Like that bill from Dr. Borrowitz’s office and the rest of Arnez’s tuition and rent because she wants to live in an emptyapartment instead of at our house she asked me to remodel. But nobody here cares about my bills, or that Kenny has me training for nothing, or that I still can’t eat solid foods. Lucky’s isalwaysthe bloodiest on the first of the month.
Darryl wobbles from side to side like my neighbor Smitty does when he gets drunk. He pushes his arm out, grasping at nothing because there ain’t no real ring in the garage bays at Lucky’s—only the pit. It’s just a big slab of oil-stained concrete with a circle of people hanging around its edges, so there’s no ropes for Darryl to fall into.
He sways into a group of old-heads until one of them reaches out to nudge him upright with their elbow. Arnez’s loud whistle rings in my ear, and the grey-haired man’s arm freezes midair.
“Aht. Aht. Men hold themselves up around here!” she squeals. “Touch him and you’ll be on the ground right next to him.”
I don’t know how I always hear her voice over all the other noise in here. She ain’t belligerent or running from one side of the pit to the other to get my attention. It just feels like she’s always right on my shoulder, buzzing in my ear.
“He likes that shit, Pup. That crazy motherfucka likes to eat fists!”
And I believe her.
Supposedly it’s Darryl's first time fighting here, but he came out of the crowd with a grin on his face. Some nigga told Smitty he heard Darryl bragging about driving all the way from South Dallas just to “knock the breath out of my body” while they shot dice on the side of Lucky’s. He said Darryl told somebody he was gon’ stomp my ass so far into the ground that my people wouldn’t have no choice but to scrape me up. Me and him never even met before today. I never came across him in the crowd here or bumped into him around the city, but that didn’t matter.There’s a lot of other Darryls out there that hate me just off the strength of my name.
He gurgles out a breath and stumbles toward me again with his bloody fist up. It sways in front of his face while his eyes cross. His floppy lips ain’t moving no more. I guess he’s done pillow talking.
“Do it, Pup,” Arnez says. “Make him pay up.”
There’s no real rules at Lucky’s. There’s only a crooked “NO WEAPONS” sign somebody strung across the top of one of the rusty garage doors, and nobody is stupid enough to pull out a phone to record. So a man doesn’t take a knee unless he wants to ruin his reputation, and the only time fists stop raining are when somebody hits the cold concrete.
Kenny says none of it’s right, but Arnez says he thinks he’s Jesus or something. I wouldn’t know. The only time we went to church growing up was when Senior’s girlfriend brought us. The most I know about Jesus is that he turned water into wine, and sometimes his name flies out of nigga’s mouths when I stop playing around and make them pay up like Arnez says I should do to Darryl.
Nowthisis the part where I’m really supposed to black out, but if I do, I’ll miss the best part of fighting.
I blink away a dribble of blood trickling over my eye while Darryl tries to take one last step back. His yellow eyes are lit just enough for me to see the moment he regrets stepping foot in here.
I lift my right arm and bury my fist into the part of his head where Senior says a man holds his strength.
His teeth clank together.
His eyes roll back into his head.
His knees buckle.
Then his beefy body folds into itself, landing on the floor with a loudthunck.
“Now go get his ass off the ground and run my baby brother his money…” Arnez says from somewhere in the crowd. “I don’t know why y’all out of town niggas think y’all special.”
“One-thousand…two-thousand…three-thousand…four-thousand…” Ms. Kathy counts my payout from behind the cashier’s counter. “And you got a thousand dollar bonus for that knockout. I saw it on the camera. I swore Darryl was gon’ bury your ass.”
She snorts, looking up at me and Arnez with the last few bills between her long ruby-red nails.
“Fourteen hundred goes to the house.” She flings up one of the bill clips inside the register and sticks the money underneath it.
Arnez clears her throat, resting her pale arms on the counter and ignoring the jar of Laffy Taffys she used to dig through every Sunday while I cashed out. “You know how much we got lef?—”
“You know I don’t do balance inquiries. You wanna know how much you owe? Go talk to Rasheeda and set up an appointment with Melo. He’ll tell you. I just disperse and collect. I don’t get paid enough to do more than that.”
We’ve spent thousands of Sundays at Lucky’s, and Arnez has been asking this same question for the last ten Sundays.
She cuts her eyes at me and sighs.
I don’t know why she even bothers with Ms. Kathy. Ms. Kathy’s been a bitch since before we were born. Senior always said if Lucky’s ever burned down, she’d be the only part of it still standing because “old ornery bitches like her lived forever.” He said it was the reason Lucky asked her to take over the payouts when she finished ushering at New Bethel on Sundays. Heneeded a neutral party to keep order over the money, and who better to do it than a so-called “saint.” Somehow she still kept her job even after Melo Barnes took control of Lucky’s.
“Here,” she grunts, sliding the rest of my money through the open slot in the bulletproof window. “Don’t spend it all in one place. Gon’ on away from my window now.”
Arnez huffs while I reach over her to snatch the money before Ms. Kathy takes it back. One time I saw her keep a nigga’s whole payout and give it to the house all because he asked her too many questions. She called it an “inconvenience fee.”
