Homemade Sin (31 page)

“I wouldn't have it any other way,” Dutch said.

“No hitting below the belt,” the referee said. “If there's a clinch, when I touch you, break immediately. No late blows. You both got it?”

The fighters nodded.

“OK, go back to your corners and wait for the bell.” The referee stepped out of the ring as ‘The Pig' turned to go back to his corner, Dutch following closely behind. When The Pig stopped at his stool and turned he saw Dutch's face inches from his own. Startled, he assumed he had missed the bell and now he was caught with his defenses down He steeled himself for Dutch's blow.

Dutch's arm shot out with lightning speed … past the Pig's face, and touched the rope three times. Dutch smiled as he turned and strode back to his corner of the ring.

When the bell rang, both fighters moved to the center of the ring. Before The Pig had a chance to settle in and size up his opponent Dutch caught him with a hammer-like roundhouse to the side of his head. As The Pig staggered, Dutch followed with a left hook to the stomach that could have stopped a truck. The Pig, his breath knocked out, bent forward in pain. Dutch grinned and caught The Pig's chin in a lightning fast uppercut that brought The Pig up off his feet and backwards on to the canvas. The Pig lay on the canvas writhing, trying hard to breathe.

The referee stepped in and started a ten-count, trying to be heard over the sound of the cheering crowd. Dutch stepped back and touched the south rope three times. On the canvas The Pig tried to rise up and fell back down.

“One … two … three … four …” the referee counted.

“Six … seven … hey, wait ref!” Dutch complained, “You're throwing my count off, start over.”

“If you say so,” said the referee. “One…two…three…”

The Pig stood, he was shaky but he was upright. The referee stopped counting and peeled back The Pig's eyelids and looked into his spinning eyes. Shrugging, the referee stepped away and dropped his arm to indicate ‘go ahead and fight'.

As Dutch approached, The Pig faked a left and tried to connect with a right cross. Dutch easily ducked it, stepped to the right and nailed The Pig with a left jab followed by his own right cross that connected with the force of a wrecking ball. The Pig hit the canvas as the bell rang, ending round one. The Pig's manager dragged him to his corner.

“You got my towel ready?” Dutch said as he bounced over to his corner. He hadn't even broken a sweat.

“Yeah, yeah,” groused the Manager. “Exactly 62 degrees Fahrenheit, slightly damp with a lime wedge folded into it.”

Dutch snatched the damp towel from his manager and dabbed his face. He took a sip of lime-infused water from his water bottle and watched as The Pig's manager tried to revive the man slumped on the stool by fanning his face with a towel. As the bell rang to start round two, The Pig's manager dumped a bucket of ice water on the fighter's head and pushed him out into the ring.

Dutch approached the swaying Pig. “Are you OK?” Dutch said.

“I'm OK,” The Pig said. “Let's go!”

“Well, I'm game if you are,” Dutch said and unleashed a flurry of punches. The Pig tried to cover his face, his mid-section, then his face again, as Dutch beat him repeatedly about the head, face, chest and stomach. In the middle of the pugilistic punishment, a seam of Dutch's glove grazed The Pig's forehead leaving a small cut that began to ooze blood. Dutch ceased battering the Pig and stepped back, horror in his eyes. The Pig staggered, the cut over his eye now trickling blood. A thin red rivulet ran down his face and dripped off his chin. Dutch looked at his glove and shrieked; “Contaminated! You've contaminated my glove!” Dutch was dancing wildly around the ring and shaking his glove as if he had stuck his hand into a hive of bees.

Running over to his corner he continued shrieking, “Get it off! Get it off!” shaking the glove in his manager's face.

“If you leave the ring I'm gonna have to give you a count,” the referee called after him grabbing Dutch's shoulder as he started for his corner. Dutch shook it off.

“Do what you want,” Dutch screamed over his shoulder to the referee. “I have to wash my hands. I'm contaminated. The germs, man, think of all the germs!”

“One … two … three …” the referee counted.

Dutch thrust his blood spotted glove at his manager who quickly unlaced it and slipped it from his shaking hand.

“I have to wash my hands!” Dutch screamed again, holding his bare hand as far away from his body as possible, like a bomb set to go off at any second. His manager doused his hand with anti-bacterial gel and held out a bucket of distilled water with a sponge floating on top. Dutch plunged his hand into the water and began scrubbing furiously.

“Six … seven … eight …” counted the referee as the manager slipped on a fresh glove, right out of the box. The Pig stood by the referee, waiting, his nose taped by his manager to stop the bleeding.

Dutch bounded back into the center of the ring as the referee counted “Nine …” When the referee stepped back to allow the fight to resume, Dutch faked a left jab and connected with a roundhouse right that knocked The Pig again to the canvas. Dutch looked down at The Pig, sprawled on the canvas, taking the full count.

Dutch noticed the seams running down the middle of canvas ring. The seams had stitches holding the two halves together. I wonder how many stitches there are, thought Dutch, I have to count them. He began to count, one, two, three, four …

Dutch, counting the stitches, didn't see The Pig push himself into a standing position.

An unseen right cross caught Dutch on the side of his head, knocking him to the canvas. He came down hard, his face hitting the center seam of the canvas …six, seven, eight, nine… Dutch continued to count the stitches.

“One … two … three …four …” the referee counted.

“Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen …” Dutch counted.

Dutch flashed back on his childhood, growing up in a filthy tenement house in Brooklyn. He could see himself at four years old, playing on the dusty and sticky floor of the tiny living room while his mother snored, passed out in a vomit-stained housecoat on the piss-stained couch. He ran his hot-wheels car across the floor and watched it come to rest near a small hole in the baseboard. He scooted over to get his car and peered into the hole. Two small black eyes peered back at him and twitched a whiskered nose. He reached for his car and the creature bit him on the finger. Dutch shivered on the canvas floor as he continued to count.

“Get up! Get up!” Dutch's manager boomed from his corner.

Dutch remembered his father in wind-smeared boxers and a yellowing T-shirt standing over his bed breathing beer breath on him as Dutch pretended to sleep, trying to ignore the biting bugs in his bed, keeping his eyes tightly sealed. He remembered getting up to go to school, putting on clothes so dirty that they were stiff. He remembered removing a dirty bowl from the sink, scraping off the biggest chunks of stuck-on food and filling it with stale cereal. Venturing into the graffiti-covered hallway, he'd had to step around a sleeping wino as he took the stairs to the street, the smell of garbage and urine assaulting his nose.

He swore then that when he grew up and got out of this place he would never be dirty again.

He wasn't sure when it started, but by the time he was eight, he was cleaning the filthy apartment himself, washing the clothes, changing the sheets but, for some reason, he could never get the place quite clean enough. By the time he was eleven he had become obsessed with cleaning.

“Seven … eight … nine …” the referee counted.

“Dammit ref,” Dutch shouted. “You keep making me lose count!”

As a young man in the shabby apartment he was constantly cleaning. He cleaned the bathrooms over and over, scrubbed the floors on his hands and knees. He even washed the light bulbs that hung from the ceiling by single wires. He was teased constantly at school about his habits, wiping off his desk seat before he sat, cleaning the water fountain before he drank and cleaning the cutlery in the cafeteria before he ate. He wiped off the dodge balls in gym class with wet wipes before he would touch them.

Teasing led to confrontations and confrontation led to fights. Soon, Dutch was fighting and winning against boys twice his size. He was a fighter, a clean fighter. Over the years the cleaning led to other obsessions – counting, ritually touching things a certain number of times, flicking lights on and off …

“OUT” shouted the referee as he reached out and took The Pig's gloved hand and held it aloft.

“Too bad for The Cleanser,” announced the first commentator.

His partner, the co-commentator, spoke up. “I talked to his trainer before the match and he seemed to feel that Dutch had his Obsessive Compulsive Disorder under control. I guess not.”

“Too bad,” the first commentator said. “He was clearly the better fighter.”

Cutter and Dee Dee stared at each other. Evil smiles bloomed on both faces like black roses.

Back in the ring, Dutch continued to count the stitches.

When The Pig danced around him in the ring in victory, Dutch counted. When the referee climbed out of the ring and headed for home, Dutch counted.

When his manager muttered that he would never, ever, manage a fighter with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder again, then packed up his sponge and bucket and walked sadly toward the locker room, Dutch counted.

The crowd filed out of the arena and Dutch continued to count.

Roland pushed the button on the remote control, and the television went black. He poured a shot of tequila into a shot glass with a little skull and cross bones on it and slid it towards Cutter. “How much did you lose this time?” he said.

“He lost two large.” Tony said then laughed as Cutter downed the shot. Roland poured him another.

“But you gotta get back on your regular losing streak if I'm gonna get back the fifty grand you won off me on that NASCAR race,” Tony said. “Who the hell would have ever thought Rebel Buford would win Daytona?” Tony genuflected and said, “Bless his soul.”

Tony smiled to himself. He had bet ten large himself on Rebel Buford winning Daytona and cleaned up.

“Bless his soul,” echoed Cutter and downed his second shot.

“I think you need to take a little drive over to Tampa,” Dee Dee said to Cutter.

It took Cutter less than an hour to drive from St. Petersburg Beach to Tampa. He entered the empty boxing arena, and found Dutch, still lying on the canvas, counting stitches.

At last, Dutch stood and announced with pride, “Three thousand, four hundred and sixty seven!”

He looked around and beheld an almost empty auditorium. Only one man sat in an aisle seat in the back of the auditorium. “Where did everybody go?” Dutch was surprised and a bit dejected. He touched the ropes at each compass point of the ring three times, climbed through the ropes, slipped into his robe and began to trudge up the aisle toward the locker room.

As he passed, Cutter pressed a small slip of paper in the boxer's hand. It read:

The Fugu Lounge

In the Santeria Hotel, St. Pete Beach

Extreme Dining at its Best

Good for a free entrée

And a one-night stay

An hour later Cutter pulled into the Santeria hotel and crossed the parking lot toward the Fugu Lounge. As he approached the door he heard a loud “Pssssst” from behind the dumpster, then he heard “Cutter? Is that you?”

Cutter wandered over to the dumpster. A skinny black woman was peeking out at him. Cutter looked down beside the dumpster and beheld a pile of fornicating felines going at it hammer and tongs. He heard a hiss and followed the sound to the snarling, black cat sitting on the top of the dumpster, glowering at him.

“Not you again,” Cutter said to Stinky, and again, slapped Stinky from the dumpster with the back of his hand.

“You are soooo dead.” Stinky aimed glittering green eye-daggers at Cutter.

“Bella!” Cutter said. “What are you doing here?”

“I'm looking for Hussey,” Bella said. “The folks at the college said she gave this hotel as her permanent address.

“Yeah, she works here now; has a room on the second floor. Why are you looking for her?”

“Hussey has a book I want,” Bella said conspiratorially. “I need to get it back.”

“I thought you were blind,” Cutter said, “what happened?”

“I got better,” Bella said. “I need you to help me get that book called Conjures Mama Wati gave Hussey.”

“Jeez, I don't know,” Cutter said, “she already thinks I'm a shit. If she catches me sneaking around her room stealing stuff, she will never take me back.”

“Take you back? Are you two on the outs?”

“Yeah, I lost all of our money gambling and she won't even talk to me, but I won some of it back and we have a plan to make a lot more to boot.”

“Oh yeah?” Bella said. “What kind of plan you got? And who is ‘we'?”

“Me and this girl, Dee Dee. She's the sushi chef at the restaurant. We're turning athletes with psychological problems into zombies and then betting on them. When they win, we clean up. It's a sweet deal. I already won fifty thousand on the NASCAR driver we turned into a zombie. Actually, we tricked Hussey into turning him into a zombie. We're going to do a boxer next, guy named Dutch ‘The Cleanser' Lewis.”

“That's interesting,” said Bella, the wheels turning behind her dark eyes. “You tricked Hussey into using her Mambo powder on a human? I bet she'd be madder than a hornet if she found out. Now, about that book, I think you are going to get it for me.”

“I told you I couldn't do it,” Cutter said.

“Want me to tell Hussey you tricked her into making a human zombie?”

“Please don't tell Hussey. She'll never speak to me again.” He realized he had said too much.