He was wearing khakis, she noted, and a shirt and tie, but he’d added a navy blazer with brass buttons, and brown loafers instead of his usual sneakers. He said, “Keisha, I don’t know what to say. I tried to see you, I don’t know how many times, but I was told you weren’t seeing anybody.”
“I had to be by myself.”
“Believe me,” he said, “I can understand that. I didn’t know whether it was everybody you weren’t seeing or if it was just me, and either way I could understand it. I left messages, I don’t even know if you got them, but I don’t blame you for not calling back.” He looked away. “I was going to write a letter, but what can you say in a letter? Far as that goes, what can you say in person? I’m glad you called me, and here I am, and I still don’t know what to say.”
“Come in, Marty.”
“Thank you. Keisha, I just feel so awful about the whole thing. I loved Darnell. It’s no exaggeration to say he was like a son to me.”
“Let me fix you a drink,” she said. “What can I get you?”
“Anything, it doesn’t matter. Whatever you’ve got.”
“Vodka?”
“Sure, if you’ve got it.”
She put him in the overstuffed chair in the living room, came back with his vodka and a Coke for herself. And sat down across from him and listened to him talk, or tried to look as though she was listening.
“Another drink, Marty?”
“I better not,” he said. “That one hit me kinda hard.” He yawned, covered his mouth with his hand. “Excuse me,” he said. “I feel a little sleepy all of a sudden.”
“Go ahead and close your eyes.”
“No, I’ll be fine. ‘Sfunny, vodka never hit me so sudden.”
He said something else, but she couldn’t make out the words. Then his eyes closed and he sagged in his chair.
She was sitting across from him when his eyes opened. He blinked a few times, then frowned at her. “Keisha,” he said. “What the hell happened?”
“You got sleepy.”
“I had a drink. That’s the last thing I remember.”
He shifted position, or tried to, and it was only then that he realized he was immobilized, his hands cuffed behind him, his ankles cuffed to the front legs of the chair. She’d wound clothesline around his upper body and the back of the chair, with a last loop around his throat, so that he couldn’t move his head more than an inch or two.
“Jesus,” he said. “What’s going on?”
She looked at him and let him work it out.
“Something in the vodka,” he said. “Tasted all right, but there was something in it, wasn’t there?”
She nodded.
“Why, Keisha?”
“I didn’t figure you’d let me tie you up if you were wide awake.”
“But why tie me up? What’s this all about?”
That was a hard question, and she had to think about it. “Payback,” she said. “I guess.”
“Payback?”
“For Darnell.”
“Keisha,” he said, “you want to blame me, go ahead. Or blame boxing, or blame Darnell, or blame the Molina kid, who feels pretty terrible, believe me. Son of a bitch killed a man in the ring and didn’t even win the fight. Keisha, it’s a tragedy, but it’s not anybody’s fault.”
“You could have stopped it.”
“And if I had? You think it would have made a difference if I threw in the towel when you told me to? He didn’t get hit more than a couple shots after that, and Molina didn’t have anything left by then. The damage was already done by then. You know what would have happened if I tried to stop it then? Darnell would have had a fit, and he probably would have dropped dead right then and there instead of waiting until he was back in his dressing room.”
“You could have stopped it after the knockdown.”
“Was that my job? The ref looked at him and let him go on. The ringside physician looked at him, shined a light in his eyes, and didn’t see any reason to call a halt.”
He went on, reasoning with her, talking very sensibly, very calmly. She stopped listening to what he was saying, and when she realized that he was waiting for a response, an answer to some question she hadn’t heard, she got up and crossed the room.
She picked up the newspaper and stood in front of his chair.
He said, “What’s that? Something in the paper?”
She rolled up the newspaper. He frowned at her, puzzled, and she drew back her arm and struck him almost gently on the top of the head with the rolled newspaper.
“Hey,” he said.
She looked at him, looked at the newspaper, then hit him again.
“What are you doing, trying to housebreak me?”
The newspaper was starting to unroll. She left him there, ignoring what he was saying, and went into the other room. When she returned the newspaper was secured with tape so that she wouldn’t have to worry about it unrolling. She approached him again, raised the newspaper, and he tried to dodge the blow but couldn’t.
He said, “Is this symbolic? Because I’m not sure I should say this, Keisha, but it doesn’t hurt.”
“In the ring,” she said, “when a fighter tries to indicate that a punch didn’t hurt him, what it means is it did.”
“Yeah, of course, because otherwise he wouldn’t bother. And they all know that because they notice it in other fighters, but they do it anyhow. It’s automatic. A guy hurts you, you want to make him think he didn’t.”
She raised the newspaper, struck him with it.
“Ouch!” he said. “That really hurt!”
“No, it didn’t.”
“No, it didn’t,” he agreed. “Why are we doing this? What’s the point?”
“You don’t even feel it,” she said. “That’s what Darnell always said about blows to the head. Body shots hurt you, when they land and again after the fight’s over, but not head shots. They may knock you out, but they don’t really hurt.”
She punctuated the speech with taps on the head, hitting him with the rolled newspaper, a little harder than before but not very hard, certainly not hard enough to cause pain.
“Okay,” he said. “Cut it out, will you?”
She hit him again.
“Keisha, what the hell’s the point? What are you trying to prove, anyway?”
“It’s cumulative,” she said.
“What are you talking about?”
“The same as it is in the ring,” she said. “Rubén Molina didn’t kill Darnell. It was all those punches over all those years, punches he didn’t even feel, punches that added up and added up and added up.”
“Could you quit hitting me while we’re talking? I can’t concentrate on what you’re saying.”
“Punch after punch after punch,” she said, continuing to hit him as she talked. “Down all the years, from playground fights to amateur bouts to pro fights. And then there’s training, all those rounds sparring, and yes, you wear headgear, but there’s still impact. The brain gets knocked around, same as your brain’s getting knocked around right now, even if you don’t feel it. Over a period of years, well, you got time to recover, and for a while that’s just what you do, you recover each time, and then there’s a point where you start to show the damage, and from that point on every punch you take leaves its mark on you.”
“Keisha, will you for Chrissake stop it?”
She hit him, harder, on the top of the head. She hit him, not quite so hard, on the side of the head. She hit him, hard, right on the top of the head.
“Keisha!”
She sat down the rolled-up newspaper, fetched the roll of duct tape, taped his mouth shut. “Don’t want to listen to you,” she said. “Not right now.” And, with Marty silent, she was silent herself, and the only sound in the room was the impact of the length of newspaper on his head. She fell into an easy rhythm, matching the blows with her own breathing, raising the newspaper as she inhaled, bringing it down as she breathed out.