Sarah Weinman - Sex, Thugs, Roll, and Rock & Roll

A few seconds later the gunfire starts.

Maybe Jack went for his gun. I don’t know. But there are two loud pops and Amanda screams and then Benny is back out, kicking Amanda in front of him, the loose stone case in one hand and the pistol in the other. Right in front of me Amanda falls down and Benny points the gun down and there’s a bang and all sorts of stuff slops out of Amanda onto the floor. I would never guess she’d have so much inside her.

Then Benny looks up at me, and even though he’s wearing glasses and a wig I can see him perfectly, and he sees me, like we’re both naked in the daylight.

I turn so I don’t have to watch the gun barrel raise, or Benny’s face when he pulls the trigger. That’s why the bullets hit me in the back.

If it had gone according to the plan that both of us knew was a lie, then Benny would have headed out the door next to the Foot Locker across the way, ditched his wig, glasses, and coat in the hall, and put the loose stone case inside the big plastic Gap bag he had tucked inside his pants. He would have gotten in his car and driven to the motel just past Six Flags on I-44. After the police questioning finished, I was supposed to drive there myself.

But first, I would have stopped at his apartment and unhooked Benny’s bomb from the front door. I would have put the bomb back into the closet and gotten ready for my new life. But I guess Benny will just have to find it himself. See, Benny never really had me fooled. But he did make me hope.

Damn him for that.

For a few blessed hours in the early afternoon, The Palooka Bar is transmogrified into a country club of sorts, a veritable Agora of Socratic discourse where elevated exchange of ideas and sentiments becomes possible before the drudges and working stiffs pour in. By the round table, Viddi, The Cadaver, Rhino, and Hulk the bouncer nursed their Buds, all smiles but each sporting a shiner.

Into The Palooka Bar breezed Mercy Beaucoup, bringing with him spurts of the autumn sun. “What’s with Petey the pit bull family reunion?”

“We were gonna roll this guy…” jubilated Rhino.

“Just wanted to borrow a few rubles and he wasn’t too forthcoming,” Viddi hastened to add.

The remembrance brought forth a gentle smile across Hulk’s broad face. “We ran out of beer money.”

“He beat us to a pulp,” Rhino chimed in.

“That should make you happy,” Mercy Beaucoup acknowledged.

“Scuzzy’s our one-way ticket to the land of plenty,” Hulk announced with pride.

“First he lays some rubes on the canvas,” extrapolated Rhino in a reverie. “Then he lays the golden eggs, and then Scuzzy lays some bread on us and we lie back and live the good life.”

“But, Viddi, you’re not allowed within a mile of a boxing ring after-”

“Bah, Burgess Meredith can train him for all I care,” retorted Viddi. “Kid’s got the stuff. All I’m going to do is sit back, watch the show, and count the cash.”

“To Dimitri Sciatscu of Bucharest,” toasted The Cadaver.

Rhino raised his beer mug high. “Our gravy train just come in, straight from Bulgaria.”

The first sparring session took place after-hours in the deserted Crooked Nose Gym-Mercy Beaucoup having slipped Stinky the janitor a couple of greenbacks, as the only resolution every boxing association in the land, including the GID, KDJ, KDH, UID, KDD, KKK, YDU, GWU and IOU, had ever agreed upon was to bar Viddi from all matches and venues in perpetuity.

“No way am I getting into the ring with that shrimpster,” whined Beardy. “I’ll be busted for child molestation.” In the opposite corner, Scuzzy’s pot belly jutted out as he lounged on his stool, his physique offering a scant testament to a predilection for sports, or solid food for that matter.

“It’s somebody or nobody, and nobody’s out of town,” countered Viddi.

“Here, you take the gloves.” Beardy brandished Hulk’s Popeye boxing gloves at Viddi.

“I slip in there and you lot will be left to the Indians,” Viddi warned with a passion. “Think of the green across the Glean.”

“What’s a Glean?” wondered Rhino.

“Ready, Scuzzy?”

“Ready-steady. Rocking to go. When I get money?”

The longest time took to disentangle Beardy from the ropes and explain to him where and who he was. After Rhino had taken Hulk to the Hoboken Methodist Hospital and The Cadaver discovered he had a limp, Mercy Beaucoup was left with no choice but enter the ring in his mustard Calani pants and shiny Hungarian shoes.

Although Mercy Beaucoup danced like a butterfly, he most assuredly did not sting like a bee. For three minutes that seemed to pass slower than the seasons, Mercy buzzed around the ring, maintaining a steady presence in the corner farthest from Scuzzi, doing the Ali shuffle, gyrating his head, feigning with great flourish, and not once getting within ten feet of his opponent. Anon, Mercy Beaucoup fainted from exhaustion, falling face-first on the post. By this time, Weeping Willy had locked himself in the powder room and Viddi tried unceremoniously to pry the door open with a rusty umbrella in lieu of a crowbar as Dimitri Sciatscu voiced some reservations about the quality of his sparring partners.

At The Palooka Bar, Viddi was late for their meeting with South African trainer Ludwig Van Oizman, a contemporary legend west of Transvaal. Although Oizman had coached some Olympians of note in Jo’burg, he did not command an exorbitant fee in the land of the free, as he was just off the boat after causing a tribal dispute of some acrimony in his homeland. To boot, he met the one requisite no trainer in the Big Apple did: he’d never heard of Viddi.

“Sorry ’bout the delay, guv’nor.” Viddi was beaming with even more confidence than usual.

“No harm done. You have my fee, Mr. Golbranson?”

“In what sense?”

“In your pocket. In that sense.”

“With the neighborhood going to seed and all…” Viddi explained with forbearance.

“We gave you the dosh last night,” sighed Rhino.

“You left us ruined, man.” After his punishment at the hands of Scuzzy, Beardy found it somewhat difficult to speak.

“Well, I don’t have it on me, physically.”

Oizman, though not amused, knew the world too well to be angry. “You carrying it metaphysically?”

“You told us the dough might as well be at Fort Knox,” wailed Hulk.

“Let’s not get into politics.”

“Viddi, Viddi, Viddi,” singsonged Mercy Beaucoup, glaring at Viddi through the blackness of his eye.

“Rollo was celebrating his last outing as a free man for quite some time. You expect me to treat my own brother to tap water and easy-listening radio under such circumstances?”

Calmly, Oizman stood up and walked away.

“But who’s going to train Scuzzy?” bellowed Viddi with indignation as he tried to grab Oizman’s shirtsleeve.

“You do it for all I care.” Oizman tore himself free with a light middleweight’s grace of movement.

“Hey, Jungle Jim there isn’t as stupid as he looks,” exclaimed Viddi as the boys scowled at him in disappointed silence, reassuring them with the famous Viddi wink.

At the Ring of Fire Gym, Dan Prince had been listening long enough to the out-of-towner with the chapeau Alpin and thick sunglasses sing the praises of his prodigy-much too long, since the man kept tugging at his sleeve to the point of playing a tune to the jangling of Dan Prince’s vast array of rings and amulets.

“What title did you say your fighter holds, Mr. Gunnerson?” queried Dan Prince, his patience on the brink of exhaustion.

With caution, Viddi looked around. All it took was one palooka who recognized him and he’d be outward-bound faster than a mermaid out of a tuna factory. “The YMCU.”