Free This Is Between Us by Kevin Sampsell Page A

said, “I’m gonna beat you real bad tonight.”

YEAR THREE

    You kicked me out of the apartment for the afternoon and told me to call you when I felt scared about something. “You’re so calm,” you told me. “I want to hear what you’d sound like when you’re in distress.”
    I went down to the boxing club that we always drove by on our way home from Saturday breakfast. There were big windows all around the place, and I watched two sweaty men going full throttle on each other in one of the boxing rings. They looked like chiseled boulders with tattoos. One of them landed four alternating punches to the other’s ribs. Left right left right . I imagined my ribs getting punched like that. Four blows in one excruciating second. I felt my ribs buckle, the bones caving in and stabbing my lungs. The winning fighter took a wide swing at the other’s head—a fast and vicious-looking roundhouse. The losing fighter was wearing some kind of headgear, but it looked loose. A red mouthpiece flew through the air and landed, sliding across the ring.
    I thought to myself: The fighter is going to spit now. Maybe a string of blood or a tooth . But I wondered if they were supposed to spit. If my mouth was ever full of my own blood, should I spit or should I swallow? What if the beating continued?
    I walked down the street and found a quiet place to call you. An alleyway. When you answered the phone, I started screaming like I was being beaten, like I needed you to call 911. But I wasn’t saying words. I was just shouting in a way that seemed to say, Hurry up! This is the end. Hurry up—I am going to die!
    I hung up the phone and started to walk home.
    Twenty minutes later, you called me and started screaming too. It was a horrible sound. The sound of fear and violence. It was guttural and ugly. But then you were suddenly laughing. A giggle that turned into a cackle. It sounded like you were out of breath and wheezing. “Wait. Let me try that again,” you said. You hung up and called me back, screaming again.
    …
    We were sitting on a bench at the park when we noticed a girl jog by with her dog. The girl was short and punky, her skirt and leggings torn. Her makeup looked applied and then smeared. The dog was bigger than she was.
    “Let’s follow her,” you said.
    We walked quickly down the path and saw her come to a large fenced-in area. When we got to the fence, your face turned pale.
    “Is this a dog park?” you asked me.
    “Yeah. It’s the biggest one in the city,” I told you. I thought maybe you were afraid of big dogs. “What’s wrong?”
    “My mom told me about this place. She made me promise that I would come down here and look at it before she died, and I never did.”
    “Did your mom have a dog?” I watched your eyes become wet.
    “No. I think she just wanted me to see something alive.”
    “Is this okay?” I asked. “Do you want to leave?”
    You didn’t say anything. We stood there and watched all the dogs. There were about twenty dogs in there. It was the middle of the day. The owners stood around the periphery, like parents watching their kids play. A couple of dogs were playing rough and growling and nipping each other. “Hey! Hey!” the dog owners would sometimes chide.
    The girl with the big dog stood in the far corner. Her dog seemed unexcited by it all. It sat at her feet and watched us watching the dogs. After a few minutes, you noticed the punk girl and her dog watching us. You smiled and nudged me with your elbow. “There she is,” you said.
    …
    You told me never to worry about you. You ate tuna from the can. I thought about knocking it out of your hand, but which direction? Straight down, so it would splat on the floor? Underhand, so it would enter your eyes? It’s not you I worry about.
    …
    One morning, I had sex with you but then felt like masturbating just a few hours later. I was at work so I couldn’t.
    On my lunch break, I was propositioned by a stranger in the parking