John Jodzio - Knockout

I want to see if they all want to grab a drink before we all split up, but I know to not even ask.

“Maybe our paths will cross again,” Grimace says, shaking my hand.

After I go for a swim, I put on my bulletproof vest and Autumn’s panties under my clothes. When I walk into Ari’s, Eleanor is giving a fat guy a lap dance on a couch by the back wall. When she finishes, the fat man gives her a long, uncomfortable hug. I order a drink, down it, order another. Eleanor walks over to me.

“Is Eleanor actually your real name?” I ask her.

She goes behind the bar and gets her wallet, hands me her ID. It says “Eleanor Tricando” on it. “There’s your proof.”

While she’s shoving her ID back into her wallet, a picture floats out of it, lands onto the floor. I pick it up. It’s a picture of a little boy, with a wide smile, floppy brown hair.

“Yours?” I ask.

“Yep,” she says.

She reaches for the picture, but I pull it away from her, hold it above my head.

“I should tell you he’s cute, right?” I say.

She jumps up and down, slaps at my wrist. I’m only teasing, but her face turns hard.

“I don’t care what the fuck you say about my kid,” she says. She motions to the three bouncers by the door.

“You fucked with one of our ladies,” the biggest one says. “That means your night is done.”

The man’s voice is weary, like he’s been here since noon, like he just wants to head home to his family.

“Time to go,” another one of the bouncers says.

The three of them start to push me outside, but I decide I’m not going anywhere, that I want to talk to Eleanor some more. They wrestle me to the ground, kneel on my back. I know I should cut my losses, go limp, let them chuck me out in the street. I don’t go easy. My mouth is right next to the ankle of one of these guys and I bite him hard, dig my teeth into his skin until I hit bone. The guy screams and jumps off my back, but the other two bouncers start wailing on me, kicking and punching. My vest doesn’t do shit to help. I feel every blow.

Lisa’s father was shot from a cannon once. It was on Circus of the Stars . It’s twenty years ago now, when her dad was playing Dr. Lance Turner on the soap opera Sunset Beach , but he still likes to watch his grainy videotape of it whenever he gets wasted.

In the video, her father wears a white jumpsuit and a silver helmet. He sheds his red cape as he climbs up the stepladder. He slides into the cannon, gives a thumbs up to the crowd. There’s a long drum roll followed by a thunderous boom. Suddenly, bursting through the gray smoke, flying up into the night sky, is her father.

Usually when he watches this tape, Lisa gives him his space. Tonight though, she plops down on the arm of his recliner and watches his descent. She watches him overshoot the landing net and fly past the bales of safety hay. She sees his body slam down on the hard and unforgiving earth, sees him tumble head over heel, shattering his left shoulder, dislocating his right elbow, breaking both ankles and his hip.

“Maybe there’s a movie on?” she says.

Her dad takes a swallow from his lowball while she slips on her jacket. He hits rewind.

“And maybe you should stop dating your weed dealer,” he tells her.

Eric’s her weed dealer and sort of boyfriend. Their date tonight is part work and part fun. A week ago Eric tore his Achilles playing beach volleyball and he asked her to drive his car out to the swamp to buy his weekly brick from his wholesaler.

“It’s a two-hour drive,” he tells her, “but it’s scenic.”

In exchange for chauffeuring him, Eric will pay her three hundred dollars. He’s also promised to cook her dinner. He’s the one who first called this a date, but Lisa is the one who keeps calling it that.

When she pulls up in front of his apartment building Eric hops over to her car. When she signed his cast last week it was totally blank, but when he gets into the passenger seat she sees that it has filled up and that her well wishes have disappeared underneath a drawing of a dragon torching up a blunt.

“You ready for an adventure?” he asks, holding up a bag of beef jerky.

She’s trying to let Eric’s enthusiasm for life work its charms on her. Instead of questioning his motives, she’s letting things flow to wherever they’re naturally going to flow. She’s not obsessing over each word he says, she’s not revealing all her needs and concerns too early on.

“Up for anything,” she says.

They drive north. She doesn’t leave Tampa much and she’s forgotten what it’s like in the swamp, every leaf and tree battling for its own sunlight, vines choking anything moored to solid ground.

She brought some Trivial Pursuit cards along to fill the silences. She memorized all the answers beforehand so she’ll look smarter than she is.

“What president once sang ‘Amazing Grace’ with Willie Nelson?” he asks.

“Jimmy Carter,” she answers.

“What Italian liqueur is made from bitter almonds?” he says.

“Amaretto?” she says, the lilt of a question in her voice.

After a couple more correct answers, Eric tells her to take a left turn. They bump down a dirt road.

“Over there,” Eric says, pointing to a trailer perched on the edge of a pond. When they pull up the red rock driveway, the door of the trailer pops open. Eric’s wholesaler, Terry, walks out, wearing a stretch-marked tank top that’s so tight Lisa can see the darkness of his belly hair underneath. Three dogs, German Shepherds, their coats caked with mud, jump around him and bark.

“This your girl?” he yells out to Eric.

Even though it’s vague, the mention of “your” and “girl” in the same sentence in regards to Eric makes Lisa blush.

“Uh-huh,” Eric nods.

Terry frisks Eric first. Then he pats her down. His hands are strangely soft and he smells like oranges.

While the two men chat, Lisa wanders over near the pond. She kneels down and picks up a rock off the ground, hugs it to her chest. The sun went down two hours ago, but there’s still some heat from the day held inside. Eric hands Terry a manila envelope and Terry hands him a duffel bag and then they get in her car and drive back to Tampa.

“Totally easy, right?” Eric says.

Eric tells her he is going to make her prawns for dinner but when they get back to his apartment he notices there are lights on his living room he didn’t leave on. He gets twitchy, scanning the street for any strange cars. He sees he missed a call, checks his messages.

“Everything’s okay,” he says after he listens to it, “but I’m gonna need to take a rain check on dinner.”

Lisa knows if she opens her mouth now, whatever comes out will sound needy or disappointed. Eric peels off three one-hundred-dollar bills from his wad, pushes them into her palm.

“Thanks for tonight,” he smiles, kissing her cheek.

Lisa gets up the next morning and finds her father in his recliner moving his pencil around his crossword. He’s not very good at them, but he read something about them staving off dementia so he gives it his best shot.

“What’s an eight-letter word for pouring forth?” he asks.

They’re close enough to the ocean to have the birds but not the fun. They’re close enough to the beach that the birds carry things back from there to show them exactly what they’re missing. A few days ago, a cormorant dropped a beach towel in their backyard. Last week, a seagull dropped half of a corndog on the patio. In the past six months, they’ve thrown away three deflated beach balls, two spatulas, a pink wig.