Fat City

by Leonard Gardner

  The announcement of Lucero’s name drew a partisan response from the half-filled gallery.

  The robe was tugged off over Tully’s gloves, the mouthpiece was fitted around his teeth, and he was alone in the corner, his arms still tan from the fields, his torso pale, a tattooed swallow in flight over each breast.

  “Keep away from him,” was the last thing he heard before the bell. But Lucero did not come after him. The Mexican waited at the ropes. Tully’s first lead drew no response. Wary, he stepped out of range, bounced on his toes, shuffled in, again pushed out his left, and Lucero, taking it on his high-arched nose, swayed back into the ropes. He leaned there, unflinching as Tully feinted, and in a single reflex Tully smashed his jab, cross and hook against that scarred and patient face. Then he was struck by a blow he had not even seen. Grasping for Lucero’s arms, he was pounded over the heart. He retreated, bounced, breathed deeply, and as he stepped back in, Lucero catapulted off the ropes toward him, and Tully was stunned. At the end of the round he returned to two grave faces.

  Lucero continued fighting on the ropes, sometimes half seated on the middle strand. Yet not until the end of the second round when Tully drove a left deep into the belly and heard him grunt did he realize Lucero’s sluggishness might be something other than trickery.

  Water streamed down Tully’s head. His trunks were stretched open and a cold shock poured over his genitals. Ruben’s hands were on his face like a barber’s, tilting it, wiping, patting, smearing on fresh Vaseline. The taped bottle rose to Tully’s lips and he rinsed his mouth, turned and spat into the bucket.

  “I hurt him in the gut.”

  “Don’t trade with him. Move him around.”

  “He’s weak in the gut.”

  Lucero waited in his corner and Tully closed with him, punching to the body. Held, Tully slapped a right to the kidney and broke away, the thumbs and laces of his gloves passing deftly over Lucero’s eyes as he thrust him off. Stepping out of range, he dropped his guard, but Lucero did not pursue. Stalling, Tully bounced and feinted, and standing flatfooted with his arms at his sides while scattered booing sounded in the gallery, he exposed his chin in invitation. Lucero came forward, but as Tully moved farther away, he checked and waited. He would not lead, and so, reluctantly, Tully again moved toward him, dropping his left to hook to the body. In a white concussive blaze he was falling. On his back, struggling to stay upright on horizontal legs, he looked up at the lights and the brown and blue gathered drapery way up at the apex of the ceiling where a giant gold tassel hung, the whole scene shattered by a zigzag diagonal line, like a crack in a window. He did not remember rising, or how he got through the round. All he remembered were the lights, the gold tassel and the shattered drapery, then the eye-smarting shock of ammonia in Lucero’s corner, where he had followed him after the bell and where Ruben had come to lead him back to his own stool. The zigzag line cut the ropes. Cold water cascaded over his head. He felt the drag of a cotton swab through a wound over his eye. When he looked up at Ruben’s face he could not see his chin. There was a sparkling vagueness to everything, and pains shifted from the top of his head to his temples and the base of his skull. The ammonia passed again under his nose and now he could see Ruben’s chin, but it was off to one side of his face.

  “How you feel?” The referee, with a jagged line pulsing in his face and his chin out of alignment, was scrutinizing him.

  “Okay.”

  “He’s fine,” said Ruben. At the bell he thrust Tully up off the stool.

  Lucero rushed across the ring, and Tully set himself, covered, was battered and then had hold of the struggling arms. He leaned and held, kept his cut away from Lucero’s head, butted him once and was pulled off. He was struck again and once more had Lucero by the arms. The referee tugged and pushed; they were separated. Urged on by the crowd, the Mexican charged, and Tully retreated, ducking, weaving, rolling with punches. Near the end of the round the jagged line was gone from his vision, and Lucero, breathing through the mouth, had slowed. Tully hit him hard in the stomach just before the bell.

  In the rounds that followed, Lucero slowed even more, fighting now as if not primarily to win but mainly to last, lashing out when pressed, often not punching at all when Tully jabbed him at long range. Satisfied to gain points with little punishment, Tully hit and moved away. In the tenth round Lucero’s pace quickened, but Tully slammed him with a steady report, and after the bell Lucero stood holding the top rope in exhaustion, his face tilted down toward the canvas.

  At the announcement that Tully had won, Ruben pulled him to his feet, grasped him around the thighs, and staggering, lifted him up to a reception of moderate applause and scattered but passionate jeering. The towel fell from Tully’s head as the two reeled sideways across the ring, Tully’s arms rising and falling like wings in an attempt to right his balance. His feet thumped back to the canvas, and Lucero, eyes swollen to slits and nostrils caked with blood, embraced him around the neck. Head to head, grinning through bloody lips, they faced the photographer from the local press, Tully’s weary arm held up by the referee and Ruben at his back attempting to drape him with the purple satin robe, his heavy face looming over Tully’s shoulder toward the camera.

  The ring lights were already off, the crowd no longer seated and the aisles congested when Lucero, again in the black robe with the sequin image, stood with bowed head and raised fists to final meager applause from his disappointed countrymen. He left the ring followed by Tully, and separated by several yards the two plodded with their handlers back to the dressing rooms.

  His nose thick and sore, a row of adhesive butterflies closing the wound on his swollen brow, Tully walked out to the lobby, where the night’s boxers and their managers had congregated. Arcadio Lucero, now in camel’s-hair overcoat and yellow gaiter shoes with cowboy heels, his dark face puffed and solemn, stood with Gil Solis, Ruben, Babe and Owen Mackin. An elderly man with a hearing aid and a large twisted nose, Mackin was patting him on the shoulder, shouting: “You good boy. We like. You good boy.” And seeing Tully he shouted: “You put on a good fight, Billy.”

  “He was great tonight,” said Ruben.

  “You get it?” Tully asked.

  “Everything’s fine.”

  “What’s it come to?”

  Ruben raised an assuring hand. “It’ll be all right, we’ll take care of it in a minute.” He leaned toward Tully’s face. “Looks good. That’ll heal up fine, it’s nothing.” Then he spoke again to Owen Mackin. “Few weeks he’ll be set to go again. It’ll be a sell-out next time. This guy’s great. I defy anyone to say this guy’s not great. First fight in two years and he got himself in perfect condition. He don’t smoke, did you know that? Never touches tobacco. This fight was just what he needed. He’s ready for anybody now. We got a winner here. He’s the most colorful lightweight in Northern California. What did you think of my kid in the opener? Wasn’t he fantastic? Ernie, come over here.”

  “Let’s go,” said Tully.

  “We’ll go. Just a minute.”

  Ernie Munger, who had been waiting near the entrance with Faye, ambled over with his hand on her back, her gray jacket unbuttoned and her belly tremendous in a yellow maternity dress. She stopped a few steps from the group, and Ernie came on alone with his hands in his pockets. “I better be going.”

  “You did great. Wasn’t this kid something? First pro fight and he’s cool as ice in there. This kid’s got heart.”

  “Guess I better get rolling.”

  Taking out his wallet, Ruben stepped aside with Ernie.

  “Don’t give it all to them baby doctors,” said Gil Solis, his strained combative face grotesquely smiling, his narrow eyes fierce.

  Tully watched Ernie and his wife go out through the open doors. Beyond a dark plot of city lawn and fallow flower beds, a line of headlights was passing through the fog up El Dorado Street.

  “I got a good boy there. Home early with the wife. He’s got all the moves. He’s got class. Ask Tully.
He’s the guy that discovered him. Am I right?”

  “He’s okay.”

  Ruben gave him a pat on the back. “But this boy here—off two years and he’s as sharp as he ever was.”

  “Guess we’ll be going,” said Gil, his pitted cheeks scored with deep merciless lines, like a bayed ferocious monkey’s. “Vámonos, eh?”

  Lucero shrugged, shifted his bag, and with an amiable show of white chipped teeth, offered his hand all around.

  Outside in the cold, Ruben told Tully he had earned $241. “You been off too long. Next time you’ll draw three times that.”

  “What’s my cut come to?”

  “Well, I gave you all those advances. I got to collect on some of that, but I don’t want you fighting for nothing, either. We got you on your feet now. Three, four weeks you’ll be ready to go again. I’ll tell you, why don’t I just keep paying your room and board?”

  “I’m not drinking any more.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “I’m not going to blow any of it. That divorce is what messed me up. Now I’m fighting again I want to get back with my wife and I got to have money. Just take your cut and I’ll pay my own bills.”

  Double-parked at the side of the Oxford Hotel, Ruben counted out a hundred dollars. “It’s not worth the goddamn trouble,” said Tully, and opening the door, looked back at the traffic coming up the one-way street.

  “I gave you those advances with the agreement they’d come out of your purse. I got four kids. But once we get another match made I’ll stake you. Don’t get out on that side, you’ll get run over. Shut the door. Get out over on this side.” At the same time that Tully stepped out on the traffic side, Ruben left by his own door to make room for him. They confronted each other across the hood. “What did you want to get out on that side for? Why didn’t you slide over?”

  “What do you care?”

  “You can get run into that way.”

  Tully went around to the sidewalk. “You’re just looking out for me every minute, aren’t you? Except when it comes time to pay off.”

  “I never made a dime off you in two years and you been hitting me for plenty. I’m giving you this hundred because you put on a hard fight and you earned it. But that don’t mean we’re square.”

  “You think I’m going to catch punches for a hundred bucks?”

  “I’ll talk to Mackin. Maybe he’ll put you on again in two weeks.”

  “With this cut?”

  “It’ll heal by then.”

  “Know why I got this? This is the same place they cut me with that razor blade because you were too tight to go down there to Panama and work my corner.”

  “That’s not old scar tissue. That’s a new cut.”

  “That’s what you’d say, all right. Who the hell cares? All I want is the money for my sweat and blood.”

  “How about a bite to eat? I’ll buy you a sandwich. You shouldn’t be out in this wind.”

  “I’m going to bed.”

  “Come to the gym in a day or two, huh?”

  “Yeah, I’ll see you.”

  Tully went in the hotel and up the stairs, but did not enter his room. He only threw in his bag and relocked the door. Back downstairs in the entrance, he put his head outside to make sure Ruben had driven away before he stepped back onto the sidewalk.

  In the Old Peerless Inn Tully had three whiskies with beer chasers, the second pair because the adhesive strips over his cut interested the bartender, who then recognized his face as that on the poster behind the bar. The third he bought to reciprocate and he bought drinks for the man on each side of him. By then the pleasure of celebrity began to diminish and he felt he had become too popular. After several prolonged handclasps, he left.

  Out in the fog, weary, yet buoyant from the drinks, his mind dulled along with his aches and his energy returning, Tully was free of the sense of impending ordeal that had been with him for weeks. He felt whole, self-sufficient, felt his life had at last opened up and that now nothing stood between him and the future’s infinite possibilities. Already he was moving into that unknown and it was good, because it was his own life, untrammeled by any other. Excited by a sense of new beginning, he walked past dark bars, their doors closed against the cold. Few figures were on the sidewalks. Under the low-hanging lights in the poker clubs, vacant chairs separated players around the green-topped tables. Outside the Liberty Theater he stopped to look at the photos of several strippers framed behind glass in silver cardboard stars flecked with dusty glitter, and in a small pad of fat on a slender, pouting girl named Estelle was an exact replica of his wife’s horizontal navel. He studied it for some time before going to the box office.

  A movie was groaning and flickering as he entered, its narrator proclaiming the virtues of nudism in a grandiloquent baritone charged with reverence for nature. Tully went down the dark aisle to a row near the stage. Slumped on his spine with his head resting on the back of the seat, he looked up at the workings of a great blurred rump. It was an old film, marred by dark shadows and dancing specks of light, and was spoiled for Tully by implacably positioned tropical foliage. Soon his eyes were closing in the drone of that voice.

  “. . . and Rama vowed never to return to the world of dresses and tight shoes and all the restraints her upbringing had heaped upon her head. This was her domain, to live in as woman was intended to live, on a diet of sunshine and fresh air, caressed by the cool stream where—what was this?—there were fish for the angler who was quick enough to catch one with her bare hands!”

  Tully sat up, squinting. Slouched about the small theater were other isolated men, squinting, yawning, some asleep under the sudden glare of the houselights. Tully waited in line at the lavatory, and when he came back to his seat the theater darkened and the maroon curtain jerkily parted. To the amplified music of a phonograph, the women came out one by one in velour and satin and sequined net, in floor-length gowns with grimy hems and long black gloves split at the seams. Middle-aged, they two-stepped across the stage, pulling off the gloves, pausing at the proscenium to expose a mottled thigh and shake a finger at the audience for peeking. The gloves were tossed to the wings, the gowns dispatched, fringes rose and fell, waved and jiggled. Unclasped brassières were held in place while orange and platinum heads shook in coy demurring. Released, breasts descended, blue-white, bulbous, low, capped with sequined discs. Fringed girdles off, haunches flexed and sagged, satin triangles drove and recoiled. Calves sinewy, thighs dimpled, scars tucked in the fat of bellies, the women rocked and heaved, beckoned with tongues, crouched and rose with the edge of the curtain between their legs. Mouths open, they trotted out on the runway in high heels, squatted, shook, lay on the floor, lifted legs, caressed themselves, rose and ran off with little coy steps, wriggling dusty buttocks. Estelle appeared last, revealing meager breasts, sharp hipbones, and a belly that had lost its plumpness since the pictures outside were taken. There was nothing about it to remind Tully of his wife. Where there had once been such a voluptuous declivity there was now only an unexceptional navel. He left with the same dissatisfaction he had felt every other time he had been here since the days before his marriage when he had attended with Ortega and Chavez. Only then they had driven out of town afterwards, in his Buick or Chavez’s Cadillac, and gone to a whorehouse at some small valley or mountain town or at a junction on the road to Yosemite. Once they had driven as far as Nevada. Now Chavez was in prison and Ortega had gone home to his family after sticking his head in the dressing room to congratulate Tully on his victory.

  He felt remote, distracted, felt that after having beaten Lucero he deserved a woman. A weary, intangible confusion hovered in his mind, a sensation of forgetfulness though there was nothing to remember. He was walking not in the direction of his hotel but toward Oma’s, feeling capable of knocking on her door, of saying he had come only for his clothes, of putting them in his suitcase and then methodically stripping her, taking her without the slightest intrusion on his isolate self, then picking
up his suitcase and leaving forever.

  Her light was on, showing under the door. He knocked, and even when Earl opened the door, Tully’s equilibrium was not disturbed. The dark eyes, the whites a smoky gray flecked with brown, looked down into his with suspicious recognition.

  “What you wants?”

  Nor did this affect Tully’s mood. “Come for my clothes.”

  “I’m living here,” said Earl, as if a misunderstanding persisted. “I pays the rent.”

  Tully nodded.

  “Got your things in your suitcase all ready to go.” Earl stepped back and Tully saw Oma on the bed. Leaning against the headboard, she wore a pink dress that exposed her collarbones, the skirt fanning out on the green chenille spread, her legs in nylons, one foot shoeless, the other in a white pump. A tan sweater lay over her shoulders, and as he entered she drew it around her elbows.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ,” she said.

  Tully, conscious of Earl watching him, tried not to appear too familiar. “How you doing?”

  “Oh, Christ, Mary and Joseph, look who’s here.”

  “Your suitcase right over there in the closet,” murmured Earl. “I’m wearing one of your T-shirts. I take it off for you.”

  “Don’t bother. I got plenty.”

  “Will you look what the cat dragged in.”

  “I got my own. Just wasn’t none clean today.” Earl was already unbuttoning his gray and white striped shirt. He threw it on the bed, pulled the T-shirt, tight, short, yellowed under the sleeves, over his head, uncovering a dark muscular trunk. “What’s yours is yours. Oma want me to throw your stuff out, but I say a man’s stuff is his stuff, when he show up around here I want to send him off with what he come for.” By now the T-shirt was in Tully’s hand and Earl was rebuttoning the striped shirt on his way to the closet. Tucking in the tails with one hand, he brought Tully his suitcase.

  “You can take that and shove it up your ass,” said Oma.

  “You hush now. He just come for his things and he leaving.”

  “Don’t hush me, you bunch of bums. What do you know about it, anyway?”