The Laughter of Strangers (10 page)

It’s because there is no data.

Nothing besides what Spencer knows and won’t tell me.

(Thank you, I don’t want to know.)

EVERY BOXER REGISTERS THEIR HANDS

AS WEAPONS

And I am no different.

You can train the human body to be a murder weapon.

My knuckles are split and scarred. If I were to punch a wall, I wouldn’t feel much of anything. I’d leave a mark, the impact might break the skin, but, like I used to always say to fans during meet-and-greets (when I still had them; that’s another worry—why haven’t I been receiving any meet-and-greet requests?), what you don’t feel can’t hurt you.

WHAT YOU DON’T FEEL CAN’T HURT YOU

Then you see how the following doesn’t hurt.

It actually helps the ‘Sugar’ Willem Floures brand.

Let spill some media slander—

“How disgraceful!”

“Are we to think a professional can act in such a deplorable manner?!”

“This is no act of god.”

“This is the problem with society: Its identity is rife with absolutes. Freedom is not an accessory. It is something you value and control!”

“Taking bets on the next great league…”

“It was a long time ago. We all make mistakes…”

“Can we really forgive him?”

“X must be worried.”

“Praise a fighter for his failures and mistakes and you praise this crooked world for how numb it has become.”

“Who said you can kill a person and get away with it? Oh, that’s right—Floures.”

“I used to watch every Floures fight. ‘Sugar’ stood out. He was the best of the best. Now I just don’t know anymore…”

“We will see if the demons get their due.”

“Executioner, you have yourself a criminal to cull.”

The world is ripe with anger and hostility.

“It’s a sight to behold,” Spencer smiles.

The concerned and guilty version of me would start worrying, rambling about how this might backfire; the guilty version would go against what Spencer just showed me. Guilt has a way about shutting up if you shut down the right avenues of feeling. I unlace the boxing gloves. I yawn.

I work on unraveling the tape.

I don’t say a word.

I picture the near future. I get into character.

Tap into the fighter, the ‘Sugar’ in Willem Floures.

I am seeing not hearing.

I am seeing not feeling.

Spencer is somewhere else, catering to the chaos of the lie. He will tend to it while I tend to nothing. I must get into character if I’m going to get through this. No thoughts about what’s impending. No thoughts at all about how large portions of the audience will be watching because they hate me. The hate will fuel me; their hate will ensure a sold-out fight night.

I am seeing the future like it is the past.

I get into character, pretending that I haven’t changed one bit.

So what if I lied?

LIES

I can condition myself to see the vast array of a varied past.

The lies will lull me into a guilty sleep but I must stay awake.

Sarah carries the gloves away from me, stowing them in the locker down the hall. Spencer ascends the steps, “Got to get back to it. I’m about to submit a written interview. Hope you don’t mind that I’m writing it as you. They wanted to speak directly to you. I would have asked you but…” he shrugs his shoulders, “you know.”

I nod.

Centering myself.

Push that piece of information away. Not to be concerned.

I am seeing.

I am seeing:

HEADLIGHTS

I am seeing that I can still focus in on the straight line, the angle of fight logic; I can still walk that long mile, that all-too-quick stroll from locker room to ringside. I can tune out the world while the world can’t so much as tune into what I’m thinking. What are we thinking?

We are ready to fight.

Executioner, I know what you are thinking right now.

ARE YOU READY?

It is almost time.

Does it bother you that I’ve murdered someone? Does it bother you that because I murdered someone, it means you did the same?

Willem Floures is a murderer.

We are currently under the scrutiny of the moralized public.

For however many that care, there are twice as many that expect one of us to end up on a stretcher after the rematch.

Blood will be shed.

AT THE WEIGH-IN

WHAT WILL YOU TELL ME

THAT I DON’T ALREADY KNOW?

ANYTHING LEFT WORTH SOME SURPRISE?

There comes a time when it pays more to push rather than play along.

Alone in the basement, I focus on the heavy bag.

That’s you, Executioner.

I see only the light above as you fall to the canvas, spitting blood.

Commentators spouting hyperbole, shocked faces seen from where I stand in the corner, still hopping on my feet, spry as any one of you competitors thinking you can claim what I’ve built.

I see this in the comforted silence of this house.

Confidence is hard to come by, and at the moment I feel renewed.

Push it all away.

I won’t play along.

I’ll let the pieces play it out, and let it be known that Willem Floures killed a man because he had to. Self defense.

But that’s not that interesting of a story.

He made a mistake.

He didn’t mean to—CONFESSION and RECONCILIATION.

The public enjoys a good second-chance story.

THE DARK PAST

GIVES WAY

TO FUTURE SUCCESS

How admirable.

I am seeing the glare of the headlights.

My eyes dry, and I wince, shutting them.

Mentality is everything.

But is it enough?

SILENCE AND LAUGHTER

Really though, despite all that I see and have seen, I know I do this to spare myself the worry, the discomfort, of what’s going on in the world.

The happenstance that happens to lay claim to the fact that Willem Floures is no pretty-boy, no professional with a clean record.

Just another identity tainted by criminal activity.

I push away the fact that it was my idea…

And more so the realization that I wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t be even remotely focused, on the rematch if it weren’t for burying my clean record for the resurrected fiction of a bar-drunk and blackout murder.

The only thing left is to take solace in a theoretical fiction.

I think about X, and what I could still do to him. I sit in the corner of the ring, with the basement lights turned off, and I dream up a scenario where the person I killed was part of myself.

Executioner found dead with a blade through his eye.

The scenario is as pleasing as it is alarming. I can feel the blade puncturing my eye, made possible only by the power of the mind.

Who would mourn the loss more than me?

I’d enjoy his death for a time. I know I would. However, eventually I would feel like I’m missing something. Willem Floures is only as diverse as the parts that populate his personality.

If one perishes, are we any greater for it?

I KILLED A MAN BUT WOULD ANYONE CARE IF I KILLED MYSELF?

In the dark, the silence takes me into a deep sleep.

When I wake up, Sarah tells me that it’s morning outside. The hysteria has subsided enough to leave the house. And today is a big day.

Today is the weigh-in.

I grip the flab around my stomach.

HOW MUCH WEIGHT HAVE I GAINED?

Weigh in my age, my lacking in pounds.

I wonder how much more baggage I’m carrying than Executioner.

Odds are, it’ll be a topic-of-interest at the weigh-in.

They’ll think about it, placing it in the perfect flabby folds of sensationalized and skewed fight analysis (favoring, of course, Executioner).

I only hope Spencer is right:

“They’ll be too busy thinking about the murder to focus on the pounds.”

THE SILENCE I PREACH

The weigh-in is predictably a clustered wreck of flashing lights, loud noises, and various lobbying media peons looking to pull me aside for a sound bite, a quick interview, something. I stand behind a blockade of paid-for guards, these crewmembers paid by the event planner to make it appear like X and I have big training camps. Actually, it looks like X has a fairly substantial crew, an entourage to be more exact. But yeah…

It makes me look important having six guards wearing black pushing through the gathered masses.

I walk the stage; find my cue, a mark of tape, where I stand and wait.

X does the same.

And then it’s lights, camera,
none of the above
.

Really it’s not that exciting.

Spencer talks to himself. What might he be talking about? I haven’t a clue. This whole thing is kind of simple. It doesn’t need to be anything more than what it sounds—a weigh-in—but then again every opportunity to extract is an opportunity to create spectacle and it looks like the “agent” in Spencer is coming to life as he shouts in the face of the other, grimacing when it’s his turn to shout back at Spencer. The cameras catch the little argument. So odd, then, when it fizzles, not amounting to much.

X and I refuse even a cursory glance.

Pretend we don’t exist.

Stand and look serious.

Wait until we hear it.

AUDIENCE APPLAUSE

Suddenly it gets quiet.

This is the cue that the weigh-in is about to begin.

The challenger goes first. Me. So whatever but really I hate this part. I’m nervous. I pretend that I’m not. I frown, holding onto the scowl, the sincerest form of expressing hatred for myself, as I take off my mesh pants, my shirt, strip down to only the thinnest possible form of underwear we could manage.

I look horrible.

I know I do.

Do I still have any muscle tone?

Anyone actually impressed with the way I look?

AUDIENCE SILENCE

It’s the worst kind of silence.

I make a note of the fact that when I step up to the scale, when they weigh me, when I flex my arms, the flash from the crowd’s cameras aren’t nearly as blinding as they should be.

Instead of my gaze being washed white in the glow of so many camera shots, I can see into a large crowd as they stare back at me, equally unimpressed.

I have flab on my stomach.

Where muscle definition should be clean I have little jagged lines, perforations made to be the byproduct of fat existing right under the epidermis. That is flab. That is fat from a decade or more of not taking care of my body.

This is the body of a boxer that hasn’t trained.

The training I have is the training of a man that’s been through a lot but maybe not yet enough to have it all figured out.

Flex, close my eyes so that I don’t see the number.

Tune out my surroundings so that when they declare my weight, I am elsewhere.

WEIGHT AT…

Don’t hear it.

AUDIENCE APPLAUSE

I don’t hear it, and I am ready to put my clothes back on. This is a beauty contest for broken beings. My body used to be cut to fit the make of a fighter, now my body is evidence of the fact that we cannot ever be the same.

We age.

We all change.

The lights dim as the cameras are set to ready.

X’s turn.

AUDIENCE APPLAUSE

Typically I don’t watch because I don’t want to confuse myself. The basic facts are enough to blur the lines of reality. How can I weigh so much when he can weigh so little? He makes weight without any problem.

I block out the fact that I might not have made weight.

I whisper, “Is it alright?”

Spencer sighs, “It’ll do.”

Not the kind of answer I wanted but…

IT’LL DO

The place washes white as X flexes, makes the weight.

I notice that he has the same scar on his back, the same one that I had when I was younger but has since faded.

I notice that I’m watching and that this can’t end well.

It involves a lot of self-scrutiny.

Watching, comparing, loathing.

Falling into myself, my own tendency to over-analyze becomes my cause to self-destruct.

Distantly, I know why Spencer isn’t worried that I didn’t make weight.

There will be a fight.

There will continue to be a number of battles. No one will deny the world a fight after what happens at the weigh-in.

AUDIENCE APPLAUSE

RATHER THAN

AUDIENCE

SILENCE

The camera flash lights up the room.

It’s blinding from where I stand in the back, slowly removing myself from the scene with each step I take.

Spencer mouths the words:

WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING?

I know but still.

And yet…

Umm…

Wait!

You see I want to—

Umm…

Someone take me out of this.

AUDIENCE LAUGHTER

X said something that must have been funny, amusing.

At my expense?

Spencer beckons me to join him.

“Get the hell back here!”

I don’t like this part of the weigh-in. This is where I pay my dues. This is where I do what needs to be done to generate buzz.

I walk up to X wearing that face.

Walk right up until we are close enough, our faces an inch apart.

Stare down.

AUDIENCE SUSPENSE

What did you say to me?

What did you say to me?

Those are the words that need to come out of my mouth with certainty, with the volition of a madman wanting his title back.