The Boxer's Dreams of Love

by philip boyle

  ‘Stephen Zinny. Well, when I say I know him, I mean, I met him once, maybe twice.’

  ‘Where?’

  She took her time, again Eddie not sure if she was choosing her words carefully, if she was pitching a story to him, if she was genuinely upset at bringing it all back.

  ‘If – if you were in that business. If you worked the hotels or the clubs, sooner or later you came into contact with him. Because it was his business, still is no doubt.’

  ‘In Glasgow?’

  ‘Yes, and here. And Stirling.’ The sheepish, closed look, the clasped hands in a kind of prayer for release from having to confess her sins.

  ‘Stirling,’ said Eddie. ‘You were working there when I met you? That night I met you. You were working that night? But you weren’t trying anything with me.’

  ‘No. no, you seemed – not the type. Or not in the mood. Because everyone is the type.’

  The café had become unbearably cold. The door was never closed for more than two seconds. Nobody seemed to stay too long anymore.

  ‘I’m really only interested in Stephen Zinny.’ She took his careless words the wrong way and proceeded to storm from the table, careering through the tables like a bumper car until she reached the door and couldn’t appear to open it. She wound her way slowly back on a zigzag course, now careful to avoid all contact with anything. She fell back down.

  ‘Where else am I going to go? I know what you meant or what you didn’t mean.’ Shook her head. ‘Anyway. I was all those things I said I was. I am. Still. Deserted mother left with two fucking kids in the arsehole of nowhere. And that’s what I was. And I would escape sometimes into town for the night, just for myself. And from there it goes. And here we are.’

  ‘I have to find him,’ said Eddie. ‘I have to finish it.’

  ‘Finish it? What, kill him?’ She laughed. ‘So there’s going to be a showdown, gunfight at the OK corral, that it? If they can’t find him, what chance have you? Jesus, Eddie, leave it alone. Look at the damage that has been caused so far. This isn’t a fucking gangster movie. You aren’t a gangster. What are you, Eddie?’

  ‘Do you know where he is?’ Eddie asked calmly.

  ‘No. How would I?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think you know something. Maybe you’re not even aware of it.’

  She shook her head, not knowing or not wanting to know. ‘Why can’t you just let it go? What good can come of it?’

  ‘I want it to end. I want all this to end. I want to be somewhere I belong. I want to go home. I want to find – her.’

  ‘You want all this to end,’ Linda said. ‘You want me to end. To go away. To have never been here.’

  ‘I want us both never to have been here. We can’t go on this way. This is no fucking way to live. Neither of us are living, are we? This where you saw yourself five years ago? Where you wanted to be?’

  ‘I wanted to be anywhere but where I was. And yes, I’ll take this.’

  ‘This?’ Eddie sneered, causing her to flinch a little, to reach for her bag, to search for things unseen, to look for support in whatever medication, whatever stimulant was available. She took out a matchbox and threw it across the table.

  ‘And I don’t even smoke,’ she said. ’Well, not normal stuff anyway.’

  Eddie took it up, opened it and pulled out one of the matches. Played with it, rolled it through his fingers. ‘What am I supposed to do with this?’

  ‘I met him there. The club, the name on the box.’ He looked at it more closely. ‘The Kitty Kat. Sounds lovely. And it’s here?’

  ‘Jesus, why don’t you read the box? Mullen Street, near Grassmarket.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Few months ago.’ She shook her head, indicating there was little if anything more to the tale. Eddie stared, glared at her, flicked a match until it lit, smelled the sulphur aroma and looked around for the curious faces edging in their direction.

  ‘He was just there, with a group of men, in a corner. He was a guest, just one of a small crowd, all dressed the same, all looking as if they wanted to be anywhere else.’ Again the shake of the head, not wanting any more questions.

  ‘How did you know it was him?’

  ‘We were introduced, that’s all.’

  ‘You’re just a born storyteller, aren’t you?’

  She heaved heavy shoulders, sipped cold cream coffee, picked at her red, chipped nails. ‘I was there with another girl. We were – working there. And we were shown to the table, introduced. We sat down for a few minutes, they bought us a drink. Small talk, dirty talk, crap jokes, rambling hands, you know the kind of thing. They looked amongst each other and chose. We went off with two of the others. To a room at the back. He wasn’t one of them. He seemed uncomfortable at us being there. He hardly looked at us, was glad when we were leaving the table. The other girl told me his name, whispered it to me as if it meant something, which it didn’t. That’s it, nothing more to be said. When we came back out later on, he was gone. He’s somebody to everyone else but me it seems.’

  ‘And the other girl?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Didn’t even know her real name. I met her that night and only that night.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How much did they pay you that night? How much do people like that pay?’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘I’m just curious. I meant no insult. How can you be insulted about what you got for doing it when you do it in the first place?’

  ‘Cause you’re fucking judging me again.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘We slept together last night.’

  ‘And now you feel the guilt and the dirt, is that it?’

  ‘No. I don’t regret last night. At all. I slept for the first time in months. My mind rested for the first time in God knows how long.’ He closed the matchbox. He wasn’t going to the club, there would be nothing of the man there.

  Ten past ten on the tenth of November on a morning that held the promise of nothing more than cleaning other people’s dirty plates. He thought of the house, made a mental note to contact Tommy Pearson. Talk about it and do something about it. Force himself to leave. Find somewhere of his own at least.

  ‘We have to go,’ he said, trying to give the words some weight. ‘What time are you due in work?’ Just the mention of the word crashed waves of weary resolution against him.

  ‘Twelve, I think. We have to go away from here, Linda. Well, I have to. So do you.’

  ‘I know. I know I do.’ She reached across and touched his hand. ‘Thank you.’ He thought he knew what for. He reached in his pocket for some change and left it on the table.

  ‘I have to go the bathroom,’ Linda said.

  ‘I’ll wait outside.’

  The cold breath of winter air steamed the inches in front of his mouth. He stood at the window of the café and wondered what could possibly take her so long.

  Eddie looked behind and in the frost reflection he saw the outline of white coated figures. Two, three, maybe another, long flowing robes, outside the open waiting doors of a flashing ambulance. And somebody else. Was that Edie? He looked in fear across the road and saw nothing more than what was there. People flowing, floating back and forth, all with similar, singular, incoherent thoughts on their mind.

  ‘Hey.’ There she was, Linda, bright and cheerful, red scarf falling behind her like the last breeze of summer.

  ‘Hey,’ he replied. He surprised her by taking her hand. She let it rest there and they walked away from the café. His other hand went to his waist where he searched in vain for the letter he had discarded long before. He tried to remember exactly where that was.

  They moved with the current, they swam in the stream of traffic, their thoughts lost amidst the clamour of all others, prayers lifted up to the unreachable heavens.

  They reached the point at which they had to part. On a corner n
ear Waverley where the smell of the trains seeped into their clothes and skin, infecting them both with thoughts of other journeys. It was stupid but he felt awkward at how he should leave her. A kiss, a touch of some kind? They stood in silence too long and he started to put out his hand, withdrawing it at the last minute. They both looked away from each other.

  ‘Enjoy your work,’ said Linda sarcastically.

  ‘Thanks. Go for a drink later? When I’ve finished? Get out of the house.’

  ‘Great. Where?’

  ‘I’ll ring you in the afternoon.’

  ‘Okay.’

  The last real moments of their unreal, brief life together. The day, the time, the skies would move on and carry them both along, fracturing, shattering all belief that they had control over any of this.

  CHAPTER 35

  Linda disappears

  She was late. In the Train, the bar curved subtly like the surface of the earth. Eddie had tried to convince himself that he hadn’t chosen this place so that he could meet Manny. Anyway, he was certain that Manny couldn’t still reside in this hostel for hostile refugees from the real world. Eddie sat at the end of the bar near the main door. He caught the draughts of wind as customers came and went. He kept waiting for that whispered horrid breath in his ear, asking him what the fuck he was doing here. But Manny was already here. He came out of the toilets, eyes hollow and black and a clear bruise under one. He sat at the farthest end away from Eddie. He struggled manfully back onto his stool and his hand stopped shaking when the glass was back in his huge hands.

  She was late. She had no job to be late from. She had no money for any shopping to delay her. Maybe she was gone. By nine o’clock he hoped she wasn’t coming at all. He had stayed watching Manny slide on and off his stool with monotonous regularity. The man seemed to have no bladder at all. Eddie had to go himself. He slowed as he passed Manny's hunched body. He waited for the man’s bruised eyes to lift. What of it? Hadn’t he come here to find this man? Why watch him from the sidelines like a circus animal?

  He wiped the mirror above the urinal in an attempt to clean some of the sludge off it. For a moment he saw Linda, lost in the dark, crying out for help, her stockings torn, her knees grazed. Her eyes had been stretched to breaking point by whatever vision had been placed in front of her. She was late, that was all. She was following the pattern of all her previous behaviour. And that was no pattern at all. His watch said ten-thirty and he knew she wasn’t coming. She could have phoned, at least.

  Manny hung slouched by the toilet doorway as Eddie came out. ‘Gonna ignore me all night?’ His voice had that low, dark growl of the corner mongrel.

  ‘I didn’t know what I was going to do.’ Eddie thought that might have been the obituary of his whole life. He’d stand between the gates of heaven and hell and even God and the Devil would struggle to decide who, if either, wanted to keep him.

  ‘I have to go outside.’

  The brittle air scythed through Manny’s fragile nature and he vomited with scary intensity into the flattened remains of a cardboard box. He came up with renewed energy and Eddie was fleetingly reminded of the second but last time they had boxed. In a stale crumbling box ring where the floor bounced until their frenetic rhythms had echoed through the half-empty room. Manny had risen that night as well and floored Eddie with two risky flailing punches.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Eddie helped him to his feet, planted him securely against the wall. A siren flashed past and he thought of Edie once more.

  ‘I haven’t heard of any more murders, Eddie. But then, how many more can there be?’ He laughed a guttural wrench and hawked up something more unpleasant. ‘Lovely, ain’t it? I’ll probably die here, Eddie, how’s that for a romantic ending. Probably go down to a weak punch from a seventeen year-old who only drinks pale shandy. I look for it often, you know that? At least once a week. Do you do that? What a stupid question, course you do.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Pick fights, fucking dummy, what else? What else could we do? That’s what you’re doin’ here.’

  ‘Why don’t you go home, Manny?’

  ‘Home? Worse than this fucking place. Chinese druggies screaming all night.’

  ‘I mean home. Cork.’

  The alley was now spitting with rain drawn from the wells of the city sewers that seemed to open in the depths of night and release all their fury.

  ‘Do you have any idea where Stephen Zinny is?’ Eddie didn’t want to spend any more time here. The question hit Manny like a jolt of electricity and he sprang forward like a wounded tiger. Not that Eddie could avoid it, the days long since passed when he could have seen the move coming. They hit the wet cobbles in a weak embrace and scrambled away from each other. Manny stood and grinned like a maniac in the weak light. He assumed the weak pose of a scarred middleweight and attempted a shuffle that only caused his breath to catch in his throat.

  ‘If I had any idea where he was I’d want to be as far away as possible.’

  ‘I have to find him.’

  ‘You have to find him? Yeah, I’ve seen that movie too. You always liked the movies didn’t you? You boxed like it was a movie, Eddie, you know that?’ Manny shrivelled in regret at his words.

  Eddie looked up at the high walls of the pub and the deserted building on the other side. No cameras mounted on these poor walls.

  ‘Hey, man, I’m sorry. Look, I’m-look at me, will you, for fuck’s sake?’

  Eddie made to move past, out into the street, anywhere but here. Linda was very late now. Maybe she was home. Home. Whose home was it? Manny wouldn’t let him let past, he was hanging onto Eddie and sobbing into his clothes. He attempted to brush him off. Why did all these people cling to him? Why cling to a rotting piece of wood in the rolling oceans when it would be better to just sink down to a peaceful death?

  ‘I’m looking at you, Manny. I’m tired of looking at sad fucking things. I have enough of that in myself.’

  ‘Let me buy you a drink,’ Manny was actually crying now.

  ‘And then you’ll have me dragging you home to bed. Carry you up some stairs and wrap you up nice and toasty, until you wake up some time tomorrow and do it all over again. Let go of me.’

  ‘You’re no fuckin’ better than me.’

  ‘Never said I was.’ Eddie pulled Manny’s rough hand off him but Manny hung on like a limpet.

  Eddie knew what he was doing this time. Somehow the man on the end of his closed fist was the only one who could understand the reasons behind it. The only one who could take it. A kind gesture in some strange way. Maybe it would kill him, release him. Eddie hit him across the brow of the nose with all the force he could muster. He could feel it break under him, felt the sudden warm spray of Manny’s blood on his own face, heard the simultaneous groan of pain and disbelief from the man now lying on a blanket of rainwater and spilled litter. He stood above Manny, exhaling bull-like breaths, full of orgasmic relief and terror that the man at his feet was dead. The more he looked the more he strained to see any movement. Then Manny’s mouth gurgled and spouted fresh blood. His body heaved and his eyes opened. He tried to move and issued fresh groans of pain. He saw Eddie’s feet, then raised his eyes to the face towering above. He tried to speak and blood came instead of words. Eddie had his phone to his ear as he knelt down, calling an ambulance as Manny’s hand pulled him down further. Eddie realized he wanted to tell him something not to try to hurt him. Put his ear to Manny’s mouth.

  ‘Brighton,’ the man whispered.

  CHAPTER 36

  Maggie Brogan leaves home Maggie may, or may not. It always made her laugh to herself, made the tune pop into her head like a spring memory. She plucked more leaves from the hedge and her pleasant indecision continued.

  They had probably realized she was missing by now but she doubted they would do much more than shrug their weary shoulders and count themselves lucky they had one less mouth to feed. And there was nobody to notify of her absence, no known relative, no family to speak
of. At least, that’s what she had told them. In the long winter meadow two or three miles from the house, the afternoon wearing on, wispy trails of clouds stretching out like yawns and in her leather coat she imagined herself a constant traveller.

  She had been asleep for so long. She had accepted the fate of the others as that of her own. Her mind had started to slow down like theirs, her thoughts becoming more settled in the past, it was more comforting there. And anyway, there was no life in the present, was there? Poacher turned gamekeeper or maybe with her it was the other way round. Helper to helped, nurse to patient, or resident as they liked to call them.

  Resident was a kind word for a life of no further purpose. Her hands and arms had stayed strong, her skin stretched and taut, not unlike the smooth cloth of her coat. Years of lifting, of comforting, changing soiled sheets, washing wrinkled limbs and minds until her own had become strained in the process. Until one day she had woken to find herself on the waxy shiny floor and now she was being lifted, being comforted and helped into bed. Maggie Brogan, born Dillon, of indeterminate age as she liked to think of herself. Her hair still long, dyed the colour of a twenty year-old with just a hint of purple. An earring in one ear, a lone salmon tattoo on the palm of her left hand, put there on her fiftieth birthday. Like all of it, it was just yesterday. Just yesterday she had arrived in London and found herself living in a flat above a garage with a bear of man, Terry, who had terrified her like her husband before. He never hit her, he only had to utter a word, threaten, raise a hand in promise. And she had borne it like before, in the dark empty Dublin years when she had watched her son bear the scars of a ruined childhood. All yesterday.

  Darkness had floated down with frightening speed. She shivered and thought of the journey back. The road was just ahead, the lights of the cars like flying saucers moving back and forth between alien planets. What was the plan, Maggie? She was awake now and the cold and the terror made her feel alive. So, go back and let them wrap the blanket around her and feed her boiling chicken soup and lull her back to her sedentary solitude. And the minutes would fall into days months and years until she would no longer be able to lift herself from her chair. If only she hadn’t been sitting in the chair that day, in that room, at that time. If she hadn’t seen his face. His face was her face, his life was hers, his pain, his need. Hers. And he was out there, alone. She had made him that way, had allowed his father to carve deep cuts into his soul. And he was out there now. Alone. Being hunted.