A Better Goodbye by John Schulian Page B

it was Nick who didn’t scream, “Stop it or I’m going to hurt him!” Didn’t do it even once, the way he had heard other, better fighters beg for mercy on their victims.
    He kept his silence and put together that last four-punch combination. It was far from his best of the night, but by then it didn’t matter. Burgess already looked soft and helpless when Nick finished with a straight right hand and watched him fall. When his head hit the bottom rope and his right leg started to twitch, Nick stopped wanting him dead.
    Everybody kept telling him afterward that Burgess would be fine. But Nick had known different as soon as he saw the referee not bothering to count and the ring doctor scrambling through the ropes and the EMTs clamping an oxygen mask on Burgess’s face. Those weren’t images that could be erased just because a pretty girl at the Holiday Inn rubbed up against him later, wanting to kiss his boo-boos all better. Nick said no and uttered a silent prayer. In the morning he went to Mass and prayed even harder, him and Cecil. Delzell had a meeting to go to. When he heard that Burgess’s wife was holding his hand at the end, Nick wanted to tell her he was sorry and try to explain how things had gotten away from him, how what a fighter fights for doesn’t always turn out to be what he really wants to happen. But Cecil wouldn’t let him see her.
    Nick supposed that was for the best, if only because it gave him one less painful memory. He had learned over time to fight to a draw, stepping lightly, holding back in and out of the ring when the occasion called for violence. He’d lost at least a couple of women because he was too remote for them, and only when there was more at stake than self-interest did he tap into the reservoir of savagery that had made him a boxer to be reckoned with. The gangbanger opened the floodgate, but Nick would pay for it. The days ahead would be filled with the shopkeeper’s cry—“Jesus Christ, I think he’s dead”—and the nights would be a bed sheet twisted by regret.
    And then there was Coyle groaning with worry when Nick told him about the gangbanger. All he could talk about was how his job would be toast, and his wife would kill him, and the skank he had nailed that afternoon would mark him as more trouble than he was worth. He barely paused to ask Nick if he had shit for brains, going up against a Pancho who wanted nothing more than a teardrop tattooed on his cheek for killing somebody.
    â€œI would have given him the money,” Nick said, “but I was afraid it wasn’t just me he was going to shoot.”
    Coyle’s expression turned to dismay. “You’re going to be on the fucking news, aren’t you?”
    â€œI don’t think so.”
    â€œYeah, you are. Channel 9 or some shit. Like you’re a goddamn hero.”
    â€œBut there weren’t any cameras there. Nobody talked to me. Reporters, I mean.”
    â€œYou sure?”
    â€œWhy would I lie?”
    â€œEverybody lies.”
    â€œI’m not lying.”
    â€œThis when you hit me?”
    â€œI’m not gonna hit you. Have I ever—” It was then that Nick realized his fists were clenched. He opened them and tried to smile. “You’re my friend, man. I don’t hit my friends. I didn’t even want to hit that kid with the gun. He didn’t give me a choice, that’s all.”
    Coyle looked at Nick for a moment before he said, “Whatever. I got to get this truck in.”
    â€œYou got to pay me, too,” Nick said.
    He was ready for another argument. Maybe he’d even get screwed over. It wouldn’t have been the first time, picking up work the way he had lately, here and there, always in cash. Coyle practically radiated the sad story he wanted to tell about how the gangbanger had changed everything, but he caught himself before he could start.
    â€œTwo hundred,