When the Thrill Is Gone

19

When I Got home I went straight to the dining room because I wanted to pull myself together before talking to Gordo. It was okay to ask him for advice, but I didn’t want him worrying about me. And the thoughts in my mind were worrisome.

Usually the dining room was empty unless we were eating; and Katrina had gotten into the habit of delaying dinner until I got home. Even though she had reverted to her old cheating ways, she still showed me respect in my home — I liked that.

I walked in, expecting solitude, but instead I found Shelly sitting at the hickory dining table, looking perplexed.

“Hi, Dad,” the dark-olive-skinned Asian girl said. She came over to me and kissed my cheek.

We had not one strand of DNA in common, going back over twenty thousand years, but she didn’t know that and I didn’t care. Blood may be thicker than water, but family has them both beat.

“Hey, babe,” I said to Katrina’s love child. “You look worried.”

“Tatyana called,” she said.

I turned a chair around and sat, heavily. “Oh? What did she say?”

“She just asked to speak to D,” Shelly said, pulling her seat up to face me.

She reached out and took my right hand by the thumb and forefinger.

Shelly, Twill, and Dimitri were everything you could want in kids: nothing alike and deeply connected.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“He took the phone into his room,” Shelly said, “talked for about twenty minutes, and then left.”

“Did he pack a bag?”

She nodded and squeezed my fingers.

Tatyana was Dimitri’s first real love. He was nearly twenty-two but that girl had him by the short hairs and he liked the pain.

“Does your mother know?” I asked.

“No. She was out when he left. I know how much she worries about D, so I thought I’d wait and tell you.”

I patted her hand and took in a deep breath. My daughter’s eyes met mine.

“What should we do?” she asked.

“Let’s wait and see if D calls. We’ ll tell your mother that Tatyana came back and D ran off on some holiday with her. She’ll be so upset about that, that she won’t worry about the worst.”

The apprehension flowed away from Shelly’s face. I was responsible now. That was why she waited for me in the dining room, to pass the torch of anxiety.

“Gordo in there with Elsa?” I asked to remove the last vestiges of her worry.

“He seems a lot better,” she said, nodding.

“The chemo’s over,” I said. “He’s bound to bounce back — for a little while.”

“You don’t think he’s got a chance to get better?”

“In my experience,” I said, “things only get worse.”

I stood up and walked out.

I entered Gordo’s Studio sanitarium and found him leaning against a stack of pillows with Elsa sitting in a chair at his side. I wasn’t sure, but it almost seemed as if they had been holding hands and let go when I walked in.

Gordo pushed himself up a bit and smiled at me.

“Hey there, young man,” he said in a tone reminiscent of him before the cancer.

“Hey there, old man,” I replied.

Elsa smiled and stood.

“Mr. McGill.”

“Ms. Koen.”

“He’s doing much better today,” the nurse said. “He asked me if I knew how to dance.”

“He asks every boxer that,” I said.

“If you can’t dance then you sure can’t box,” Gordo and I said together.

We laughed and I felt a sense of unfamiliar lightness.

“I’ll go into the other room,” Elsa said, “and let you men talk.”

She walked away with a sway to her gait that I hadn’t noticed before.

“Fine-lookin’ woman,” Gordo said as the door closed behind her.

“I’m just seein’ that,” I said.

I eased into Elsa’s seat and took my own appraisal of my oldest friend.

“You do look good,” I said.

“Feel great,” he replied. “I’ve taken enough of that poison. Shit. Even cancer feels better’n that. How you doin’, son?”

“It’s thirty seconds into the third round and the other guy, who everybody said couldn’t punch, has knocked me on my can — and I’m not seein’ double, but one and a half.”

Gordo grinned.

I continued the metaphoric list. “I’m worried about the round, the fight, and my own two feet doin’ what I tell ’em to.”

“It don’t get any better’n that,” Gordo said.

“Did I tell ya that the referee was the other boxer’s brother-in-law?”

“I heard Katrina fightin’ with that voice again today,” the ancient trainer intoned. “It was a young man, I’m pretty sure. I couldn’t make out what they were sayin’ but there was some threat in there.”

“What time was that?”

“Between twelve and one. Before Elsa got here.”

The phone rang in the hall. I wondered if it was Dimitri but pushed the thought out of my mind. Shelly would tell me if it was.

“You look good, old man,” I said. I was tired of conflicts and mysteries.

“I feel good.”

I decided to quit while we were ahead and rose to my feet.

“Your head’ll clear by round five,” Gordo told me.

“If I don’t get knocked out in the fourth.”

Shelly and Elsa were talking in the hallway.

“Who was that?” I asked my daughter.

“Mom. She said that she’s going to the movies with Magda and that dinner’s already made in the refrigerator. Elsa said she’ll stay and look after Papa Gordo.”

“Where’s Twill?”

“He’s out with some friends,” Shelly said. “You know what that means.”

“Either he’ll be home by dawn or the police will be calling at three in the morning.”

Shelly and I both smiled but Elsa looked perplexed.

“Don’t worry, Ms. Koen,” I said. “We love Twill.”

“He seems like such a nice boy,” the nurse offered.

“You won’t find finer on four continents,” I said. “But trouble sticks to him like white on rice.”

The meal Katrina left us was magnificent. Glazed oxtails with red cabbage, saffron rice, and walnut pie for dessert.

When Gordo asked for seconds on the pie I began to wonder if Western medicine was something more than insurance scams and doctors’ excuses.

Elsa agreed to spend the night in case Gordo had problems. Shelly said they could set the guest cot up in her room.

I went to bed early, wondering what force it was that kept me moving forward with so much to do and most of it left undone.

Sometimes a soldier finds himself in a war so long that he forgets his goal, Tolstoy McGill had once said to me at bedtime. He should have been telling me the story of Little Red Riding Hood, but instead I was receiving an anarchist’s indoctrination. At a time like that all he has to do is remember his last order and keep moving toward that. Because, like everything else, life is just a reflex.

I’d hated my father up until the moment Nate Chambers told me that dreams were oceans. And now, after forty-three years of spite, I went to bed with no hatred to give me solace, or to keep me going forward. My last orders had been nullified and there were no new instructions to replace them.

With these thoughts in mind I fell into a fitful sleep. Somewhere just after four I woke up to find Katrina there next to me. She was dreaming peacefully. A sigh escaped my lips but no one heard, and so no one cared.