The Department of Health bus arrived at Dr. Steinman’s office, and the derelict men of the Healing Hands Rescue Mission, plus several others who had decided to take advantage of the free health screening, filed out of the bus and up the stairs to the second floor, led by Jason, who knocked at the pebbled glass door at 213. Opening the door, he greeted the receptionist, a blonde in a hip hugging skirt and a narrow waist, which would have been hidden by the desk if Jason were not peering over the top of it.

“Jason Whitlock, with a group of men from the Healing Hands Rescue Mission.” He huffed, holding two cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other, that were both heavy and awkward to carry, forcing him to walk in a squat.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Whitlock,” the woman replied cheerily, “the doctor is expecting you.”

“Can I set these here for the moment?” Jason asked, waddling over behind the desk to set down his boxes.

“Certainly,” the receptionist replied, and Jason tried not to stare at her slim calves or the skirt hugging her slim, yet shapely butt behind the desk where she sat.

“Okay, gentlemen, go ahead and have a seat,” Jason began addressing the men in the room, but he quickly realized that there were too many men to fit into the reception area. The receptionist discretely opened a window to help odors of stale booze, sweat, and cheap cigarettes filter outside, and a fresh breeze to circulate through the lobby, even if the air was chilly. “It looks like some of you are going to have to form a single file line out in the hall. Don’t worry—we’ll get to you as soon as possible, and everybody will get his Christmas gift.”

The men cheered up at the mention of their Christmas gifts, and Jason set about getting them cups of coffee or water.

“Mr. Whitlock,” a feminine voice called out.

Turning, Jason saw the voluptuous redheaded candy striper, the one who always played him like a violin, resulting in mind-blowing orgasms. He gulped, and followed the redhead into the office, admiring her ample butt packed into her tight skirt, not to mention the way her candy apple sparkling high heels accentuated her toned calves. She closed the office door, and motioned for him to sit on the paper-lined bench, which caused him to gulp again.

The redhead chewed gum, which caused her pouty red lips to move provocatively. As always, her pale, freckled breasts blossomed in the cleavage of her blouse and threatened to spill out. “Dr. Steinman thought we should start with your checkup to serve as an example to the other men—don’t ask someone to do something you wouldn’t do yourself.”

This time, she placed the cuff at his elbow to take his blood pressure, then placed the thermometer in his mouth to take his temperature. Nor was there any request for him to remove his pants or to bend over the table.

“Usually, something, uh, kinky happens whenever I come in here,” Jason told her, “but this is like a normal checkup. I mean, I’m not complaining; I’m just surprised.”

“Well, maybe we could meet after my work?” the redhead suggested.

Was a woman asking him out? That was a first. “Sure, I’ll be back here at 5 o’clock. Sound good?”

“That would be great.” She slapped him on the butt as he hopped down from the bench. “You pass with flying colors.”

Jason smiled and waited in the lobby as the first man entered the doctor’s office. Once the man finished his checkup, Jason reached into his cardboard box and handed the man a half-pint bottle Christmas gift that had been wrapped in comics from the Sunday paper to give it a bit of color.

The first man, with a stubble-covered face, took his bottle and held it up to his ear as he shook it, then broke into a broad smile. “Thank you, Brother Jason!”

And so it went, with every man who completed his checkup receiving a free “Christmas gift” in a half-pint bottle. There wasn’t a single man who failed to light up when handed his gift, and by the time the last man had completed his checkup and boarded the bus, most of the men had already drunk their Christmas gifts.

“Today was a very successful day, Mr. Whitlock.” Dr. Steinman extended his hand, and he and Jason shook. “By our count, we had 53 men get physicals. One guy there, Frank, was a ticking time bomb, with stratospheric blood pressure. I put him on some meds, and please help make sure he takes those. He’s a prime candidate for a massive heart attack or ischemic stroke—the kind that leaves a guy paralyzed or dead. Thanks to you, we caught it.”

“It’s good to be of help.” Jason smiled, and he really did feel good. He felt even better when the receptionist handed him a check for $26.50. Looking down, he saw “$26.50” above the dollar sign on his watch, but the wealth column still remained at zero.

Jason nodded at the blonde receptionist and the voluptuous redhead, who peeked out from the consultation room, and felt good as he looked at the check in his hands. He was stuffing the check into the inner breast pocket of his suit jacket, striding down the hall to where the bus sat idling, full of happy men who had just drunk their early Christmas gifts, when a massive brute of a man, towering 6’2’’ at least, and broader at the shoulders than he was at the waist, appeared in the hallway. The man resembled a half of a beef, a combination of boxer and football lineman. The gargantuan hulk of a man stood in the hallway to block it off, which he managed quite easily, as wide as he was.

“Where d’ya think yer goin’?” he growled in the ugliest New York accent that Jason had ever heard.

“Uh, back to the rescue mission,” Jason tried to ease past, but the colossus of a man subtly shifted to block off that section of the hallway. “The men just completed their physicals.”

“I’ll be takin’ dat,” he announced and reached for Jason’s inner breast pocket.

Jason seized the brute’s wrist with both of his hands, and felt like he had a grip on a yule log. The massive man slammed Jason into the wall behind him, smashing the sheet rock and creating two crumpled depressions: one where Jason’s shoulders struck the wall, and the other where the back of his head punched into the sheetrock. The force of the impact knocked the wind out of Jason, who found himself gasping to try to get air into his lungs. He saw points of light blink in and out of existence, orbiting around a spot at the back of his head that throbbed in agonizing pain.

The beast then slung Jason forward, so that he hit the opposite wall face-first, creating a similar concave section of the crumpled wall he struck. Jason wasn’t aware of letting go of the man’s wrist, or releasing the check—he simply lost consciousness for a moment and woke on the floor, lying on his back, and looking up at the florescent lights embedded in the hallway ceiling. He reached into his breast pocket for the check, but noticed that his hand was trembling, and that the check was gone. His nose felt warm, as did the upper corner of his left eyebrow, which he was slow to realize was due to the fact that he was bleeding. One of the men, Harry, came up from the bus and yelled in alarm when he saw Jason lying on the floor, then ran yelling all the way back out to the bus.

In time, the ambulance arrived and the attendants checked Jason’s pulse, shined a penlight into his eyes, and then gently probed his face, no doubt checking for broken bones. They lifted him up onto a gurney, and had to shoo the men of the rescue mission away from him, because they were jamming the hallway to check on Jason and encourage him. The attendants led him down the stairs and hopped him up into the back of the ambulance, where the gurney rolled the short distance to the partition between the driver and the back of the vehicle. Jason found himself looking up at the cylinder of an oxygen tank standing upright beside him, and realized that he had been mugged for the check for $26.50, the most money he’d ever had in the game.

The attendant slipped the oxygen mask over his face, which seemed a little small, and covered in red felt, with a tassel…

Jason turned, and already knew that the monkey was sitting beside him.

“You’ve got to fight him,” the monkey told him. “You’re stronger than you look, and you could have taken that guy, but you froze.”

“Yeah, I …” Jason realized the fez was still covering his mouth, so he quickly removed it and handed it to the monkey. “I choked.”

“Let’s go for a stroll,” the monkey suggested.

Jason and the monkey stood inside a gym, where boxers smoked and punched heavy canvas bags, or threw medicine balls around, or worked the speed bag while chewing gum. A boxer stepped into the ring, wearing head gear, as did his opponent, who was noticeable larger. While the man’s opponent moved slickly, lightly on his feet as a boxer should, the smaller of the two men took clumsy steps, and moved awkwardly.

“Is that the shittiest boxer you’ve ever seen in your life?” the monkey asked.

“Yeah,” Jason had to admit like the guy had no business in the ring—whoever he was, he was no athlete. The other coaches and trainers who witnessed the smaller man’s introduction to the ring also shook their heads. The new boxer had neither the gifts of a natural athlete, nor the skills of a trained boxer to make up for them.

In an instant, the larger, trained boxer, who moved so adroitly in the ring was lying on the canvas, out cold. The smaller man beamed in triumph. He had just knocked out his sparring partner, but how had that happened?

“That boxer there,” the monkey pointed to the new guy in the ring, “is Rocky Marciano, one of the greatest boxers of all time. This is a real-life incident from when Rocky was first introduced to the ring. He was small for a heavyweight, clumsy, and everybody was laughing and shaking their heads right up until he knocked out his sparring partner.”

In the next instant Jason and the monkey were in a cheering Madison Square Garden crowd. The monkey pointed at Rocky Marciano in the ring. “He’s losing right now, and losing badly on every single score card. There’s no way he can win this except by a knockout, and it’s the last round. He doesn’t have a hope in hell.”

In a move that one sports writer described as the impact of a meteorite striking the Earth, Marciano hit with a left-right combo that blasted his opponent into the ropes, where he hung tangled up, knocked out cold.

“That was typical Marciano,” the monkey explained, and somehow he could be heard over the din of the pandemonium following Rocky Marciano’s miraculous last-round knockout victory. Bits of tickets, newspaper, and sports programs wafted down like oversized snowflakes. “Marciano was short and small for a heavyweight. He was not a natural athlete. He typically was losing most of his fights, and not just losing on points, but getting his ass kicked. He took tons of punishment, and often bled like a stuck pig. But Marciano found a way to win. Somehow, Rocky dug up some inner reserve inside of him, a rock of sheer indominable will, and won. He’s the only heavyweight ever to go undefeated, and it wasn’t because of his natural gifts or skills—it was sheer guts.”

Jason realized that when he saw the hulk of a man in the hallway, he had been overwhelmed by an emotional reaction, and frozen into paralysis. That’s why bodyguards were always monstrous men, because their sheer size caused an instinctive reaction in smaller men to back down out of an instinct of self-preservation.

“Want a do-over?” the monkey asked.

“Hell yes,” Jason replied, remembering his date with the redhead.

“Good,” the monkey said, and replaced his fez over Jason’s mouth.

It took Jason a moment to react, and yank the fez off of his face. He was going to get another shot at that goon, but that didn’t make the brute any less taller, bigger, or stronger.