“You should have seen the characters in here tonight. If there was a way of doing it, I'd have taken my suitcase into the ring.”
“That old wedding ring. If it was worth anything, you would have hocked it long ago. A cheap...”
Tommy straightened up, a fast movement that increased the pounding in his head. He held on to the table for a second. But his eyes narrowed and his face turned cruel and hard. Then he relaxed, said gently, “Bobby, you know better than to call it cheap. You really know.” He sat down to take off his ring shoes and socks, dropped the wedding ring on the table, atop the pile of money. Slipping on the wooden shower shoes and taking the towel, he clopped toward the coffin-like shower, calling out, “Watch that for me.”
“I have to go back up....”
“Only be a few minutes,” Tommy said, turning on the water.
Biting on his cigar holder, Becker stared at the wedding ring, silently cursed it. He heard steps in the hallway and turned to see Alvin Hammer stoop to walk through the dressing room door. Hammer was five inches over six feet tall and weighed less than one hundred and forty pounds. His clothes were casual and expensive, and heavy framed glasses gave his lean face an owlish look often considered intellectual. His nervous face still held a trace of an actor's good looks despite his baggy eyes and receding hair, which was dyed black. (On TV he always wore a hairpiece, of course.) He was now smoking a handsome pipe and an amazingly deep, clear voice managed to come out of his skinny frame as he said, “My boys are all cleared away, Becker. How's the kid?”
“Taking a shower. Watch his stuff, I have things to do upstairs.”
The announcer sat on the rubbing table. “He was completely tragic in there tonight. A magnificent display of... This all he gets?”
Al's eyes counted the money under the ring, then looked over abruptly at Becker, who snapped, “Stop it, Al. Go peddle your shaving soap and cut the do-good act. I'm running a business here.”
“He would have been a famous champ if you hadn't thrown him in with Robinson!”
“What do you know about it? Tommy wanted the fight.”
“I know he never recovered from that beating,” Al said, his voice clean and ringing.
Becker cleaned his cigar holder again and wrinkled his face as if about to spit. Then he remembered that in a fashion Alvin was his boss. He had so many bosses these days. Heading for the door he said, “I can remember when you screamed at him to go out, with his eye half open from a butt, to fill up a few minutes of open TV time! Leave me alone, Al, I have my own problems. Believe me.”
Alone in the dreary dressing room, Alvin stared at the pathetic pile of money, the wedding ring and enjoyed his pity. He glanced around the room, as if drinking in the horrible atmosphere. After many years as an unsuccessful actor and part-time spieler on sight-seeing buses, then a minor success on radio, Al had rung the bell as a TV fight announcer.
“Money-wise” he wasn't big, but he made a fair salary and far more important, thoroughly enjoyed his work. Having been a sickly kid who grew too fast into a painfully thin man, Al was fascinated by muscles, by athletes, by men able to give and take punishment. He liked being “a part” of the fight game. “I indeed consider myself fortunate to play any role in this intense drama of courage and skill, in this age-old contest of man against man,” Alvin would say— and often. His open excitement and sincere admiration for pugs wasn't cynical, as is the case of most sports writers, and a great deal of Alvin's sincere feeling came through the mike, making him most effective with his listeners. Although some of his descriptions of movements and precise blows were entirely wrong, the average TV fan never knew the difference and at times Al's vivid description sounded as if he were up there in the squared circle—as he undoubtedly was, in his mind.
One time on the air, talking about a hard gut wallop, Alvin had said, “Oh! Oh! Frank rips a terrible right deep into Brown's stomach. Brown is clinching, his eyes rolling. Our mouth is desperately open, fighting for air. Now our stomach muscles grow numb, our legs go deadly tired. I feel as if I'm sinking into a numbing fog. Hold on! My heart cries out. Hold on for dear life!... Ah, now our nerves and reflexes respond, we shake off the lifeless feeling, energy and strength are flowing back into our trained muscles. The fog lifts from our brain and... There! Brown is fighting back like a wounded tiger....”
The sports writers razzed Al without mercy, but the fans like it, showered the stations with letters.
If Alvin's blind worship of “courage” made him fail to understand the stupidity and commercialized brutality of the fight racket, he could feel and understand the tragedy, the violence. Now, remembering the beating the nineteen dollars represented, he was moved to tears.
Alvin, after two failures at marriage, only saw women out of need and was “married” to his job. This marriage worked for him. People on the fringe of sports often adopt an athlete (often not aware they are doing it), one they may feel close to for any one of a hundred different reasons. Al was very fond of Tommy. “The little fighting cock,” as he loved to call him (although not on the air where it might possibly be misconstrued) had once saved a show for Alvin. From that moment on he was Alvin's favorite pug.
Tommy came out of the shower stall dripping wet, rubbing himself vigorously with the towel—the hotel name too faded to be legible. The cold shower had washed most of the dizziness and pain from his body. He waved and said, “Hello, Al. Sorry I stunk up your show. I couldn't get started.”
“He was a strong youngster.”
“Muscle-bound dummy. In the old days I wouldn't have let him carry my bag.”
“You would have cut him to ribbons with your left in a round,” Alvin said, although he'd never seen Tommy box before a year ago, when Cork had been way past his prime. Indignation shook his voice as he asked, “I thought you were paid sixty dollars for an emergency bout?”
“That's the price,” Tommy said, powdering his crotch and between the toes. It often made him nervous the way Al stared at him. He sometimes wondered if the announcer was a queer.
“Then why these few dollars?”
“Well, fifteen bucks I owed Bobby. Six went for the seconds, and Bobby gets his one-third cut, like a manager, for getting me the bout,” Tommy explained as he put on his torn underwear.
Al banged the rubbing table, a tremendous thump. “The cheap bastard! Where does he come off taking a manager's cut? He knows it's against the law for a matchmaker to be a manager, too. I'll have a word with him!”
Tommy looked up, surprised. “Look, Bobby gives me the breaks.”
“Ice in the wintertime!”
“Don't forget, he used to be my manager,” Tommy said, slipping on socks and badly cracked shoes. “It isn't easy for him to get me on the card. Plenty of mob managers are after Bobby to give their boys the cellar fight. Old Becker's been a pal to me.”
“With a pal like him you don't need enemies, as the joke goes.” Alvin put a hand in his pocket. “Irish, you need a-few bucks?”
“Naw, I'm into you for near a hundred now. This dough will last me until I get another bout.”