"Require," Sabine said. They were standing at the edge of the mats. The evening class was doing its cooldown. Sabine had a towel over her shoulder and the patience of a woman who has been approached by promoters in fencing halls too, in another life, and knows that the first offer is a weather report from a country she does not intend to visit.
"If I build it," Dana said. "A sanctioned rematch. Main event. A charity gala, five weeks from Friday, ballroom at the Meridian, the big circle, real production, real gate. Three rounds of three minutes, so there's time for it to become a true thing and not a trick. Trained coordination allowed, encouraged, it's the whole point: the two of them train together, properly, for five weeks, and then they come and try to do in nine minutes what they couldn't do in three. Proceeds split between the self-defence programme here and the club itself, which Vic tells me needs a roof fund the way Houston needs drainage. Television, local, and a stream. So. If I build it, what would you require to walk into that circle?"
Sabine looked at the mats for a while. Down the floor, Marcus was holding a heavy bag for a teenager in the adult class and clowning, counting the strikes in a cartoon voice, and Tyler was drilling takedown defence against the wall with his headphones in, alone inside his own concentration, and she watched them both the way she had watched them from inside nine feet of chalk: by the sternum, where the truth passes through.
"Everything published," she said at last. "The rules, the purse split, the circle size, the time. Published before tickets, not after. If a rule changes, it changes in writing with my name next to the change or it does not change."
"Done. What else."
"No marketing that makes it men against a woman," Sabine said. "I have seen the posters from fights like this. Pink gloves. Battle of the sexes, they used to call it, as if it were a war and I were a country. I will not be a country. It is two athletes against one athlete in a footwork event. Their names, my name. If your designer writes the word lady anywhere, I will know, and I will not come."
Dana wrote it down, actually wrote it, in a notebook, which bought her more of Sabine's attention than any compliment could have. "What else."
"Medically cleared, all three of us. The same doctor, the same tests. Not their team doctor. Not your doctor. A doctor the state sends." She counted on her fingers, unhurried. "Vic referees. Not a celebrity referee your television people like. Vic, with the absolute authority to stop it, and his stop is final even if the crowd boos and the stream is mid-sentence. And the men—" She nodded down the mats toward Marcus, toward Tyler. "The men attend my footwork class. Twice a week. Six in the morning. Until the gala. Both of them, on time, doing the drills the beginners do, in the line with the beginners. Not as guests. As students."
Dana's pen stopped. "They'll love that."
"Then they will learn quickly," Sabine said. "Dana. Understand what you are selling. You are selling the question of whether five weeks can teach two strong men to move like one. If they will not train, there is no question, only a second video, and the second video is worth less than the first and makes all of us cheaper. If they train—" She shrugged, and the shrug was almost French, an entire philosophy in one shoulder. "If they train, perhaps they touch me in the first round, as Marcus promises, and it is a wonderful show and I lose beautifully and everyone learns something true. Or they do not touch me, and it is a wonderful show and everyone learns something true. Either way it is a sport and not a joke. This is my condition. It is not negotiable at six in the morning. It is not negotiable at all."