Nadia Frost called the gym on Monday, came in person on Tuesday, and was, within four minutes of arriving, the most organized person who had ever stood on Saltline's mats in street shoes.
Rowan knew her by reputation the way everyone in Greyhaven knew her: Nadia Frost, forty-four, who ran the harbor festival's charity program and two benefit regattas and a winter coat drive with the serene ferocity of a harbor master moving ships. She had a folder. The folder had tabs. The tabs, Tess whispered, had sub-tabs, and it was not even a whisper of exaggeration.
"Walt has the bones of it," Nadia said, when the four of them, Walt, Rowan, Nadia, and Tess, who had appointed herself to the meeting on the grounds of being emotionally involved, were seated in the little office off the mat room with the door shut against the evening class. "I am here for Rowan's answer, and I want to be precise about the question, because I have listened to the young man's podcast and precision is what the situation is starving for."
"Go ahead," Rowan said.
"The harbor festival closes in six weeks with the charity showcase at the community arena. Grappling has been on the undercard for three years, you know this, local clubs, exhibition matches, good crowds, modest money. This year, because of a forty-second video that half of New England has now seen at breakfast, the showcase has a chance to be something else. The arena committee will move grappling to the main event slot on Saturday night. Full house, two thousand seats, licensed, insured, sanctioned exhibition rules. You and Kieran Holt. Neutral start, standing, the way he keeps describing on microphones. Full safety rules, and I mean full, Rowan, I have read Walt's list and added to it. Owen Tate referees, with authority to stop anything at any moment for any reason, and he will have a second official at the mat edge. Medical team ringside, two physicians, not volunteers with a first aid kit, physicians. Submission only, no strikes, no slams, weight classes reconciled, you will not be giving away more than the agreed differential and we weigh in the morning of, publicly, so there is no talk afterward. Tap ends everything, instantly, and the contract says so in language my lawyer wrote and his lawyer has already read."
"His lawyer," Rowan said.
"Kieran's management contacted the festival on Friday." Nadia said it without relish. "Before the podcast. The podcast was not, I think, spontaneity. I think it was a young man, and possibly people around a young man, building a road and then walking down it loudly. Marcus Doyle called me separately, I will tell you that too, and said his fighter would accept any safety condition Walt Finch wrote down, and that if the match did not happen it would not be because of conditions. He is an honorable man, I believe, managing a bonfire."
"Proceeds," Walt said.
"All gate proceeds above costs, and costs are capped in the contract, go to one named beneficiary." Nadia opened the folder to a tab, and turned it around, and put it in front of Rowan with the care of a woman laying down a photograph of someone's family. "Walt suggested it. I agreed before he finished the sentence. The Greyhaven Rehabilitation Clinic's equipment fund. The new gait training system, Rowan. The one on the poster in your waiting room, with the harness and the track, that your clinic has been fundraising toward for three years and is currently, at the present rate of bake sales and raffles, eleven years away from affording."
The office was small and the heating was enthusiastic and Rowan was suddenly aware of both facts at once.
"You planned that," she said to Walt.
"I suggested the clinic," Walt said. "The eleven years is her arithmetic."
Tess, who had been uncharacteristically silent, said, "Tell her the rest."
"There is a rest?" Rowan said.
"When do you need an answer?"
"Contractually, Friday. Humanly, whenever you have it. I know what I am asking. I am asking you to step into the loudest room in the county with a man who has spent a week explaining to microphones that you are a fluke and a coward, in approximately that order, and to do it for money that is not for you. If it were for you, it would be simpler to refuse. I have thought about that, and I am not proud of using it, but I did come here with the clinic in the folder, so I have used it, and I would rather you knew the shape of the lever."