Michael Seidlinger - The Laughter of Strangers

Yeah, it was. And it probably hurts. I just don’t feel it yet.

Adrenaline hasn’t fully flushed from my system yet.

Once it does, I better be on the painkillers.

“Just get me to the hospital,” I say.

He pulls back, crosses his arms and shakes his head:

“Tell me first, what is it that you’re fighting for?”

I lower my head, no reply.

“It must be something because it used to be for you. You fought to fight yourself. When you were two and zero, fresh out, you told me you wanted to fight to be the best you could possibly be. Now I look at you and I see someone bruised up and broken, looking to blow it all.”

He grabs my forearm, my hands still wrapped in tape, “What. Are. You. Fighting. For?”

I look at my taped up hands.

I look down at the blue gloves hanging slack against the side of a nearby bench. I look at the locker room door, open ajar, not a single invading source, typically we’d have to keep it closed, locked, because every media personality would be clawing at the door, finding a way in, wanting a sound bite, something, anything, but now, I see an empty hall and the lingering nuance of stale laughter. At my expense, at my loss.

I look up at Spencer, the only person that cares about who I am, rather than who I fought so hard to be, and I…

I can’t.

I have no answer to that question.

Likely the most important question to be posed at this point of my life and career and I haven’t a clue.

I have lost focus, lost favor.

“I can’t answer that question.”

Spencer relents, but still manages a sigh that digs under my skin.

“Let’s get you to a hospital. God forbid you’d want to feel the magnitude of your decisions.”

He’s right. I’m quick to act but last to understand the effects of what I’ve done. By the time you read any of what I’ve said, I will have yet to fully comprehend the telling. I might tell you everything, more than I want to tell, and it won’t hit me as reality for weeks, months; it might never register as reality. That’s another scar on the surface of my being:

Incapable of keeping private and public life apart.

I don’t know how much they know about me.

They probably know the whole story.

You probably already know what’s going to happen.

You know where this is going, right?

Wish you could point me in the right direction.

LAUGHTER

A CHUCKLE

Not quite cheery, more like the clearing of one’s throat. A sweet feminine voice, made to be sweet because it’s her duty to take care of me. Nurse of many, nurse of few, tends to my wounds while holding my hand, checking my pulse, scribbling notes onto my chart.

How am I doing?

I’m on painkillers.

Right about now, I’m doing swell. If you’re asking about later, we don’t talk about later. We let everything that isn’t the dozy trance of “right now” slip by as nonessential.

The nurse notices that I’m awake, “How are they treating you?”

By “they” she means the pills.

“Swell,” I reply, slurring the word so that it sounds more like “ shwellp .”

“Oh boy you don’t need any more.”

No I don’t.

But she gets me feeling good, asking me if I feel this, feel that, scribbling more onto my chart.

I do my best to strike up a conversation, “I used to go twelve rounds and still have enough energy to hit the bars for another twelve!”

That’s what I said. I can’t be sure it’s actually what she heard.

Again, the painkillers.

She smiles and giggles because that’s what she does, as part of her ‘cute nurse’ routine. Says something like, “A lesser man would have tapped out.”

Whatever that means.

I just don’t want her to keep scribbling in my chart.

“I used to see that left hook from a mile away. I used to be the one that threw the hook just so that they’d see it coming and duck. I used it to get them into a position where I could land an uppercut right under the chin. Left hook, left hook, pause, assess, uppercut while they block, block, weave, duck, impact.”

“My my,” pandering, being nice, because, why not?

“Those were the days when I could really throw a punch. Never went down though, never got them down to the canvas for more than a five count. Power but I have a chin. Had a chin. Cast-iron, I’d say. Now I can hear glass shatter whenever I take one to the jaw.”

More scribbling, not really listening, but the nurse is nice enough and who really listens to anyone anyway?

“I’m ‘Sugar’ Willem Floures. Got to mean something right?”

The nurse nods, “My mom used to watch every single one of your fights. She always bet on Sugar.”

“What about you?”

Not understanding my slurred speech, she seems to say, “You had one of the best win-streaks I’ve ever seen.”

Again I ask, “What about you?”

“Me? Oh I always bet on the other guy.”

She looks at me, must have some kind of grimace on my face because she chooses to explain herself, “Don’t get me wrong; I love watching a good Floures fight but I always bet on the underdog. I watched every fight hoping that you’d surprise yourself, catch one and go down for the knockout.”

“Then tonight’s fight was good then?”

Oh, now she hears me loud and clear. “If you want me to be honest, yes — I enjoyed the fight. Executioner looks just like you when you were just starting out and the league fights were in those high school stadiums and broadcast on cable TV.”

I want to defend myself but my guard is already down and the nurse managed to jab her way right into the most fragile depths of my ego.

Not that there’s a whole lot left to maintain.

I go quiet. She continues scribbling into the chart and for a brief moment I consider what she might be writing down, what must be so important that she sacrifices legibility for the speed of the scribble?

IS MY CONDITION REALLY THAT BAD?

There’s something I don’t want to think about right now, not while I’m on so much medication. Think about the wrong thing and it becomes all you can think about. So I’m thinking instead about what I might do as a counter, saying something that will somehow make her regret her choice to cheer for ‘Executioner.’

I garble my words, not quite sure what I’m trying to say, when Spencer walks into the hospital room, instructing the nurse to leave.

“Yes, sir, I must keep a log of—”

“That can happen later. He’ll be here all night.”

Spencer glares at the nurse. She looks at me, “You feel better, okay?” and quickly leaves the room. Door squeaks shut.

Spencer pulls a chair up to the left side of the hospital bed.

Sits down and leans forward, “Don’t you talk to anyone. How many times have I told you, huh?”

I close my eyes, letting the nameless force pull me under, into a deep sleep more preferable than listening to yet another lecture, but Spencer’s voice cuts deep enough to sever that tether, and I rise back up, eyes opening, looking, focusing, Spencer asking me what I told the nurse.

“Nothing, just good times.”

“Good times? That won’t cut it. What did you tell her?”

I take a moment to recall what I had said.

Sure, fine, I tell him. You don’t need to hear it a second time.

Spencer shakes his head, “You never learn do you? Do not talk to anyone when you are under the influence of anything .”

A younger version of me would ask why.

For Spencer’s sake, he doesn’t manage a younger version.

He’s stuck with old and busted.

Old and busted he can deal with.

Doze through the lecture, about how I am susceptible to disclosure of information that could leak to the media, ruining the prefight promotional junkets, which is, according to Spencer (really, according to anyone but me; I loathe it; loathe it all), the fight before the fight .