Thomas undressed and got into a clean sweatsuit and put on a pair of boxing shoes. He was taking over the five o’clock calisthenics class from Dominic and there were usually one or two members who asked him to spar a couple of rounds with them. He had learned from Dominic the trick of looking aggressive without inflicting any punishment whatever and he had learned enough of Dominic’s phrases to make the members believe he was teaching them how to fight.
He hadn’t touched the forty-nine hundred dollars in the safety deposit box in Port Philip and he still called young Sinclair sir when they met in the locker room.
He enjoyed the calisthenics classes. Unlike Dominic, who just called out the cadences, Thomas did all the exercises with the class, pushups, situps, bicycle riding, straddles, knee bending, touching the floor with the knees straight and the palms of the hand flat, and all the rest. It kept him feeling fit and at the same time it amused him to see all those dignified, self-important men sweating and panting. His voice, too, developed a tone of command that made him seem less boyish than before. For once, he began to wake up in the morning without the feeling that something bad, out of his control, was going to happen to him that day.
When Thomas went into the mat room after the calisthenics, Dominic and Greening were putting on the big gloves. Dominic had a cold and he had drunk too much the night before. His eyes were red and he was moving slowly. He looked shapeless and aging in his baggy sweatsuit and since his hair was mussed, his bald spot shone in the light from the big lamps of the room. Greening, who was tall for his weight, moved around impatiently, shuffling his boxing shoes against the mats with a dry, aggressive sound. His eyes seemed bleached in the strong light and his blond hair, crew-cut, almost platinum. He had been a captain in the Marines during the war and had won a big decoration. He was very handsome in a straight-nosed, hard-jawed, pink-cheeked way and if he hadn’t come from a family that was above such things, he probably could have done well as a hero in Western movies. In all of the time since he had told Dominic that he thought Thomas had stolen ten dollars from his locker, he had never addressed a word to Thomas and now, as Thomas came into the mat room to wait for one of the members who had made a date to spar with him, Greening didn’t even look Thomas’s way.
“Help me with these, kid,” Dominic said, extending his gloves. Thomas tied the laces. Dominic had already done Greening’s gloves.
Dominic looked up at the big clock over the mat room door to make sure that he wouldn’t inadvertently box more than two minutes without resting and put up his gloves and shuffled toward Greening, saying, “Whenever you’re ready, sir.”
Greening came at him fast. He was a straight-up, conventional, schooled kind of fighter who made use of his longer reach to jab at Dominic’s head. His cold and his hangover made Dominic begin to breathe hard immediately. He tried to get inside the jab and put his head out of harm’s way under Greening’s chin while he punched away without much enthusiasm or power at Greening’s stomach. Suddenly, Greening stepped back and brought up his right in an all-out uppercut that caught Dominic flush on the mouth.
The shit, Thomas thought. But he said nothing and the expression on his face didn’t change.
Dominic sat on the mat pushing reflectively at his bleeding mouth with the big glove. Greening didn’t bother to help him up, but stepped back and looked thoughtfully at him, his hands dangling. Still sitting, Dominic held out his gloves toward Thomas.
“Take ’em off me, kid,” Dominic said. His voice was thick. “I’ve had enough exercise for today.”
Nobody said anything as Thomas bent and unlaced the gloves and pulled them off Dominic’s hands. He knew the old fighter didn’t want to be helped up, so he didn’t try. Dominic stood up wearily, wiping his mouth with the wrist band of his sweatsuit. “Sorry, sir,” he said to Greening. “I guess I’m under the weather today.”
“That wasn’t much of a workout,” Greening said. “You should have told me you weren’t feeling well. I wouldn’t have bothered getting undressed. How about you, Jordache?” he asked. “I’ve seen you in here a couple of times. You want to go a few minutes?”
Jordache, Thomas thought. He knows my name. He looked inquiringly over at Dominic. Greening was another story entirely from the pot-bellied, earnest, physical culture enthusiasts Dominic assigned him usually.
A flame of Sicilian hatred glowed momentarily in Dominic’s hooded dark eyes. The time had come to burn down the landlord’s mansion. “If Mr. Greening wants to, Tom,” Dominic said mildly, spitting blood, “I think you might oblige him.”
Thomas put on the gloves and Dominic laced them for him, his head bent, his eyes guarded, saying nothing. Thomas felt the old feeling, fear, pleasure, eagerness, an electric tingling in his arms and legs, his gut pulling in. He made himself smile boyishly over Dominic’s bent head at Greening, who was watching him stonily.
Dominic stepped away. “Okay,” he said.
Greening came right to Thomas, his long left out, his right hand under his chin. College man, Thomas thought contemptuously, as he picked off the jab and circled away from the right. Greening was taller than he but had only eight or nine pounds on him. But he was faster than Thomas realized and the right caught him, hard, high up on the temple. Thomas hadn’t been in a real fight since the time with the foreman at the garage in Brookline and the polite exercises with the pacific gentlemen of the club membership had not prepared him for Greening. Greening feinted, unorthodoxically, with his right, and crashed a left hook to Thomas’s head. The sonofabitch isn’t fooling, Thomas thought, and went in low, looping a left to Greening’s side and following quickly with a right to the man’s head. Greening held him and battered at his ribs with his right hand. He was strong, there was no doubt about it, very strong.
Thomas got a glimpse of Dominic and wondered if Dominic was going to give him some sort of signal. Dominic was standing to one side, placidly, giving no signals.
Okay, Thomas thought, deliciously, here it goes. The hell with what happens later.
They fought without stopping for the usual two-minute break. Greening fought controlledly, brutally, using his height and weight, Thomas with the swift malevolence that he had carefully subdued within himself all these months. Here you are, Captain, he was saying to himself as he burrowed in, using everything he knew, stinging, hurting, ducking, here you are Rich-boy, here you are, Policeman, are you getting your ten dollars’ worth?
They were both bleeding from the nose and mouth, when Thomas finally got in the one he knew was the beginning of the end. Greening stepped back, smiling foolishly, his hands still up, but feebly pawing the air. Thomas circled him, going for the last big one, when Dominic stepped between them.
“I think that’s enough for the time being, gentlemen,” Dominic said. “That was a very nice little workout.”
Greening recovered quickly. The blank look went out of his eyes and he stared coldly at Thomas. “Take these off me, Dominic,” was all he said. He made no move to wipe the blood off his face. Dominic unlaced the gloves and Greening walked, very straight, out of the mat room.
“There goes my job,” Thomas said.
“Probably,” Dominic said, unlacing the gloves. “It was worth it. For me.” He grinned.
For three days, nothing happened. Nobody but Dominic, Greening, and Thomas had been in the mat room and neither Thomas nor Dominic mentioned the fight to any of the members. There was the possibility that Greening was too embarrassed about being beaten by a twenty-year-old kid a lot smaller than he to make a fuss with the committee.