Dangerous Women (31 page)

Both parties said they were.

Marvin looked at Felina. She was sitting with her hands in her lap. She appeared confident and smug, like a spider waiting patiently on a fly.

The timekeeper hit the watch with his left thumb and rang the bell with his right hand. X-Man and Jesus came together with a smacking sound, grabbing at each other’s knees for a throw, bobbing and weaving. And then X-Man came up from a bob and threw a quick left. To Marvin’s amazement, Jesus slipped it over his shoulder and hooked X-Man in the ribs. It was a solid shot, and Marvin could tell X-Man felt it. X-man danced back, and one elderly man in the small crowd booed.

“Go fuck yourself,” X-Man yelled out.

X-Man and the Bomb came together again. There was a clenching of hands on shoulders, and Jesus attempted to knee X-Man in the balls. X-man was able to turn enough to take it on the side of the leg, but not in the charley horse point. They whirled around and around like angry lovers at a dance.

Finally X-Man faked, dove for Jesus’ knee, and got hold of it, but Jesus twisted on him, brought one leg over X-Man’s head, hooked the leg under his neck and rolled, grabbed X-Man’s arm, stretched it out, and lifted his pelvis against it. There was a sound like someone snapping a stick over their knee, and X-Man tapped out. That ended the round. It had gone less than forty-five seconds.

X-Man waddled over to his corner, nursing his arm a little. He leaned on the ropes. Marvin brought out the stool.

“Put it back,” the old man said. “I don’t want them to think I’m hurt.”

Marvin put it back, said, “Are you hurt?”

“Yeah, but that cracking you heard was just air bubbles in my arm. I’m fine. Fuck it. Put the stool back.”

Marvin put the stool back. X-Man sat down. Across the way, Jesus was seated on his stool, his head hung. He and X-Man looked like two men who wouldn’t have minded being shot.

“I know this,” X-Man said. “This is my last match. After this, I ain’t got no more in me. I can feel what’s left of me running out of my feet.”

Marvin glanced at Felina. One of the lights overhead was wearing out. It popped and went from light to dark and back to light again. Marvin thought for a moment, there in the shadow, Felina had looked older, and fouler, and her thick hair had resembled a bundle of snakes. But as he looked more closely, it was just the light.

The cowbell clattered. They had gotten some of their juice back. They moved around each other, hands outstretched. They finally clinched their fingers together, both hands. X-Man suddenly jutted his fingers forward in a way that allowed him to clench down on the back of Jesus’ fingers, snap him to the floor in pain. It was a simple move, but it put the Bomb’s face in front of X-Man’s knee. X-man kneed him in the face so hard, blood spewed all over the matting, all over X-Man.

Still clutching Jesus’s fingers, X-Man stepped back and squatted, pulled Jesus to his face. X-Man pulled free of the fingers, and as Jesus tried to rise, X-Man kicked him in the face. It was a hard kick. Jesus went unconscious.

The cowbell clattered. The timekeeper put the cowbell down and made his way to the ring. He climbed through and hitch-legged it over to Jesus. It took almost as much time as it would take for a blind man to find a needle in a haystack.

The timekeeper got down on one knee. Jesus groaned and sat up slowly.

His face was a bloody mess.

The timekeeper looked him over. “You up for it?” he said.

“Hell, yeah,” Jesus said.

“One to one!” yelled the timekeeper, and he made his slow pilgrimage back to his chair.

Jesus got up slowly, went back to his corner, trying to hold his head up high. X-Man was sitting on his stool, breathing heavily. “I hope I didn’t break something inside the old cocksucker,” he said.

X-Man closed his eyes and sat resting on his stool. Marvin was quiet. He thought the old man was asleep. Three minutes later, the cowbell clattered.

Jesus huffed loudly, creaked bones off the stool, stuttered-stepped to the center of the ring. X-Man came out in a slow shuffle.

They exchanged a few punches, none of which landed particularly well. Surprisingly, both seemed to have gotten a second wind. They tossed one another, and rolled, and jabbed, and gouged, and the bell rang again.

When X-Man was on his stool, he said, “My heart feels like a bird fluttering.”

“You ought to quit,” Marvin said. “It’s not worth a heart attack.”

“It ain’t fluttering from the fight, but from seeing Felina.”

Marvin looked. Felina was looking at X-Man the way a puppy looks at a dog treat.

“Don’t fall for it,” Marvin said. “She’s evil. Goddamn evil.”

“So you believe me?”

“I do. You think maybe she has those pipe cleaners with your hair with her?”

“How would I know?”

“In her coat, maybe?”

“Again, how would I know.” And then it hit the old man. He knew what Marvin was getting at. “You mean if she did have, and you got them …”

“Yeah,” Marvin said.

Marvin left X-Man sitting there, made a beeline for the closet. He opened the door and moved his hands around in there, trying to look like he was about natural business. He glanced back at X-Man, who had turned on his stool to look.

The cowbell rang. The two old gentlemen went at it again.

It was furious. Slamming punches to the head and ribs, the breadbasket. Clutching one another, kneeing in the balls. Jesus even bit the lobe off X-Man’s ear. Blood was everywhere. It was a fight that would have been amazing if the two men in the ring were in their twenties, in top shape. At their age it was phenomenal.

Marvin was standing in the old man’s corner now, trying to catch X-Man’s eye, but not in a real obvious way. He didn’t want him to lose focus, didn’t want Jesus to come under him and lift him up and drive the old man’s head into the ground like a lawn dart.

Finally the two clenched. The went around and around like that, breathing heavy as steam engines. Marvin caught X-Man’s eye. Marvin lifted up two knotted pipe cleaners, dark hair in the middle of the knot. Marvin untwisted the pipe cleaners and the hair floated out like a puff of dark dandruff, drifted to the floor.

X-Man let out his breath, seemed to relax.

Jesus dove for him. It was like a hawk swooping down on a mouse. Next thing Marvin knew, Jesus had X-Man low on the hips in a two-arm clench, and was lifting him up, bending back at the same time so he could drive X-Man over his head, straight into the mat.

But as X-Man went over, he ducked his head under Jesus’ buttocks, grasped the inside of Jesus’ legs. Jesus flipped backwards, but X-Man came up on his back, not his head. Instead, his head was poking between Jesus’ legs, and his toothless gums were buried in Jesus’ tights, clamping down on his balls like a clutched fist. A cry went up from the crowd.

Jesus screamed. It was the kind of scream that went down your back and got hold of your tailbone and pulled at it. X-Man maintained the clamp. Jesus writhed and twisted and kicked and punched. The punches hit X-Man in the top of the head, but still he clung. When Jesus tried to roll out, X-Man rolled with him, his gums still buried deep in Jesus’ balls.

Some of the oldsters were standing up from their seats, yelling with excitement. Felina hadn’t moved or changed her expression.

Then it happened.

Jesus slapped out both hands on the mat, called, “Time.” And it was over.

The elders left. Except Jesus and Felina.

Jesus stayed in the bathroom for a long time. When he came out, he was limping. The front of his tights were plumped out and dark with blood.

X-Man was standing, one hand on the back of a chair, breathing heavy.

Jesus said, “You about took my nuts, X-Man. I took one of your towels, shoved it down my pants to stop the blood. Them’s some gums you got, X-man. Gums like that, you don’t need teeth.”

“All’s fair in love and war,” X-Man said. “Besides, old as you are, what you using your nuts for?”

“I hear that,” Jesus said, and his whole demeanor was different. He was like a bird in a cage with the door left open. He was ready to fly out.

“She’s all yours,” Jesus said.

We all looked at Felina. She smiled slightly. She took X-Man’s hand.

X-man turned and looked at her. He said, “I don’t want her,” and let go of her hand. “Hell, I done outlived my dick anyhow.”

The look on Felina’s face was one of amazement.

“You won her,” Jesus said. “That’s the rule.”

“Naw,” X-Man said. “Ain’t no rule.”

“No?” Jesus said, and you could almost see that cage door slam and lock.

“No,” said X-Man, looking at Felina. “That hoodoo you done with the pipe cleaners. My boy here undid it.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Felina said.

They just stared at each other for a long moment.

“Get out,” X-Man said. “And Jesus. We ain’t doing this no more.”

“You don’t want her?” Jesus said.

“No. Get out. Take the bitch with you. Get on out.”

Out they went. When Felina turned the corner into the hallway, she paused and looked back. It was a look that said: You had me, and you let me go, and you’ll have regrets.

X-Man just grinned at her. “Hit the road, you old bitch.”

When they were gone, the old man stretched out on his bed, breathing heavily. Marvin pulled a chair nearby and sat. The old man looked at him and laughed.

“That pipe cleaner and hair wasn’t in her coat, was it?”

“What do you mean?” Marvin said.

“That look on her face when I mentioned it. She didn’t know what I was talking about. Look at me, boy. Tell me true.”

Marvin took a moment, said, “I bought the pipe cleaners and some shoe polish. I cut a piece of my hair, made it dark with the shoe polish, twisted it up in the pipe cleaners.”

X-Man let out a hoot. “You sneaky son of a bitch.”

“I’m sorry,” Marvin said.

“I’m not.”

“You’re not?”

“Nope. I learned something important. I’m a fucking dope. She didn’t never have no power over me I didn’t give her. Them pipe cleaners and the hair, hell, she forgot about that fast as she did it. Just some way to pass time for her, and I made it something special. It was just me giving myself an excuse to be in love with someone wasn’t worth the gunpowder it would take to blow her ass up. She just liked having power over the both of us. Maybe Jesus will figure that out too. Maybe me and him figured a lot of things out today. It’s all right, kid. You done good. Hell, it wasn’t nothing I didn’t know deep down, and now I’m out of excuses, and I’m done with her. It’s like someone just let go of my throat and I can breathe again. All these years, and this thing with Felina, it wasn’t nothing but me and my own bullshit.”

About seven in the morning X-Man woke up Marvin.

“What’s the matter?” Marvin asked.

X-Man was standing over him. Giving him a dentureless grin. “Nothing. It’s Christmas. Merry Christmas.”

“You too,” Marvin said.

The old man had a T-shirt. He held it out with both hands. It said X-Man and had his photograph on it, just like the one he was wearing. “I want you to have it. I want you to be X-Man.”

“I can’t be X-Man. No one can.”

“I know that. But I want you to try.”

Marvin was sitting up now. He took the shirt.

“Put it on,” said X-Man.

Marvin slipped off his shirt and, still sitting on the floor, pulled the X-Man shirt over his head. It fit good. He stood up. “But I didn’t get you nothing.”

“Yeah you did. You got me free.”

Marvin nodded. “How do I look?”

“Like X-Man. You know, if I had had a son, I’d have been damn lucky if he’d been like you. Hell, if he’d
been
you. ’Course, that gets into me fucking your mother, and we don’t want to talk about that. Now I’m going back to sleep. Maybe later we’ll have something for Christmas dinner.”

Later in the day Marvin got up, fixed coffee, made a couple of sandwiches, went to wake X-Man.

He didn’t wake up. He was cold. He was gone. There were wrestling magazines lying on the bed with him.

“Damn,” Marvin said, and sat down in the chair by the bed. He took the old man’s hand to hold. There was something in it. A wadded-up photo of Felina. Marvin took it and tossed it on the floor and held the old man’s hand for a long time.

After a while Marvin tore a page out of one of the wrestling magazines, got up, and put it to the hot plate. It blazed. He went over and held it burning in one hand while he used the other to pull out one of the boxes of magazines. He set fire to it and pushed it back under the bed. Flames licked around the edges of the bed. Other boxes beneath the bed caught fire. The bedclothes caught. After a moment the old man caught too. He smelled like pork cooking.

Like Hercules, Marvin thought. He’s rising up to the gods.

Marvin, still wearing his X-Man shirt, got his coat out of the closet. The room was filling with smoke and the smell of burning flesh. He put his coat on and strolled around the corner, into the hallway. Just before he went outside, he could feel the heat of the fire warming his back.

Books by Megan Lindholm include the fantasy novels
Wizard of the Pigeons
,
Harpy’s Flight,
The Windsingers,
The Limbreth Gate, The Luck of the Wheels,
The Reindeer People,
Wolf’s Brother,
and
Cloven Hooves,
the science fiction novel
Alien Earth,
and, with Steven Brust, the collaborative novel
The Gypsy
. Lindholm also writes as
New York Times
bestseller Robin Hobb, one of the most popular writers in fantasy today, having sold over one million copies of her work in paperback. As Robin Hobb, she’s perhaps best-known for her epic fantasy Farseer series, including
Assassin’s Apprentice,
Royal Assassin,
and
Assassin’s Quest,
as well as the two fantasy series related to it, the Liveship Traders series, consisting of
Ship of Magic,
Mad Ship,
and
Ship of Destiny,
and the Tawny Man series, made up of
Fool’s Errand,
Golden Fool,
and
Fool’s Fate
. She’s also the author of the Soldier Son series, composed of
Shaman’s Crossing,
Forest Mage,
and
Renegade’s Magic
. Most recently, as Robin Hobb, she’s started a new series, the Rain Wilds Chronicles, consisting of
Dragon Keeper,
Dragon Haven,
City of Dragons,
and
Blood of Dragons
. As Megan Lindholm, her most recent book is a “collaborative” collection with Robin Hobb,
The Inheritance and Other Stories
.