The Fighter (31 page)

The
teeth his mother had "found" were still lodged in his gums. They
didn't hurt that badly, though to leave them in much longer was to risk
infection. "They were a gift."

"For
the man who has everything, huh?" She flipped her hair— a strangely
girlish gesture—then squeezed Paul's crotch. "I'll go wash up."

The
bathroom door shut. Running water, splashing water. Paul removed his shirt and
stood bare-chested before the window, considering the reflection of his body.
The flesh over his ribcage was an ugly bluish-yellow mottle. It still hurt to
breathe.

The
name of the man who'd done this damage was Tom Tully; Lou had given him the
name after much prodding. An ex-pro boxer. He and his brother shared a small
house in the Love Canal district of Niagara Falls. Tom Tully was at Mount St.
Mary's hospital, comatose fifteen days now.

Paul
often thought about Tom Tully. What sort of person was he? He'd visited the
local library archives and hunted through old
Ring
magazines.
He'd dredged up an article:
sammy "night train" layne & tommy "boom boom" tully set
to tango on holmes/cooney under- card at msg.
A photo: Tully looking
impossibly hale beside a cigar- chomping manager. A trial horse, the scouting
report said. Loads of heart, little skill. Takes a mean punch.

For
the past few days Paul had taken a cab over the river. He idled across the road
from the row house off 16th Street. Everyone looked so different. Nobody wore
suits or carried briefcases. Everyone took the bus. Though a mere forty miles
separated Paul from his childhood home, the distance seemed much greater. Paul
Harris and Tom Tully—he wondered, were their lives in any way similar? The
prospect gnawed. If they'd met outside the ring, somehow by chance, might they
have been friends? Paul remembered the bigger man saying he'd take it easy on
Paul. He remembered Tully's awkward, shamed smile.

A
trial horse. Loads of heart, little skill. Takes a mean punch.

The
whore, Adele, was singing. A sweet voice. She stepped into the room with a
towel wrapped around her head and another draping her body.

"So,"
she said. "Ready to rock and roll?"

Paul
realized, somewhat abruptly, that he had no desire to fuck this girl. He
wondered if he could ask her to get dressed and leave so he could catch a few
hours' sleep.

Adele
stared at Paul, fascinated with his body: the lumps and abrasions and bruises.
She leaned back on the mattress, a slatternly pose, running her bare feet over
the puke-green shag. Paul retrieved his handwraps from a coat pocket and sat
beside her.

"Give
me your hand."

Gently,
the way he'd been taught, he wrapped this whore's hand. Holding firm her wrist,
he felt the birdlike bones pulse under her skin. The wraps were filthy,
stinking of sweat and blood. Adele didn't seem to mind. Paul worked slowly,
applying gentle pressure, testing his handiwork. Again he was struck by just
how young she was: the rosy, fresh-scrubbed complexion of a high school girl.
He considered asking her to leave—but perhaps her being with him tonight was
the lesser of so many possible evils.

"What's
your name?"

"Rex,"
Paul told her. "Rex Appleby."

Adele
offered him a soft smile. "And what do you do, Rex?"

"I'm
the last good cop on the force. If you have a problem, if no one else can help,
and if you can find him, maybe you can hire...Rex Appleby."

When
Adele's hands were wrapped, Paul set them back in her lap. He knew he wanted
something from her—not sex, not comfort or intimacy, any of that.
Contact,
was all. Not loving contact, or even professional tenderness. Something more
forceful that would leave him scarred.

He
heeled off his shoes, unbuttoned his jeans and shucked them. He removed his
underwear and stood before her naked.

"You
sure got a big dick."

Paul
knew she was lying: his cock was a runty wrinkled thing sunk so deep into his
crotch it almost looked like a second belly button. She was no different from
the stylist who runs her hands through a balding customer's hair and remarks
how lustrous it is.

She
was tall: they met eye to eye. Her lips were almost colorless, her mouth big
and hard and brutal enough to chew right through him.

Her
shaved pussy had a starchy, ruffled look, like the collar of a Victorian
gentlewoman's dress. In the room's sulfurous light she looked like a young man.
Her breasts so small, slender body roped with taut muscle. Like a teenage boy.

Paul
pulled bills from the pocket of his jeans and placed them in the Gideon bible,
between pages in the Book of Leviticus.

Adele
smiled. "What is your pleasure, sir?"

He
considered her and sighed. He could only make a fist and slug his thigh. Adele
intuited something in this gesture—his need was as naked and undisguised as the
buzzing neon M through the parted drapes.

She
said, "I can do that."

They
stood close but not quite touching.

"Well,"
Paul said softly, "what are you waiting for?"

The
first blow glanced off his forehead. The room was so dark, visibility so poor,
that he did not see it coming. Adele's fist had some serious steam behind it:
fragments of shooting light spun before his eyes like formations of burning
birds. He was still grinning stupidly when a second punch, this one much
harder, rocked his jaw.

Paul
tripped backward, startled and unbalanced. His thigh rammed the bedside table,
knocking the lamp off as his feet swung out from under him. His skull slammed
the wall and he dropped to the floor, crushing the lamp: the cheap cellophane
shade crumpled and the light bulb burst with a powdery
pop
to drive eggshell shards of glass into his ass.

Her
hand twined in his hair, dragging him up. Her lips pressed to his ear, breath
stinking of sour bananas: "Like that, don't you?"

Before
Paul could reply she slugged him in the belly. Twin whips of snot spurted from
his nostrils. She punched him under the chin, an unforgiving uppercut that shut
his mouth. His new teeth collided. One shot straight up into the air. He
swallowed the other one and fell back on the bed.

When
the cobwebs cleared he propped himself on his elbows and found her kneeling
between his spread legs sucking his cock. She bobbed up and down, her
hair—yellow like greased wheat—fanned over his thighs. Her tongue was small and
pink, hot and wet, and she kept flicking it over the tip of Paul's hard cock as
she sucked him off.

"Wait,
now," he said, groggy but alarmed. "My god—!"

She
took a swing at him with his cock still in her mouth, clipping his chin, and he
fell back again. She grasped his hips, sharp painted talons digging deep into
his ass, thick strings of saliva hanging from her lips as she bent to inhale
his dick, taking the whole of it into her throat. She gagged around its size, a
barfy-burpy sound. Paul had never felt anything like it. She kept pumping the
shaft, impaling her mouth on it while at the same time slipping one finger
between his legs, between his ass cheeks, pressing that finger against his
asshole, circling, rubbing, and he tensed a bit before relaxing to let that raw
skinny finger slip up inside him and he squirmed, helpless as an infant as she
worked his cock, finger pressing his prostate, and it felt as if his every
nerve center had been dynamited until she abruptly removed her finger from his
ass and punched him in the kidneys so hard he retched.

She
clambered atop him, straddled his hips. She punched him in the face—he could
have avoided the blow but elected not to. Brilliant stars pinwheeled across the
dark space between his eyes and the ceiling. She gripped his cock, rubbed the
head over her clit. He was bleeding now, a ton of blood spilling from his torn
mouth and ass. She ground her pussy against him, thrusting and bucking and
slipping his cock up into her, riding him bareback as Paul idly contemplated
the many diseases she might be infested with before realizing he didn't give a
damn. Her pussy was tight and wet, not loose and used as a first- time customer
might suspect.

She
grabbed the bible off the bedside table, laid it flat on his face, and smashed
her fist into the cover. His nose cracked. She slapped his forehead with the
Good Book, as if she were a revivalist preacher and he a possessed worshipper
speaking in tongues. In the brown light she regarded him with an interest best
described as clinical—a specimen pinned on a dissecting tray.

She
slid his cock out of her and stood at the edge of the bed.

"Come
on." She was panting like a dog. "Let's see it."

Paul
jolted off the bed and hit her as he might a tackling dummy, shoulder driven
into her stomach, shoving her back. He had her up against the wall with his
mouth hot on her neck, kissing and licking and sucking, hands propped under her
ass lifting her a few inches off the ground. She guided his cock into her and
he thrust up, slamming into her like the pump arm on an oil derrick, her long
legs clamped around his hips, and she was kissing him now, biting his lips, one
hand wrapped around his neck and the other clenched into a fist punching him
lightly in the jaw, and in a high trembling voice she whispered, "This is
great. This is really, really...
great"
and the realization that she was
enjoying it, that the rough goings-on had penetrated her hard whorish soul,
flooded Paul's heart with a bizarre species of joy and he orgasmed uncontrollably,
the world blanking out for a few seconds, and all he saw was this endless sheet
of gray-blue ice as his knees buckled and he slipped out of her. He slid down
the slender plane of her body, exhausted and trembling, until his lips came to
rest on the bony swell of her hip.

She
was breathing heavily. "Was it good for you, Rex?"

Before
Paul could say a word she brought a knee up into his chin. His head snapped
back, then he didn't know a thing.

When
he came to, Adele was gone. So was the cash in the bible.

In
the bathroom he managed to tweeze most of the light-bulb glass from his ass
with his fingers. He splashed cold water on his face and crotch and in the
mirror surveyed the crazed geometry of his face.

A
few fresh lumps and cuts. One of his testicles had swollen to the size of a
racquetball; a violet spiderwebbing bruise spread over his ballsack. It was
hard to distinguish one injury from the other: they all blended,
cut-to-bruise-to-scab-to-bump-to-bruise-to-cut, red-to-
black-to-purple-to-yellow-to-pink-to-blue. It had become impossible to recall
where he'd absorbed them—in his mind they had merged into one single
catastrophic injury.

He
pulled his lower lip down and bared what remained of his teeth.

"Booga
booga."

From
the motel he made his way toward Mount St. Mary's hospital. He followed snaking
streets and narrow alleyways, crossed bridges spanning iced-over streams on his
way to the place that he realized, deep down, he was destined for all along.

He
bumped into a guy as he crossed the Rainbow Bridge. His fists instinctively
curled before he got a look at the guy's face in the yellow glow of the bridge lamps.

"Jesus,"
he said. Then, "Hey."

It
was Drake Langley, his old prep school chum. But Drake looked nothing like he
had: he wore an old army fatigue jacket and sported a clean-shaven skull. And
apparently he'd rediscovered how to walk without assistance: the dog-headed
cane was nowhere in sight.

Drake
was missing a handful of teeth. The dome of his skull was grooved with long
slits stitched with catgut. His face looked odd. After a moment Paul realized
that his eyebrows and eyelashes had been shaved off.

"How's
it going, man?"

"I'm
all right," Paul said."...you?"

"Fuckin-A
great."

Drake
said he'd moved out of his parents' place and was holed up with "a pack of
hardcore animal rights activists" in an abandoned house on Paper Street.