“He’s been slurring his words,” she said. “Don’t you call that a reason?”
“He sounds the same as ever to me,” Marty said.
“Maybe you don’t listen.”
“And maybe you listen too hard.”
“Hey,” Darnell said. “Maybe I gets a little mushmouth some of the time. Sometimes my lips be a little puffy.” He tapped his head. “Don’t mean anything’s messed up inside.”
“All the punches you’ve taken—”
“Let me tell you something about the punches,” he said. “Gettin’ hit upside the head? Nine times, you don’t even feel it. It don’t hurt. Body shots, a man keeps beating on your ribs, man, that’s a different story. Hurts when he does it and hurts the next day and the day after. Head shots? Don’t mean nothin’ at all. Why you lookin’ at me like that?”
“Nine times.”
“Huh?”
“ ‘Nine times, you don’t even feel it.’ That’s what you just said.”
“So?”
“Nine times out of ten, you meant.”
“What I said.”
“No, you just said ‘nine times.’ ”
“Well, shit,” he said. “You tellin’ me you didn’t know what I meant?”
“I’m telling you what you said. You left out some words there.”
“Man, there’s a sign,” he said heavily. “I must have brain damage, leavin’ out ‘out of ten’ like that.”
“It’s cumulative, Darnell.”
“What you talkin’ now?”
“Punches to the head, the effect is cumulative. Even if you barely feel them—”
“Which I just said I don’t.”
“—they add up, and you reach a point where every punch you take does real damage. It’s irreversible, you can’t turn it back, and once you see signs—”
“Which there ain’t yet.”
“If you’re slurring words,” she said, “then we’re seeing signs.”
“What happens,” he said, grinning, “my tongue gets in the way of my teeth an’ I can’t see what I’m sayin’. Why you lookin’ at me like that?”
“Your tongue gets in the way of your eyeteeth,” she said, “and you can’t see what you’re saying.”
“What I just said.”
“Except you left out ‘eye,’ ” she said. “You said your tongue got in the way of your teeth, and that doesn’t mean anything.”
“But you know what I meant.”
“And I also know what you said.”
“Damn,” he said. “We just had the tests. Didn’t have to, had ’em strictly to keep you happy, and look at you. You ain’t happy!”
Marty said, “What’s that, a Coke? You want something stronger?”
“This is fine.”
“Because you’re not in training. You can have a real drink, if you want.”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Well, I want a drink,” he said, and ordered vodka on the rocks. “I’ll tell you,” he said, “I won’t pretend I wanted to be having this conversation, but we ought to have it. Because you really got to cut the guy some slack, Keisha.”
“I’ve got to cut him some slack?”
“Molina’s style is tailor-made for Darnell,” Marty said, “just like he says it is. You look at tapes of his fights, that jumps right out at you. But that doesn’t mean this is gonna be a walk in the park. Molina’s ten years younger.”
“Eleven. He’s twenty-six and Darnell turned thirty-seven last month.”
“Can we compromise? Call it ten and a half?” His smile was disarming. “Keisha, what I’m getting at, he should have training on his mind and nothing else, and what he’s got is you hammering away at him, telling him he’s slurring his words. He’s training hard, he’s tired by the end of the day, and is it any wonder his speech might be the least bit blurry? Time the day’s done, I’m slurring my own words, come to that.”
“Just let him see a doctor,” she said.
“Keisha, he saw one. He had a scan and an MRI, remember?”
“A doctor to test his speech,” she said. “There’s a specialist, I wrote the name down. All Darnell has to do is sit down and talk with him, and he can tell whether there’s been any damage.”
Marty was shaking his head. “We looked at the brain waves,” he said, “and he got a clean bill of health. No evidence of damage.”
“Or proof there hasn’t been any.”
“You can’t prove a negative. There’s no evidence of any organic brain damage, Keisha, and he’s been pronounced okay to fight by experts. You sit him down, have some quack listen to his speech and measure how his tongue moves, and it’s a judgment call on his part, got nothing to do with anything you can put your finger on. And if he gets it into his head that there’s something wrong, the fight’s off. Doesn’t matter that your expert turns out to be full of crap. The fight’s off and Darnell’s chance at a third belt’s down the toilet.”
“He doesn’t need a third belt.”
“He wants it, Keisha.”
“And you? What do you want, Marty?”
“I want him to have a shot.”
She looked at him. “The money doesn’t mean a thing to you,” she said.
“Not as much as it means to Darnell,” he said. “His fight with Molina’s on the pay-per-view undercard. He’s getting eighty thousand dollars for it, Keisha. He’s had title bouts where he didn’t get that.”
“We don’t need the money.”
“That’s not how he sees it. What he sees is he can stand in there for ten rounds and put eighty grand in his pocket.”
“Minus your cut, and training camp expenses, and everything else that takes a bite out of his check.”
“Including taxes, which gets a lot more of his money than I do, and a lot more of mine, too. But ten rounds is what, thirty-nine minutes, start to finish? You do the numbers, Keisha, you’re the one’s good at numbers, but it’s better than anybody ever made bagging groceries at the Safeway.”
She looked at him. He met her gaze, then picked up his drink and drained it.
“And if he gets past Molina,” he said, “which he will, and it probably won’t take all ten rounds, either, I can get him a title shot, prolly WBO but it could be WBC, and for that he’ll make close to a million. And if he wins it, which there’s no reason why he can’t, then he’s a man won three different belts in three different weight categories, and he’s that much more desirable when it comes to endorsements and public appearances, because that’s the only way you can make any money after you hang the gloves up. You show up at a dinner, you make a little speech—”
“How’s he going to make a speech,” she demanded, “if he can’t talk straight?”
“He sounds fine to me,” Marty said. “Maybe you got ears like a dog, hear things I don’t, but he sounds perfectly fine to me. And nobody is gonna expect him to perform Shakespeare. All they want is for him to show up, three-time champion of the world, sign some autographs, and pose for some snapshots. Keisha, all this is beside the point. It’s what he wants, this fight and the fight after. Then he’ll quit winners and hang ’em up.”
“Will he?”
“He’ll have no choice,” he said. “I’ll insist on it. I’ll tell him I’m quitting him, and he’ll have to quit.”
“You could do that now.”
“There’s no reason.”
“I already told you the reason, Marty. His head’s the reason. All those punches he’s taken, aren’t they enough of a reason?”
“The man’s never been knocked down.”
“That Cuban fighter, had all those tattoos—”
“You didn’t let me finish. The man’s never been down from a blow to the head. The Cuban kid, what the hell was his name, they coulda called him the Human Sketchpad—”