Is that what being a man was all about? Taking physical punishment? Forget that too. She’d caught a few beatings in her time and the pain was nothing compared to childbirth. Men talked about blood and guts and going to war, but having a baby was more than that. It was war in reverse. Shoving all your guts aside to make room for the life and vital organs fusing, pulsing, and growing in your belly. What was the pain of losing a fight compared to the pain of losing a child?
But pain wasn’t the point of it, she was beginning to see. It wasn’t enough just to get by. The point was surviving with some part of yourself intact. And making it. Making it for yourself. Making it so your kids wouldn’t end up giving blow jobs in the back of Honda Preludes. She looked over at Terrence’s corner and saw his father and trainer Terrence Sr., trim and graying, kneading his son’s shoulders like he was trying to mold him into some exact replica of himself. Perhaps that was the main difference between men and women. A man was always trying to teach his son to be as tough and brutal as he was, so that one day he could turn around and say the kid just didn’t measure up. Leaving women to try and protect their daughters from these ferocious, frustrated boys.
What had she said to Anthony’s wife, that sad girl with the gun in her bag? You couldn’t depend on anyone else to rescue you. Rosemary had known that before. But she was only truly feeling it now.
She crossed one foot in front of the other and felt the muscle stretching from her hip to her thigh go as taut as a fishing line. She hoped she’d shaved high enough so there wasn’t any pubic hair showing at the bottom of her outfit. A couple of guys in the fourth row were pumping their fists in the air and making ape noises, so she wasn’t sure.
Fuck them. She was a survivor. She bared her teeth and jutted her hips out. Not even caring if her stomach bulged anymore.
She was coming up on Terrence’s corner. She wished she could climb out through the ropes right there, but then she figured he was too busy to notice. After all, he hadn’t said anything up to this point. His father was still giving him orders. Terrence had his mouthpiece out and his head turned half away, as though he wasn’t really listening. He was looking right at her now and his eyes narrowed a little.
She was sure he couldn’t really be seeing her. He had to be thinking about the fight and what was going to happen next. But she still had an eerie feeling like he was about to jump off his stool and come charging after her for the way she’d set him up. His father put his hands on the boy’s shoulders to get his attention, but Terrence kept glaring at her, even drawing his own lips back to show he still had his teeth. And when she was directly in front of him, he said something to her. At first, she couldn’t hear it above the crowd noise, and she hurried the rest of the way around the ring to get out sooner. But by the time she climbed out through the ropes, she’d put it together in her mind.
“You and me after this is all over, bitch,” he’d said. “We gotta go another round in the sack.”
61
JOEY SNAILS BROUGHT THE car to a full stop right outside Anthony’s house on Texas Avenue. There was a roll and a thump in the trunk and Teddy, sitting on the passenger’s side, gave a look back. Then he reached around to unlock the back door and Richie Amato, who’d been waiting for them on the sidewalk, got in.
“I can’t believe you whacked Vin,” he said in a dazed voice.
“I can’t believe I carried the body downstairs by myself,” Joey Snails whined.
“Will youse two shut up?” Teddy admonished them. “You sound like a couple of Girl Scouts, for fuck’s sake.”
“Yeah, but this was Vin!” Richie protested, sliding in behind Teddy. “He lived and died for you, Ted.”
“He hadda go,” Teddy said numbly. “He kept sticking up for that mutt. Hadda go. It was the only way.”
He sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as the two younger men. A couple of brown leaves fell from the trees overhead and brushed the windshield. The three of them fell silent for a minute.
“You shouldn’t have done it,” Richie murmured. “The old man was the best thing that ever happened to you.”
“Oh, what are you?” Teddy turned around. “You gonna be a rebel too? Am I gonna have to discipline you, Richie?”
“No,” Richie pouted.
“All right.” Teddy faced front again. He let out a deep breath and sagged back in his seat.
The downstairs lights in Anthony’s house were still on. Through one of the front bay windows, Carla could be seen putting the kids to sleep.
“I think I’m gonna go inside and sit with my niece awhile,” he said in a weary voice.
He looked back at the trunk. “You all right to take care of this thing?” he asked Joey and Richie.
“Yeah, I guess.” Richie swallowed hard. He still seemed to be in a state of shock.
“Come back later to pick me up, after you get rid of him,” said Teddy. He was on automatic pilot too. His instructions were without thought or inflection. He rolled down the window and spit in the gutter. Then he put his hand over his stomach as if the effort had cost him too much.
“What if Anthony comes back here?” Richie tried stretching his arms, but wound up punching the car’s ceiling.
“He probably ain’t coming back until this fight’s over. And if he does come back, he’ll have Tommy Sick with him.”
“And what happens if he don’t have Tommy with him?”
A car swept by and its headlights shone in the rearview mirror. Teddy barely recognized his own eyes, looking small and furtive.
“You shoot him right in the face, so there’s no question,” he said, feebly making the sign of the gun with his hand. “Don’t worry about him giving you any problems. He ain’t half the man his father was.”
62
“THREE MORE MINUTES, CHAMP, and you got ’im,” said John B. “Three more minutes and you got it won.”
Elijah turned on the stool to face his brother. His eyelids were so swollen they looked like pursed lips.
“Three minutes,” his brother repeated above the crowd’s ceaseless noise.
“That bullshit,” Elijah somehow managed to say through a grotesquely swollen jaw. “I gotta knock him out.”
John B. shook his head and squeezed another wet sponge over his brother. “Say, you better not talk so much, bro. You liable to hurt your jaw some more.”
It didn’t matter, P.F. thought as he came up the steps to the ring, using his security badge to get access. For the last five rounds, Elijah had taken a relentless pounding, interrupted only by the occasional low blow he’d dealt Terrence. Even if his jaw wasn’t actually broken, he’d been behind on points most of the night, and as he prepared to go out for the twelfth and final round, it was obvious he’d need months of reconstructive surgery.
He stood slowly, as if he was reconsidering how he’d spent the last forty-three years.
The crowd’s din, merely deafening before, approached a new unbearable pitch for the last stage of the slaughter.
“You can still quit,” John B. told his brother just before the bell.
Elijah didn’t bother looking back. He staggered forward and touched gloves with his opponent one last time.
Terrence began the round the way he’d ended the last one, trying to unhinge Elijah’s jaw from the rest of his face.
Only this time there was a difference. Elijah was talking to him, taunting him, challenging him.
