Look, all he’s saying is that it doesn’t bother him that much. Why would you doubt him? You’ve just read his life story in the form of a medical file. Thirty-one broken bones, two bullet wounds, nine puncture wounds, and four stainless steel screws. To these you are about to add nine staples, to close the knife wound he incurred in the process of physically fighting multiple armed attackers in his employer’s office. He’s a bouncer by trade, and taking it is as much a part of the job as dishing it out. More so, perhaps. The fight has to come to him, not the other way around. Until someone’s ready and willing and able to hurt him he’s off duty. So he turned down the anesthetic, so what. Pain is how he clocks in.
But there’s more to it than that, you suspect. Because the non-standard subject-verb agreement is…it’s cute, you guess, but you know he knows better. In that job, with that body—you’ll afford him the working-class hero affectation, but that’s what it is. Again, you’ve read his medical file. You know he went to NYU. You know he keeps this information in his medical file, for some reason. You suspect, in the minute you’ve known him you suspect, that he’s put real thought into the things he says, for better or…
Beautiful eyes. Blue. He has a blue-eyed smile, too, you think, unsure what that means, sure that it’s right.
You’ve been with violent men before. There, now you’ve thought it, now it’s out in the open. Not with you, never with you, not really, no not really, though you’ve heard things since then that you have a hard time believing yet also believe the moment you hear them. What’s that girl’s name? The blonde woman. She was with one of his boys, and you were with him, and you left town, and he went nuts, and now she’s with him and the boys have moved on, you suppose. Not with you, though, not really.
But Brad didn’t need to hit you to hurt you. His charisma, his worldliness, his ease with success, the way he promised you everything and meant it: When you saw it for what it was—for its casual cruelty and gross acquisitiveness and lack of empathy and small-minded understanding of what “everything” even means—and the life you’d planned to last forever kindled and burned and crumbled to ash in the light of it, oh, he hurt you then. He hurt you so badly you ran to get away from it, like the feelings lived in that godawful mansion and you could leave them there mounted on the wall, immobile, unable to reach you again.
Has he ever been hurt, you wonder? Hurt like that, you mean? Has Dalton comma James, he of the thirty-one broken bones, two bullet wounds, nine puncture wounds, and four stainless steel screws—and nine staples, don’t forget those—has this man who literally trailed blood into your hospital tonight ever tried to run away from the pain, only to learn just like you did that you take it with you no matter where you go?
You want to check his medical file for the answer. You wonder if maybe it’s on the same page that lists his alma mater. You want to laugh but that would be inappropriate.
But you have your answer. You may not want to believe it, because it’s safer not to. But the working-class hero with the NYU degree and the studiously sculpted body and the equally studiously sculpted speech, with the blue eyes and the smile, with the thirty-one broken bones and two bullet wounds and nine puncture wounds and four stainless steel screws and, soon, nine staples—he told you already.
He told you, when he said Pain don’t hurt.
No, you think. By comparison? No. No, it does not.
You’re still smiling, you realize, you’re still smiling and he’s still smiling as you turn to grab the stapler. As you feel his body through the latex of your glove and begin to repair what was broken you think Pain don’t hurt and you wonder how long the smiling will last.
