The Best Thing (9 page)

Okay. Now I won’t see him until he steps out into the ring on Thursday night. Flutter, flutter. As if I didn’t have enough to panic about.

Normal life, the gruesome things it can hide. If Mum would only give her frustrated cry, ‘What is
wrong
with you two?’ I could point, I could say, ‘What is wrong is,
he
…’ But she doesn’t. She’s chirpily preparing for our weekend away. She’s so happy and lively it seems like she knows everything and is putting on a monstrous pretence of not knowing.

I haven’t even seen Dad in the two days since. Working late, the bastard. I hear him come in and shower, knowing the reason for all those showers now. Because nothing’s been said, I look back to Monday afternoon and wonder if it really did happen. Maybe I dreamed it, my brain hunting out someone else to blame for my troubles.

Mum looks up from her list-making. ‘It’ll be a big shop, Thursday night.’

‘Oh, I can’t come. I promised Lees I’d go out with her.’

‘Oh, rats. I finally coaxed Dad into coming.’

‘Good, you won’t be on your own, then.’

‘I thought Lisa wasn’t allowed out week-nights either.’

‘They bent the rules, ‘cause I’m going to be away.’

‘Oh, well.’ She glances down her list. ‘Dad and I’ll just have to have an intimate candlelit dinner for two. Shucks, eh?’

I manage a sickly smile.

I’m at the Club. Oriana’s nails dig into my elbow, the crowd of mostly men and feral children stamps, claps and calls ‘Di-no! Di-no! Di-no!’ as his team escorts him down the aisle from the dressing room. Over the raised ring, small, bare, spotlit, hang two white cards:

Magnum Poulos is already in the ring, shedding a long crimson satin robe and a white T-shirt. He’s big and dark and tough-looking, with a black frizz of hair bursting off the top of his head. ‘Oh God, I hate him already,’ says Oriana in my ear.

Pug, robed in hot red, looks magnificent, a warrior king coming down through his battalions. He’s a different creature from the restless, speechless person in the dressing-room, needing us there but blind and deaf to everything but Jimmy’s reassurances. Now he seeks us out in the crowd before climbing up into the ring.
Right, on with the business
. I’m
appalled
at what’s about to happen (can this be the twentieth century?), at what I’ve got myself into, caring for someone who subjects himself to this. I glance at Mrs Magnini, who sits with her handbag on her lap, her eyes on the ring. It must be ten times worse for her. The others, Pug’s
dad and Oriana and Luciano, are going mental like the rest of the crowd, cheering madly.

You can see those extra five kilos on Magnum Poulos; he’s a bit bigger all over. Pug looks unperturbed, stripped down to hot red shorts, testing the surface of the ring. Can this be the same guy, mine, the man in the green-shadowed room in the long summer afternoons? He looks horribly alone up there, despite the whistles and the crowd calling out, despite his team and the officials encrusting the edges of the ring.

Jimmy Riley ties a pair of bright red gloves onto him. The guy with the megaphone introduces them and the crowd cheers for Poulos and goes bananas for Pug. Then the ref has his little mutter to them (what does he say? A little prayer? ‘Follow Plan B tonight, lads—it’s Magnum’s turn to win’?), and they go to their corners and wait for the bell.
Oh God, I don’t want to see this. Is there a way to stop time?
Clanng!
No, there isn’t
.

They go straight after each other like sworn enemies, no dancing, no hanging back. Pug is up against the ropes in a few seconds, but he slips out and around and traps Magnum in a corner. Then too much is going on for me to follow; they’re locked together and trying to punch upward between each other’s fists. This is so different from training; there’s no Jimmy calling the shots, there’s no imaginary opponent. Instead, a big angry body is trying to pound Pug into oblivion.

I can’t believe the crowd. As soon as the fight starts the ones up the front are all shouting advice (‘Body-body-body, Dino!’, ‘Work ‘im, Magnum, work ’im! Don’t let ’im rest!’, ‘And again, Dino! Body again!’), which is loud enough, but when either of the fighters gets a scoring blow in there’s this—it isn’t a roar and it isn’t a cheer—it’s a big
rush
of male voice noise. A roar of joy? And then the advice goes up to a new pitch, and after the next blow and rush of noise, an even higher, louder one. Guys are practically climbing into the seat in front of them, their faces red and yelling, veins popping out in their necks—their eyes focused
without blinking on the ring. It’s absolutely one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen, heard or experienced.

I never thought two minutes could last so long. When the bell goes I’m really ready for a break.

Oriana stops screaming and sits down. ‘How do you like it?’

‘It sucks,’ I say, my eyes on Pug. He’s aglow with sweat on a stool in his corner, Jimmy talking in his ear.

‘Don’t faint, willya?’ Oriana grins. She looks up at the ring, turns her head away sharply. ‘Now
this
bit sucks.’

A little
doll
of a girl, dressed in a tight, tight, sequined, very short mini dress, comes tottering up to the ring on spiky heels. When she bends down to climb through the ropes whistles and shouts explode all over the hall because one half of the crowd can see down her front and the other half can see up her backside.

‘What’s she doing?’ I ask Oriana. Neither fighter takes a scrap of notice of her.

She stands up and smirks her way around the ring, holding up the round number written on a little card. The feral kids whistle and clap. Some man in the crowd yells encouragement, and she pauses and lifts her skirt so he can see her sequined knickers—she gets lots of applause for this.

What the
—‘Does that happen every round?’

‘Different bird every time,’ says Oriana. ‘It’s off, isn’t it?’

But the bell’s gone and everyone’s melted off the ring except for Pug and Magnum and the referee.

They’re a perfect match; for every good blow he puts in, Pug gets one in return. He takes a couple of smacking body blows and the crowd
howls
, echoing the little howl of fear in my innards. But he pushes forward straight away, and lands a really solid blow to the side of Magnum’s head. Magnum doesn’t even stagger; his head pops up and he comes in close and locks it into Pug’s shoulder. It looks weird, almost affectionate.

The referee has to tell them to break quite a few times this round, and the boxing seems messy, with Pug basically fending off the other guy and not getting any openings. When the bell
goes he swings away to his corner. Both guys are glossy and beginning to drip, with red patches where they’ve been hit, and Magnum’s black frizz is draggling onto his shiny forehead. He still looks massive, and angry now, dangerous.

The Round 3 girl, in a gold-beaded bikini, trips past him, delicate as an insect, cheerfully flashing a breast at one of her supporters. ‘Oh, gross,’ says Oriana, turning away. Beside her Luciano is watching the girl and grinning.

‘Onyer, Dino! Don’t wait for ’im!’ someone yells when the bell goes for the third round. Magnum locks Pug into that embrace again and forces him back towards his corner. Pug shakes himself free. He steps back and sideways and puts four neat, hard blows into Magnum’s ear and jaw. Half the crowd hollers with outrage and the other half hollers with joy. Oriana and Lu are jumping in their places. Magnum turns and tries to push in on Pug again, but through his elbows Pug slips a blow to his chest. He gets hit on the forehead for that, but comes back so quickly that Magnum’s up against the corner pad, taking a bunch of blows full in his face before he butts his way out. Pug’s face over Magnum’s charging back has no emotion on it at all; then it disappears; it reappears red where their foreheads have connected and the brow-bones have squashed the flesh apart, and there’s still no emotion—no shock, no pain, nothing. The crowd is no longer voices, but a surging sea of noises, Oriana’s screams lost in it. Mrs Magnini leans against me, craning for a view, hanging onto my arm. Pug’s dad is on his feet and yelling with the rest. Pug ducks a swipe before the referee stops the fight and makes him check with the doctor.

He’s allowed to continue. The next time they come together Magnum falls to one knee on the canvas and is counted out to three. He stands up and goes forward. Pug pushes him back onto the ropes and gives him three big,
meaty
punches in the head, right-left-right, yanking three
great
big roars out of the crowd. I go into shock.
This is a person’s head, not a sawdust-stuffed bag. So this is what is meant by ‘a decisive victory’ in boxing
.

Magnum’s fists sag away from his face. The referee stops the fight again, has a very short exchange with Magnum, then turns and gives the match to Pug.

‘That’s it?’ I say to Oriana.

‘Yes, yes!’ She flings an arm around me and jumps about cheering wildly.

Pug’s mum squeezes my hand, then lets go to hunt for a hankie in her bag.

The two fighters look as if they’ve been shovelling coal in a furnace all day: the sweat splashes off them, their fancy shorts are dull and soaked. Pug lifts his arms like a bear, and then seems to notice the crowd for the first time as it roars all round him.

He turns full circle to acknowledge all the applause. He doesn’t smile at all, as if he’s just taking what’s due to him, no big deal. And then he’s looking at me, standing still and meeting my eyes down a
tunnel
in the most incredible, inhuman racket. Buildings fall, mountains crumble all around, but
inside
the tunnel is absolute silence. He could whisper and I would hear every word, I swear. His eyes snap wide awake then, and there’s a half-smile on his mouth, a really
ironic
one, when I just didn’t think Pug was an ironic type of person, didn’t think he had that level of thinking in him. It’s as if he knows everything I’ve been thinking about this crazy sport, and he thinks it all too, but then there’s
this
on top of it, the winning. He can still put himself up there, risk his face and his brain, for this. It means something.
Can you see what it means to me, Mel?
No, I can’t. I can see that it
does
matter, but I don’t think I’ll ever know why.

Then the tunnel blinks out, and the racket makes me jump, like a bang of thunder. He turns away to accept a hug from Magnum and Jimmy and his team. A shining rain begins to fall; people are throwing handfuls of coins. The money rings in the air overhead and splashes onto the canvas.

Pug is whisked away, a thick knot of people hugging him and
shaking his hand and slapping his back as Jimmy leads him up the aisle.

I feel as if I haven’t breathed since the match started. Dazed, I follow the Magninis through to the change-room, grateful for the crowd that slows us, holds me upright, gives me a chance to recover.

I trail in with the family, stand by while they all embrace and congratulate and cry on him. It feels as if hardly a minute’s passed since we were all in here watching Pug psych himself up. Now we’re all different people. He won, and we saw him do it.

Over his dad’s shoulder he sees me. Come on over, he gestures with his head, his taped hand. I wangle my way through, feeling awestruck, tiny as a round-card girl.

‘Outa me way, Dad,’ he says, pretending to push him aside. And here is my Pug—non-ironic, bloodied and beautiful, kissing me with a grunt of emphasis, grinning a sparkling grin at me under the split eyebrow, lifting me off my feet and swinging me round. I bury my face in his neck, in that ridiculous red robe, so no-one will see my tears.

‘So, what d’you think of me new job?’ he says, putting me down.

‘I don’t know,’ I say shakily. ‘I think I hate it.’

He laughs, and Magninis laugh around me. Someone pats me on the back, as if to say,
You’ll come round to it
.

But I don’t believe I ever can, ever will, be anything but puzzled. Puzzled, and frightened.

‘Siddown, Dino, and let me finish with that cut,’ says Jimmy.

We all sit around while Jimmy swabs and Oriana, Lu and Mr Magnini do a post-mortem of the fight. Mrs Magnini sits beaming, dabbing at her eyes now and then. And every now and again you look at me, you pug, you Pug, and I have to stop myself saying it, out loud and in front of everyone (God, wouldn’t we all be embarrassed!), because of your green eyes, your hand trailing tape, your damp-patched T-shirt and the black hair curling along your legs, because of the mist of victory-glamour between us, and
your same old rusty voice assenting, describing, enthusing in Italian. But as far as I know how to love anybody I love you, whatever it means. I don’t know how someone like you can be a fighter for a living, or how such fighting can be fair, within the rules, but I’ll claim the privilege, I’ll sit in the post-victory dressing-room with you, any time!

And of course,
. Feels like a star-fuck, except that he seems to think
I’m
the star.