No. You won’t.
I know what hurts me and what doesn’t.
I know about fear and I’ve faced it.
This is the aftermath, the result.
‘James,’ you get to be the last person that fights me.
It’s a privilege you’ll regret later.
ROUND FIVE
‘Spencer’s’ words confuse ‘James’ and I capitalize by throwing weak flurries of jabs and straights to the face.
He defends but cannot seem to fall back into his groove.
I win the round up until he lands a hook to my stomach, knocking me down to the canvas.
Two of five.
I get back up by the five count and I send my own uppercut, which I had intended on being the “snap punch” I told you about, but it doesn’t work.
The uppercut, though, sends him to his knees for a fraction of a second, enough for the referee to slip between the both of us, calling it a knockdown.
It’s one of those kinds of knockdowns that really isn’t a knockdown but the referee starts counting anyway.
Spencer is pissed and I get a sick thrill out of hearing him shout.
I don’t have a corner in this fight, only the cutman I paid and the two others who make sure I stay hydrated and awake.
In this fight, I am my own trainer.
It’s a draw.
The round is split down the middle, some favoring ‘James’ some favoring ‘me.’
ROUND SIX
I take the round off, being as defensive as I can.
I’m old. I can’t go the distance without taking at least one round off.
I show the world that I have a great defense. More importantly, I show ‘James’ that I can be defensive too.
A boxer-puncher is the real wildcard.
Remember that.
Cocky and confident until he sends me down to the canvas with the same uppercut.
Three of five.
I get up after the five count. I’m fine but the referee whispers in my ear, “You get knocked down again and I’ll be forced to stop the fight.”
He won’t stop the fight.
Empty threat.
‘James’ wins the round.
ROUND SEVEN
I win this round. ‘James’ doesn’t take the round off; I steal the round from him. We trade punches for three-fourths of the round. He hits me with a great hook that nearly takes the wind out of me but I counter with a hook to the side of his face. It scares him. Proof that he’s a young fighter:
The blind shots cultivate fear.
I’d say that the majority of shots that hurt me are the ones I can see coming but cannot evade. Blind shots are convenient blackouts.
I wish I could get a punch to the face every night. Maybe then I’d be able to sleep. That is, if it wasn’t unhealthy to take knockout-inducing shots to the face every night. Anyway—
The last ten seconds are mine.
‘James’ knows that he’ll win if he knocks me down again so he becomes a bit predictable. I use that as an opportunity to crack his “perfect” defense.
It starts with two blocked jabs but then I send an uppercut, same uppercut he’s used against me all throughout the fight, and it causes him to drop his gloves. Arms at his sides, stunned, cracked, I send eight shots to the stomach followed by another uppercut to the chin, before he can bring himself to defend again. Bell, end of round.
My round not his.
ROUND EIGHT
It’s bad for me but I expect it going in.
Spencer motivates ‘James’ into taking me out this round.
YOU GOT TO END IT NOW.
NOT NEXT ROUND. NOW!
And he tries.
He really tries.
Four of five—
To the canvas I go, same uppercut. The referee brings the fight doctor out due to the cut just under my right eyebrow.
Blood drips into my eye.
The doctor says that I’m okay.
I narrowly evade having the fight end but the round is obviously ‘James’s.’
ROUND NINE
I have trouble seeing due to the cut but I take the round using sheer force. I fight southpaw the entire round just to aggravate ‘James.’
Mostly jabs and cheap shots to the body.
‘James’ spends most of the round silent and defending. Fighting southpaw confuses him into slowing down.
He’ll get a talking to from Spencer that’s for sure.
My round.
ROUND TEN
I intentionally fight dirty. I need to take another round off, getting pretty gassed. People can tell. The referee is beyond worried.
I let him have this round but I let him know that he can’t hurt me by clinching whenever he attempts more than a single punch.
The crowd boos a little, but even the perfect fight has a number of highs and lows.
This is a tough round to judge.
I get in cheap kidney shots when we clinch.
I bring him to the ropes and fight using rope-a-dope, using the ropes to prop me up as I lean back and launch forward with extra force single jabs to his face. Most of the round, I punch not to the body or face but to his gloves.
I do it because no one does it.
I win the round.
The round I took off to rest.
ROUND ELEVEN
It’s bad. The cut gets worse despite what the cutman does to keep it from getting bigger. ‘James’ focuses on the cut and by the end of the round I am nearly dead on my feet, blood down my chest, the front of his shorts stained with my blood.
His round. No doubt about it.
This went the distance and physically we both have to pay for it.
ROUND TWELVE
He knocks me down at the beginning. Uppercut.
Five of five.
The referee counts instead of calling it.
I get to eight before standing up.
He looks into my eyes and says, “I’m going to let you fight because you got this far. Don’t make me regret it!”
And I don’t. I let fists fly. I dig deep into the tank.
I leave nothing for tomorrow.
This is my last.
His defense avoids eighty percent of my onslaught but everyone is shocked to see the elder of the two fighters taking the last round.
He’ll win the round because he knocked me down, but I win the fight in terms of psychology.
I silence him in the last and as the bell rings, I know that I’ve lost. I needed to lose in order for Willem to rise back to the top.
But even in losing, I know what just happened.
“It is, it really is.”
There you have it, the perfect fight.
In my humble opinion, there is no greater fight I can give.
This is my best performance.
In my best performance, I lose.
You can laugh if you want, strangers.
The laughter of a stranger is not always bad. It gets old and loses all meaning. So let them laugh. It won’t always hurt this bad.
You can wash it in the sorrows that bleed the same bright white from before, but this time it all seems so new when you’re empty handed.
No longer holding onto much of anything.
Just your face, looking back at you in the mirror, waiting to be redefined. Waiting for a description.
We know what a stranger sees…
BUT WHAT ABOUT YOU? WHAT DO YOU SEE?
THE SILENCE
In the silence of the bedroom, I hear myself talking. Not ‘myself’ but myself—who I am now. In the silence, I hear myself saying, “Hey, how are you feeling?” That’s a question I’d ask someone that’s gone twelve rounds but that would mean I can’t be talking to myself because I have twelve rounds to go.
LAST FIGHT
Alongside my last fight there will be a series of lasts—
Last chance to make things right.
Last statement before receding into the world of anonymity. The publ
ic doesn’t look for sound bites or blurbs from the fold of people you call life. They look for the notable identities to buoy whatever it is they are trying to sell.
I hear myself talking, and it sounds like me.
It sounds like what I imagined I’d sound like.
It’s not that far off from anything you’d hear Willem saying.
THAT’S BECAUSE
“I know, I know.”
YOU REALLY NEED TO START GETTING USED TO
“Yes, I know.”
YOU SHOULDN’T INTERRUPT PEOPLE
WHEN THEY ARE
“Yes, I know.”
SEE? THAT’S YOUR PROBLEM
“Yeah and what’s my problem?”
YOU THINK YOU KNOW EVERYTHING
I laugh, “I assure you that I don’t have that problem. If anything, I know how to make toast and survive in a fight. Not much else. Wait. No. I got something else. I have ten toes and nine-and-a-half fingers. I lost that tip of my left pinky finger during that, you know…”
I KNOW
“Of course you know because—”
“What are you doing?”
A voice that could only be Sarah’s.
“Oh, hey Sarah.” Looking down at the two dolls in my hands, recalling instantly how odd this must look, dolls, talking to myself, in her room when I’m not supposed to be, “I was… wondering where you went.”
She wanders over, takes one of the dolls from me and says, “You shouldn’t be in here!”
Her tone is scolding more so than angry.
“Yeah, sorry. I was just following the—”
YOU SOUND LIKE A LUNATIC
“Never mind.”
She looks at her doll, “What were you doing in here?”
Doing my best to change the topic of conversation, I ask, “What were you doing out of your room?”
She places both hands on her hips, “What am I, some kind of prisoner?!”
I shake my head, “No, no, just…I don’t know.”
“Of course you don’t know!”
SMOOTH, REAL SMOOTH
What else am I going to do? I relent, “Yeah you’re right.”
She exhales deeply, the house shaking at the peak of the sigh, “Whatever…”
I remain seated on the edge of the bed as Sarah wanders over to the mirror and, unsurprisingly, she lacks a reflection.
YOU DON’T FIND IT ODD?
I am the only person within frame.
She turns and looks at me, “What?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. What?”
“It’s just…”
She returns her attention to the mirror, “Oh, this.”
YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT SHE IS,
DON’T BOTHER
“You are probably wondering what it means for you.”
I admit that, yes, it’s a little selfish but…
DON’T SAY ANYTHING
She sets the doll down on the end table next to me.
“You see me right?”
I nod.
“That’s only because you know my dad. You know my name.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t exist to the world out there. This is how we are.” Looks at me, “Get it?”
YES YOU DO
“You mean…”
OH JESUS
“What don’t you understand?”
I hold up the doll, “By ‘we’ do you mean ‘us,’” referring to the inanimate doll, “or ‘us,’” pointing to the room as a whole, meaning all the hauntings within the house.
“I mean ‘us’ as in everyone that watches the media. Everyone that watches one of your fights. Everyone that—”
“Laughs…”
THERE YOU GO INTERRUPTING PEOPLE AGAIN
She nods, “Right.”
For a while we are silent, sitting there thinking about all of this while Sarah brushes her hair. When she’s done doing that, she wanders over to her dollhouse, takes the one I’m still holding, and puts them back in position.
She sits next to the dollhouse, facing the opposite side.
“Why are you sitting there? You can’t see into the house that way.”
“Yeah I can. I see from the outside looking in. I see into the house the way anyone else would if they really wanted to look.”
SILENCE
We sit in silence. I resist talking to myself until the words seemingly escape me like they did:
RIGHT ABOUT NOW IT HAS STARTED
RIGHT ABOUT NOW IT’S THE BEGINNING
OF THE END
Sarah isn’t put off by this, “How is the fight going?”
I shrug, “It’s still round one. Feeling each other out.”
Realizing how odd this is, I narrow my eyes, “How do you know?”
She makes a face, “My dad is at the fight, duh.”
DUH!
“You are very mature for your age, you know that?”
“I have to be.”
“Who takes care of you anyway?”
She looks into one of the dollhouse windows, “I take care of myself.”
“‘James’ used to right?”
She shakes her head, “I took care of ‘James.’”
“What?”
“Dad wanted someone to watch ‘James’ just in case.”
JUST IN CASE
“Just in case I…”
She nods, “Yeah. You tend to lose track of yourself.”
“Yeah, but everyone changes, right? Everyone doesn’t stay the same like we maybe want to. I know the media wants the same from someone when it’s good but that just doesn’t happen.”
She turns the dollhouse around, “Yeah.”
“So you agree?”
WHAT DO YOU CARE?
“Yeah,” she grabs one of the female dolls, “I agree.”
Sarah stands up and walks back to the mirror.
She brushes the doll’s hair.
THE SILENCE
She asks again, “How’s the fight going?”
“It’s going well. Round three. I am pressuring ‘James’ with straight shots to the face. The judges and commentators seem a bit surprised that I am able to take some of the momentum of the fight away from ‘James.’”
She nods, “Yeah.”
THE SILENCE
I ask her, “You already know all this, don’t you?”
She turns, looks at me, a straight face, and returns to the combing of the doll’s hair.
I don’t know what that means.
YES YOU DO
No I don’t.
But okay, let’s change the subject.
To what? Umm…
“So…”
Sarah interrupts, “Are you actually going to get knocked down five times?”
YEAH
“Yeah.”
“That’s unheard of.”
I shrug, “It’s my last fight and—”
“And you want to make it perfect.”
WHAT IS WITH ALL THE INTERRUPTIONS?
“Yeah. I was going to say ‘good’ but perfect is better.”
Sarah replies, “Perfect is the right choice.”
I have to ask...
“You are going to ask about my dad right?”
“Yeah.”
“Go ahead and ask.”
YES, GO AHEAD AND ASK
“Does he think I’ll be remembered?”
WRONG QUESTION
Sarah sighs, “What’s the question?”
I reconsider, opting for something simpler:
“What does Spencer think of me?”
REALLY?
Sarah doesn’t say anything until she returns to the dollhouse and rearranges the layout.
The house shakes.
DOES SHE REALLY HAVE TO KEEP DOING THAT?
Doing what?
CHANGING THE WAY THINGS ARE
“Yeah,” Sarah says, “change is good.”
THE SILENCE
We are silent for some time. I watch Sarah reconfigure
the entire dollhouse. The house sounds like it’s about to collapse. I cringe but hold back, choosing to imagine the silence I used to loathe.
“How is it that you are able to predict what I’m about to say?”
She laughs, “You’re not serious are you?”
Umm.
“Oh, you are.” Sarah laughs, “You are talking to yourself and you don’t even realize it! That’s a really bad habit.”
“I am?”
“It’s really bad, yeah. It’s bad because you don’t realize that you’re having a separate conversation with yourself.”
“Yeah…”
“Like there’s a whole group of people, an entire audience, listening to your every word or something.”
Sarah can’t stop laughing.
“I admit it’s bad but can you please stop laughing?”
“Oh,” she clears her throat, “sorry. But I guess you’re used to being in the spotlight. Dad always said you treated everything like it was on camera.” She moves around one room and attaches it to the attic.
It’s this room.
The entire room shakes violently. For one brief moment, I watch as one of the windows looks like it’s about to shatter.
But doesn’t.
“It’s okay,” Sarah says, “I do this all the time.”
“Why do you change everything around?”
“I like the challenge.” She turns the dollhouse around so that I can see inside, “I like figuring out what fits where, and how it will affect the dolls that live in the house.”
The Laughter of Strangers Page 22