A Better Goodbye by John Schulian Page A

on the move. More than once, he turned around and went back out the door, walking up to Westwood for a glimpse of the pretty girls from UCLA. Then it would be down to Rhino Records, where he’d heard “The Dark End of the Street” for the first time. It was about cheating lovers who can’t stay away from each other, and it sounded melancholy enough to be played at a funeral for their good sense. Nick hadn’t been in a jam like that in years, but the song touched something in him just the same.
    When he was out of places to go, he sat in front of his twenty-one-inch Toshiba, the nicest thing in his apartment though he hadn’t paid a cent for it. The previous tenant had left it behind when he fled without paying his rent for four months. He had pirated cable service too, so Nick found himself with more channels to stare at numbly than he’d previously known existed. Ballgames ate up time the best—didn’t matter which sport—and old movies were good too, particularly when Bogart was in them. Or Gregory Peck, the one his mother had always had a crush on. Nick thought it was because Peck seemed like the kind of decent guy his father had never been.
    He was watching To Kill a Mockingbird the night Cecil Givens called, first time in five or six years, saying they should get together for a meal. Cecil’s voice was still deep and mellow, a touch of the South in it even though he’d never done anything there except fight and catch the first thing smoking out of town. Cecil said to meet him at the Pantry. There was a cook there he wanted to see, a Latino guy who had done some boxing before he got in trouble with the law. Cecil needed to ask if the guy could help a friend of his get a wait job. His friend was a reformed burglar, and when Cecil said reformed, Nick could picture the laughter in his heavy-lidded eyes.
    The laughter was still there when Nick spotted Cecil watching him make his way down the line that seemed to form outside the Pantry every minute of the twenty-four hours it was open daily. Cecil looked a little thicker through the middle and his forehead was higher—what the hell, he had to be in his sixties—but he still had a tidy mustache, a soul patch, and a silky way of moving. Before he’d turned to training, he had been a damned good middleweight. With a better manager, he might have been a champion—or maybe not, because no manager could have kept him from getting shot. His kid brother had beat up some crazy son of a bitch in a street fight, and the crazy son of a bitch was determined to spill the blood of someone in the Givens family, didn’t matter who. Cecil never fought again.
    There would be no hugs now, no backslapping or pronouncements that it had been too long. “Good to see you, man,” was all Cecil said. It was enough. He had always been about efficiency, in the ring and in life.
    â€œI thought you were still in Vegas,” Nick said.
    â€œI am, most of the time.”
    â€œWith Bettina?”
    â€œMost of the time.” Cecil frowned. “What the fuck you smilin’ about?”
    â€œHow some things never change,” Nick said.
    The frown disappeared as Cecil rolled a toothpick on his tongue. “I like my freedom, man. She knows it.”
    â€œThis where you come for freedom?”
    â€œL.A.?”
    â€œYeah. You got a place here, right?”
    â€œOver by Crenshaw, uh-huh.”
    â€œShe know about it?”
    â€œThere’s plenty in Vegas that keeps her busy.”
    Cecil smiled, and Nick felt himself give in to the rhythm their conversations always had. Nick was the puncher and Cecil the counter-puncher. Nick had just been away from him for too long, that was all.
    Once they were seated, a waiter as grim as a seven-year jolt at Chino slung plates of coleslaw and sourdough bread in front of them. If they wanted something in the way of vegetables or an appetizer, there was a lazy Susan filled