.” Hildred shoved the book in his face. “Page 97.”

“I can't see nothin' without my glasses.”

“The language of the Tagature,” she read, sounding as important as O'Riley when he used to deliver the gospel in church before he was upstaged by Frankie. “The Tagature, who lived in the far mountains of Tagaran, last colonists of the First Empire, used a fiery dialect that betrayed their blood-soaked past.”

She handed him his glasses. “Do you see?”

Ownie stared, trying to figure it out. Hildred flipped to page 101, and Ownie squinted at the strangely familiar words, the same ones that Jacob, the boy genius, the comic book mogul, had given him for Turmoil.

“Eyd toer d'eyd kotore.” The curse of the Earthshaker.

“D'evl eyd onno ga klo?” Does the day find you well?

“Cesa ge apeg.” I am deeply moved.

He looked at the cover:
The Tongue of the Tagature: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Greatest Alien World Ever Imagined, Toas Publishing science fiction/reference
. Jesus. Millie's boy had set him up; he had him talking to Turmoil in an alien language, mumbo-jumbo made up by a science fiction writer.

“Honestly,” Hildred sighed as Ownie laughed. “I wouldn't laugh if I were you,” she warned Ownie, whose eyes were filling with tears. “If Turmoil finds out, he'll think you're crazy.”

“Maybe, I am,” choked Ownie. “Maybe I am.”

Garth MacKenzie, the
Standard
's managing editor, pushed the elevator button and nodded at the two cleaners sharing the space. The hefty one was juggling a stand-up vacuum, a Coke can, and a bag of all-dressed nachos. In her twenties, she had skin stretched so tight she looked like she was smothered with Saran Wrap.

“I like your hair, Doris.” She nudged a broomstick of a woman with a spray bottle strapped to her belt gunslinger-style. “Didya change it?”

“Gotta perm the other day.” Doris patted the frizz.

“Looks good.” The fat one spoke with authority. The bones in her face had vanished like twigs in a pit of human quicksand. “Not too tight.”

“Corkscrew. I weren't too fussy about it at first,” Doris admitted, chewing on a nail. “Takes a while to loosen up, you know, with them perms.”

The fat one smiled girlishly as if she was about to let Doris in on an amazing secret, like how to lose weight by eating french fries and sausages. Leaning closer, she rocked her deboned head, shook her hair until it moved, and whispered, “
I
wouldn't know.”

“What?” Doris feigned surprise and then stared at the head like it was a spaceship. The short curls appeared hot-glued to the scalp with unsettling patches of pink showing through. “That's natural?”

“Uh-huh,” the fat one giggled, then flicked her head. “Sure is.”

MacKenzie, who was bald, stared straight ahead, deeming the conversation beneath him. In his sixties, he had a basketball-shaped stomach under his short-sleeved shirt, and the washed-out colouring of someone whose hair had once been red.

“Well, you're some friggin' lucky.”

She smiled, eyes closed, head rocking with the zonked-out bliss of a zealot. “I know. My mother had curly hair.” She opened her eyes for a top up of Coke. “I'm the only one in the family that gots it, and it drives my sister crazy.”

The elevator door opened, and MacKenzie stepped out. He flinched as a flushed reporter slid by with a kit bag. “Out for a jog, Smithers?” He stopped the man.

“Ahhh yeah.” Smithers fumbled his response. “I like to get my five miles in before it gets too busy. I make it up at the end of the day,” he added nervously.

“I know what you mean.” MacKenzie tried to suck in his stomach. There was something about Smithers, he decided, that he did
not
like. “It keeps the mind alert. I do stairs myself. Uh-huh, good aerobic workout, stairs.”

The new publisher, Garnet Boomer, a numbers man from Advertising, was always talking about fitness, knocking booze and junk food, Garth reminded himself. Boomer was so relentless that Garth had resorted to club soda at lunch, Coke at the office Christmas party. Keep on top of Sports, Garth had advised himself after one of Boomer's speeches on fitness; let it be known that you have a solid understanding of what they are doing. Also, find out what those two characters were doing in the newsroom. The old one, he decided, looked suspicious, like a wise guy.

Smithers nodded tentatively as though he had been caught in a
Candid Camera
gag. Stairs? MacKenzie weighed about
260 pounds, Smithers estimated, and was shaped like a seagull with an undersized head, a thick torso, and stick legs. Prone to lower-back problems, he looked like a man with varicose veins.

Garth walked across the newsroom, unsure whether he had mentioned stairs to Carla, his secretary and a valuable conduit of office news. If not, he should.

Garth stared in the direction of Smithers's empty desk. Through an oversight or an act of malice, Sports had been located near an Entertainment writer named Blaise, who had Caesar hair and wary eyes. Fearful of invasion, Blaise had erected a blue partition decorated with an autographed picture of Karen Kain. He kept his files locked in a drawer and his stories separated into two distinct piles: “Before” and “After,” a reminder to editors that he was keeping track of changes. Fond of grand stage gestures, he'd played Brick in a Tennessee Williams tribute. Today, there was a lily on his desk. Garth nodded at Blaise, who, if Carla's intelligence was correct, hated Smithers.