Welcome Thieves

by Beaudoin, Sean

  “Getting in a little road work. I need you to tell me left, right, left?”

  “You gonna fight this Gobbler, you do. And a whole lot else besides.”

  Primo got down and knocked off crunches. Nurse tapped a rhythm, two-­two-­three, three-­two-­three, with a stick. After a while she said, “Told Fancy I’m done. No more corner woman. No more cut woman. No more Miss Two Percent.”

  “Good.” Primo grunted, touching elbows to knees. “Past time.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe it’s past time you do the same.”

  Primo picked up the pace. His stomach burned. “Can’t (huff). You know why, I know why (grunt). So what’re we even talking about?”

  Nurse yanked at weeds that poked through the skeleton of the seat. She stuck one in her mouth, grimaced, spat it out. “Yeah, well. This little runt is bad news. I been watching. I seen him eat his way through half a dozen guys like they were buttered toast.”

  Primo lay back and caught his breath. He rubbed his eyes, yellow spirals dancing beneath the lids.

  “So?”

  “So even if you stepped from some time machine, all twenty-­one and hungry again? All I’m on top of the world, Ma! I still don’t know if that guy beats this guy.”

  “Gonna have to. Too late to back out. There is no back. There is no out.”

  Nurse ran purple fingernails the length of her nylons.

  “How’s your old lady?”

  Primo hadn’t actually been working late the night Gina swallowed the Floor Fiesta. He’d been training with Nurse. Training up to the hilt in Nurse. Had been for months. Gina knew or she didn’t. Cared or she didn’t. Never said a word. Either way, he was a piece of shit and nothing could ever change that fact. No amount of being hit would ever be enough.

  “The same.”

  “Uh-­huh. And you?”

  “Need another week to make weight.”

  “Not talking about training.”

  Primo stood, watched the silent overpass, wondered how long until it got the joke and just toppled over.

  “Listen, you could come with us maybe. Get your own place, settle in.”

  “Japan? Fuck that. You don’t read the news? Whole island glows.”

  “Can’t be any worse than here.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  “Are you crying?”

  Nurse wiped her face. “Nah. Allergies.”

  They stood close, breathing hard. She pressed her mouth to his. His hands left trails of sweat, began to pull at her blouse before wrenching away.

  “Fuck.”

  “That’s the idea, genius.”

  A series of booms cascaded up the valley. Primo ducked, but Nurse didn’t even flinch. There was heavy machine gun fire and then a much larger explosion that silenced it all.

  “Let me ask you something.”

  Nurse exhaled, breath sterile, eyes glassy, higher than any kite would ever go. Primo was tempted to climb on up there with her, rest for a while.

  “What?”

  “You know any good cut men? I mean, now that you told Mr. Fancy you’re through. Anyone else you could recommend to stand at my back while I fight this Gobbler?”

  She half-­smiled. “Cut woman.”

  “Right.”

  “Someone fast and talented? With a wealth of experience? Maybe a touch exotic?”

  “An empress in white.”

  Nurse took his hand and held the swollen knuckles, kissed them one at a time.

  “Yeah, I might could scare someone up.”

  ON FRIDAY THE Old Barn was raucous. Every seat full, suits crammed into aisles and fire exits, four to a step, all of them screaming, nearly unhinged. Primo punched the air while bettors lined up to put money on “Immediately Raked with Incisors,” even at a prohibitive (2 – 5). Beverage Girls stepped like flamingos, no space for their stiletto heels. Men pushed and shoved in front of Doc Nob’s Olde Tyme Injection Booth, waiting to be pricked.

  Buddy Vox, in a pink cummerbund, reached for the mic.

  “And now, friends . . . in the main event . . . the Jewel of the Amazon . . . the Prince of Peridontia . . . the Little Stomach That Could . . . pound-­for-­pound the most savage fighter to ever grace a Spectacle ring . . . the Gobbler!”

  A prolonged roar shook the rafters, as an orderly led the Gobbler in on all fours. He strained at the end of a steel chain, giggled and spit and swung his head from side to side. Buddy Vox held the ropes apart, but the Gobbler leapt over them and landed in the center of the ring, letting out a wail that sounded pre-­Columbian. Prelanguage. The crowd went crazy. Money flew. Mr. Fancy snapped his pencil, trying to get down all the bets. “Calf Gnawed Like Hoagie” (2 – 1) was getting lots of play, as well as “Da Champ Cries Like a Little Bitch” (3 – 1). The sole nonbite wager in his favor, Primo noticed, was “Da Champ Pulls Off Some Tom Hanks Miracle” (100 – 1), which hadn’t gotten a sniff.

  So much for his 20 percent.

  Buddy Vox finished an extralong announcement speech. There’d been two stabbings at the last Spectacle and no one was happy about it. Souvenir knife sales were temporarily halted. “Please, no stabbing. Really. Are we kidding? No. Why does everyone think we’re kidding? We’re not. So take a second to sheath yourself. Also, go ahead and order a porterhouse. Tell your nearest server, ‘Buddy Vox likes it so damn rare’ for an extra 6 percent off. And now let’s have some fun!”

  The crowd noise was almost painful. Primo leaned against the ropes, trying to concentrate.

  “You keep movin’,” Nurse whispered from behind. “Move, move, move.” She put her lips against his earlobe. “He insane quick. Can’t stand and trade. Gotta get on your horse. Stay still, you’re done. Move.”

  The Gobbler clawed the canvas, crouching and spitting. He was tiny. Maybe five-­two but one solid muscle, like a bar of soap. His skin was a glistening teak, covered with tattoos and feathers, a stick through his nose and hair plastered to his skull with orange mud.

  “You ready, Champ?” Vox asked.

  Primo nodded.

  “You ready Gobbler?”

  The Gobbler grinned like a piranha.

  “To ze victor, ze spoils!” Buddy Vox intoned.

  THE DAY AFTER the Bulldog Funches bout, Primo and Gina walked down a path lined with cherry blossoms, other couples milling around an ornate wooden shrine. It was cool, a mild Pacific sun casting long shadows over crushed gravel and elaborate shrubbery. There were banners hung on wooden poles, simple drawings of tigers and bears, austere symbols in black ink. Gina asked an old man what they meant. He smiled broadly and bowed.

  “Man don’t speak English,” Primo said.

  “Neither do you,” Gina answered.

  They watched him shuffle away in cloth sandals. The sun began to set. Two children played with paper birds, repeatedly folded, that seemed to hover in the air. No one here knew what Primo had done to Funches. No one here needed to.

  As if reading his mind, Gina said, “I don’t want you to fight. Ever again.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  He took off the enormous sunglasses that hid the swelling around his eyes.

  “Then I won’t.”

  “You don’t mean it.”

  “Try me.”

  Gina threw her arms around his neck. Primo inhaled her scent, coconut and linen and a trace of sweat. She wore a kimono they’d bought at the Honshu market, tiny clerks showing how to wrap and tie. He lost his hands in the folds. It was such a cliché, but they’d met in eighth grade, by a locker, and immediately he knew. That quiet smile and checked skirt. She claimed not to be interested, said he was too big, too coarse, didn’t raise his hand enough. She was a virgin, her father a hard-­ass with a racing form in his back pocket and a silver cross dangling from the rearview. Primo told her at a party he could wait. He’d train, live at the gym. She could pretend as long as she needed to, but one day he would lean over and brush his lips along her bare shoulder like it was the most natural thing
in the world.

  And he was right.

  THE ENTIRE FIRST round Primo ran, barely managing to dodge the Gobbler, each pass a gnashing of teeth that caught only air, loud and wet and savage, missing by inches. The Gobbler’s movements were electric, tiny hops, cartwheels and back flips, all the while those teeth grinding like something with pistons and gears, chomp chomp chomp, like something built to extract marrow.

  FOR A YEAR Primo and Gina shared a tiny apartment, one room and a kitchen. It didn’t matter. His gloves and trophies and equipment sat in a box in the closet. She hung tapestries, created walls, gave the illusion of space. Primo drank wine for the first time in his life. Gina read poetry and danced to scratchy Nat Cole records. They lay in bed while candles burned, fit seamlessly against one another.

  IN THE SECOND round, the Gobbler began to find his range, quick little nips, shot Primo’s guard, scampered under his left, a series of bites and welts, all of them bleeding. The only punches Primo managed fell on the Gobbler’s back or shoulders, the tiny bastard too quick, somehow able to anticipate a blow and contort his least vulnerable part in its path. Primo backpedaled, giving up damage for breath, punching for space, not even trying to land.

  TWO DAYS AFTER Primo found out Gina was pregnant, he bought the store. She got bigger and needed help getting off the sofa. Primo cooked terrible dinners and bid on new inventory and outfitted the car with a baby seat, top of the line. In the final trimester they went to the doctor’s. There was a test, just routine, then a complication, which wasn’t.

  AT THE END of the third round Mr. Fancy climbed the ropes. Abe Golem held him by the ribcage until he and Primo were face to face. “What in fuck’re you doing, Champeen? I’m taking a beating here. “Twenty Percent Blood Loss” is paying three-­to-­one! “Gobbler Flosses with Ankle” is ten-­to-­one and has already paid twice. You can’t let this degenerate beat you. I got no one left. Next week he’s gonna have to fight himself!”

  “Fights himself and every bet wins,” Abe Golem intoned.

  “Exactly. It’s like you’re sleepwalking, Champ. Jab and stick, jab and stick. Christ. What did you train all those years for, huh? Or did that turd Funches take a dive?”

  Abe Golem put Mr. Fancy down and they shuffled off to take more bets.

  “Don’t pay no attention to him,” Nurse whispered, kneading Primo’s shoulders. “Just fight your fight, got me? Fight your fight.”

  THE DOCTOR UNTIED his mask and strapped on his sympathy, explained the unexplainable in a rush of jargon and honed concern. Gina was in a room with four other women, all of them sedated. Primo went across the street to a bar and had six whiskeys before getting into a fight with an enormous red-­faced Pole, losing badly, only half on purpose.

  THE BELL RANG. The Gobbler leapt from his corner and sank his teeth into Primo’s arm. Primo threw an uppercut that missed, a right that missed, a kick that missed. The Gobbler gnawed some leg before slipping back out of range.

  “Jesus, Throw in the Towel Already” lowered to (3 – 1).

  Wanna thrive, gotta come da fuck alive! the Albatross used to say, back when he still talked.

  Even had it tattooed across his chest.

  For once, the crazy bird was right.

  Primo dropped all pretense of technique. He charged, forced the Gobbler into a corner, and threw a roundhouse lifted straight from the movies. All windup and shoulder. It caught the Gobbler flush in the mouth. It was a better punch than he ever hit Funches with. It was a better punch than he ever hit anyone with. Primo’s knuckles ached inside their wraps. The crowd fell silent. The Gobbler woozed back and grabbed the ropes with one hand, reached into his mouth with the other. For a comical second he rooted around, eventually pulled out a tiny razor tooth. He held it up, whimpering, while it gleamed like a diamond under the lights.

  Nurse whistled.

  Mr. Fancy and Abe Golem stopped collecting bets.

  Primo cocked his left.

  And then the Gobbler went Completely Insane.

  He screamed and frothed and showered the crowd with bloody spit. He pulled out his nose stick, tossed it over his shoulder, and charged. It was a jabbering, bug-­eyed attack. Primo countered without thought.

  They met in the air, like a pair of rams.

  And bounced off one another, falling to the canvas.

  “Oh, my god,” moaned a stock analyst in the front row, jumping up and down. He’d put ten grand on “Fighter Ditches Rationality as Working Concept” (163 – 1) and wanted to collect. So did all his pals. Mr. Fancy tried to explain how insanity was relative and wondered if the gentleman was indeed a trained psychoanalyst and therefore capable of making such a determination. “No? What is insane, really, anyhow? Are not our great artists and philosophers still wrestling with that question? And so, unfortunately, your bet is No Good.” The analyst argued. Abe Golem loomed. The entire section came to the guy’s defense. The bet was good. It had to be paid. A chant began. Mr. Fancy saw what was coming and changed his verdict. “Fine. Everything is fine. Really.” He tried to open the canvas bag, but Abe Golem fumbled with the chain and by then it was too late. A riot began. Someone in gabardine stabbed Doc Nob. Mr. Fancy disappeared beneath a lofted chair. From the top row, the thin, reedy voice of an Internet entrepreneur requested help. Abe Golem grabbed a lawyer by the collarbone and swung him like a three iron, trying to clear a path toward his boss.

  Primo, dazed, forced himself to stand. The Gobbler began to slink forward on all fours. Primo warded him off with a series of kicks.

  “What’re we doin’, Nurse?”

  He glanced back, but Nurse was no longer in the corner. The stool was knocked over and some idiot was wearing the spit bucket on his head.

  The Gobbler inched closer.

  Primo tried to gauge the odds of making the same side door that Buddy Vox had just slipped through. A path opened where a section of crowd had their backs turned, surrounding a trio of Beverage Girls making a brave stand, shoes in either hand, razor heels swung in wide arcs, carving suit.

  Primo saw himself vault the ropes. He’d find Nurse, grab her by the collar, sprint into the gap.

  It was a long shot. It was the only shot.

  He pivoted, flexed, took two steps.

  And then slipped in his own blood.

  “Da Champ Eats Shit” (16 – 1).

  The gap closed.

  The Beverage Girls disappeared under a wave of French cuffs.

  Primo managed to get on one knee as the Gobbler sprang, landed squarely on his back. The weight drove Primo flat. A rib cracked. The crowd roared, a vibration welling through the canvas and into his chest. Primo, pinned, thought about Gina. She would be at home, on the couch. If Therapy Fred had a remedy for her now it would be Next time, marry a winner.

  Sirens wailed. A fire started, smoke billowing toward the rafters. The sprinkler system went off, a deluge of rusty water, like rain in the Amazon. Nurse was lying in the aisle, on her side, staring at nothing.

  “Show’s over,” Primo rasped, unable to move. “Nada mas.”

  No answer.

  “Comprende?”

  The Gobbler’s teeth clicked and gnashed. A powerful stink wafted from his gums. Rotted lamb and scorched metal. Ruin.

  “Yeah, I comprende.”

  “Wait, you speak English?”

  The Gobbler leaned forward, whispered in Primo’s ear.

  “I’m from Jersey, asshole.”

  “Not Brazil.”

  “No, papi.”

  Primo exhaled. There was still a chance. He could offer the guy money, maybe tip him to Nob’s stash.

  “Thank Christ. They said you were a cannibal.”

  The Gobbler giggled. His fingernails dug in.

  “At least they got one thing right.”

  Primo tried to reach back and get a grip, but his gloves were wet and the thumb was useless. Arcs of pain, like camera flashes, exploded in his head. The Ring Girls were a blur and Abe Golem’s shoes were a blur. Someone scre
amed, and then someone else joined in, hitting the same desperate note. Rain gently pattered. Smoke settled in the corners. Primo pressed his cheek against the canvas, inhaling the smell of rubber and sweat, while the Gobbler ate parts of him he couldn’t afford to lose.

  Tiffany Marzano’s Got a Record

  The warehouse takes up an entire city block. St. Cloud is the manager. He used to be infantry but got kicked out for asking and telling. Now he’s an artist, wears a snake around his neck. Sometimes you can see the bulge of a mouse beneath the coils. He waits on the dock while Jake and Tiffany Marzano back another load of donations in.

  Workers circle, push and shove, make claims on the haul. Everyone at the warehouse is allowed to steal one thing. But it can only be one thing, and you have to be consistent or St. Cloud decides you’re greedy and it’s a pink slip. A skinny blond does furs. The dock guys handle stereos. There’s someone for comic books, screen prints, silverware. A guy in a trucker cap prices Italian shoes, ships them to New York in bulk.

  St. Cloud does toasters.

  Jake hops out of the truck and presents him with a vintage top loader, chrome and Bakelite, looks like it fell off Sputnik in 1962. St. Cloud mounts the toasters in galleries with names like Char-­O and Count Van Der Slice. When one doesn’t measure up it goes on the scrap pile. All around the warehouse are different piles: sweaters, coffee makers, Les Baxter albums, sofa cushions, boom boxes, reading glasses.

  No one steals reading glasses. It’s a wide-­open niche.

  THEY HEAD OUT on another run. The truck smells of Tiffany Marzano, so Jake smells of Tiffany Marzano. Even with the windows down. There’s a sleeping bag in the hold. Cans of chili roll with every turn. When Jake asks Tiffany Marzano if she’s living in back, the truck veers into a motel courtyard, lurches to a stop.

  “Why, you gonna tell?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  Jake is. He would never.

  “Listen, I did eleven months behind a misunderstanding,” she says, all shoulders and brown skin, a shark’s tooth around her neck on a tight leather strap. On weekends Tiffany Marzano plays three sets as El Vez, the butchest Presley this side of Tucson. “Now I’m on a registry. No one will rent me a room.”