The Laughter of Strangers Read Free

say he is.
    “You’ll want to take him up on the rematch clause,” Spencer insists.
    A rematch. What does it mean when I go pale, flush with fear, at such a thought? Don’t answer that. Spencer leans in close and looks at the welt.
    Makes a clicking noise with his tongue, “This was the left hook that done it.”
    Yeah, it was. And it probably hurts. I just don’t feel it yet.
    Adrenaline hasn’t fully flushed from my system yet.
    Once it does, I better be on the painkillers.
    “Just get me to the hospital,” I say.
    He pulls back, crosses his arms and shakes his head:
“Tell me first, what is it that you’re fighting for?”
    I lower my head, no reply.
    “It must be something because it used to be for you. You fought to fight yourself. When you were two and zero, fresh out, you told me you wanted to fight to be the best you could possibly be. Now I look at you and I see someone bruised up and broken, looking to blow it all.”
    He grabs my forearm, my hands still wrapped in tape, “What. Are. You. Fighting. For?”
    I look at my taped up hands.
    I look down at the blue gloves hanging slack against the side of a nearby bench. I look at the locker room door, open ajar, not a single invading source, typically we’d have to keep it closed, locked, because every media personality would be clawing at the door, finding a way in, wanting a sound bite, something, anything, but now, I see an empty hall and the lingering nuance of stale laughter. At my expense, at my loss.
    I look up at Spencer, the only person that cares about who I am, rather than who I fought so hard to be, and I…
    I can’t.
    I have no answer to that question.
    Likely the most important question to be posed at this point of my life and career and I haven’t a clue.
    I have lost focus, lost favor.
    “I can’t answer that question.”
    Spencer relents, but still manages a sigh that digs under my skin.
    “Let’s get you to a hospital. God forbid you’d want to feel the magnitude of your decisions.”
    He’s right. I’m quick to act but last to understand the effects of what I’ve done. By the time you read any of what I’ve said, I will have yet to fully comprehend the telling. I might tell you everything, more than I want to tell, and it won’t hit me as reality for weeks, months; it might never register as reality. That’s another scar on the surface of my being:
    Incapable of keeping private and public life apart.
    I don’t know how much they know about me.
    They probably know the whole story.
    You probably already know what’s going to happen.
    You know where this is going, right?
    Wish you could point me in the right direction.
     
    LAUGHTER
    A CHUCKLE
     
    Not quite cheery, more like the clearing of one’s throat. A sweet feminine voice, made to be sweet because it’s her duty to take care of me. Nurse of many, nurse of few, tends to my wounds while holding my hand, checking my pulse, scribbling notes onto my chart.
    How am I doing?
    I’m on painkillers.
    Right about now, I’m doing swell. If you’re asking about later, we don’t talk about later. We let everything that isn’t the dozy trance of “right now” slip by as nonessential.
    The nurse notices that I’m awake, “How are they treating you?”
    By “they” she means the pills.
    “Swell,” I reply, slurring the word so that it sounds more like “ shwellp .”
    “Oh boy you don’t need any more.”
    No I don’t.
    But she gets me feeling good, asking me if I feel this, feel that, scribbling more onto my chart.
    I do my best to strike up a conversation, “I used to go twelve rounds and still have enough energy to hit the bars for another twelve!”
    That’s what I said. I can’t be sure it’s actually what she heard.
    Again, the painkillers.
    She smiles and giggles because that’s what she does, as part of her ‘cute nurse’ routine. Says something like, “A lesser man would have tapped out.”
    Whatever that means.
    I just don’t want her to keep