Wrong Thing (3 page)

The gym was called Rodriguez Brothers Boxing Club. There was a taco stand outside. A guy cooking beef and chicken over mesquite. The Kid asked him how he did it, and the guy showed him. Then the guy asked the Kid if he wanted one.

“I don't like tacos much,” the Kid said.

“Where did you eat them?”

“Just at home. My mom's. They suck.”

“Okay” the guy said. “I'm gonna make you one. If you don't like it, you don't pay. All right?”

The Kid agreed. The guy asked if he wanted beef or chicken, and he chose beef. As he watched the guy cook, he asked him, “Do you do this every day?”

“Every day except Sunday. Sunday is for family and God. I only started about a month ago.”

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah, it's cool. It's not easy, starting your own business. But it's cool not having some jerkoff telling me what to do.”

The Kid imagined himself doing this, cooking his food and selling it to people passing by.

The vendor gave him the taco. He ate it, and it was good. He paid for it, and told the guy he'd get another one after the fights.

The gym was almost full. It wasn't the type of crowd he'd expected to see at a boxing show—mostly families with small children, which gave the place the atmosphere of a fair. They sat in rows of folding chairs around the full-size ring at the center of the gym. All the punching bags had been taken down and put away to make room. Against a wall, a candle burned in front of a shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe. A little girl played with a plaid-suited toddler who kept trying to climb the steps to the ring. At the back of the room, a teenage boy with dark brown skin and long black hair, baseball cap on backwards, hands wrapped in grimy bandages, shadowboxed with ferocious quickness as his coach looked on, circling and instructing him.

The Kid found a seat. It was near the back, but the place was so small that he still had a good view of the ring. He got a program. Lisa's fight was third on the bill. The first fight was between two very small boys who didn't look like they could be older than ten. One of them stood near the Kid's seat as his coach put the gloves on him. It felt strange to the Kid to watch the boy stretching and warming up like a pro as he talked to his coach in a high, unbroken voice. The gloves were as big as his head.

The fight was comical. The families and friends of the boys screamed support and abuse as if they were ringside at a world title fight, while the boys nervously jabbed at each other. The fight went three rounds, each round just a minute long. When the final bell rang, the Kid wasn't able to pick a winner, but the judges managed to.

The second fight was better, but the Kid didn't pay much attention to it. He'd noticed Lisa waiting near the ring.

Her hair was tied in a ponytail and pulled through the back of her headguard. There were gloves on her hands, and she wore boxing shorts, shoes and a tank top. The Kid looked at her bare arms and shoulders, her tight muscles, the black cotton stretched across her big tits.

Lisa got in the ring, and so did her opponent, who looked to be at least twenty pounds heavier. She had the look of a mean bull dyke, and her build seemed better suited to sumo wrestling than boxing. She reminded the Kid of Bull Marie from the
Love and Rockets
comic books he read sometimes.

“Next up is a featherweight contest,” announced the emcee. “Between, on my right, in the red corner, representing the Rodriguez Boxing Club, Li-sa Sal-cido . . . ” A bunch of guys, Lisa's clubmates, cheered louder than the rest. She stepped out of the corner and waved to them. She didn't look at the Kid.

“. . . And, in the blue corner, from the Albuquerque Sporting Club, Chris-tina Ber-nal.”

Christina saluted the crowd as Lisa had. Then the referee called them to ring center for their instructions. The girls listened to him, then touched gloves and went back to their corners. Lisa's coach said something to her as he put in her mouthpiece.

The bell rang.

The girls went straight for each other. You wouldn't have known that either of them had ever had a boxing lesson—they just ran to the middle of the ring and started wailing on each other. Neither would back off. Neither threw a single body punch. They just windmilled punches to the head. Lisa looked puny compared with Christina, but neither of them was about to give. When the bell rang to end the round, they grinned insolently at each other and walked to their corners.

In the second round, Christina got on top and looked set to steamr`oll Lisa. Her bulk was starting to make a difference, and Lisa couldn't hold her ground. But Lisa backed off and started to box, scoring with an accurate jab and banging hooks to Christina's head. Christina just kept swinging. The round was even.

In her corner, Lisa seemed calm. So did Christina, but she was breathing hard. At the start of the third and last round, Lisa almost skipped from her stool. Christina pulled herself from hers.

The last round was a replay of the first. The girls ignored defense and just stood there and battered each other. The crowd went apeshit. Christina was still as aggressive, but she seemed exhausted. Lisa raised her pace as Christina slackened hers. When the final bell rang, the girls ignored it and kept fighting. The referee pushed them apart and ordered them to their corners.

The Kid watched as Lisa spat her mouthpiece into her coach's hand. The coach removed her headguard and gloves. Her hands were taped and bandaged. She ran a hand through her hair, which was slick with sweat. She looked at the Kid and smiled.

The fighters were called to ring center for the announcement of the decision. It was obvious that both girls thought they'd won. The decision went to Lisa. When the referee raised her hand, she whooped and punched the air with her other hand. Christina shook her head but slapped Lisa on the back.

Lisa was given a trophy, a plastic statue of a boxer painted gold. When she got out of the ring, some of the guys from the boxing club were waiting to congratulate her. The Kid waited. When Lisa was walking to the dressing room, he went up to her and said, “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Good fight.”

“Thanks. My coach is mad at me because I got too excited and just brawled.”

“Everybody else liked it. Hey, are you gonna stay for the rest of the show or do you want to go do something?”

“We can go” she said. “Just wait while I get changed.”

“Okay. I'll be outside.”

The Kid went out to the taco stand and asked the vendor to make a couple. When Lisa came out of the gym, he handed her a taco and a can of Coke.

“Thanks,” she said. She was dressed more casually than usual: jeans, a hooded sweatshirt, a denim jacket. Her hair was pulled into a bun. No earrings or makeup. She was a little bit swollen around the eyes, and her lips were puffy. The Kid still thought she was beautiful.

“So what do you feel like doing?” he asked her.

“I don't care. But I need to go home and take a shower. I feel gross. They don't have a shower in the gym.”

“You look awesome.”

She laughed. “And I have to tell my mom and dad I won. They don't like me fighting. They were too worried to come.”

She lived a couple of miles from the gym. They walked. She had her gym bag over her shoulder, and she carried her trophy in her hand. The Kid asked if she wanted him to carry something, but she said no.

“So what made you want to be a boxer?” the Kid asked her.

“Don't know. I just like it. My dad watches the fights on TV, and I always get excited.”

“Do you get scared of getting hurt?”

“Nah. It doesn't hurt. People think getting punched will hurt, but it doesn't. You ever had a filling in one of your teeth?”

“Yeah.”

“And you feel the drill on your tooth, but it doesn't hurt? Being punched in a fight's like that. You feel it hit you, but it doesn't hurt.”

“Are you going to keep on doing it?”

“Oh, yeah. You know, they're talking about having women boxers at the Olympic Games soon.”

“Would you like to be a pro fighter?”

“Sure. But that don't look like it's happening for women like it does for men. There are some women pros, but not many. It's not a career. I'm gonna go to school.”

“What kind of job do you want?”

“A probation officer”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And from what people say about you, you could be one of my guys.”

“What do people say about me?”

“That you're nuts. You're a psycho.”

“Who says that?”

“A lot of people.”

“You know anybody who ever saw me do anything?”

“No.”

“I'll bet the people who say things like that don't even know me.”

“Maybe.”

They walked in silence for a moment. Then she asked him, “What do you want to do when you finish school?”

“I don't know yet.”

“Want to go to college?”

“I guess. I don't know.”

“What do you think you might want to do?”

“I don't know.” Searching for something, he said, “Be a chef, maybe.”

“Can you cook?”

“Yeah. My mom don't cook no more. I do it.”

“Cool. Where did you learn to do it? Did your mom show you?”

“No. I got it from books.”

“You like to read?”

“Yeah. Do you?”

“Not much. I just read for school.”

When they reached her house, the Kid said, “I know it's dumb, but I'm shy about meeting your mom and dad. Not really . . . Meeting them's okay. I'm just nervous about hanging out with them while you take a shower.”

“It'd be okay. They're pretty cool. But it's okay if you don't want to. But if I have to look like this, we can't go anywhere people can see me.”

“If you feel like just keeping on walking, that's cool with me.”

She laughed. “You're fucking weird . . . Okay, we can do that.”

Her living room reminded him of his own, but her parents didn't remind him of his. They asked her in detail about the fight, and pretended to be thrilled that she'd won even though the truth was that they were just glad she wasn't hurt. She introduced the Kid, and they gave him a polite interrogation, which he handled by lying wherever possible and keeping his answers general when he thought Lisa might know if he lied.

“We're gonna take a walk,” Lisa told her parents.

“To where?” asked her father, bemused. He looked at the Kid. “She never walks anywhere! Did she get hit in the head too many times tonight?”

“Well, it's late. I don't have time to get ready. And I'm not going to a cafe or anything looking like this,” said Lisa.

“When'll you be back?” her mother asked.

“Couple hours, probably,” she said.

The alley wasn't as dark as they'd have liked, but they were pressed so far into a doorway that you'd have had to walk past and look to see them. Lisa's hair had pulled out of its bun. She was sucking the Kid's tongue deep into her mouth. The Kid was feeling her tits through her sweatshirt. She took his hands in hers and moved them under her shirt. His hands were cold and she gasped at the shock. “You okay?” he said.

“Yeah. Just cold. See how you like it.” She shoved a hand down into his pants and he laughed and groaned at the same time.

He kept feeling her tits as she unzipped his pants and began stroking his cock. When he was close, she took a step back, looked at him and went down on her knees. She rubbed her face against his cock, then sucked on it.

He came in her mouth.

She swallowed, hard, then licked what was left of it from his cock. “Mmmm.”

He didn't do anything to make her come. He didn't know how. They walked back to her house, holding hands. He didn't go in. They kissed for a few minutes more. He could taste himself in her mouth. She said she'd call him.

She called him and told him that her parents were going to Albuquerque on Monday night and wouldn't be coming back until late. Did he want to come over? He said he'd see her then.