Mario Puzo - Fools die

I stalked her into a corner. She crouched down, her red-gloved tiny hands protecting her head. I started to throw a left hook into her delicately rounded belly, but the navel I had licked so many times repelled my hand. We went into a clinch and I said, “Ah, Janelle, cut it out. I love you, honey.” She danced away and hit me again. It was like a cat ripping my eyebrow with its claw and blood started dripping down. I was blinded and I heard myself saying, “Oh, Christ.”

Brushing away the blood, I saw her standing in the middle of the ring, waiting for me. Her blond hair was pulled tightly back into a bun and the rhinestone clip that held it glittered like a hypnotic charm. She hit me with two more lightning jabs, the tiny red gloves flicking in and out like tongues. But now she left an opening and I could hit the finely boned face. My hands wouldn’t move. I knew that the only thing that could save me was a clinch. She tried to dance around me. I grabbed her around the waist as she tried to slip away and spun her around. Defenseless now except that the trunks did not go all the way around her body and I could see her back and her beautiful buttocks, so rounded and full, that I had always pressed against in our bed together. I felt a sharp pain in my heart and wondered what the hell she was fighting me for. I grabbed her around the waist and whispered in her ear, tiny filaments of gold hair remembered on my tongue. “Lie on your stomach,” I said. She spun quickly. She hit me with a straight right I never saw coming and then I was tumbling in slow motion, upended in the air and floating down on the canvas. Stunned, I managed to get to one knee and I could hear her counting to ten in her lovely warm voice that she used to make me come. I stayed on one knee and stared up at her.

She was smiling and then I could hear her saying, “Ten, ten, ten, ten,” frantically, urgently, and then a gleeful smile broke over her face and she raised both hands in the air and jumped for joy. I heard the ghostly roar of millions of women screaming in ecstatic glee; another woman, heavyset, was embracing Janelle. This woman wore a heavy turtleneck sweater with “CHAMP” stenciled across two enormous breasts. I started to cry.

Then Janelle came over to me and helped me. “It was a fair fight,” she kept saying. “I beat you fair and square,” and through my tears I said, “No, no, you didn’t.”

And then I woke up and reached out for her. But she was not in bed beside me. I got up and, naked, went into the living room of the suite. In the darkness I could see her cigarette. She was sitting in a chair, watching the foggy dawn come up over the city.

I went over and reached down and traced my hands over her face. There was no blood, her features were unbroken and she reached one velvety hand up to touch mine as it covered her naked breast.

“I don’t care what you say,” I said. “I love you whatever the hell that means.”

She didn’t answer me.

After a few minutes she got up and led me back to the bed. We made love and then fell asleep in each other’s arms. Half asleep, I murmured, “Jesus, you nearly killed me.”

She laughed.

Something was waking me out of a deep sleep. Through the cracks of the shutters of the hotel room I could see the rose light of early California dawn, and then I heard the phone ringing. I just lay there for a few seconds. I saw Janelle’s blond head snuggled almost under the covers. She was sleeping far apart from me. As the phone kept on ringing, I got a panicky feeling. It must be early in the morning here in Los Angeles, so the call had to be from New York and it had to be from my wife. Valerie never called me except in an emergency, something had happened to one of my kids. There was also the feeling of guilt that I would be receiving this call with Janelle in bed beside me. I hoped she wouldn’t wake up as I picked up the phone.

The voice on the other end said, “Is that you, Merlyn?”

And it was a woman’s voice. But I couldn’t recognize it. It wasn’t Valerie.

I said, “Yes, who is it?”

It was Artie’s wife, Pam. There was a tremor in her voice.

“Artie had a heart attack this morning.”

And when she said it, I felt a lessening of anxiety. It wasn’t one of my kids. Artie had had a heart attack before and for some reason in my mind I thought of it as something not really serious.

I said, “Oh, shit. I’ll get on a plane and come hack right away I’ll be back today. Is he in the hospital?”

There was a pause at the other end of the phone, and then I heard her voice finally break.

She said, “Merlyn, he didn’t make it.”

I really didn’t understand what she was saying. I really didn’t. I still wasn’t surprised or shocked, and then I said, “You mean he’s dead?”

And she said, “Yes.”

I kept my voice very controlled. I said, “There’s a nine o’clock plane and I’ll be on it and I’ll be in New York at five and I’ll come right to your house. Do you want me to call Valerie?”

And she said, “Yes, please.”

I didn’t say I was sorry, I didn’t say anything. I just said, “Everything will be all right. I’ll be there tonight. Do you want me to call your parents?”

And she said, “Yes, please.”

And I said, “Are you all right?”

And she said, “Yes, I’m all right. Please come back.”

And then she hung up the phone.

Janelle was sitting up in bed and staring at me. I picked up the phone and got long distance and got Valerie. I told her what had happened. I told her to meet me at the plane and she wanted to talk about it, but I told her I had to pack and get on the plane. That I didn’t have any time and I would talk to her when she met me. And then I got the operator again and I called Pam’s parents. Luckily I got the father and explained to him what had happened. He said he and his wife would catch the next plane to New York and he would call Artie’s wife.

I hung up the phone and Janelle was staring at me, studying me very curiously. From the phone conversations she knew, but she didn’t say anything. I started hitting the bed with my fist and kept saying, “No, no, no, no .” I didn’t know I was shouting it. And then I started to cry, my body flooded with an unbearable pain. I could feel myself losing consciousness. I took one of the bottles of whiskey that was on the dresser in the room and drank. I couldn’t remember how much I drank, and after that all I could remember was Janelle’s dressing me and taking me down through the lobby of the hotel and putting me on a plane. I was like a zombie. It was only much later, when I had come back to Los Angeles, that she told me she had to throw me in the bath to sober me up and bring me back to consciousness and then she had dressed me, she had made the reservations and accompanied me onto the plane and told the stewardess and chief flight attendant to look out for me. I don’t even remember the plane ride, but suddenly I was in New York and Valerie was waiting for me and by that time I was OK.

We drove right to Artie’s house. I took charge of everything and made all the arrangements. Artie and his wife had agreed that he would be buried as a Catholic with a Catholic ceremony and I went to the local church and arranged for services. I did everything I could do and I was OK. I didn’t want him lying aboveground alone in the mortuary, so I made sure the services would be next day and he would be buried right afterward. The wake would be this night. And as I went through the rituals of death, I knew I could never be the same again. That my life would change and the world around me; my magic fled.

– -

Why did my brother’s death affect me so? He was quite simple, quite ordinary, I guess. But he was truly virtuous. And I cannot think of anyone else that I have met in my life that I can say this of.