“But you can’t have one hand in this pot and one hand in that other pot. It just don’t work like that.” He tosses his hands back and forth between two imaginary pots.
“What you mean?”
“You got a black eye and a busted lip and we ain’t even scheduled your first amateur fight yet. Before that, it was a broken jaw. You been coming up here every week looking like this and I can’t ignore it anymore.”
I stare back at him until he sighs.
“I thought we talked about this when Faye brought you to the house?”
We didn’t.
Faye had danced around the subject while I sat at their kitchen table looking around their house at all the memories she made with him.
“This is Rich Lovelace’s son—Pup,” she said, squeezing my shoulders. “I ran into him at the bank and he said he wants to fight…professionally. I told him to stop by so you can take a look at him.”
Afterward, Kenny had dragged his eyes over my body, then asked how I paid my bills. As soon as I sat forward to tell him, Faye pulled me back by my shoulder.
“I told you he was Rich’s boy,” she replied, patting my chest.
“Remember last month when I told you about my buddy, Chico? He says he waited for you all day last Thursday,” Kenny says.
“And remember when I told you I ain’t need a job at no gym?”
“I don’t understand what’s so bad about having a real job. The pay is decent. The people are friendly. You can even use their nice equipment for free. It’s easy work while you train.” His light face turns red. “How you expect me to train you for a legitimate boxing career if you fighting at that place every Sunday? You gon’ ruin your career before it even starts.”
“I don’t know what you talking about, Kenny.”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about, son. I told you what y’all do down there ain’t right. You need safety and a…a sanctioning body. Hell, at the very least you needrules.”
One time when I talked to Faye on Beatrice’s back porch, she admitted that the one thing she enjoyed most about being with Kenny was that he lived somewhere up in the clouds. His feet were never fully planted on Earth. She said it helped to come home to somebody like that after dealing with the big, bad world all day. It’s probably the reason he’s always “mentoring” the stupid niggas around here trying to outrun what’s in their blood.
I snort out a low laugh, eyeing Chase running past the back door with his arms flailing at his sides. “Faye said the deal was that I’d meet you here every Saturday morning for training, and you’d put me in somebody’s ring eventually because I had everything you was looking for in a heavyweight. I ain’t missed a Saturday yet and I ain’t brought no trouble to your doorstep. I don’t need a mentor or big brother. Faye said I need a boxingcoach. Is you gon’ give me what that mission statement says outside your gym or lecture me?”
The other boys’ eyes burn holes into the side of my face because I’ve never had this much to say to Kenny. He was always the one following behind me and running his mouth while I watched the digital clock tacked onto the wall above the Ali poster.
He chuckles, rubbing the back of his neck and looking everywhere except my face. “Rich, being somebody’s coach comes with a level of trust and respect.”
“Yeah, I respect you enough to show up here at six every Saturday morning and I trust you enough to teach me those skills you always going on about.”
“That ain’t…that ain’t how this works, son.”
“I ain’t your son.”
“Look, I think we’re going down the wrong path right now. I don’t wanna argue.”
“Good, ‘cause I don’t waste time arguing.”
He holds his hands up like he’s surrendering to the irrational hate I suddenly have for him. It’s the same thing he does with the boys when they throw their teenage temper tantrums, and now I feel like somebody poured a bucket of ice water over my head.
“How ‘bout we just cut today short,” he grumbles. “I gotta go meet Faye, anyway.”
Ever since I’ve been coming here, he’s never rushed home to Faye. Sometimes I even catch him down at Lucky’s holding a personal bottle of whiskey and feeding money into one of the eight-liners in the back of the store after we all leave here.
“She wanna meet for lunch and I can’t miss it. You know how women get when you miss the important things.” He waits for me to agree, but I just stare back because that temptation hugs my fingers again.
Because what about Slim?
He ain’t say shit about her.
