Suckerpunch: (2011) (24 page)

“So?” Tezo asked.

I opened my mouth, and Parasite kicked me in the lower back. The air went out of me like an untied balloon. I collapsed.

Tezo kicked me in the belly. More air went out, stuff that had been hanging out in the bottom of my lungs so long it smelled like middle school. The two of them each grabbed an arm and hauled me to the tub and dumped me in.

My head cleared the end near the stall, but my feet stuck over the other end so my shins cracked against the lip. Tezo bent my legs and smashed the mesh lid over the top and sat on it. Parasite joined him, his ass directly above my face. I was wedged in with my head squished between my left shoulder and the mesh, which dug into my forehead and would turn into a cheese grater if I moved too much. The water and trash combined to make a cold and jagged nest.

Tezo reached behind him and turned on one of the urinal spigots. More cold water fell on my side and back. “Comfy?” he asked.

I tried to talk and got out something in baby goat language. I shifted as much as I could to take the bend out of my neck and said, “This isn’t going to get you any money.”

“You got time,” he said. He had to raise his voice over the hiss of the pipes. “This is my negotiating table. You like it?”

Parasite laughed.

I pushed with everything against the mesh. It could have been welded on. Wrappers, butts, and Lotto tickets sloshed around my face, and the water was over my hips. I could feel broken glass scraping against the bottom of the tub when I moved. I wanted to kick against the lid but couldn’t get my legs straight, and it was too cramped to roll onto my back to get my knees pressed against the mesh. I tried to use my hands and forehead to push, but Parasite bounced a few times and put an end to that.

I fumbled around behind my head and found the drain, but it was a hard pile of caulk or putty stuck in the outlet pipe. It was there forever.

I started to panic. I’d never been drowned before, so my body didn’t know what to do. My breathing had no rhythm, just ragged gasps and spurts as I jerked and squirmed between the water and the wire grid. The water slapped at my chin. Everything else was underwater. Objects floating in the tub bumped against me and rode currents into my jeans and neckline.

“I’m fighting tonight,” I said, “on the Warrior card. Main event. Put money on me to win, and you’ll walk away happy.”

“Is there a fix?”

The water was at my chin. I yelled about Marcela and Kendall as fast as I could and told Tezo there was no way I was going to lose the fight. The last few words were gurgled out. The water was up to my nose when somebody turned it off.

Parasite shifted to the end of the mesh so Tezo could look down at me from over my legs. “What’s your name?”

I had to tilt my head back and get my eyes under the water to get my mouth above it. “Wallace.”

Tezo got his phone out again and did the staring routine while he made a call.

I kept busy by shooing trash out of my nose so I could breathe and rolling side to side as much as I could to get the water moving. After a few rolls it started to slop over the edge of the tub onto the tile floor, giving me more room to breathe.

“Hey, it’s me. Hold on.” Tezo leaned over and looked at his feet and the water spreading across the floor. “Knock that shit off,” he said to me.

I rolled faster. I could tell by his face he wasn’t a fan of insubordination, but he let it slide. What was he going to do, take the lid off and make me stop?

He brought the phone back up and said, “Is there a guy fighting tonight named Wallace? . . . Yeah . . . No shit? I’m gonna put some money on him.”

I shifted, slightly more comfortable knowing I was getting out soon.

Tezo listened for a few beats and said, “Can I bet on a fighter to lose for not showing up? . . . Fuck. Okay, let’s go fifty—no, a hundred grand, Wallace to lose.” He closed the phone and opened the faucet.

Tezo stared down at me thrashing and dying. “Go easy, son. It’s a bad way to go, but it don’t have to be as bad as you’re making it.”

I pressed my lips against the mesh and sucked air and pushed with everything I had. Nothing moved.

Tezo said, “I’d put you back in the pit, but now that you’re a pro fighter I can’t afford the licensing.”

Parasite thought that was hilarious.

The cold water poked into the outside corners of my eyes, and I had to shut them. I grunted air in and out and tried to mash my nose against the wires to keep water from flowing into my sinuses.

Then I couldn’t breathe at all.

I tried again and couldn’t bring any air in. Not even a wet gurgle. I had to push against the wire mesh to make my face drop into the water. I opened my eyes, and everything was pale and hazy.

The edges were closing in.

Then the paleness moved, and I saw Tezo’s face again, grinning at me like it was the happiest day of his life. Parasite’s bare ass hovered over my mouth.

“Kiss it,” Tezo said into the water.

I shot back up and pressed against the wires and tried to get air, and Parasite dropped his ass again. No more air. I could hear them laughing.

My eyes started to bulge. The water was churned and foamy from the faucet flow, and everything I did sent the surface bobbing up and down through the mesh, creating a whirl of ripples and waves. Garbage swirled like a filthy cosmos. I pushed up for one last shot at air, ass flavor and all, but some trash wedged between my forehead and the mesh. I pulled back and the water moved the stuff—a bloated French fry, a condom, and a long, used hypodermic needle with brown crust on the inside of the cylinder—in front of my face.

I carefully pinched the extended plunger between my thumb and forefinger. I closed my fist around the plunger and the barrel and shoved the needle into Parasite’s right ass cheek three times like I was sending Morse code.

Parasite screamed. But he didn’t move.

I jabbed him five more times, moving left to right, hoping to find a nerve that wouldn’t let him overcome the pain. Red clouds fanned into the water. Parasite loosed a steady screech but kept his weight on the lid. It looked like Tezo was holding him there.

I pushed the needle in as hard as I could and swirled it around. I felt the vibration through the barrel as the end of the needle scraped against bone. After the third revolution Parasite sprang off the lid and slipped on the wet tiles and went down.

Vesuvius had nothing on my eruption from the tub.

Tezo dumped off the end of the tub and skidded against the wall under the window with the wire lid on top of him. I stood up, hardly noticing the weight of my wet clothes or the loud music coming from the other side of the door. My teeth were bared.

Parasite was in front of the tub with his pants down, leaning on his right hand and knee. He planted his left foot and tried to put weight on it, but the tile was too slick and his foot shot straight out.

I didn’t give him a second chance to get up.

I grabbed the top of the stall with my left hand and the rim of the tub with my right and vaulted out. Parasite looked over his shoulder in time for my foot to smash into his ear and send his face toward the floor. I let go with both hands and was careful but fast while I closed the distance and dropped my left knee onto his spine. His head snapped up from the impact, and I smacked it down with a palm strike that started at my shoulder. His nose splattered against the tile, and he screamed into the puddle.

He turned his head and cocked his arms like he was going to do a push-up, but I rose on my knee long enough to bring my right foot around so I could stomp my heel on the back of his hand twice—once to break the bones and once to move the pieces around. With my foot still moving back, I pivoted on my knee and let all my weight flow into the tip of my right elbow. I crushed that into his ear. It sounded good.

The tension went out of his body. Maybe three seconds had passed since I got out of the tub. I roared something non-English into his pulpy ear. This was not MMA or anything I’d learned on Gil’s mats; that muscle memory had been overruled by something that waited in the mud of my primordial soup until the dark waters got churned up enough. Now it was frolicking in the lather, and somebody was going to die.

I left him there and turned on Tezo.

He’d shoved the lid off and was trying to get his hand behind him to pull the revolver out of his belt, but he was on his side and slipped on the wet floor, pinning his arm beneath him. I closed in as fast as I could, and Tezo rolled onto his back to free his arm. He grabbed the gun, and my feet went out from under me. I tipped forward and landed with both my forearms across his right one, crushing it against the tiles.

Tezo hissed with pain and tried to punch me with his left. I ducked and let him crack his hand against the top of my head. Brought my right knee up to pin the gun hand and put all my weight on it, posturing over him with my left foot planted next to his face. He was jammed in the corner so there wasn’t much room to work. He tried to push me off with his left so I pulled his arm straight and dislocated his elbow over my knee. It sounded like snapping a fistful of dry spaghetti.

When Tezo opened his mouth to scream, I hit him with a short left hook that bounced his head off the wall. Again. Again. His legs went stiff. He was looking at me but not on purpose. I bounced his head again, smiling at him until a voice of reason finally spoke up in my head and said I was going to break my hand, so I switched to elbows.

I slapped the gun across the floor and yanked Tezo out of the corner so I could get my knees into his armpits. I drove elbows into his temples and bounced them off his eye sockets until my shoulders began to burn.

I stood and tried to pick up the tub to drop on his face. When I couldn’t lift it, I blamed my shirt. Halfway through getting the thing off, the heavy, wet material sticking to my back and bound up around my shoulders, I realized I was exhausted.

I let my shirt fall back down and sat on the edge of the tub. I wheezed air in and out through clenched teeth. I was spattered with blood, and spittle trailed down my chin. Compared to Tezo and Parasite, I looked like a Calvin Klein ad.

Tezo’s face was gone. The parts were still there, but they were on the wrong side or upside down or only attached by blood and hair. The tattoos made less sense than before. He was breathing, but I think he regretted it. Parasite was still facedown, huffing into a pink puddle with his ass in the air. The needle punctures looked angry.

I checked my hands. They were scraped and bloody but intact. They were not shaking. I rinsed them off as much as possible in the tub. Most of the pit muck was gone from my thrashing in the water, but the stench was still on me. I’d need bleach or fire to get it off.

I felt my elbows; they’d be swollen from the collisions with Tezo’s facial bones but no chips or nerve damage. I got to my feet and nothing gave out or protested. My breathing was close to normal. I tilted my head and tapped it with the heel of my hand to get some water out of my ear, and that was when I heard the music.

Jairo.

I cracked the bathroom door and put my eye to the opening. I could just see the top of Jairo’s head in the pit, facing toward the bleachers. Good. At least he was on his feet again.

The shotgun kid was showing me his right profile, standing over Jairo with a sloppy grin on his face. Everyone else was still on the other side of the tarp. The kid loosed a stream of brown juice through his teeth that arced above the pit and dropped like a mortar shell behind Jairo. I didn’t see him move or duck to avoid it. The kid laughed and took a step backward and started working his cheeks, constructing the next salvo.

The shotgun was on the lowest bleacher seat behind him. He’d see me before I could get to him or it. I thought about Tezo’s gun and Parasite’s black automatic. If the kid made me shoot, the whole gang would swarm in. Worse, the old women.

The kid threw both fists over his head and puffed his chest out—he must have hit the target—then grabbed his crotch and laughed and had to bend over to keep the vine of spit that fell out of his mouth from landing on his shirt.

I opened the door and started moving, my gaze on Jairo so I could give him the hush hush when he saw me.

Instead, he saw me, threw the bloody scrap of shirt at the kid, swore, and ran to the side of the pit near the tarps. I almost called him a stupid motherfucker but realized he was getting the kid to turn his back on me completely. Jairo jumped and got his hands on the lip of the pit and pulled and kicked against the rotten wood for momentum.