games the white guys tended to call more traveling calls and the black guys tended to call more fouls. Then there was Fat Eddie, the old gay guy who passed out towels from a cage located right by the showers. I'm guessing when he took his career aptitude test it recommended he throw towels to naked athletic men while sitting in a chair, eating Fritos all day. Fat Eddie had the perfect job. Recently, they added to Eddie's responsibilities and identified his station as the place to drop off the can goods for the soldiers. So, in addition to getting the chance to dry off in front of the fat man, you could also hand in a can of Spam for his 'Snack Attack' collection. Some how it made sense.
I headed down the stairs to the boxing gym, a dank room with low lighting and layers of fermented BO from years of training. No ventilation in the boxing room meant the body funk had seeped into the concrete and leather, and permeated the atmosphere. All of this made it perfect for my sport. I got in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror to warm up with shadowboxing and danced around the crack that went straight down the middle of the mirror. The crack had been there as long as I remember, and if I ever had to throw punches into a mirror without a crack I think I would get confused.
It took a long time to get warm and I couldn't figure out why. I threw jabs and methodically moved to my right-what a left-handed fighter should do-but I felt awkward from the soreness. I started to pick up the pace to get a sweat going when I heard Smitty come out of his office.
'Duff-Hold up,' he said. He stood in the threshold of his little office with the plastic window so old it had yellowed. He folded his and scrunched up his forehead. Balding, his curly grayish hair framed his haggard brown face. He sighed and unfolded his arms and walked toward me.
'Go on home, Duff,' he said without any expression or inflection.
'What?'
'Go on home.'
'What are you talking about?'
'You ain't right, kid. You're balance is off.'
'Just loosening up.'
'Go on home, Duffy.'
'I'm fine, really.'
'Go on home-now.' He increased the inflection in his voice just slightly, but that's all he ever did. I knew not to question him, but I didn't understand what the big deal was. When Smitty said you had to do something you had to. He didn't see a ton of grey in life, and I respected him even when he was wrong. Besides, I had no fights on the near horizon, so there wasn't much point in arguing.
It's about ten minutes to my converted trailer on 9R and Elvis came along for the ride as he always did. I loved the King's early sixties period, and he went from One Broken Heart for Sale to Please Don't Drag that String Around — both songs by Otis Blackwell, the guy who did Don't Be Cruel. Or, come to think of it, maybe it was Leiber and Stoller, the guys who did Hound Dog. I always got that shit mixed up.
My domicile gleamed in the sun, as aluminum Airstream trailers tend to do. I had christened it the Moody Blue after the Elvis song, and also because I thought it lended some class to living in a trailer. It made it kind of yacht-like-in a white trash kind of way the customized addition coming out the back of it gave it a special appeal, so please don't make the mistake of assuming it is just a trailer.
My girlfriend's…er…uh…my fiancee's-yeah that's right, the future Mrs. Duffy Dombrowski's-car was parked outside on the gravel. This hadn't been a four star day, but there was still a chance to turn it around with a ninth inning rally. Rene and I had been seeing each other for almost a year, and for a guy who has had a lifetime of bad relationships, she was a welcome relief. She wasn't diagnosable with any major psychiatric illnesses, she hadn't stolen anything from me, and she enjoyed sex. That put her in a very small percentage of the women I've gotten involved with.
Rene was a graphic designer, which made her a little artsy, but not enough to make her a whack job. I liked artsy-fartsy, I liked avant-garde, and I even liked a woman with a little bit of a dark side. Dark side, in the sense she gave life some thought and didn't always see things as uncomplicated, easy to define, or static. She was also a hot red head with green eyes, an ample bosom, whose legs came all the way up to there. I guess you can tell a guy like me is in love when he chooses 'ample bosom' over 'a great rack.'
The best part was she was crazy about me. She knew the kind of money I made and it didn't matter. You see, she was brought up with money, but with a couple of emotionally distant parents who, honestly, just sounded like assholes. The fact I worked with poor people and lived in a trailer didn't turn her off; she actually kind of liked it. She said I was 'genuine.'
That's me, one genuine motherfucker.
It doesn't mean everything was perfect. Two things she didn't like at all-one was the fact I boxed. She saw it as crude and macho and a useless archaic way for two men to hurt each other. My esoteric and philosophical explanations didn't work and my references to Gene Tunney, considered a gentleman and a genius, Sugar Ray Robinson, a brilliant tap dancer and entrepreneur, and Hector Camacho, who liked to wear loincloths in the ring, didn't help. I figured she'd warm up to boxing after a while, or soon enough it would be time for me to retire. The other thing she didn't like was my roommate, who, unlike most male roommates, would come along with the marriage. Al is my roomie, and he and Rene just didn't see eye to eye on many issues. Actually, Al didn't see eye to eye with any body because, well, he's a basset hound and he's only about eleven inches tall. It wasn't really surprised she didn't get along with Al. Al barked all the time, and when he wasn't barking, he farted and when he wasn't gaseous, he smelled a tad houndy. He was given to fits of enthusiasm in which he would jump on people. This was more of a problem for men because at Al's height his attacks landed directly on the most sensitive area of a man's body. He also ate furniture; never quite mastered the whole housebreaking deal, and he never did anything he didn't want to do.
Al was a great pet.
I got him from a client who got murdered. 'Al' was derivative from a Muslim name that had to do with Allah because his original owner was in the Nation of Islam for a while. I said I'd watch him while she did a short stint in the county lockup, and she got killed. For that reason and for one other Al was staying.
The other was he's saved my life a couple of times. When I pulled up, the fact the Blue was quiet was a good sign and probably meant the two creatures in my life were simply avoiding each other. I came in the door, toward the back of the trailer. I called the front door because it sounded better than saying 'I came in the door toward the back of the old trailer I live in.' Renee was on the couch that had no upholstery on the arms because of Al's obsessive-compulsive relationship with fabric. Renee didn't bounce up to kiss me, which was her somewhat over- exuberant way of greeting me since we'd been seeing each other. Some people found her affection a little nauseating but I didn't care. It was a nice ray of sunshine especially on days that were shit sandwiches.
'Hey, what's goin on babe?' I said by way of greeting. Her usually flowing red hair was tied back in a bun and she looked pale without any makeup. Frankly, she looked rough.
'Duff, we've got to talk,' she said without looking at me. Now, I've been dating long enough to know 'wanting to talk' wasn't a good sign.
'About?'
'I don't know. Something doesn't feel quite right' I felt that funny feeling in my throat and chest when something bad was about to happen.
'Something with us?'
'I don't know. I guess everything that has to do with one of us has to do with both us,' she said and looked away. Philosophically, I think that made sense, but it didn't do anything to that feeling in my chest.
'Hey, are you all right?' Rene looked at me for the first time. The look on her face was one part concern and a bunch of other parts anger.
'What are you talking about?'
'You're wobbling.'
'I am not.'
'Did you get hurt boxing?'
'No.'
'You did and now you're lying about it.'
'I got hit. That's not getting hurt.'
'Oh bullshit, Duffy. You know exactly what I mean.' I got caught lying and I felt my face flush. The physical
