Leonard Gardner - Fat City

Tully continued to get up before dawn. Though Oma received monthly compensation for the death of her first husband, he dressed in the dark with the bitterness of one supporting a parasite. While Oma went on sleeping, he ate bread with coffee; if he had time he fried eggs and packed a lunch. Quietly he closed the door and went down the stairs and, as he hurried along lighted streets to the long lines of trucks and buses, a sense of relief at being alone came over him. He rode, sleeping, to peach orchards, where he spent the sweltering days on ladders among leaves filmed with insecticide, a kidney-shaped bucket hanging over his belly from a shoulder harness and thumping his thighs as he ran with it loaded to the train of trailers pulled through the shadows under the trees. By mid-afternoon he was back in the room. In his purple satin robe with BILLY TULLY across the back in white letters, he clopped in unlaced sockless shoes down the hall to the tub.

“You’re so handsome,” Oma said once as he stood in the robe after his bath, combing his hair in front of the mirror.

“I am?” Pleased, smiling, he turned, stretched luxuriously, moved to where she sat, and stood over her in coersive silence, a hand at the back of her head urging her to further homage.

In slacks and a short-sleeve shirt, the top buttons open, the sleeves folded up above his biceps, he took her out to eat. On the days when she was not in the room, he found her in the Harbor Inn, and after an early supper in a café crowded with farm workers, they spent the evening drinking.

One night in the sour twilight of Paris de Noche they met Esteban Escobar with a large young woman. Her hair was platinum blond, the pits in her face obscured by a coating of pink make-up, and in her presence Tully felt restricted by Oma; now that he had her he was no longer free to pick up a woman. The four of them drank together, Esteban at times placing an audible kiss on the girl’s fat white neck. He wore a well-pressed, tan summer suit, a yellow silk shirt open at the collar and immaculate brown and white wingtip shoes. His flat brown face was immobile, his irises as black as his oiled hair and as inexpressive as a bird’s. Tully felt an old ease around him. While never close friends, they had both been at their peaks together, and Esteban had lasted. A Filipino asparagus cutter, he could still draw his countrymen to the arena. He, and the girl beside him, renewed in Tully the belief that his own retirement might only be a protracted layoff between bouts. He asked who was at the gym, talked of past fights, progressed to the subject of mismanagement and eventually to his bout in Panama with Fermin Soto, which he viewed now, for the sake of convenience, as the pivotal event of a long-suspect relationship with Ruben Luna.

“To save a couple hundred bucks he sent me down there alone and blew my chance,” he said, and turned to Oma. “You know who Soto was then?”

“Soto. He’s the one you fought, isn’t he?”

“Oh, for God’s sake.”

“He was good, huh?”

“Good? I had that bum hanging on. I was all over him like a swarm of flies. I was on that night. I was on . You never seen so many sick faces. My own seconds looked sick, those bums. They all figured me for nothing and for six rounds I’m knocking him silly. I had that guy by the ass and there wasn’t anybody in that arena didn’t know it. So I’m back in the corner, I know I got him, I’m not even paying attention to what they’re doing. I don’t feel a thing. I just know he’s going out of there next round. So I go out and he pops me a couple times and here’s the referee stopping it and blood pouring all over me. How do you like that? Both eyes cut. Nobody says a thing. They’re all happy. Audience screaming their heads off. Seconds patch me up and put me on the plane, all smiles. Adios. So the first thing I get back to Stockton I go see Ruben and he takes off the butterflies and looks at the cuts and says there were done with a razor.” Tully paused.

“Were they?” asked Oma.

“Were they? Sure they were.”

“How could he tell?”

“He could tell by looking at them. What do you think? So we went up to Sacramento to the commissioner and filed a complaint.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing.” He paused again. The others waited.

“Is that all?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

They were all silent.

“That was a dirty trick,” offered the girl with Esteban.

“That’s about it, all right,” Tully said, and attempted to generate something more. “I don’t know, maybe I should of gone into something else, like insurance. You fight your heart out and what does it ever get you?”

“That was tough luck,” said Esteban in a clipped monotone. “Soto’s a good man.”

“Good? I had that guy beat.”

Esteban was leaning again toward his companion. “How about another drink? Tomorrow I take you downtown, get you something nice. You like perfume? I don’t care how much it cost, it don’t make no difference to me.”

“Okay, okay, don’t hang on me.”

“You like that, baby. Don’t tell me you don’t like that. I hang on you if I want to hang.”

“Aren’t you sweet.”

“I’m sweet if other people sweet to me.”

“I been thinking about giving it one last try,” Tully said. “I just let myself go all to pot. I’m going to start doing some running. If I can get in shape I know I can still fight.”

“Well, fight then,” said Oma.

“I’m going to.”

“Sure you are. I’ve heard that one before.”

“I am.”

“Sure, sure.”

“I mean it, goddamn it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh, screw you.”

“Blow it out your ass, cowboy.”

They sat in silence, all facing ahead while an over-head fan with oarlike blades revolved slowly through the heat. Angry, Tully frowned awhile into the mirror so that nobody would think he was stupid enough to be happy with Oma. Soon Esteban’s woman began to sigh with obvious impatience and so they all went down the street. Tully pressed against her as they entered a packed bar where a baldheaded man with side-burns and a blond woman with a worn, pretty face were picking electric guitars and singing.

Why don’t you love me like you used to do ?

Why do you treat me like a worn-out shoe ?

My hair is still curly and my eyes are still blue ,

Why don’t you love me like you used to do ?

That night in the room, Tully experienced a desperation he was afraid he could not contain. He felt as if his mind might shatter under the stress of Oma’s presence. He could not bring himself to speak, and when she spoke he could not listen. At the sound of her voice he felt he had to get away. Yet because he could not love her, she seemed more defenseless, and he more bound. As assuagement for the loss of his liberty, he longed for a closer attachment. In bed beside her he lay motionless, repelled by the thought of contacting her with even a toe. But her hand sought him. Though he did not yield, it moved with proprietary assurance, until he turned, his foot tangling in the sheet and pulling it from their bodies as he thrust his leg between hers with the savagery of one administering punishment. His exertions made no discernible impression. Afterwards as Oma slept, he was so excruciatingly aware of his structure, of each troubled limb, each restless joint, that he longed to thrash about in search of some position of ease. But he moved slowly, carefully, in order not to disturb her. As he inched up an arm, straightened a leg, his muscles seemed to pulse on their bones in an agony of confinement. He was balked. His life seemed near its end. In four days he would be thirty.