The War for Gloria

by Atticus Lish

  “Let me see.” Adrian picked up his shirt and crushed it to his face. “Aaahhh! That’s ambrosial.”

  “You have to wash.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or we’ll go to the dean. Do you still have a hamburger on your wall?”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, he does. It’s right there.” Ajay pointed over Robin’s shoulder at a grayish disc of meat nailed to the wall next to the row of books standing upright on Adrian’s desk.

  “What’s that?”

  “Let’s see what it says. Hmm. It’s my protein polymer experiment. My long-chain protein polymer experiment.”

  “Why do you even have that?”

  “Maybe I want to see it grow.”

  “You’re going to have to take that down.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re not allowed to take food out of the dining hall. It’s not very nice to Ajay.”

  “That’s not nice to me. You’ve got your posters. I don’t have anything else on my walls.”

  “It’s got to come down.”

  “If I have to take it down, then you have to take something down too, something that’s special to you. Think of something that’s special to you, and then we’ll trade.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Robin said.

  “It should,” said Adrian.

  * * *

  —

  Despite this controversy, which provoked a letter to the dean, a round of meetings, and a formal apology from Adrian, it seemed that no one had yet noticed Adrian’s affinity for the basement of the dorm, let alone what it could mean. In general, the only people who went down there were the guards. The guards at MIT worked for a rent-a-cop company, utterly distinct from and not to be confused with the MIT Police, who were a genuine police agency. The police uniform had red piping on the trouser legs; the guard uniform had blue. Guards had no special skill or training. They didn’t carry weapons—at least, they weren’t supposed to. Most were not intellectuals or even intelligent. A social barrier obtained between them and academic people. Generally, a guard passed his shift in solitary silence. When a student swiped in, her face came up on a computer screen behind his desk. He could pass the time by reading a book or looking at the students’ faces, except when he left his post and did rounds throughout the building.

  18

  Body Puzzles

  On the last day of September, Corey went to New Hampshire on the Concord Express bus out of South Station. His teammates sat behind him, reclining, listening to Beats headphones. Corey sat in a window seat, watching the redbrick waterfront and long wharves below as they climbed the Zakim Bridge and took the elevated highway north.

  Soon they left the city behind, started coming to strip malls, big signs on super-tall poles that could be seen for miles: Nissan, Wendy’s, Best Buy, Mobil. The buildings shrank to the ground, the trees rose up, and the highway became a broad channel into the woods. The entire way, he could feel them traveling uphill, up a slowly rising mountain. He heard it in the engine.

  After an hour, they exited. The driver took a long, disorienting turn, a seemingly endless, swinging turn, past a needly wall of pine trees an inch away from the windshield, and let them off at a brick building by the highway cloverleaf. There was no town, only a huge expanse of churning gray sky, the tan road curving like a child’s racecar track through the rolling hills, pine trees at the horizon, and Corey could contemplate what the world meant this far away from Boston.

  They checked in at the Travelodge, and Eddie took them, walking as a team, a mile down Policy Road. Coming out of the woods, they saw a mall, which looked like a formerly grand hotel, and on the other side of it, the casino—a dirty white swan sitting in the great lake of a parking lot.

  The lobby was empty. They entered through unattended turnstiles. Banners billed tomorrow night’s fight as “The Combat Zone.” They went through a vast amphitheater with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking an overgrown racetrack like an air traffic control tower. Gamblers hunched at airport-lounge-type tables, watching miniature TVs tuned to races occurring somewhere else. Everyone was smoking cigarettes. Junked furniture was piled behind betting counters: “Cash/Sell—All Bets.” Pillars held up the ceiling like an underground garage. In their tracksuits and hooded sweatshirts, the athletes walked through the smell of rotting carpeting, must and mold and years of cigarettes. Outside the chained-shut doors at the end of a hall, one saw cracked asphalt and nature taking over.

  They followed Eddie to a doctor’s scale in an upstairs room. The athletes took their clothes off. An athletic commissioner, wearing a gold badge on a leather wallet flipped out of his breast pocket like a sheriff, watched the weigh-in. A referee with slicked-back hair manipulated the sliding weight.

  Corey had been dieting for weeks, taking one slice of bread off his sandwich every day at lunch. Three times he had reached for a piece of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting in the high school cafeteria, and three times he had pulled his hand away. After practice, he put peanut butter on his dry skinless chicken—anything to get his protein up. If he got hungry at night, the only thing he could eat was a can of tuna fish with the oil drained out. Before practice, he drank Gatorade and ate a gummy protein bar. He had gotten to the point where he could feel exactly what was in him. Every day he had gone to the locker room and weighed himself on Eddie’s scale. The fat under his skin had disappeared.

  But the thought of losing muscle had troubled him and late at night when he couldn’t sleep because he was worrying about the fight, he had gotten up and gone out to the kitchen in the dark and eaten his mother’s protein powder, which tasted like vanilla.

  Everyone but Corey was on weight.

  “It’s his first time,” Eddie said to the ref.

  “It happens.”

  “How long does he have?”

  “I don’t want to see anybody forfeit, but four thirty’s the latest.”

  “Can you cut the weight in four hours?”

  Corey had never cut weight before. “Yeah,” he said.

  “Get him on weight,” Eddie told Corey’s teammates.

  “You’re just wringing water out of a sponge,” they told him. “Zip up everything and get moving.”

  Corey zipped up all his clothes and ran out across the parking lot. The northern sun was shining. It was warm for late September. His hood was cinched tight, leaving a tiny circle for his eyes. He cut through the mall and lost his way in the empty atriums, the loud pop music, all the girls in store windows folding jeans, dodged around families drinking smoothies, broke outside again into the lot, so huge it took minutes to jog across—a bundled figure in the warm day, sweat blotches appearing on his sweatpants.

  He pawed up a grassy incline, crossed a major road, forcing traffic to wait, stumbled across another fringe of grass and burst into a gas station convenience store. The cashier and a customer—a guy in a Palmer Gas & Oil hat—both straightened up and watched him. Corey sprinted down the aisles, grabbing trash bags and duct tape and dumped them on the counter. He paid, and, right there in the store, while the men watched him in silence, kicked off his sneakers and pulled trash bags on his legs like trousers. He tore leg holes in a bag and stepped into it like a diaper. He pulled another bag over his head and stuck his arms through it. He had a sense of body asphyxiation, even though he could breathe—he tore a hole for his face like a knight’s chain-mail hood. He taped his arms to his chest, his legs to his diaper, his top to his bottom, vacuum-sealing himself in. Covered in trash bags, his feet slipped back in his sneakers with frictionless ease. He pulled his sweatshirt and parka back on over his rustling plastic body and zipped up, banged out through the door and started shuffle-jogging back to the arena, his temperature skyrocketing, unable to hear anything but the trash bags on his ears, like a rumpled bed
sheet sliding back and forth over a microphone.

  At the casino, he ran straight upstairs into the men’s changing room and turned the showers on hot. The air steamed up like a sauna. He jogged in place, varying his gait, skipping, his sweatpant-ankles heavy, swinging around his feet. After a while, a teammate looked in and said, “They’ve got a stationary bike set up, if you want.”

  It was the kind of bike where you rowed with your arms as well as pedaled with your feet. Corey got on and pedaled and rowed. He rowed into the sun, which was shining in his eyes. The wheel spun like a fan blade in a wire cage—a ratcheting and sawing of chains and flywheel. The window glass steamed up, as if he were breathing on it with a giant mouth. The sun moved. He turned his rustling body and checked the clock. He kept rowing until the hour hand moved again. His teammate came back and told him he was out of time. He climbed off, his ankles sloshing, took off his jacket, sweatshirt, ripped open his garbage bags like a present. Water spilled out on the floor. His soaking-wet sweatpants were loose around the waist. He pulled the drawstring and they dropped to his ankles. He was thinner. He wrestled off his shirt—suddenly cool—and stepped on the bathroom scale in his wet underwear.

  “You there?”

  “Right on it.”

  He made weight in the green room and tried to eat and drink all afternoon. That evening they went back to the hotel and he kept eating and drinking even though his body didn’t want the food.

  Eddie put out the lights, and the team lay in the dark, on beds and on the floor, which smelled like feet. Corey shut his eyes and imagined he could feel the protein he had eaten flowing out of his stomach and reassembling his muscles.

  “You’re not going to think about your fight,” he told himself. “Everybody’s in the same boat. You have to deal with it the same as them.”

  * * *

  —

  The next day they lay around not moving, like reptiles conserving energy. Around noon, someone said, “It smells like mad balls in here,” and opened up the door, letting in the sun, and they started stirring, coming out of hibernation, getting up and walking back and forth, tossing out their hands, throwing punches.

  “You ready to do this? Let’s go.” Eddie took them to the casino.

  Carrying their gym bags, they went through the turnstiles and followed him upstairs to a room that said Fighters Only on the door. Inside, there was a mural of a jockey and a racehorse on the wall, and the room was filled with gangs of guys in team shirts—Sityodong, Bucket Brigade Fight Team, Destiny Boyz Wrestling Club, Renzo Gracie New Hampshire, Team Irish Fighter, Gorilla Crew, Cage Strikers Manchester, Team Havoc, Bearstrong—sitting in separate camps, welcoming their friends with handclasps and hugs, treating all others to silence.

  Eddie checked them in at a picnic table. A young woman in silver hoop earrings found their names on a list. Upside down, Corey saw Goltz, 154 pounds, in blue ink, next to Ochiottes, 154 pounds, in red. The room was divided into two halves by a counter and a banner for Budweiser Select Poker. Opponents went to opposite sides like bride and bridegroom before the wedding. Bestway claimed a picnic table and dropped their gear. Eddie went downstairs to get a yellow wristband, proving he had a New Hampshire cornerman’s license. Corey took off his clothes and put on his cup.

  The athletic commissioner arrived, opened a briefcase and handed out badges on lanyards to the officials.

  The referee with slicked-back hair called, “If I could get everybody down here for the rules meeting.” The fighters gathered round and he started talking like an auctioneer: “Elbows to the back of the head: No twelve to six. Give me an angle on that. We’re worried about the brainstem. Slamming: If you sign up for the ride, it’s not up to us how you land. Vaseline: After you get your high-fives and hugs out of the way, then you do the grease. You’re okay as long as you stick with the raccoon eyes. Groin and mouth protection: If your mouthpiece falls out, we won’t stop the fight. In a choke hold, we ask for motion to show you’re still awake. Move something for us. But don’t let go of the choke to give us the thumb’s-up.”

  His audience laughed.

  “Eye pokes have been a huge problem in the sport. Don’t stick that pitchfork in your opponent’s face. Pros, if you don’t want to tap and something breaks, that’s up to you.”

  Eddie returned carrying a bucket of ice. He took out the top tray of a toolbox, loaded with tape, gauze, Vaseline, a single-use cold pack, rubber gloves, scissors. Sitting backwards on a chair, he wrapped his students’ hands. Corey spread his fingers and watched Eddie winding gauze between his fingers. “Make a fist.” Corey stiffened his arm, and Eddie slammed his palm into Corey’s knuckles.

  * * *

  —

  For the past hour, a crowd had been entering the turnstiles and going to the event room. By now, a sea of people was standing in every available space, stepping over folding chairs, eating pizza, drinking beer. One could smell the mustardy tang of the hot dog and pizza concession under the hot yellow lights. The room was airless and loud. Miller Genuine Draft and Pickle Barrel banners hung from the ceiling. People were getting drunk already. A biker gang, the Risen Dead, out of New Haven, sat at the best section of the bar—big bearded men with mean little eyes, wearing leathers. An army of cops in blue nylon jerseys was massed at the exit. Behind them stood a pair of EMTs, part-time firemen from Haverhill. Strapped to their gurney, instead of a body, were bags of medical equipment. In the center of the heaving room, under hot white lights, stood the cage.

  The judges took their seats at cageside. A camerawoman wearing an orthopedic boot climbed a ladder one step at a time and aimed her camera down into the cage. The rock ’n’ roll went off. The lights went off. An announcer in a tuxedo walked out under a spotlight. “Good evening, everyone!” he said. “The action tonight is brought to you by American Irrigation. Let the red, white and blue make it green for you!”

  They heard him in the dressing room, which was connected to the event room by a tunnel.

  The first fight was called. It was one of Corey’s teammates, who put his mouthpiece in and went off down the tunnel, shrugging his shoulders and throwing uppercuts. Corey watched him go. The dressing room went quiet. A bunch of guys stared at a monitor on the ceiling. Suddenly, it was like everyone exhaled. Then Eddie and his boy were back and they were excited: He had won by knockout. Corey slapped him on the shoulder. His shoulder was warm. All the guys were excited. The victor posed for a picture with Eddie, who put his arm around him and held up a finger—number one.

  “One up, one down. That’s the way everybody’s gonna do it tonight. This is our night, Bestway.”

  “Damn straight,” the guys said.

  Corey started bouncing in place. He checked his spot on the card. Goltz and Ochiottes were ninth.

  The next bout went the distance. So did the next. Corey stopped bouncing and tried to meditate, without success. Around the dressing room, some fighters curled up like babies and slept. One lay in his girlfriend’s lap while she stroked his head. They pulled their hoods over their heads exactly like depressed people, people at a doctor’s office facing a grave diagnosis. A woman fighter put her face down on a table like a student who had failed her finals. Some shuffled around in sport-flops, sipping water. A few stalked back and forth with monster rock leaking out of their headphones, throwing combinations and snorting through their clenched mouth guards.

  As the night wore on, out in the event room, the crowd got drunker, looser. The cops started drinking too. A fighter got kicked in the groin, and the ref gave him time to rest. He squatted froglike. The fight resumed. He wasn’t local. He was up from Taunton. He got hit in the groin again—his opponent threw a lot of inside kicks. This time, he made a show of agony. A drunk kid in the audience yelled, “It’s not that big, Taunton! Come on.”

  Eventually, all the Bestway guys had gone except for Corey. Eddie grabbed the pads. “Let’s warm
you up.” He moved around him like a target in a shooting gallery. He flashed a mitt; the image triggered Corey’s brain to fire a punch. Eddie beat Corey’s fists with the pads. He made him kick. “Relax. Again. Better.” He dropped the pads and dove into Corey, chest to chest, and they started pummeling. They swam their arms in alternation under each other’s arms while slamming their chests together and switching their legs back and forth. The white towel in Eddie’s waist whipped like a tail.

  “Do you know anything about your guy?”

  “No.”

  “Has anyone heard anything?”

  “Who’s he got?”

  “Ochiottes.”

  “Do you know what school he trains with?”

  “Sityodong, I think.”

  “Take him down. Get on top. Ground and pound.”

  The girl with earrings called, “Bestway, is that your fighter? I’ve been calling you!” The preceding bout had ended with a knockout. Eddie grabbed the ice bucket and said, “That’s you! Got your mouthpiece? Come on!” They ran after her into the tunnel. She had a thick-legged, low-hipped frame, her Rockingham Park shirt untucked over khaki pants, which she wore low. At the final doors, she held up a hand and told them to wait as she listened to her earpiece.

  “Are you scared? Run in place like this, like you’re climbing a mountain.”

  Then the girl said, “Go!” and Corey went through the doors into the arena. Hip-hop was blasting. People were shouting and yelling and drinking cups of beer. He walked down a chute through the shadowy crowd towards the glaring spot-lit brightness of the cage. A woman reached for him and gave out a piercing scream. Guys slapped his hands as if they loved him. A bodybuilder in black rubber gloves stopped him and patted him down as if he were checking him for weapons before letting him into a club. Corey closed his eyes and someone greased his face. He stepped into the cage.

  There was a Budweiser King of Beers advertisement on the padding. There was Vaseline in his eyebrows. He saw stains on the canvas and felt the heat of the lights. It was beach-hot under the lights, like being on the shore in August.