Rich Man, Poor Man

“I didn’t know he was a fighter before today,” said Gretchen. “Do you mind if I sit down? I’m feeling very tired.” There was a chair across the hall and she moved away from the woman and sat down, hoping to put an end to conversation. Teresa ruffled her shoulders irritably under the red fox, then began to walk peckishly up and down, her high stiletto heels making a brittle, impatient sound on the concrete floor of the hallway.

Inside the dressing room Thomas was dressing slowly, turning away modestly when he put on his shorts, occasionally wiping at his face with a towel, because the shower had not completely broken the sweat. From time to time he looked across at Rudolph and smiled and shook his head and said, “Goddamn.”

“How do you feel, Tommy?” Rudolph asked.

“Okay. But I’ll piss blood tomorrow,” Thomas said calmly. “He got in a couple of good licks to the kidney, the sonofabitch. It was a pretty good fight, though, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Rudolph said. He didn’t have the heart to say that in his eyes it had been a routine, ungraceful, second-rate brawl.

“I knew I could take him,” Thomas said. “Even though I was the underdog in the betting. Seven to five. That’s a hot one. I made seven hundred bucks on that bet.” He sounded like a small boy boasting. “Though it’s too bad you had to say anything about it in front of Teresa. Now she knows I have the dough and she’ll be after it like a hound dog.”

“How long have you been married?” Rudolph asked.

“Two years. Legally. I knocked her up and I thought what the hell.” Thomas shrugged. “She’s okay, Teresa, a little dumb, but okay. The kid’s worth it, though. A boy.” He glanced maliciously over at Rudolph. “Maybe I’ll send him to his Uncle Rudy, to teach him how to be a gentleman and not grow up to be a poor stupid pug, like his old man.”

“I’d like to see him some day,” Rudolph said stiffly.

“Any time. Come up to the house.” Thomas put on a black turtle-neck sweater and his voice was muffled for a moment as he stuck his head into the wool. “You married yet?”

“No.”

“Still the smart one of the family,” Thomas said. “How about Gretchen?”

“A long time. She’s got a son aged nine.”

Thomas nodded. “She was bound not to hang around long. God, what a hot-looking dame. She looks better than ever, doesn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Is she still as much of a shit as she used to be?”

“Don’t talk like that, Tom,” Rudolph said. “She was an awfully nice girl and she’s grown into a very good woman.”

“I guess I’ll have to take your word for it, Rudy,” Thomas said cheerfully. He was combing his hair carefully before a cracked mirror on the wall. “I wouldn’t know, being on the outside the way I was.”

“You weren’t on the outside.”

“Who you kidding, brother?” Thomas said flatly. He put the comb in his pocket, took a last critical look at his scarred, puffed face, with the diagonal white slash of adhesive tape above his eye. “I sure am a beauty tonight,” he said. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d’ve shaved.” He turned and put a bright-tweed jacket over the turtle-neck sweater. “You look as though you’re doing all right, Rudy,” he said. “You look like a goddamn vice-president of a bank.”

“I’m not complaining,” Rudolph said, not pleased with the vice-president.

“You know,” Thomas said, “I went up to Port Philip a few years ago. For Auld Lang Syne. I heard Pop is dead.”

“He killed himself,” Rudolph said.

“Yeah, that’s what the fruit-lady said.” Thomas patted his breast pocket to make sure his wallet was in place. “The old house was gone. No light in the cellar window for the prodigal son,” he said mockingly. “Only a supermarket. I still remember they had a special that day. Lamb shoulders. Mom alive?”

“Yes. She lives with me.”

“Lucky you.” Thomas gri

“Whitby.”

“You don’t travel much, do you?”

“There’s plenty of time.” Rudolph had the uncomfortable feeling that his brother was using the conversation to tease him, undermine him, make him feel guilty. He was accustomed to controlling conversations himself by now and it took an effort not to let his irritation show. As he had watched his brother dress, watched him move that magnificent and fearsome body slowly and bruisedly, he had felt a huge sense of pity, love, a confused desire some-how to save that lumbering, brave, vengeful almost-boy from other evenings like the one he had just been through; from the impossible wife, from the bawling crowd, from the cheerful, stitching doctors, from the casual men who attended him and lived off him. He didn’t want that feeling to be eroded by Thomas’s mockery, by that hangover of ancient jealousy and hostility which by now should have long since subsided.

“Myself,” Thomas was saying, “I been in quite a few places. Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, New Orleans, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Hollywood, Tia Juana. Name it and I’ve been there. I’m a man broadened by travel.”

The door burst open and Teresa charged in, scowling under her pancake makeup. “You fellows going to talk in here all night?” she demanded.

“Okay, okay, honey,” Thomas said. “We were just coming out. Do you want to come and have something to eat with us, you and Gretchen?” he asked Rudolph.

“We’re going to eat Chinese,” Teresa said. “I’m dying to eat Chinese.”

“I’m afraid not tonight, Tom,” Rudolph said. “Gretchen has to get home. She has to relieve the baby sitter.” He caught the quick flicker of Thomas’s eyes from him to his wife and then back again and he was sure Thomas was thinking, he doesn’t want to be seen in public with my wife.

But Thomas shrugged and said amiably, “Well, some other time. Now we know we’re all alive.” He stopped abruptly in the doorway, as though he had suddenly thought of something. “Say,” he said, “you going to be in town tomorrow around five?”

“Tommy,” his wife said loudly, “are we going to eat or ain’t we going to eat?”

“Shut up,” Thomas said to her. “Rudy?”

“Yes.” He had to spend the whole day in town, with architects and lawyers.

“Where can I see you?” Thomas asked.

“I’ll be at my hotel. The Hotel Warwick on …”

“I know where it is,” Thomas said. “I’ll be there.”

Gretchen joined them in the hallway. Her face was strained and pale, and for a moment Rudolph was sorry he had brought her along. But only for a moment. She’s a big girl now, he thought, she can’t duck everything. It’s enough that she has so gracefully managed to duck her mother for ten years.

As they passed the door to another dressing room, Thomas stopped again. “I just have to look in here for a minute,” he said, “say hello to Virgil. Come on in with me, Rudy, tell him you’re my brother, tell him what a good fight he put up, it’ll make him feel better.”

“We’ll never get out of this goddamn place tonight,” Teresa said.

Thomas ignored her and pushed open the door and motioned for Rudolph to go first. The Negro fighter was still undressed. He was sitting, droop-shouldered, on the rubbing table, his hands hanging listlessly between his legs. A pretty young colored girl, probably his wife or sister, was sitting quietly on a camp chair at the foot of the table and a white handler was gently applying an icebag to a huge swelling on the fighter’s forehead. Under the swelling the eye was shut tight. In a corner of the room an older, light-colored Negro with gray hair, who might have been the fighter’s father, was carefully packing away a silk robe and trunks and shoes. The fighter looked up slowly with his one good eye as Thomas and Rudolph came into the room.

Thomas put his arm gently around his opponent’s shoulders. “How you feeling, Virgil?” he asked.

“I felt better,” the fighter said. Now Rudolph could see that he couldn’t have been more than twenty years old.

“Meet my brother, Rudy, Virgil,” Thomas said. “He wants to tell you what a good fight you put up.”