Three Balconies (12 page)

Harry could not have been more pleased. Along with so many Americans, Harry had been captivated by the television phenomenon. Julie had even worked the advisory “Don't call during the
Sopranos
” into her answering machine message which delighted many of their friends. The actor who stopped at Harry's table was not a regular – he'd had bit parts in two or three episodes – but to receive a compliment from anyone who had anything to
do
with the series was high praise indeed. It occurred to Harry that maybe he had been on screen a little longer than he realized – and that more of his face was recognizable than he had previously thought. He'd been so upset that he had probably never sat back and taken in the full impact of what he now thought of as his performance.

 

And so what began as a disaster for Harry turned out to have a surprisingly bright side. This was not an unusual development in his life. One of Harry's casual interests was military history. A favorite episode came about in the Franco-Prussian War, when all seemed lost for the Gallic nation; and then, all of a sudden, and out of nowhere, Ricciotti Garibaldi, the foreign recruit, rose up in the Cote D'Or; with his ragtag army of
francs-tireurs
, he began to cut through the German lines and to show that France still had teeth. France lost the war, and for that matter, Harry might lose his war
as well. But that was beside the point. Whenever Harry was down on his luck there always seemed to be a Garibaldi in his life. Acting was his new Garibaldi.

Not that he took it seriously. He had never even taken
screenwriting
seriously and he had done it most of his life. But just for fun, Harry began to calculate the kinds of roles he could play. Not the kind where he'd actually have to act. He wasn't about to sign up for lessons at The Actors' Studio. But the kind where he could just more or less show up and be himself. He could do writers, of course, and people in related professions, such as William Morris agents. He couldn't do Mexican bandits, but he could certainly do judges. He felt confident – with his hair – that he could play the hell out of judges. So if he could get a judge part here and there and maybe a role as a teacher – he had actually taught screenwriting at a community college for a couple of weeks up in Vancouver – if he could land a few judge and teacher parts here and there and pick up some more of those five hundreds and string it all together he'd have a nice little income to go with his pension. Throw in Julie's counseling money and maybe they could stick it out after all in financially strangulating Manhattan and not have to move to Flushing.

One thing he would not do, however, is audition. He'd move to Flushing – and the hell with what everybody thought – before he'd do that. That's all he would need is to be standing around with a bunch of old guys, skilled old guys with real acting track records, guys who did Falstaff with the
Lunts
for Christ's sakes, waiting around to try out for a judge part or a doorman. And that's probably what they'd want him to audition for, too, a doorman role, one who was about to retire with a heart condition and all the tenants come by to tell him how much they're going to miss him.

Let's say a Judge part did come up – or the hell with it, let's say it was a doorman role after all, just for argument's sake.... He might
read
– just go down there and read a few lines – so that they could get a feel for his capabilities and what he would be like in the
role – but only – and he was firm about this – only if he knew the director – or at least
someone
in the production. It wasn't that he needed the fix to be put in. It wasn't that at all. He just wanted to know that he wasn't wasting his time, that he didn't go all the way down there for nothing . . . that he had a pretty damned good shot at getting the part. Otherwise, if it couldn't be set up that way, if they wouldn't allow him to just read informally, with no commitment on anyone's part, theirs, or
Harry's
for that matter, if they couldn't do that much for him, then forget it.... They could keep the fucking part and get somebody else to do it.

Some poor bastard who really needed the work.

THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE that it was a grudge match. To the contrary, the fighters touched gloves respectfully at the end of each brutal round. Yet few in the arena could recall seeing two men in a boxing ring attack each other with such savagery. One was a pale square-shouldered Irish middleweight with a conventional straight-ahead style, the other a Jamaican who was listed at the same weight but was much scrawnier than his opponent. He had, nonetheless, what the boxing analysts call a “wide repertoire” of skills. Both men had decent but not especially distinguished records in the ring. There was nothing in their previous matches to indicate they were capable of fighting at such a high level and with such unrelieved intensity. Yet something in each man seemed to tap into a well of fury in the other. They did not bother to feel each other out. At the opening bell, they flew at one another and began to trade punches to the head and body – a furious exchange that had the crowd in a state of frenzy. Before the third round had ended, the excited television announcers were already calling it The Fight of the Year.

Philip Collins, a retired high school teacher, watched the action on a television set in a small apartment above a Greek restaurant in the Chelsea district of Manhattan. He was a tall, slender man who was, at 73, a bit stooped over. Though his hair had turned white, he had lost little of it. And he still had the strong profile that had led more than one person to ask if he was a film actor.

Collins had intended to thaw out his frozen dinner in the microwave, but the televised fight was so riveting that he did not
want to get up from his recliner and miss a moment of it. He had followed the sport for many decades. When he was a boy of five, Collins' father, who had a milk delivery route in the East Bronx, had taken him to see his first fight – one that was held in an outdoor arena. Collins became a fan of a local heavyweight named Tami Mauriello who fought in the main event that night. Later in his career, he gained recognition with a knockdown of the great Joe Louis in the first round of their championship fight. The astonished Louis had recovered and finished off Mauriello before the round ended. Whenever Collins discussed the fight, he was quick to point out that one of Mauriello's legs was shorter than the other, so that he could only move in a forward direction. The predictable style unfortunately made him easy prey for a skilled opponent.

Collins himself had never done any boxing and only once had he been tempted to enter the ring. He had signed up to participate in an amateur fight sponsored by The Police Athletic League. But the night before the fight, he was so sick with worry about what might happen to him that he was unable to sleep. In the morning he threw up and his mother had to call ahead on his behalf and cancel.

The memory of what he thought of as an act of cowardice stayed with him for years. Nonetheless, he continued to follow the major fights on the radio. So vivid was the announcing style of Don Dunphy that Collins felt he was actually in the arena for the event being broadcast. He was able to visualize every punch thrown, each knockdown. He learned the meaning of certain code words. For example, when a fighter was described as being “game,” Collins knew that he was on his way to defeat.

As a GI, during the Korean War, Collins became ill one day and ran a fever of one hundred and four. Yet he managed virtually to crawl out of a hospital bed in San Diego and make it to an enlisted men's club in time to watch Rocky Marciano knock out “Jersey Joe” Walcott in the first round of their televised championship rematch. He had his favorites, Ali, of course, and Henry Armstrong, and a middleweight few remembered named Johnny
Bratton. The Chicago fighter had seal black shoulder-length hair that bounced each time he hit or got hit. He was not much of a puncher, but he had a style that was clean and pure, more so than any boxer Collins had ever seen. Collins loved to
talk
fights, at saloons, or on social occasions when he ran into another enthusiast. He would always steer the conversation around to the “phantom punch” Ali used to defeat Sonny Liston in their Lewiston, Maine rematch. (“I've watched that tape a dozen times and I still haven't seen the punch.”) He made sure to mention that he was actually there at the Garden for the first Ali-Frazier fight. In the same arena, he had seen Roberto Duran, an unknown teenager from the back streets of Panama, literally spit at the then champion Ken Buchanan of Scotland before knocking him out in the thirteenth round. To Collins, the very names of past fighters were like poetry . . . Charles “Bobo” Olson, Kid Gavilan, Harry Greb, Benny Leonard and the southpaw Lou Tendler. Al “Bummy” Davis, Tony Canzoneri and Arturo Godoy. Kid Chocolate, Pipino Cuevas and Willie Pastrano. Though he admired Evander Holyfield, he winced each time the heavyweight was introduced as Evander “The Real Deal” Holyfield. Was this a plea for his authenticity? Collins had always felt the nickname struck a wrong note.

 

Collins had lost his wife in a car accident. In the years following her death, he had met and enjoyed the company of several women. But such was the depth of his love for his wife that he had never once thought of remarrying. He raised their one child alone. They lived in a small house on Long Island; from time to time, Colleen would join her father in the den and watch the fights with him. Now and then he made stray comments about the sport. “When you have a guy hurt, step back and let him fall. Keep punching and you're liable to revive him.”

In fighting a south paw, he instructed his daughter, the trick was to circle to the left of his front foot.

“That takes away his left hook.... And always throw punches in combinations. You don't throw one and then step
back to admire your handiwork. That leaves you vulnerable to a counterpunch.”

On occasion, as Collins watched a fight, he would unconsciously duck punches, cover up his ribs and throw a punch when he saw an opening.

“Dad, you're not in the ring,” she would remind him.

When a fight turned vicious – or more than most – he would say to her “Maybe you shouldn't watch this.”

“It's all right,” she would assure him. “I enjoy it.”

He did not try too hard to dissuade her. It was comforting for Collins to have her beside him in what he had come to think of – since his wife's death – as an empty house.

But now and then he asked himself: What am I doing? Why am I letting her watch two men try to pound each other into oblivion? He tried to justify this by telling himself – and her – that it was a sport. The best fighters were great athletes, their movements balletic. They rarely got hurt. But he could not think of too many examples to prove his point. Ali himself had had at least five fights too many. No one could claim that he had walked away from the sport uninjured. So there was a part of Collins that felt awful about exposing his daughter to such carnage, especially since many of the televised fights were one-sided. Managers served up bloated, over-the-hill “tomato cans” to fatten up the records of rising stars. At a cocktail party, Collins had once met a psychiatrist, a father and presumably a learned man, who was also a boxing fan and, as a hobby, had actually managed several fighters.

“How do we justify our interest in this bloody sport?” he'd asked the man. “Two men trying to destroy each other?”

The man, who seemed not to have a worry in the world, had shrugged and said” “We don't.”

His response was of interest to Collins, but it was not terribly helpful.

 

Collins had constructed a scenario in which his daughter would always be with him. She would travel with him to China, a dream
of his – and she would look after him when he was unable to take care of himself. (He had never considered the unfairness of such an arrangement.) As it happened, Colleen enrolled in a junior college nearby where she met and fell in love with the first boy she had dated seriously. They married, and before they'd graduated, moved to La Jolla so that they could be near the young man's family. Rather than remain alone in an isolated area, Collins, in his sixties, sold the house and moved back to New York City where he had been born. Though Manhattan offered a feast of activity, Collins took advantage of very little of it. He'd once enjoyed the theatre but the ticket prices seemed annoyingly high, and it became increasingly difficult for him to hear the stage dialogue. So he stopped going to see plays. His few friends died. He kept in touch with his daughter, but neither had much of a phone style. They ended each conversation by saying “I love you.” But the exchanges were brief and strained. Perhaps he felt she had deserted him.

Though Collins' life had begun to narrow down, his interest in the fights never wavered. He saw one boxing program at an arena on Staten Island and had been surprised – and frightened – by the unruliness of the crowd. His age no doubt contributed to a feeling of vulnerability. But he recalled the fight nights of his youth as being convivial affairs. Men dressed for such occasions. They greeted each other warmly and exchanged cigars. There were catcalls but they were in a different spirit, jocular, never obscene. To throw refuse into the ring because of a disputed decision was unthinkable. It was a gentleman's sport. Or such was his recollection.

 

Collins was content now to kick back in his recliner and watch the fights at home on a television screen. More programs than ever were available on the cable channels. Once in a while he caught a gem, such as the unheralded bout between the powerful Irishman and the rangy and skillful Jamaican. Halfway along in the brutal ten-round fight match, there was an expectation that the fight would taper off. It was impossible for the fighters to continue at
that level. But if anything, the action intensified. As if by silent agreement, the fighters took turns battering each other. The Irish fighter threw body punches with such force it seemed the Jamaican would be cut in two. And then, seemingly at the point of collapse, the slender Jamaican would find enough energy and willpower to fire back with a blizzard of slicing punches to the head that were thrown with speed that was impossible to follow. This was the pattern for ten furious rounds, Collins winced when the Irish fighter threw body blows, and covered up as if to block the scissor-like combinations of the Jamaican. Though the fighters were relatively unknown, the announcers, who were hoarse with excitement, made comparisons to the legendary fights of the past . . . Sadler/Pep . . . Leonard/Hearns . . . the Ali/Frazier fights . . . Zale/Graziano . . . When the bell sounded at the end of the tenth and final round, the referee raised the hands of both exhausted fighters. The fight was declared a draw. The crowd roared its approval.