One

  Anne said, “At least let a nurse wash you, Zack.”

  “Yeah, you stink to high hell,” Gail said, because of course she was with Anne, horning in. Gail carried her yellow hard hat from whatever construction site she was engineer on this month. Flaunting her job. She’s going to turn her back on me, look out the window, pat Anne’s back, give me the finger behind it .… Whatever Anne had told her about his “condition,” Gail wasn’t impressed. It didn’t make Zack like her any better.

  “I’ll shower when I get home this afternoon.”

  Anne frowned. “You can’t, not without—”

  “I checked myself out.”

  “Against medical advice?” On the last word her voice scaled upward like she’d been goosed. Zack held his temper. She meant good, and even bossy and a pain in the ass, she was his sister. Christ, she’d practically raised him after their parents bought it. He had a sudden memory, sharp and sweet as a lemon drop on the tongue, of walking with Anne to some candy store, his small hand in hers, her head bent protectively toward him. “The only person you’ve ever loved, and only on your terms,” Gail had once said to him. Screw that. Gail should keep her nose out of Zack’s business.

  “They’re doing the paperwork now. Annie, I’m fine. Really. That shit they gave me made all the brain swelling go down. I’m fine and I’m going home.”

  But not before he had two more visitors, neither of whom he wanted to see.

  Jerry, at least, had no idea of Zack’s “condition of integrated consciousness” and wouldn’t have cared if he did. Huge, shambling, a former heavyweight gone to fat, Jerry’s tattoos had expanded with his fat until the naked girl on his forearm looked as bloated as he did. Nothing in Jerry’s life had quite worked: not the brief boxing career, not the even briefer mob involvement that earned him five-to-ten in federal prison, not the seedy gym, always on the verge of going under, where Jerry trained and matched boxers who were never going anywhere bigger. For the past six months, ever since Zack had started fighting for Jerry on Saturday nights, he had thought: I’m not going to end up like you. He just hadn’t known how to avoid it.

  Until now.

  “So, champ, how you doing?” Jerry called all his fighters “champ.” None of them ever were. Jerry stared at the side of Zack’s head, shaved around the bandages.

  “Going home.”

  “Yeah? When you coming back to the gym?”

  “Real soon,” Zack said, glad that Anne wasn’t there. Jerry said nothing. He’s got more to say, something he needs to ask but doesn’t want to, he’s going to scratch his head first …

  Jerry scratched his head, his flabby arm coming up like a hydraulic lift. “Champ, I hate to ask this, but I got a problem. Week from Saturday, Bobby Marks was on the slate to fight Tom Cawkins. Not at the gym—at a real venue. Magnolia Gardens. But Bobby, stupid kid, got himself nabbed for possession, won’t be out in time. Cawkins’s manager’s trying to pull him out of the fight ’cause ever since Cawkins beat C. P. James, manager thinks he’s bigger shit than he’ll ever really be. I don’t have a fighter to put against him week from Saturday, contract’s void and I gotta C&R.”

  Cancel and Refund—the bogeyman that chased Jerry every struggling accounting period. Zack knew that Jerry needed every scheduled fight to make expenses, even though the fights were mostly lame and the customers, neighborhood punks and old guys who remembered better, only filled half the seats. Jerry especially needed this fight; he’d hoped it might move his gym up a notch. Personally, Zack doubted it.

  Jerry went on, looking everywhere but at Zack’s bandages. “So—you think you’ll be well enough to be slotted in? Bandages off and all?”

  Zack said, “Sure. Why not?”

  Jerry blinked. He’s really afraid I’ll get hurt … why, the sentimental fat old bastard! He’s going to go all sappy …

  “Look, champ, I don’t want you to do nothing that’ll interfere with getting better. You’re a good kid even if you are so mouthy. You want to wait to fight, we’ll wait. I can get DeShawn, maybe, though he—”

  “I’ll do it,” Zack said, and watched Jerry go through a complicated series of emotions during which Jerry kept a poker face.

  “Well, if you’re sure, then good. Prize money ain’t great, but—”

  “I said I’ll do it.”

  Jerry knew when a deal was closed. A rare smile quirked his lips, drowned in his usual anticipation of the worst, and propelled him shambling out the door.

  Zack poked gently at the bandages on his head and stared at the ceiling.

  * * *

  His last, most unwelcome visitor was Jasmine.

  He was out of bed, dressed in his own clothes again, a little headachy but upright. Five more minutes and he could have escaped. He should have known better—you couldn’t outrun women. Anne, Jazzy, even fucking Gail. And a part of him was glad to see Jazzy, or at least might have been glad if she hadn’t looked mad enough to chew his head off.

  “Why did you tell the nurses to not let me in? Huh, Zack? Why?”

  “Didn’t want to upset you.”

  “Like I’m not upset now?”

  Damn, she looked good. She had on the tight jeans he liked and a low-cut top with some sort of creamy ruffles that shimmered against her chocolate breasts. Body like a porn star, big dark eyes, seventeen years old and no slut. She kept her nights for Zack, her days for finishing high school (more than he had done), and next year’s eye on a training school in medical technology. Jazzy had plans. She didn’t want a baby daddy and a welfare check, she wanted a job and an apartment she could pay for herself. Zack had been afraid since they started hanging out together that she also wanted him in that future apartment, tethered and leashed. So he’d tried a few other hookups, but nobody else had Jazzy’s pull on him.

  Also—and this was the surprising thing—they had fun together even out of bed. They went to movies, laughed, took walks together just to walk, not to get someplace. She was funny and she got him, got who he was. He liked her. But even so—

  “Look, Jazzy, I didn’t want you here because I didn’t want any big scene. Bad enough I got Anne wringing her hands over me. She works here, so I was stuck. But I just wanted to rest and get better and go home. Is that so hard to understand, huh? Is it?”

  “Don’t get all huffy with me, Zack Murphy. Don’t you dare. I know you needed rest. I wouldn’t have made a scene.”

  She was telling the truth. Zack felt it from her. But, given the scene she’d made when they were last together (“Who was that slutty girl? When are you going to give up fighting and get your shit together? You need a real job and a real future!”), he’d been sure that she would keep it up in the hospital. But clearly he’d been wrong. Concern for him poured off her—Zack could see it, feel it, almost taste it.

  He hated it. It was a rope, tying him down.

  “I gotta go, Jazzy. Anthony’s picking me up.”

  “I can drive you home.”

  “I already called Anthony.”

  Anger, held in check. Concern that he was all right. The gentleness he’d glimpsed once or twice underneath her fierceness; each time he’d hated that gentleness. Another rope. She was going to cross the floor, hug him gently .…

  He brushed past her. “Call you later, baby, okay?” In the hallway, he regretted his rudeness—how many people did he actually like? Fewer than corners in a boxing ring. Nonetheless, he strode as quickly as his aching head would allow to get to the elevator, to the outside, to the welcome indifference of Anthony, one of his two roommates in the apartment filled with beer and sagging couches and pizza boxes and freedom from women.

  * * *

  Zack, the voices said. Zack …

  No, they didn’t. Lying awake three days before his fight with Cawkins, Zack knew perfectly well that the voices were the thrumming of the music coming through the thin walls of the apartment. The breeze from the open window, wafting the faint scent of garbage cans in the alley. That ringing in your ears that
everybody got sometimes. They weren’t even voices, they were all in his imagination, and he damn well better stifle it and get some sleep. But it was only midnight, and he wasn’t anywhere near sleepy.

  “You leaving the party so early?” Anthony had said. But the truth was, Zack had been leaving early all the time. Leaving parties at night, leaving Pizza Hut at dinner, even leaving the goddamn 7-Eleven before he found the Cheerios on the shelves. Too many people, all flinging emotions at him in the way their bodies moved, the way their mouths worked, the tones of their voices. I’m scared, I’m so happy, I’m disgusted, I’m starting something that might not work, I’m going to talk to that guy over there or boost that nail polish or give that bum a dollar or find somebody to fight with or brush against that babe’s tits or buy these roses even though I can’t afford it… Stop!

  But they never did. All the information about everybody just kept coming, and Zack didn’t even know how he knew any of it.

  He had to get it under control. Now.

  Heaving himself up from his mattress on the floor, Zack put his clothes back on. Outside, the non-voices seemed even more persistent, like the sweet spring night gave them more to work with. Well, screw that. Zack was having enough trouble with live people without dealing with imaginary ones.

  People spilled out from the bars and clubs on Belmont Street. Zack leaned against a lamp post, lit one of the twenty or so cigarettes he allowed himself every month, and pretended to be absorbed in it while a couple walked past, holding hands and talking softly.

  He loves her, she doesn’t love him, she wants out and he doesn’t know it yet .… How do I know?

  Forget that. It didn’t matter how. Concentrate on not seeing them, not noticing all the “sensory information” that Anne said he was getting and “integrating.” Concentrate …

  It didn’t work. Zack was aware of everything the couple didn’t know they were telling him, until they turned the corner and disappeared.

  He tried next with three high school kids who got off a bus and peered into a bar where, of course, they knew they wouldn’t be allowed in. Anger, envy, thinking that if only they could get in they’d show up everybody there but not even believing it themselves, horny as hell … The redhead is going say something full of bullshit …

  The redhead said, “Couldn’t I just give that babe there a thick foot of happiness!” His buddies jeered.

  Zack tried to both see and not see them. He didn’t turn his back, but he concentrated on his cigarette: how it felt, smelled, looked as the ash lengthened and fell to the sidewalk. The boys walked past him, arguing. Concentrate on the cigarette …

  The information about the boys was still there, but now it felt more like rap playing in the house next door. You could hear it, but you could also sort of block it out. The cigarette mattered, the information from the boys didn’t.

  He practiced for a few more hours, sitting in the corner of a bar. He didn’t always succeed; sometimes the only way he could break the overwhelming flow of information was to close his eyes. Even then, it seemed like he could smell attitudes around him. But as the night wore on, he got better at it.

  The next day, better still.

  He could control it.

  * * *

  The day before the fight, Friday, Jazzy showed up in his bedroom before Zack was even out of bed.

  “How’d you get in?” Zack said, sitting up woozily on his mattress and glancing at the glowing red numbers on the clock sitting on the floor. 12:00. Midnight? No, noon.

  “Anthony or Lou didn’t lock the door,” Jazzy said. Zack had nailed a blanket over the window and light from the living room silhouetted her. He couldn’t see her face. He didn’t need to.

  “Why … why aren’t you in school?”

  “Because this is more important.”

  Alarm bells sounded in Zack’s head. When Jasmine thought something was more important than school, it meant trouble.

  She put her hands on her hips. “I’m only going to ask you once, Zack, and I want an honest answer. Are you done with me? Are we over?”

  Were they? Peering at her, Zack didn’t want them to be over. On the other hand, he’d been avoiding her for days. Quick phone calls full of bogus excuses: doctor’s appointment for my head, Anne’s got a situation I got to see to, Jerry’s got a situation, Anthony’s got a situation, I need to rest, baby, I’m just so tired since the operation—

  She was serious. He got that from every line in her back-lit body: a whole lot of inner conflict, but she was dead serious. If he said it was over, this time it would be. He could be free,

  She looked so damn good. And when they had good times, they were really good times. The sweet way she’d looked at him that time he’d bought her those earrings for no holiday or birthday, just because the earrings reminded him of her …

  But he could be free.

  “We’re not over,” he said slowly, wondering if he meant it, “but I need some time. Some space.”

  “Some space I’m not in.” Now her arms were crossed across her chest, which he knew she was going to do before she did it.

  “Jazzy…” All at once he felt tears prickle his eyes. What the fuck! He hadn’t cried since the last time his father beat him, when Zack was nine, just before the bastard died. Zack blinked hard to dash away the tears. He didn’t want Jazzy to see.

  Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. But all at once she was kneeling beside him on the mattress, and then he was kissing her, and then clothes were coming off and she was the one with tears on her face and …

  He felt her. Not just near him, taking him in, like normally in sex. No, he knew what she was going to move before she moved it, knew what she wanted without her whispering anything, knew when his touch wasn’t getting it done and when he was exactly in the right place, doing the right thing, for how long she wanted it done. It was like he was her as well as himself, and when he exploded, right after she did, he cried out, something he never did.

  He hated every second of it.

  Jazzy lay face down, jeans still circling one ankle, tee shirt up over her ears. She gasped, “That was … incredible.”

  When he had control of his voice, he said, “No.”

  She twisted to look at him. “What?”

  “You KO’d me. I don’t like that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You … erased me.”

  “I—”

  “It’s over, Jazzy. Go away.” He snatched up his clothes and stalked into the bathroom, locking the door before she could say anything more, before he could take in any “sensory input” and know what she was going to do next, what she was feeling, where he ended and she began.

  * * *

  He spent the afternoon in the public library, a place he hadn’t been since the third grade, trying to find things on the Internet that would explain what was happening to him. He googled the words he remembered Dr. Norwood or Anne using: “sensory input,” “consciousness,” “brain patterns,” “CRI.” CRI got him “Carpet and Rug Institute,” “color rendering index,” and “Community Rowing, Inc.” Googling “consciousness” resulted in 88,000,000 hits, “brain patterns” almost as many. He tried to read some of them but the terminology was too hard and anyway none of it seemed to apply to his problem. Which was what? Norwood said that Zack had some sort of new level of consciousness. If so, why was he still too stupid to find out what was happening to him?

  He wasn’t going to call Norwood or Anne. His cell had two calls from the doctor, six from his sister. He wasn’t going to go crawling to either one of them for information he’d rejected when they offered it before. He texted Anne—I’m fine stop worrying—and left the library to go get drunk instead.

  Dusk bathed downtown in a pink glow, neon through light fog. The air smelled sweet. Zack picked a bar he never went to, where nobody would find him. He sat at the bar and practiced shutting out everybody except the bartender, a young guy who might have made a welterweight: long legs
and arms, heavy sloping shoulders, thick neck. Zack knew when the bartender was going to sweep his eyes around everyone’s drinks to offer refills, when he was irked by the almost-but-not-quite-falling-down drunk on the end stool, when he was going to flirt with the middle-aged brunette sitting alone. Zack knew it all before the bartender did it, maybe even before the guy himself knew he was going to do anything. Just as important, Zack was able to not let the other people in the bar distract him from this one guy.

  And after three drinks, the non-voices in his head went away.

  When the bartender shot him a glance that said: You’re looking at me too much, wrong team, no luck here, buddy, Zack paid his tab and left. He wasn’t as drunk as he wanted to be, but drunk enough. On to the next test.

  The hooker wasn’t all that young, and she wasn’t all that pretty, which meant she was cheap. Zack followed her to her room and undressed. She did the same, not bothering to look at him. Zack pulled her down onto the bed.

  And the thing happened again. Even through the alcohol, Zack knew what would make her happy. Not at first, because she was so sullen that nothing would make her happy. But when he picked up on faint movements and expressions she probably didn’t even know she was making, and then he followed through, the thing happened again. He could anticipate every one of her secret needs, hidden desires. Another minute and he would be her.

  “Hey,” she said softly, the word carrying a world of surprise and shock.

  He got up, threw her money on the bed, and left, more furious than he’d ever been in his life. To ruin sex! If Norwood had been in that room, on that steep flight of stairs, beside that sidewalk stained with somebody’s vomit, Zack would have torn the doc’s balls off and stuffed them down his throat. And enjoyed it.

  * * *

  The fight against Cawkins was at Magnolia Gardens, a small and dingy arena on the edge of the industrial district. Despite what Jerry had said, Zack knew it wasn’t an important fight and Cawkins wasn’t an important fighter. Nothing Jerry arranged was important in the world of boxing, a world that started with clubs like Jerry’s and rose upward to dizzying heights like Madison Square Garden and title fights and TV movies about Ali or Tyson. Those were places Zack had never even thought about. Until now.