For nearly twenty minutes I did my barbarian dance, punishing the big bag, allowing it to swing forward and hit me in the chest now and again. Since I’d given up smoking my wind was getting longer.
I needed anaerobic exercise to vent my anger.
I hated Roger Brown and Juliet along with so many things I had done over the years. At one time I had been able to live with myself because I could say that I only set up people who were already crooked, guilty of something—usually something bad—but not any longer.
I hit that bag with dozens of deadly combinations but in the end I was the one who was defeated, crouched over with my gloves on my knees.
“Not half bad,” a man said, his voice raspy and familiar.
“Hey, Gordo.” I didn’t raise my head because I didn’t have the strength.
“You still know how to give it yer all when you decide to give.”
“And even with that I come up short nine times out of ten.”
“You shoulda been a boxer,” one of New York’s unsung master trainers said to me.
“I liked late nights and cheap wine too much.”
“Beard like you got belongs in the ring.”
I’m a clean-shaven guy. Gordo was complimenting the iron in my jaw.
“Hit me enough,” I said, “and I’d go down like all tth=wn likehe rest.”
“You coulda cleaned the clock of every light heavy in 1989.”
“Somebody woulda beat me.”
“That somebody was you,” Gordo said with emphasis. “You hung back when you coulda stood tall.”
“Lucky for the world that I’m a short man in inches and stature.”
I straightened up and turned to face my best friend and toughest critic.
Gordo was a short guy too, somewhere between seventy-five and eighty-eight.