*
The nightclub was called The Miami and the man was Hammer Coller; both the club and the man were damp and sticky in their symbiotic relationship although it was Hammer more so: there was beer down his shirtfront and perspiration matting his hair. He was a large, heavily muscled, overly intoxicated ex-boxer who seemed to be perpetually underestimating his own strength, lifting his glass too high for his mouth.
The effects of his thirty three years of life were largely hidden beneath his thick black beard though his nose, flat and wide, appeared to have been sculpted by a boxing glove. He leaned back against the bar and drank some more, spilling about as much onto the floor and it was barely an instant before his mouth was free to talk again.
‘There I was,’ he marveled, ‘wasting away in the slammer, thinking life had passed me by, destined to be forgotten, but now look at me, in my second week of parole, drinking it up with a star of the newspapers.’
‘You were not going to be forgotten so quickly,’ replied Hope, lapping the whiskey in his glass up against its ice, ‘not with so many of your own newspaper moments.’
Hammer grinned with his broken teeth. ‘From the sports page, to the society columns, to the crime blotter, I only hope that is not my life in a nutshell.’ He turned to Stacey, sitting beside Hope and looked her up and down. ‘Well, just the first lap at least.’ He hauled himself off his stool. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I want to go fight some brute uglier than myself. It will take my mind off being an ugly brute.’
‘You sure that’s a good idea?’ said Hope. ‘Your parole officer won’t like it.’
Hammer shrugged dismissively. ‘The one thing I’ve learnt is that life should always hurt. The suckers in the slammer who don’t make it are the ones who go numb. Same goes for the suckers on the outside. They come to places like this trying to bring numbness to their numbness but what they really need is a good sorting out.’ He slammed his glass down on the bar top and grinned some more. ‘Besides, the penal system should’ve known what to expect when it let me out, ‘cause it wasn’t for a lack of fighting. Join in if you like. There are plenty of mugs in a New York bar that would look just fine at the end of a fist.’
He wandered away through the chattering crowd, very much resembling a potential suitor looking for a dance partner. In this instance, however, the kind of attraction he was seeking was altogether different. When he found the right person for his mood, he grabbed him by the throat and clumped together a mass of bone, knuckles and calluses in the form of a well-worn fist. Why this man had been singled out among all the others was hard to fathom as his suit and demeanor merely suggested that he was trying to look like everyone else. Fortunately for him, it seemed a good number of those in the bar were in fact his friends and sprung to his aid in an irresistible surge, holding back Hammer’s cocked fist before a swing could be made and prizing away the hand from the throat.
Hammer stood his ground, arguing some point or another before finally withdrawing back to the bar. Hope and Stacey had remained there, watching events unfold.
‘He should have just let me do it,’ Hammer grumbled. ‘I wouldn’t have hurt him too bad. Would have done him some good.’
Hope had bought him another beer and slid it across the bar-top. ‘Seems like you’re ready to get back into the fight game.’
Hammer shook his head bleakly. ‘My trainer, Iganov, died in a car crash while I was inside. Crashed trying to avoid a cow. Stupid idiot, dying so a steak could live. I don’t think I could do a fight without him.’ He slurped the head off his beer. ‘He made me believe in the tooth fairy.’ He grinned with a memory. ‘If ever I knocked out someone’s teeth, didn’t matter if it was in the ring or anywhere, he would put them in a glass at the gym and the next morning there would be some money waiting.’ He scratched. ‘I don’t know why he did it, but it was a nice thought. Even a fighter has gotta’ believe in something.’ He shrugged it off and wet himself some more in beer. ‘Anyway I’m into a different sort of fight game now.’ He looked away, feeling something hard. ‘Want to see the reason I was thrown into the slammer?’
Stacey leaned into the conversation. ‘Yes, please.’