Light streamed through Tootsy’s windows, exposing ghostly spots on the walls, spaces left by Turmoil’s ripped-down clippings. Music drifted upstairs, the unmistakable strains of “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.”
The music was coming from a new business downstairs. That day, Ownie had peered through its window, which contained a mannequin, a picnic blanket, and a bottle of Spanish wine. In the centre of an unfurnished room was a couple waltzing. One-two, one-two across the floor. The woman looked like a cook Ownie had known in the navy; she had the same skinny hips and pot belly.
BEGINNERS SPECIAL, a sign said. 5 LESSONS: $19.95. BALL-ROOM. LATIN. COUNTRY.
As Ownie watched the middle-aged dancers, a mustachioed man in tight white jeans and an open shirt darted toward him, desperate for business. Ownie was surprised he could move that fast in cowboy boots. Life, Ownie conceded, was tough.
Ownie had made himself come to Tootsy’s, but he wasn’t in the mood for much. He was determined to ignore Louie, who was talking nonsense to the Runner. Louie informed the Runner in a pleased voice that he was going to Canastota, New York, to visit the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
Take a tape of your fight, Ownie thought, for World’s Biggest Bum, and then felt guilty. He shouldn’t be so hard on Louie, he admitted, since none of this Davies business was his fault. Besides, the poor fool was doing all right considering what he came from. Louie’s father was long gone and his mother was no good. Every three or four months, she would phone him and tell him that she was moving. It was always something: “These neighbours are a bunch of stiff necks. The seagulls are keeping me awake. I know those tight-asses are spying on me.”
And each time, Louie had to drop everything, including his job, to haul her stuff. The mother moved more times than Pretty Boy Floyd on the lam and always sent Louie back for the deposit. The worst part was, it was one of her old boyfriends who got Louie on the fire department, so she owned him. “At least Lester was a real man,” she’d throw it up, drunk and dirty.
“Rocco Mar . . . uhmmm . . . Mar-chegiano?” Louie was now playing the name game with the Runner.
“Is that a joke?” the Runner asked.
The world is full of crazy bastards, Ownie thought. That morning, he’d seen two shakos shuffling down the street, the same two, always together. Out of the blue, like someone had flipped his remote control to ballistic, one started yelling in the other’s face, in an awful, spit-flying attack. On and on, while buddy stood there, blank. Suddenly, the screamer stopped as abruptly as he had started, and off they went, Hope and Crosby on the Road to Nowhere.
Over the drifting music, Ownie heard someone climbing the stairs. It was probably Sandra, that ugly little girlfriend of Louie’s. They were back tighter than a jam jar since Louie’s fight disaster. Sandra, whom Johnny generously described as a four, had even persuaded Louie to retire his alter ego, the Arabian Knight.
A muscular man with puffy supermodel lips stood in the doorway, dressed like he had a court appearance. Hepped, bouncing on hot metal, it was Roddy Nason. He glanced about and then looked confused, like he didn’t know what came next.
“Hey, Roddy.” Ownie signalled him over. Roddy crossed the room, hands in the pockets of his dress pants. It was the same spring-toed walk that carried him into amateur fight nights, deaf to everything but the faded cheers and the long-ago chants of “Roddy,” guided by phantom arms, inaudible jokes, always too big for the room.
When Roddy reached him, Ownie gave himself a slapstick punch to the head and staggered, suckered by Roddy’s invisible left. They laughed.
“Lookin’ good, you old bugger.” Roddy rubbed Ownie’s bald head.
“You still got the hammer, Roddy.”
“How ya been, brother?” Roddy’s words were as thick as molasses, which made Ownie believe the rumours, the ones about dope.
“Like Little Mary Sunshine,” Ownie boasted.
“You sure?” They both knew what he was talking about.
“Yeah. That stuff don’t bother me. I don’t need guys like Davies; I’m on a full pension.”
“Good, good.”
“Roddy, this is Louie Fader,” said Ownie as the fireman trotted over in sweats.
“Louie got arrested this year for impersonating a fighter.”
“Too bad, man.” Roddy missed the joke.
“Louie, this is the Roddy Nason. He beat Nigel Baxter for the Commonwealth title. The writers said that fighting Roddy was like facing the Amazing Kreskin. He knew your next move before you did. Every block had radar, every counter punch was a Stealth bomber. It’s too bad you never saw him fight.”
For years, Ownie recalled, Roddy had been something. He had driven around town with a Newfoundland dog, a lovely big animal that rode shotgun. It was black, with webbed feet and a soft, understanding face. The dog weighed one hundred and fifty pounds. “We fight in the same class,” Roddy would joke, proud of that dog. “Toby’s a hero. He earned a citation in New Brunswick for saving a three-year-old boy who fell off a wharf. He jumped in and swam him ashore, and they ran his picture in the paper.”
One night, Toby escaped from Roddy’s house and fell into a swimming pool. In a sad twist of irony, the heroic dog swan round and round until he drowned, exhausted, three blocks from home. In denial, Roddy couldn’t believe that the dead dog was his. “Toby would’ve never drowned,” he’d argue, pointing to the citation and the newspaper picture from New Brunswick, so he kidnapped another Newf. When the owner found him and the dog, Roddy slugged the man, got charged with assault, and pulled thirty days, which seemed to spell the end of it, really.
“This Ownie here, he’s A-1.”
Ownie nodded, humouring him.
“You going to that surprise dinner they’re holding for Darren?” Ownie walked Roddy to the door. “He’d like to see you there.”
“When is it?” Roddy squinted.
“The tenth,” Ownie said. “I’ll write it down for you.”
Roddy pocketed the paper. He’d been in and out of jail a couple of times since Toby died, and then he fell down a flight of stairs, rupturing an eardrum and doing damage to his head.
“Good, good, but don’t tell Darren I’m coming.”
“It’s a surprise.”
“I know, I know, but don’t tell him I’m coming. Me and Darren go way back.”