Knocked Me Over
Ryan
Cold water stung as it sluiced across my knuckles. Most of the abrasions were scabbed over, but there was still enough blood to make the water pink as it pooled in the bottom of my bathroom basin. It didn’t bother me like it once did. I was used to it.
I shook the excess water from my hands and then poured hydrogen peroxide across the backs of my hands, one at a time. This time I winced as the peroxide bubbled and dug into the broken skin. After a few moments of letting the disinfectant do its work, I rinsed it off, then followed it with a quick douse of rubbing alcohol.
That was the part I hated worst. It felt as if someone was holding a flame to the backs of my hands.
“Goddamn!” I wasn’t much for talking to myself, but some conversations are best to have alone.
I looked into the bathroom mirror. With the damage to my knuckles I’d come to expect some bruising on my face, or maybe a cut above my eye. Sometimes I’d take a shot in the heat of things and not even notice until I got home and found a trickle of blood somewhere.
Not today, though. Matt “Machine Gun” Arnolds didn’t seem to have managed to sneak a single shot in on me.
There’s more to fighting than a scary name.
I pulled my first aid kit from behind the mirror. With the stainless steel scissors, I trimmed away a small flap of skin that clung to my middle knuckle. I grimaced, because I had another fight in three days, and my raw knuckles were going to sting through the whole bout.
Whatever. It didn’t matter. As soon as the adrenaline kicked in I wouldn’t feel much of anything.
After I got my hands cleaned up I wrapped gauze around them and secured it with tape. Then I turned back and forth in the mirror, checking for bruises or scrapes I had missed in my initial inspection. Nothing.
Reggie’s going to have to find me some better opponents.
After I showered, I walked barefoot back into the living room. My apartment was a small walk-up I rented over a mechanic’s shop. I didn’t need much. Just a place to shower and sleep, for the most part. All the rest of my time was devoted to fighting, or training to fight. Or working my day job. I looked at the clock and realized I needed to head that way pretty soon.
No rest for the wicked. Or for me, either.
I dug around in the pocket of my jeans and pulled out a roll of cash. I counted it. I never did this in front of Reggie out of respect. He’d taken care of me in Afghanistan, and I didn’t want him to think I’d lost faith in him now that we’d come back stateside.
The money was all there, just as I’d known it would be.
Under the counter in the kitchen was a small stack of cigar boxes. I opened the top one and placed the roll of money in beside the other rolls of money. I reminded myself that I needed to get a more secure place to keep my cash. Maybe a bank. I also reminded myself that I should count it and see just how much there was. Seemed like the kind of thing I should know. If someone asked me how much I had for a down payment on a house, they wouldn’t want to hear, “Oh, about eight cigar boxes full.” I should at least figure out something to buy with it. A house, or a fast car. Something cool. But the simple fact was I didn’t much care about any of that. I kept it simple.
A job to occupy my time.
Night fighting to make the real money. To give me something to focus on. To give me an outlet for my rage.
In three days I’d fight Jimmy Barrett. No scary nickname for that guy. Reggie had shown me the videos of his last two fights. I tried to think about them as I dressed for work. Part of my process. Analyze his fights, break him down in my head. Then break him down in the dirt ring.
But the video in my head wouldn’t play. Every time I tried to think about Barrett, the image in my head fuzzed out, replaced by other, more pleasant, imagery.
I shook my head. It wouldn’t do to get distracted. In Afghanistan, distractions got you killed. In the ring, they got the shit knocked out of you. Neither was good.
Watch his left, I heard Reggie say. That hook’ll blind you, set you up for a hard right.
The image started rolling again, Barrett bobbing, weaving, launching that killer hook…
But that was replaced, again, by another image. Red hair spread across my pillow. Creamy olive skin reflecting the moonlight through my window. Miriam’s moans and soft cries more vivid in my ears than the chanting of the crowd when I walked to the ring.
I lost myself momentarily in the reverie. Her smile, the way her lips tasted like chocolate and peppermint. Her body moving against mine.
She was the first woman I had been with since before I’d gone off to war.
That had been a week ago. And of course now she wouldn’t give me the time of day.
She’d knocked me senseless, and then knocked me over.
Left hook. Hard right. Effortless KO.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure what had gone wrong. It was pretty standard first date stuff. I took her to a fairly nice dinner. Then for a fairly nice cup of coffee. And then we came back to my place.
It had been a while for me, but I was fairly certain I hadn’t completely lost my touch in bed. She seemed to have a good time.
Maybe it moved too fast for her.
I finished dressing. I hadn’t slept yet, but I was still jazzed from the fight, so I didn’t think work would be a problem. Not until around noon, and then fatigue would catch up with me.
The sun was brilliant when I opened the door, and the air was cool. One of those rare, perfect Fort Worth days when it wasn’t blistering hot or colder than a well-digger’s ass. The kind of day when you know you’re going to have good luck.
I climbed into my beat up old Ford and kicked the motor over. As I pulled out of the gravel driveway, I decided I’d drop into The Lazy Spoon before work. Have some breakfast. Ask Miriam out one last time. If she said yes, great. If not, I was going to let the whole thing drop.
I’ve got my fuckin pride, after all.