Craig Davidson - The Fighter

And here were heads popping from apartment windows, people occurring in shadowed doorways and from bars.

“Gonna bash your face to fucking pulp.”

Strung together into a single word: Gonnabashyafacetafuckinpulp.

How the hell did this happen ? Walk it back to the beginning.

After he and Faith had secured a booth Paul excused himself to take a piss. He ran into Drake Langley, an old prep school classmate. Drake wore a suit of lush dark fabric — padded velour? — that made him look like a sofa cushion. Drake worked for his father, same as Paul worked for his father, same as just about all the guys from school worked for their fathers.

“Hey, hey, hey…” Blasted, Drake pawed Paul’s jacket like a needy golden retriever. “Did you hear the one,” he gulped, “about the guy?”

Paul replied that no, he hadn’t heard the one about the guy.

Drake slopped half a mouthful of Macallan down his shirtfront; no matter how expensive the liquor, Paul thought, a cheap drunk is still a cheap drunk.

“So this guy, he’s living at home with his sickly widower father and he needs a woman to keep him company. Okay?”

Paul nodded, irritated. Did Drake think he was giving a lecture on astrophysics and needed to pause so that Paul could absorb this complex information?

“So he goes to this bar and sees this chick with a rack like — b am!” Drake held his hands out a goodly distance from his chest. “And an ass like a Polynesian dancer. So the guy goes up to her and he says, Right now I’m not much to write home about. But in a month or two my old man is going to kick the bucket and I’m gonna inherit millions. So the woman goes home with him that night — and four days later she becomes his stepmother!”

Paul managed a weak chortle. Drake’s face froze with mortal fear: it was as though he’d come to understand the full implication of the joke and it terrified him.

He grabbed Paul’s elbow. “You know what I’m gonna do tonight, Harris? I’m gonna take one of these slags home”— the liberal sweep of his arm suggested that the club was brimming with said slags — “and I’m gonna eat her ass like French vanilla ice cream. What do you think of them apples?”

The bathroom attendant was black. Why were they always black? Dressed in a faded olive-tone suit, the guy’s skin looked like cheap chocolate — like a fine layer of chalk dust had settled over it. His eyes were yellowed and Paul felt he ought to be home in bed. He looked like an Uncle Tom. Not that Paul would ever call him that; he only meant that if you put the bathroom attendant in a lineup with a bunch of other black guys and asked anyone to pick the one who fit the stereotype, well, this poor guy hit about every note. After pissing he felt poorly for thinking this and left ten bucks in the tip jar.

He returned to find his date in conversation with some townie asshole. The guy blocked the booth; he leaned over the table like a hillbilly tycoon buying up cheap real estate.

“Introduce me to your friend, Faith?” Paul said, slipping past the townie to sit down.

“We’ve barely introduced—”

“She’s being coy.” Paul offered his hand. “Paul Harris.”

“Todd.”

Todd was a stocky unshaven shitkicker. Paul hadn’t bothered to look at his feet but assumed they were clad in steel-toed boots; when he moved on, Paul was certain he’d leave a pile of debris behind. He pictured Todd’s home: a trailer jacked up on cinderblocks. Engine parts laid out on oil-sodden newspapers. It struck Paul that he was infinitely richer and more successful than this poor slob; the knowledge actually filled him with a bizarre kind of pity.

“You with her?” Todd wanted to know.

“That’s beside the point, Todd.”

“Paul —”

He raised his hand, shushing her. “Well, Todd — what were you two confabbing about?”

“That’s between me and the young lady.”

Paul smiled indulgently and drew Faith down to the far end of the booth. “You can’t be serious. This troglodyte’s got as much personal flair as an unflushed toilet.”

She laughed and tugged at his lapel, pulling him close. “Shhh. He’ll hear.” She was so skinny: cheekbones were shards of flint. A Madison Avenue stick insect.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” he chastised, “for encouraging him. For shame.”

Todd the Shitkicker stood there like a goon. As if in expectation that Faith might — what? Leave with him? The image of Faith with shitkicker Todd was so absurd that Paul could only visualize it as occurring in a Salvador Dali painting; in it, Todd’s head would be replaced by a pocket watch melted over a tree branch.

“Hey,” Todd said to Faith, “I was thinking maybe you’d—”

“Isn’t there a toilet that needs snaking somewhere in this city?”

“Paul!”

“I’m kidding. He knows I’m kidding. You know I’m kidding, don’t you, Todd?”

“Sure, Paul,” the shitkicker said in a voice gone deathly soft. “I love a good joke as much as the next guy.”

Paul raised his hands as if caught in a bank heist. “Listen, she’s my date — what do you want? I saw you talking and got a little jealous.”

A half-truth, if that. Faith was welcome to return tomorrow, find Todd, head back to his trailer, and fuck him senseless on a pile of discarded TV dinner trays.

“Us being buddies now and all,” Todd told him, “figure I should tell you to watch your mouth. Otherwise, y’know, someone’s liable to stuff a boot in it.”

“Are you threatening me, Todd?”

“I’m saying words have consequences, Paul. Like, if I were to call you a faggot cocksucker — that would have consequences, wouldn’t it?” He rapped his knuckles on the underside of the table; the sharp bang straightened Paul’s spine. “Wouldn’t it?”

It came then, fierce and unbidden: fear. It stole over the crown of Paul’s head, moving under his scalp behind his eyes, cold and hollow. It oozed down his spine into his chest, his groin, pooling in his gut like dark dirty oil. He glanced about to assure himself of his location. Yes. Still this club, these people: his people. So why did he feel all shredded inside, shriveled and paralyzed?

Todd nodded to Faith in a way that suggested he’d lost all interest. “I’ll leave you to it.”

Paul was pissed to have it end on that note. But a larger part of him was just glad to have the shitkicker gone, relieved to find the fear dissipating.

“Why did you talk to him that way?”

Paul ignored Faith’s question as one too obvious to merit a reply. He glanced over at the shitkicker’s table. Todd and his pals looked like janitors who’d arrived early, waiting for the place to clear so they could break out the mops. He flagged down the waitress and ordered a round of Sex on the Beaches for Todd’s table.

“—I’m sorry.” He was dimly aware of Faith saying something. “What?”

“A teacup Chihuahua,” she said. “I’m getting one.”

“Is that so.”

“They’re adorable. And Versace makes this cute carry-bag for them.”

Paul had seen the dogs. Frail, sick-looking things, all papery-eared and bulge-eyed.

They looked delicate enough to die of a nosebleed and shivered all the time; perhaps being cooped up in handbags made them petrified of natural light. But if the cover of next month’s Vogue featured a model with a ferret wrapped around her neck several women of Paul’s acquaintance would soon be wearing one. Prada would probably design a ferret-tube to cart the silly fuckers about.

They finished their drinks and stood up. Faith excused herself to use the ladies’ room. Paul deliberated whether he should fuck her. Conventional wisdom decreed he snap up whatever was on offer, never knowing when the opportunity might come around again; to do otherwise would be as stupid as a desert wanderer who passes over one waterhole in hopes of finding another when he’s thirstier. But it would be the sexual equivalent of a lube job. Pure maintenance.