by Fiona Maazel
“Fair enough,” Bruce said, swearing not to talk, not another word, “except for the part where you’re urging people to civil war or whatever and still thinking the man is Mother Teresa? Isn’t half your manifesto about leaving the Union and governing yourselves? What’s that got to do with bringing people together? In fact, now that we’re talking about it, the stupid fucking Helix is ruining my marriage. It’s not the money or even that I’m irresponsible or that my priorities are screwed; it’s the fucking Helix. Tearing my union apart. So, yeah, big success over there. Huge. Congrats.”
Norman’s face went dead, and what light had crawled into his eyes went dead, too. He said, “There’s someplace I have to go. You are on your own.”
Was Bruce the worst documentarian ever? He was. “No, please, wait. I’m sorry. It’s been a long day. I was kidnapped? Look, I’m sorry. Let me go with you. We can talk some more.”
“Thanks, but no. I paid my dues cocounseling. I was thirteen and doing RC in New York. Thirteen! I discharged. I’ve cried and yawned and laughed my guts out. I’ve been looking for a place to fit in all my life, and all my life has brought me to is this. Can’t you just leave me alone?”
“How about I come with you without talking?”
“It’s a free country,” Norman said, and he walked away.
They left the casino. By now Bruce had gotten the idea there was a second life here below Cincinnati. Clubs and bars. Spas and brothels. Whatever could not be conducted aboveground was encouraged below. They walked the tunnels as before, and this time when they passed three guys toting gunnysacks, and one stumbled, so that a hundred official Major League baseballs rolled out and crowded their feet, Bruce said nothing, just bent down to help. It did occur to him to filch a ball and whistleblow—See? They’re juiced! Right here in Ohio!—but only for the second it took the bearers to read his mind and threaten his life. At least, such was conveyed in the hairy eyeball coming off each one.
Finally, they came to another door. Bruce looked for the card scanner—he was going to be helpful from now on—but there was none. They broached the front desk, where a woman flipped through a binder of names, looking for Norman’s. She wore a headset, which freed her hands to fly about her face as she yelled into the mouthpiece because the system had been down for hours, and it was Neanderthal having to thumb through a binder looking for guest names and IDs. “Think it’s good business when one of the Supreme Court justices stands here while I’m trying to figure out which one he is, and he’s like, Name rhymes with urea—which isn’t helping me any—but what am I supposed to do, let him in? He could be, what’s those two, Woodward and Bernstein, so look, my point is, when’s the system going to be fixed? Ugh, hold on”—and she found Norman on the list and asked for his ID, and when that cleared she let in Bruce, too, because Norman was high Helix, enough said.
She buzzed them through frosted glass doors.
Bruce did not ask where they were headed—No talking—and then they were there, in a theater that sat three hundred inside soundproofed, padded walls. The energy of the room was condensed in two guys who were beating the crap out of each other in a wire-framed cage. The fighters looked like soccer dads nabbed from home in the middle of Sunday sports. Like Fight Club for fatsos. One wore a football jersey and cargo shorts. The other was in a green henley and chinos. The audience was three-sixtied around the action; the bleachers were wood, the ceiling a rig of spotlights and flood; and because the space was not much bigger than the concentric arrangement of show and crowd, steam appeared to rise off everyone without prejudice.
Bruce said, “What the—”
Norman skirted the ring and had words with a referee, who wrote something down on a clipboard. The ref made room for them in the front row. Their neighbors were cased in garbage bags, which made sense to Bruce only when the sweat rained down on him two seconds later.
“I don’t believe this,” he said. “What is this?”
Norman flagged down a vendor and bought a hot dog. “It’s amazing, right? You ever see Ultimate Fighter on TV?”
“Yeah, but those are real fighters. Athletes. These guys are—I don’t know what they are.”
“Sure you do. They’re just normal guys.”
“That one’s got an inhaler.”
Norman made short work of his dog. “Once you get a feel for it,” he said, “what does any of that matter? This serves a purpose. I signed up.”
Blood and cracklings oozed from one of the guy’s kneecaps. Bruce visored his face as flings of skin came at him.
“Signed up to do what?” he yelled. As the sound of the crowd was in ebb and flow, Norman’s words were more or less audible. He looked at the audience. On many legs were thousand-dollar jeans perfectly aged and smelted at the knees. Designer T-shirts and jewelry soldered to taste. These people were rich—that much was clear. He needed a camera; he asked Norman’s advice.
“Oh, you’re just not very smart,” Norman said. “God knows why the feds sent you.”
Since Bruce had no idea, either, this did not mean much. He pressed. Norman said, “You think you’d be getting out of here alive with a camera? You think being held at the Helix House was scary?”
“Yeah, but it can’t be long before the feds come down here looking for me. Or us. I’m a little surprised they haven’t shown up yet.”
Norman laughed and wiped spit from his cheekbone. “They aren’t coming here. If they come down here, they’d have to explain here. And how good’s that going to make them look?”
“Oh,” Bruce said, feeling shoots of panic rise up from the mulch his brain had become over the last few months. Norman was right. Probably when deals were brokered between overtly hostile nations, it happened here. Diplomats fondling twelve-year-old girls? Down the hall. No one was coming for Bruce. No one at all.
When the fight was over, an MC stepped into the cage, followed by ring girls who upheld news of the docket. Next up: the walk-ins.
Bruce began to get a bad feeling. He said, “Maybe it’s time to go, huh?”
“Sure,” Norman said. “You go on without me. I’m up.” He gave Bruce his wallet and keys and in so doing seemed to forsake more than the miscellany of his pockets. He mounted the three stairs to the ring and the gate swung open. On the other side was his opponent, who wore a black catsuit, a cape, and Oreo face paint that might have seemed doggerel if only. His hands were pork loins. He could probably clock Norman from the other side of the pen, such was the length of his reach. He weighed three hundred pounds at least.
Norman did not even hesitate, just looked up at the ceiling, maybe at God, and stepped in. The gate shut behind him. Click went the lock.
From his pocket the referee pulled a laminated card that was encomium for all things barbaric and unfair. In gist: Poke each other’s eyes out, anything goes. Agreed? If so, let’s get it on.
The Orca—because that was what he was called—backpedaled around Norman, who seemed to have committed to a spot in the middle of the ring. He didn’t follow the Orca with his eyes or even flinch when the thing came up behind him to speak his intent just in case Norman thought this was going to end well.
The crowd began to jeer. “Put ’em up, black boy!”
Norman, who’d been lock-eyed with the floor, upturned his cow face and smiled. The Orca knocked him down with one hand, and the crack of his head against the floor—and the floor was vinyl foam, which discouraged this sound 99 percent of the time—roused from the audience a gasp that turned to laughter when Norman smiled anew, got up, and returned to the spot of his choosing. The Orca’s face paint was dusted in glitter, and his catsuit was made of rubber, and though the costume had none of the pathos that halos your average clown, it still should have beat out for pity Norman’s carriage in the moment. But no. Norman was, in the outpouring of his body and the soul inside, effigy for the Bozo punching bag Bruce once whaled on as a kid. Weighted at the bottom, always coming back for more. People celebrate resilience, and mostly Bruce did,
too. How else to scrape himself off the floor every day he woke up unsuccessful and broke? But still, every now and then, looking at himself in the mirror, he’d catch sight of Bozo and his stupid optimism and think: Just for today, don’t bounce back.
The Orca, who’d probably grown up bullying kids at school, was undeterred by the ease with which Norman went down. Only it was not so entertaining, and the audience was getting mad. The Orca tried to spice things up, reverted to choreographies that had made his career in the WWF. Except it was hard when only one of you knew the moves and the other just wanted to die.
Bruce started to yell. “Get up, Norman! Fight back!” He came off his bench and pressed his face to the grille, and the chain link grooved his skin, but so what? He rattled the cage and, unbelievably, started to cry. He knew about this kind of thing, okay? As a kid, he’d been classed among the weak and advised by teachers schooled in permutations of self-disgust to give himself a break. As an adult, he dismissed this advice and hated himself thoroughly. Norman, fight back! But no, he was in a heap and not getting up.
Bruce plunged his arm through a diamond hole in the cage and groped for Norman’s hand; he just wanted to hold his hand. Was everyone template for someone else’s feelings? Norman had to bounce back because, who knew? one more bounce and the Orca might go out with a heart attack, because life couldn’t beat you down every second of every day; there had to be some successes here and there. Get up, Norman! He strained to reach into the ring, and finally he managed to tap Norman on the arm.
The Orca went wild. “Tag team!” The grin on his face was so big, his gold fang implants caught the light from the overheads.
“Tag team!” went the crowd, and like that Bruce was borne up on the needs of three hundred. He tried to resist but was pushed through the cage door so fast, it locked shut before he could reestablish contact with the workings of his inner ear and stand upright. The Orca, meantime, had straddled the top rail and was brandishing his arm as though he held a lasso. Bruce scrambled for Norman, who was attempting to pull himself up by the cage wire and fishing words from the blood welled in his mouth, words like, “Get out of here,” and “I don’t want your help.”
The Orca came off the rail. Bruce looked into his eyes and was horrified to see in them the weary acquittal of a guy who just can’t afford to retire. He must have been at least sixty.
Bruce backed up into a post and then, like a rodeo clown himself, tried to draw off the Orca from Norman, who was still scaling the fence with the intent to escape—or so Bruce told himself.
He put up his hands, palms out, and when this failed to stall the Orca, and when the Orca was, essentially, on top of him, he counted it down. One: Even if there were a phone anywhere in this nightmare, he couldn’t call his wife, not anymore. In fact, he couldn’t even go home. Not without a wedding ring. Not having exhausted their savings. Two: He’d had the greater share of moral authority between them for a whole day, and he’d blown it, and for what he’d done in the casino, he would never get it back and would probably have to yield the raising of their son to her, because he couldn’t think of a single quality that suited him to the privilege. Three: He drew back his fist and let it rip.
Probably, though, he should have looked. His bones glanced off the Orca’s elbow. Only Bruce was hurt. He stuffed his hand under his armpit, then sucked on his knuckles and winced like it was sour candy.
The Orca was scandalized. The crowd was festive. Go get him, Orca!
Bruce lay down, recalling advice he’d once gotten from a trail guide in the Adirondacks—Just play dead—which he and Rita had done in their tent as a bear pawed through their cooler, and which he did for the rest of that night because she was ovulating and he was terrified. Why hadn’t he been more supportive? Tried harder? Maybe if he hadn’t been so afraid, she’d have gotten pregnant sooner and not needed IVF or bed rest. Maybe, in the clarity imposed by news of a child on deck, he’d have honed his talents or gone to therapy. Why he’d been clutched with self-loathing every day of the forty-two years it had taken to get him spread-eagled on the cage floor, he did not know, except that self-loathing was the problem, self-loathing was the devil. He saw Norman get up and lurch his way, wanting, it seemed, to supplant him on the mat. And then he saw the Orca balanced on the top rail as sweat poured down his cheeks and streaked his face paint, and, as the Orca vaulted off the rail and scissored his thighs in the classic wrestling finisher, the guillotine leg drop, intending to land one on Bruce’s neck, he saw all of this and thought: When I wake up, my life will start over.
Bruce woke up. He vomited down his chest. If his pancreas came tumbling out his mouth in the next heave, he wouldn’t mind; he’d never felt worse in his life. The most profound hangover he’d ever had—twenty-two grasshoppers plus a fifth of tequila the night Rita said she was pregnant—was Disney compared with the variety of afflictions at work in his body. The guillotine leg drop strikes again. He’d been head-traumaed, which did not even come with the benefit of amnesia. His thoughts perseverated. Where was Norman? Was he okay? He tried to sit up. Rolled back his eyelids just enough to case the room. Empty but for the bed he was on. A woman at the door in a nurse’s uniform. She peered at a chart and whispered, “You’re going to be fine. Let me help you change out of that mess.” Where was Norman? Was he okay? He slurred out the words as best he could—Christ, he was slurring. She said, “I’ll be back to check on you in a little bit,” and left the room. There were flowers in a corner. He eased himself off the bed to read the card. Who’d send him flowers with a card? It said, I’m sorry. Best wishes, Fred Spitalowitz, a.k.a. the Orca. It was hard to make out in the dark, but the O appeared to double as a smiley face, which brought to mind the Orca’s real face coming right at him, so that he threw up all over again. It seemed to Bruce he threw up more than anyone he knew. He crawled back to bed and had nightmares.
Someone was tapping his shoulder. Norman? It was not Norman. Not the nurse, either. He thought for a second it was Rita, but only because whenever he saw a beautiful woman, it put him in mind of Rita.
The woman, satisfied that Bruce was awake, took a seat opposite his cot, which seemed to have turned into a queen. He was sure there’d been no chair there before and now, suddenly, a La-Z-Boy? Also, the bedding seemed to have improved. She offered him a box of tissues, which had also materialized out of nowhere. Maybe he should ask for a Porsche, because, quite obviously, he was dead, and here was the genie to prove it.
“How are you feeling?” she said.
“Who are you?” He sat up and swung his feet off the mattress, only they didn’t reach the floor, which was so infantilizing, he drew the blanket to his chest and scurried for the headboard. In brighter news: the pain behind his ears had subsided, and he even felt interested in food. How long had he been knocked out?
“If you’re hungry, I can have something prepared for you in no time.”
A mind reader. Wonderful.
“Anything in particular? The doctor says you are cleared to eat whatever you want.”
He patted himself down. Was there surgery? What had the Orca done to him?
“No surgery,” the woman said. “Just a concussion. And I know how you feel. I just had one myself.”
Bruce looked at her warily. She really was reading his mind. She picked up a phone and said, “Roast beef on rye. Muenster, bacon, avocado, honey mustard.”
“What’s going on?” Bruce said. “Only my wife knows I like that sandwich.”
“Maybe I’m your wife.”
“That’s not funny.” Unless—wait, did he have amnesia? He looked at his body. Mole on his knee he’d had removed twice—once for vanity, once for prudence—to no avail. Rubble heels, because he would not put cream on them at night, and the one time Rita had persuaded him to sleep in socks filled with Lubriderm, he’d had a wet dream that embarrassed them both. Pale swath of skin on his ring finger because he was the world’s biggest loser. Nope, he remembered everything.
The wo
man smiled. “I’m just saying I can be anyone. We’ve met before.”
Bruce did not have enough ex-girlfriends from which to pool the one crazy whose likeness he’d blotted out. A colleague? Maybe one of the homeless from Trial by Liar? He shook his head and said, “I’m sorry, I don’t remember. I just want to go home. I miss my wife. Probably she’s going to leave me, but I still want to see her before it happens.”
Someone came in with a trolley bearing a giant sandwich under a stainless steel dome. A can of Dr Pepper, a basket of hard pretzels, and possibly the greatest and most counterintuitive pleasure on earth, carrot cake. He wanted to ask more—Where am I?—but the food was Svengali in its hold on him. He felt ligatures of beef fat wedge between his teeth and rejoiced.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Fred got a little overzealous with my instructions.”
He shook his head. He preferred not to dignify the man with a name. He was the Orca. Now and forever, the Orca.
“I don’t understand. Are you saying you run that show? Is that it?” He’d finished his sandwich and pretzels and was scraping the frosting from the carrot cake to save it for last. If this woman had come to silence him, fine. Unless she wanted to buy his silence, which was even better. “I was with a guy in there, a short black guy—any idea what happened to him?”
She crossed her legs. And only now did Bruce notice she wore some kind of military uniform.
“Norman, yes. He’s fine. I got him on a plane to someplace nice. I’ve always liked him. He’s had a rough life, but he’ll be all right now.”
Bruce had the first coherent thought he’d had in a while. The feds. Good grief, he was a moron. Someplace nice. Like Guantánamo. Why the feds and the Mob were always talking in this arcane patois everyone understood anyway was beyond him. Still, the feds had hired the Orca? To do what?