Read Cataract City for Free Online

as he unleashed a mad-dog howl.
    “Thank you! Good night!”
    Next we were filing down the aisles, feet crunching over stale popcorn and paper cups. Lifeless, inert, shuffling like zombies under a buzzing Orange Crush sign.
    Our fathers bought another beer as the arena emptied. I saw Mr. Hillicker lingering beyond the arena doors. He glanced inside, spotted my father, then turned over his shoulder and spoke to someone I couldn’t see.
    “Hey,” Mr. Diggs said to my father, nodding towards the dressing room door. “You figure Bruiser Mahoney’s in there?”
    Dad chuckled. “I’d guess so.”
    “How would you like to talk to the Bruiser?” Mr. Diggs asked the two of us. “He’s just a
man
.” I caught an edge of irritation in his voice. “A man like any other man.”
    “Like
us
,” my father said.
    Saying this, he turned and walked towards the dressing room, striding purposefully albeit with a noticeable wobble, pulling me behind him.
    The wrestlers sat on folding chairs arrayed haphazardly around a wide tiled room. Here and there were open duffel bags, knee braces,piles of sodden towels and grimy balls of tape. The room was foggy from the steam billowing out from the shower stalls. It smelled of Tiger Balm and something to which I could give no name.
    “Hey, can I borrow your deodorant?” Disco Dirk said to the Masked Assassin.
    “I wouldn’t give it to him,” one of the Lucky Aces said. “He’s got that rash on his dick he picked up in the Sioux.”
    “Ah, go fuck your hat,” Disco Dirk said as the other men roared.
    One by one they took notice of us. None made any effort to cover up. The Brain Smasher brushed the tangles out of his hair, naked in front of the mirror.
    “Bruiser,” he said. “I think somebody’s here looking for you!”
    “Is it Estelle?” came Bruiser’s voice from the showers. “I told that one it was once and no more. I’m no tomcatter.”
    “It isn’t,” the Brain Smasher said.
    “Well who in hell is it?” Bruiser said, stepping into the room with a towel wrapped round his waist.
    Maybe it was his wet hair hanging down his shoulders in dark ropes instead of the wild mane I was accustomed to. Or maybe it was the water glistening in the concavity between his chest muscles that I’d never seen before. Or the plastic cup with an inch of piss-coloured liquid in it that he downed quickly before tossing the empty cup into the showers. Or was it simply the shock of seeing Bruiser Mahoney in a locker room surrounded by naked men, amidst piles of spangly boots and neon tights? Whatever it was, he looked shockingly human for the first time.
    “Mr. Mahoney,” my father said, finding his voice. “This is my son, Dutchie.”
    “And my son, Duncan,” Mr. Diggs said, guiding his boy forward. “They’re your biggest fans.”
    “Oh, are they now?” Bruiser Mahoney said. “I must say they oughtto be, that you’d bring them into this snakepit with these vipers!”
    He laughed and strode forward, offering a hand that swallowed my father’s own. He shook Mr. Diggs’ hand next, then knelt down before me and Dunk like a man preparing to accept a knighthood.
    “Look at you. My wide-eyed little warriors.”
    Up close his eyes were blue, terrifically blue, the skin around them scored with little cracks like the fissures in alabaster. He smelled of carbolic soap. The cleft in his chin bristled with untrimmed stubble.
    “Welcome to the bestiary.” He smiled. The point was broken off one eye tooth. “Fancy joining the carnival, boys?”
    It was overwhelming to be so close to him, to all these men. I still struggled with the notion that the Masked Assassin might lend Disco Dirk his deodorant. Was it possible that any of these men actually
wore
deodorant, or stood in line at the post office to mail a parcel or behaved in any way like normal people? How could a creature like the Boogeyman have a job, a mortgage, a wife? It was impossible to imagine him grilling steaks in his