Pillow

by Andrew Battershill

  The next morning Pillow, partly because he had paced Emily’s living room instead of sleeping and partly because he was nervous about the afternoon training session at Julio’s gym, ran all the way downtown without thinking too carefully about how he’d get back to his apartment, and decided to just hang out in the architecture garden for a while.

  The architecture garden was this strange two-level park with a structure that looked like a castle wall in it. On the top level there was a large, flat gravel courtyard with very tall sculptures in a circle around the outside. The sculptures were all elevated on steel or concrete pillars. One had a miniature two-floor house with walls on three sides. Another had a small biplane made of metal at the top. The sculpture furthest from Pillow was a big block of concrete extending out toward the highway with a metal chair attached to the end. On the ground, there was a stool with a very old-looking bike wheel welded to the top.

  Pillow leaned against one of the castle walls and looked over the courtyard, sometimes focusing on individual sculptures and sometimes letting the whole thing loosely into his focus. From where he was standing he could see the sculptures and the highway behind them at the same time.

  Lieutenant Avida and Sergeant Simon emerged from the berry-bush-lined stairs under the chair, Avida skipping up the last step and using the railing to swing heavily around. Simon followed her not quite as slowly as an elderly hippo would have and slightly more enthusiastically.

  ‘How goes, Pillow?’

  ‘Pretty good. How are you?’

  ‘Oh, you know, we’re all right. Catching a lot of cases lately, though, like that one from yesterday … What happened there again, Sergeant?’

  ‘Jack Prevert popped an aneurysm not unrelated to the full kettle of boiling water poured on his face.’

  ‘Oh yes. Of course. And remind me, why would we bother, Mr. Thing I Used To Practice Kissing and Cuddling When I Was a Lonely Twelve-Year-Old? Get it?’

  ‘Because I’m a pillow.’

  Avida snapped her fingers and pointed at him.

  Simon answered her question. ‘Because we think he was there strong-arm debt-collecting, and that set the wife off to kill the husband.’

  Pillow yawned. He looked over Avida’s head, admiring the lines of the chair against the cloudless sky. When he looked back down they were both waiting in silence. ‘Oh, were you two done? Hey, I’m a straightforward guy …’

  Simon snorted as loud as a lot of people would shout at a rescue helicopter.

  ‘And the way I think, with a thing like that, a guy getting a kettle thrown on him, right? With a thing like that, either you’ve got the goods right away, and I’m arrested, and you’d have brought eight guys and I’d have already called my lawyer. Or you two love my company. And I’m a lot more charming than I am guilty.’

  Avida leaned over and spun the bike wheel; it kept rotating as she talked. ‘We aren’t talking about lawyers here, Pillow. We’re talking about trying to find some lost money. If you won’t talk to us, should we talk to Breton? Does he know about these little chats? We talked to Don Costes yesterday, and it seemed like he wasn’t aware. Why wouldn’t you tell them? One wonders.’

  Avida seemed edgy – she knew he was after the coins, but they couldn’t do anything about it. The less official they kept it, the better.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Pillow. ‘And if you want to tip your hand to Breton, you can be my guest.’

  Simon stepped up and pushed his face close to Pillow’s. Simon had about a hundred pounds on Pillow but the cop still only came up to his collarbones. Pillow grinned and stuck his chin up.

  ‘There’s nothing more dangerous than being smart for a second, Punchy. Don’t walk home alone or anything reckless like that. You’re bleeding an awful lot.’

  Pillow looked down and noticed a thick line of dark red blood rolling down his leg, smeared into the cracks of his dry skin. He flipped Simon’s tie up into his face, sidestepped him and did a quick Ali-shuffle. ‘That’s it for me, kids, unless you have any other advice.’

  Avida smiled vaudeville-wide. ‘You look a little worse for wear there, Pillow. You stressed out? The body is a candle, Pillow.’ She patted the top of her head. ‘This end is for burning.’ She dropped her hand and nodded at her feet. ‘And this end is so you don’t tip over.’

  The cops turned and crunched back toward the stairs. Pillow stuck around another few minutes wiping absently at his leg until the bike wheel stopped spinning and the huge, oblong shadows of the park were still again.

  Julio’s gym was cramped and tight, and now that Pillow was really looking around, he liked it. The walls were the usual collage of posed photos and old fight posters, glued up in wide, crooked blocks at random intervals. You could tell it was a one-man shop – most of the pictures and posters and the only belt up were Julio artifacts – but Pillow looked around and thought that some of the kids looked decent. The gym was in sort of a strip-mall area. The windows stretched all around, each covered by a different flag, the gym bright with sunlight through fabric.

  Pillow had agreed to go look at the kid at Julio’s gym that day. He was ready to skip it, but Emily wanted him to, so he figured he may as well come to the gym. It also helped that sitting alone in his apartment and thinking about Artaud and the coins had mostly been a random, aggressive back-and-forth between nausea and whatever the feeling is when you want to cry but you’re a grown man and that’s actually physically sort of hard to do.

  Pillow slung his leg over the top rope and moved into the ring. He tested the canvas and started moving around, shaking his arms out, up on his toes circling to his right and throwing the odd jab. He picked up the pace, eventually closing his eyes and feeling Julio. Moving away from that right hand. He started throwing more punches, really sitting down on the right. He saw a glancing shot cut Julio’s brow. Julio moved in and Pillow clinched him, dragged the laces of his glove over the cut, then broke the clinch, rolled Julio’s straight right and hit him with a counter-uppercut to the solar plex. He felt the ropes behind him and bounced off, switching his feet quickly and taking the angle. It was all right there. Julio was beatable; Pillow saw him folding.

  ‘Damn, my man still has legs.’

  Pillow opened his eyes. Fat Julio was there in his old-man sweatsuit, arm draped lazily around the kid’s waist. The kid was tall as hell, a bit skinny in the legs, but he looked athletic. His face wasn’t that marked up. Good skin.

  ‘This is Kevin.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, sir.’

  Pillow started skipping in the air, jumping over an invisible rope, moving it with his arms. ‘How do you do, boo-boo?’

  Kevin looked a little puzzled, a little like it might be a permanent state.

  ‘I’m going for a Yogi Bear–type vibe. See what I’m doing here, with my legs and hands and shit. You should do this, but with a real rope.’

  Kevin seemed to realize that now was a time to smile. He turned around and fished a rope out of his bag, moved over to an open spot by the mirrors.

  Pillow did a couple double skips and shouted over to him, ‘And stay outta dem pic-a-nic baskets.’

  Kevin looked over his shoulder to acknowledge that a joke had been made.

  Julio smirked up at Pillow. ‘I don’t think he’s seen that cartoon.’

  Pillow stopped air-skipping and looked over at the kid untangling his rope as he stretched his neck out. ‘Well, Jules, first impression: if he did see it, he’d think it was a documentary.’

  Pillow watched the kid hit the bag for a while, then he worked the mitts with him. It took about six seconds for Pillow to size the kid up. This wasn’t some hotshot prospect Julio was giving him. The kid was card-filler. Julio was hoping to squeeze enough wins out of him that he could put him in a squash match with a real prospect. Of course they wouldn’t give him a real one. Still, it felt good to be back in the ring, and the kid had an okay jab, he was just raw as shit, and slow on the trigger. The kid had fast feet
and bad footwork, the classic trick case. To anyone who didn’t know shit about boxing, he’d look like a champ. Almost ten years out of the ring, and if they gave him two weeks to train, Pillow knew he could still take the kid apart. It wouldn’t even be fair.

  Pillow showed Kevin a few good exits, worked on his balance a little, and the kid listened. After the mitts were over, Pillow was a bit dizzy so he let the kid get some water and sat down on the edge of the canvas. The kid came back smiling and started taking off his wraps.

  ‘Hey, thanks a lot. It’s, it’s, it’s a real honour to train with someone like you. I watched you when … um.’

  Pillow smiled and slapped the back of Kevin’s head. ‘When you were a kid. A child. An infant. A fuckin’ newborn fawn. I know I’m old, motherfucker, all right, you won’t hurt my feelings.’

  Kevin laughed and nodded. ‘Good to know, gramps.’

  They both sat there smiling and nodding until Kevin got his wraps off and stood. Pillow hopped up, stuck out his hand and pulled Kevin standing.

  ‘Have you got your miles in today?’

  Kevin looked down. ‘Nah, I slept in. I was planning to just run home.’

  Planning nothing. The kid was lazy, but Pillow let it slide. ‘Hey, no sweat, I’ll run with you.’

  Kevin looked back up at him sidelong. ‘That’s okay, man. You look tired. I’ll just do it.’

  ‘I ate a big lunch, gotta work it off. Flush the poisons and so forth.’ Pillow turned abruptly and started to leave the gym.

  Kevin hesitated then followed. ‘Really, man, it’s okay, none of my other trainers have run with me. You can drive behind me or something. Lots of them do it.’

  When they got outside, Pillow got distracted by a trash-can lid that had somehow ended up stuck in the top branches of a tree. He stopped and looked at it a second. Pillow imagined the hum it would make in a heavy wind, imagined the lid floating and hovering a while, deciding to settle there. Sitting, thinking it could be a mistake, the way anything different can be a mistake.

  Kevin had started bouncing around to keep his legs awake. Pillow felt sorry for Kevin, for Kevin’s nose and eyebrows and mom. The nicest thing would be to break the kid’s knee, make sure his brain couldn’t get anywhere near a good fighter in a bad mood.

  ‘Fuck that noise. I always hated that shit, some fat asshole driving a golf cart while you’re sweating your balls off. I’ll run with you. Who can’t run? Lemmings can run, and they’ll jump off a cliff ’cause it’s there.’ About eight kilometres in, Pillow’s headache got so bad that the world of his vision shrunk into a black pinhole from the corners. He keeled over a bit and after a second Kevin grabbed him around the waist and guided him off the sidewalk to the grass. Pillow breathed deeply for a while. It was a very hot day. It had been a very hot day and a half since he’d slept.

  ‘Well, Kevvy baby, I might should’ve winked a few times before I came here.’

  Kevin looked at Pillow like he was deer whose head was already mounted on the wall. ‘Hey, it’s all good. Don’t worry. Just take your time. You sure you’re good?’

  Pillow wiped his forehead, then he snapped his fingers at Kevin. ‘Shit, son. Just because I’m a broke-down wreck doesn’t mean you’re done training. Gimme some Superman–Banana action.’

  ‘What?’

  Pillow waved vaguely. ‘Tummy down, arms and legs up, engage your core, then, y’know, flip over. You feel me?’

  ‘Oh yeah, sure.’ The kid got down on his stomach. ‘I’ve never heard anyone call it that.’

  ‘What does everyone else call it?’

  ‘They just say it like that, then they say switch when you’re supposed to.’ Kevin laughed. ‘Most them don’t say tummy either.’

  Pillow looked up at the sky; it was so empty he could have forgotten about clouds if he tried a little. He counted off in his head. Banana. Kevin switched over onto his back. Pillow watched for a few seconds and nodded. ‘Just say switch, huh? I’m a bit more whimsical than those old sacks of shit. Oh, that reminds me, lesson time, here we go, Superman.’ Kevin rolled over again. ‘If you ever have to do an interview, a longer one, just learn like six words they don’t expect you to use. In this business, that passes for a personality.’ Pillow leaned forward and pinched Kevin’s earlobe, folding it over and then letting go. Kevin looked up startled. Pillow winked. ‘That’s sign language for banana.’

  After he’d put Kevin through a quick plyometrics circuit, Pillow told the kid to sit down on the curb and drink some water. Kevin took a mouthful, spit it back out into the street, then had a deep drink.

  ‘So what’s your record?’

  ‘Julio didn’t tell you?’ Kevin laughed and wiped his mouth. ‘He doesn’t have the best memory.’

  Pillow let out a loud snort. ‘Who does? That stuff’s for pussies.’

  ‘I’m eight and two. Six kayos.’

  ‘Good, man, good.’ Pillow hooked Kevin’s nose with two fingers. ‘You broke this – ever do your jaw?’

  ‘Nah. You?’

  Pillow stood and took a few steps, making sure they were solid. ‘Oh yeah. Twice. First time, I broke it laughing.’

  Kevin dribbled some water down his chin, then wiped it. ‘In a real fight?’

  ‘Yup.’

  The kid shook his head, grinning. ‘So you were winning?’

  Pillow rocked his head back a little. ‘Shit no. I was getting the piss beat out of me. Yeah, man, he was banging – this was Angulo – he was banging me to the body, clinching the shit out of me, roughing me up. Real dirty fight. The ref wasn’t doing anything, eighteen-foot ring, the whole set-up, so I tried to fight him on the inside. And this is a lesson, this is a lesson: I was landing shots, landing all my shots, but they were just bouncing off him. He looked like he was getting his nails done, meanwhile I’m getting my ribs caved in about five times a round. So round eight or nine, I don’t remember, he’s got me in the corner, throwing a million punches, I’m too tired to get out. And I look down and he’s so excited he’s got his elbows, like, 100 percent flailed out to the side. Like he wanted to float in the ocean, y’know? So I look at it and I lean in his ear and I say: “D’you leave your water wings at home?” Pillow could tell he was slurring a bit, but Kevin seemed to be following. ‘And I laughed, I mean, I know that’s not an amazing crack, but in the ring, context and all, on the fly like that, it seemed pretty good to me. So I’m just hanging out, laughing at my own joke, and he pushes me into the turnbuckle and snaps my jaw in half with a left hook.’ Pillow rubbed his jaw, remembering screws.

  Kevin was shaking his head. ‘You’re crazy, man. Why would you laugh when you’re getting beat up like that?’

  Pillow was back to looking at the sky. ‘It was funny.’ The kid looked up at Pillow the way Pillow looked at shits he was really, really surprised had come out of his body. All of a sudden he didn’t feel like talking to Kevin anymore. ‘I have to get a move on, pal. This was fun, I’ll be …’ Pillow lost the last of the sentence and let it trail off. Kevin grabbed his hand and shook it, said a bunch of thankful things Pillow didn’t bother following. Pillow looked at the kid again, imagined cuts over his eyebrows, imagined telling him he could still win, imagined pouring water down his throat, imagined lying. Pillow hugged Kevin hard, and when they broke he put his hand around the kid’s jaw, cradling it a little.

  ‘What do you call a sheep with no legs?’ Kevin was too confused to say anything. Pillow finished the joke anyway. ‘A cloud.’

  Pillow was too keyed-up to nap, so he just lay down in the back of his car, rubbing his hands against the vague fuzziness of the ceiling for about an hour. It made him feel better, refreshed enough to give Gwynn the kind of attentive visit she really deserved at this point in her life.

  Pillow figured Artaud might need a little energy (which in Artaud’s case was to say cocaine and opiates) to revitalize himself. Gwynn had been allowed to keep a small dealing operation out of her place after she bought out. Mostly she just sold pills and coke
to her art friends.

  Pillow got out of his car and then immediately leaned against it, doing a quick supported back bend over the roof and taking a couple of cleansing breaths. He twisted the skin on his chin around for a bit, then he stood up straight and looked up at Gwynn’s window. She saw him, smiled and waved. Gwynn had a strange way of waving. She’d start with her hand down on her hip and move it slowly up, still half-cupped, and then at the top she’d open it. Opening it was the wave.

  ‘So, four people went hiking and they stood by the edge of a cliff. It was a beautiful cliff, and when they looked out they could see the clouds wisping off into nothing, they could see more dirt and more trees than they could imagine on their own. At first they stood far back, and they looked, and they looped arms around each other’s backs.’ Gwynn turned around and pinched Pillow’s forearm gently. She kept talking, her loose, dry hands resting on the inside of his knees. ‘And then one of them walked right up to the edge of the cliff, and she looked out, and she breathed so deeply that the others could see her chest move in and out, and they could feel their own chests move in sympathy. And she turned to them, she told them it was beautiful, so much more beautiful, to look straight down at the little bit of dirt under them than at the wide, stupid panorama. She said, “Come to the edge.” And they said, “We can’t.” And she kept insisting. And they said, “We can’t, we will fall.” And she asked them one more time. And they came. And she pushed them. And they floated into the vacuum of infinite space, never to return.’

  Gwynn lifted her hands and brushed them against each other. ‘That, dear boy, is a thing I never said. It’s a thing I should have said. You’ll find that, when you’ve got the time, and the world has forgotten you, and you’re doing your tallies alone. You’ll find the best things you said were the things you didn’t, or they were the things you only said to the cold night air in front of you as you walked home so light-footed and so drunk and so sure that life was just starting. That it would keep on starting. When time was just a thing you checked on sometimes so you wouldn’t be late to the next party.’