"I want to see it again because I am a coach," he said, "and coaches are permitted." But his eyes were wet, slightly, in the way of men's eyes at dawn when there is tea to blame it on.
Her legs were another matter, and they both treated the matter honestly. She was fifty-two. The knees had opinions now, and the left one had a solicitor. So they managed them the way you manage any veteran on a roster: no roadwork on concrete, the bike instead, ten minutes before and after; rounds shortened and sharpened rather than lengthened; footwork drilled at half speed until the lines were true, then walked up to speed only as far as the truth held. Barlow built her a geometry that asked less of the springs and more of the angles, and Greta, who had spent three years pushing a mop in long efficient lines across this floor, recognised the philosophy immediately. It was cleaning, applied to fighting. You did not scrub harder. You stood in the right place and let the work come to the edge of the bucket.
"Three rounds," Barlow said, resting on the ropes while she worked the bag in the last of the session. "Three rounds is not a career. Three rounds is a paragraph."
"It is a long paragraph, at my age."
"It is a paragraph you have written before." He watched her finish — a jab, a step, a roll under nothing, a counter tapped to the bag's ribs with a restraint that was, itself, the whole art. "Greta. Your hands are twenty-nine. Your legs are fifty-two and being treated with respect, which is more than most legs get. And your head—" he shook his own, slowly, with something like wonder, "—your head never left. You have been watching fighters for three years from behind a mop. I would not want to be the young man who has to solve you with a crowd watching."
"He does not have to solve me," she said, and untied her gloves with her teeth, the old way. "It is an exhibition. He has to share a ring with me for nine minutes and give the port some money. If he learns something, that is his business."
"And if you learn something?"
She considered this while she towelled her face, seriously, because she considered everything seriously; it was the habit of a life spent listening to buildings at night.
"I am learning that dawn is better than night," she said at last. "In the night I clean what the day left. In the morning —" she gestured, a small sweep of the towel that took in the ring, the grey light, the old man on the ropes, "— the day has not left anything yet. It is all still possible. Stefan used to say training was the only honest part. The fight is just the reading aloud."
"Was he right?"
"He was right about most things, except the ones he was wrong about, which were mostly about me being invulnerable." She hung the towel over the rope with the neatness of long practice. "He is not in my corner, Frank. I want you to know I know that. It is you in my corner. That is not a lesser thing. It is a different thing, and I am — I find I am not sorry about it."
Barlow looked down at his tea for a moment. "Then I'll do my best to deserve the stool," he said.
"You already carry it well. I have seen you. You have a gift."
She showered, and changed into her cleaner's clothes, and at seven, when Big Eddie arrived with the day shift's keys rattling and the first fighters drifted in with their bags and their music, Greta Lindqvist was pushing her mop in long lines across the floor of the Northgate Athletic Club, her hair pinned, her face composed, a woman of fifty-two doing unremarkable work remarkably well. One of the young fighters stepped around her bucket with exaggerated care and said, "Morning, champ," half as a joke, and she inclined her head and said "Morning" and mopped on, and if her shoulders, moving, remembered other mornings, other canvas, a brother's hands at her wrists saying the wrap is the promise — that was hers, and she kept it where she kept everything: behind the work, sheltered, standing.