Philippe Djian - Betty Blue

We went and got the mattress and the partition from Bob’s house, then came back. We unloaded the mattress onto the sidewalk, swearing and huffing and puffing. The shocks of the car groaned. The trouble was that we couldn’t let the goddamn thing drag on the cement. We had to carry it. Next to the mattress, the partition felt light as a feather.

We made it upstairs, winded. The girls fussed over us. While I was getting my breath back, I felt the effects of the alcohol starting to multiply. My blood coursed through my veins at full throttle. It wasn’t unpleasant. It was the first time in three days that I had the sensation of having a body at all. The girls had made a shopping list for us. We went back downstairs at a sprint.

Once in town, we took care of business in no time flat. The trunk of the convertible was full. We were on our way out of the bakery, cake boxes under our arms, when this guy walked up to Eddie and threw his arms around him. I vaguely recognized him-I’d seen him the day of the funeral. He shook my hand. He was small and kind of old, but he still had a good grip. I moved away a little to let them talk. I smoked a cigarette and looked at the starlit sky. I overheard every other word. From what I could understand, the guy didn’t want to let us go so easily. He insisted that Eddie come see his new gym, just around the corner. He wouldn’t believe that we didn’t have five minutes to spare.

“What do we do?” I asked Eddie.

“Stop asking stupid questions, and follow me!” said the guy.

I put the cakes in the trunk. I can’t refuse, Eddie explained, I’ve known him for over twenty years. We had some good times together, back in the days when I helped him organize little regional bouts. He didn’t have gray hair back then. I told Eddie that I understood perfectly-it wasn’t very late and it didn’t bother me at all, really. We closed the trunk and took off, following the guy around the corner.

It was a small gym, smelling of leather and sweat. Two dudes were working out in the ring. You could hear the sound of gloves on skin, the water running in the showers. The old man led us behind a sort of counter. He brought out three sodas. His eyes were like bubbles.

“So, Eddie, what do you think?” he asked.

Eddie grazed his list affectionately on the old man’s jaw.

“Yeah, I get the feeling you run a pretty tight ship here…”

“The one in the green trunks is Joe Attila,” the old man said. “He’s my latest. You’re going to hear big things about him one of these days. He’s got the killer instinct… he’s got the stuff…”

He gave Eddie a phony right hook to the stomach. I slowly lost the flow of the conversation. I drank my soda pop and watched Joe Attila practice his technique on his sparring partner, an older guy in a red sweatsuit. Joe Attila laid into the old guy like a locomotive. The old guy hid behind his gloves, muttering, “Attaboy, Joe, keep it up, Joe, good boy.” Joe just let him have it, as hard as he wanted. For some reason, I was hypnotized by the spectacle-it set my brain on fire. I approached the ropes. I knew nothing about boxing. I’d seen maybe one or two matches in my whole life. I had never been particularly attracted to it. Once I got a spurt of somebody’s blood on my pants. Yet I sat there watching the old guy get showered with punches, my tongue hanging out like a junkie. All I saw were gloves shooting back and forth like arrows. I was captivated.

Eddie and his pal came up next to me, just as Joe was finishing the session. I was perspiring. I grabbed Eddie by the lapels.

“Eddie, look at me. You know, all my life I’ve dreamed of putting the gloves on-getting into the ring-just for one minute to pretend I’m slugging it out like a pro!”

Everybody laughed-Joe hardest of all. I insisted. I told them, “Just among friends, it’ll be fun-I just want to do it once before I die.” Eddie scratched his head.

“Are you kidding, or what…?”

I bit my lip and shook my head. He turned to his pal.

“Well, I don’t know… You think we could arrange something…?”

The old man turned to Joe.

“What do you think, Joe? Think you could hang in there another minute…?”

Joe’s laugh reminded me of a tree trunk rolling down a hill. I was so hyped up that I paid no attention. I was blinded by all the lights, short of breath. Joe grabbed the ropes and gave me a wink.

“Okay, why not? One little round, for fun…”

At that moment I suddenly got very scared-my whole body started to tremble. The oddest thing of all was that I found myself undressing, propelled by that force that draws you toward the void. My brain tried to play its card-it was becoming delirious in all the hysteria, trying to break my spirit, make things seem menacing. Don’t do it, it told me, it happens one time in a million, but it happens-perhaps death awaits you in the ring, perhaps Joe will tear your head off. Spurred on by alcohol and fatigue, I felt myself drift off into morbid delirium: a horrible plunge into a dark and icy lake. I knew it only too well, it was always the same one. All my phobias tore at me. Fear of the dark, fear of madness, fear of death, the whole shebang. It was the moment of total fear that hits you from time to time. It was not new to me-I had already found the remedy. With great effort, I bent down to untie my shoes, saying to myself: Make friends with death, make friends with death, MAKE FRIENDS WITH DEATH!

This did the trick. I came up for air. The others were talking all around me, paying no attention to my problems. The guy in red sweats helped me suit up. I found myself wearing white trunks. My brain stopped carrying on. I climbed into the ring. Joe Attila smiled at me, nicely.

“You know anything about this?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “This is the first time I’ve ever had gloves on.”

“Okay, well, don’t be afraid. I’ll go easy. It’s all in good fun, right?”

I didn’t answer. I had hot and cold flashes. Though Joe and I were about the same size, the resemblance stopped there. My head was bigger than his, his shoulders were wider than mine, and his arms were like my thighs. He started hopping around.

“Ready?” he said.

I felt myself take off. All the accumulated rage and impotence of the last few days channeled itself into my right fist. I took a swing at Joe-the punch of a lifetime-letting out a little grunt as I did. I hit his gloves. He backed up, furrowing his eyebrows.

“Hey! Easy,” I said.

I must have been running a temperature of 100 or 101. He started dancing around again. I seemed to have lead in my shoes. He faked left, then gave me a right cross to the chin. It wouldn’t have hurt a fly. I heard laughing behind me. Joe circled me like a butterfly, tapping me lightly, his gloves a blur. At one moment he turned toward the others to give them a wink. I gave him a straight shot to the mouth. I wasn’t playing.

The results were immediate. I blocked a one-two punch with my face, hit the canvas, and slid under the ropes. Eddie’s face appeared ten inches away from mine.

“What, are you crazy? What the hell’s got into you?”

“Never mind that. Tell me, am I bleeding?”

I couldn’t feel anything. My ears were ringing. His voice and mine both seemed to be coming from a dream. I couldn’t breathe.

“Jesus,” I groaned. “Am I bleeding somewhere?”

“No, but keep it up and you will be. Come on, take those gloves off.”

I pulled myself up by the ropes. Everything was fine, except that I weighed about four hundred pounds and my face was on fire. Joe was waiting in the middle of the ring, hopping around. He looked like an ephemeral mountain. He wasn’t smiling any more.

“I like to have fun as much as the next guy,” he said. “But don’t go too far. I wouldn’t try that again, if I were you.”