Simon Greer stood at the back of the hall with his arms folded, in the place he always stood when the club's money and the club's honour were both on the mat, and he was remembering, against his will, the way he had spoken to Dolores Marenco the night this had all begun, in his own building, in front of his own staff. He had watched a champion laugh at the woman who cleaned his floors and he had weighed the sponsorship against the janitor and found the janitor lighter. She had never mentioned it since. She had come to work the next night and the night after that, and emptied the bins in his office without a word, and he understood now, watching her shorten a young champion's world by inches, that her silence had not been submission. It had been the patience of a person who did not need his permission to be what she was. When the bout ended, however it ended, Simon Greer had some things to say out loud and in the right order, and for once in his life he intended to say them where people could hear.
On the mat, the distance between them had begun to close in a way that had nothing to do with steps. Dee was no longer retreating to the full length of his reach and making him cross it. She was meeting him a half pace sooner, crowding the start of his movements, putting her hands on him before his feet had finished their sentences. He felt it and did not like it and covered his dislike with activity, throwing more, and more was exactly the error. A tired champion is still a champion. A tired showman is a man rehearsing. Twice his famous entry arrived with the flourish on the end of it, the little dip and show of the shoulders that Eddie had called the chorus, and twice Dee answered it almost, her hands finding his sleeve, his collar, the edge of the thing, slipping off as his speed tore him free at the last instant. The second time, her fingers closed on his jacket for a whole breath before they were stripped away, and a sound went through him that he would remember in the shower that night: not fear, exactly. Recognition. She is not guessing any more, he thought. She is not hoping. She has it timed.
He decided, then, to end it with the best thing he owned. It was not a decision he made with the thinking part of himself, the part that had held the plan for three weeks and nursed the score and behaved like a professional. It was the older part of him, the part that had won a title at twenty-four by believing that audacity was the same thing as truth. His corner was calling something at him, words he did not take in. The hall was a single held breath. He set his feet the way he set them for the entry that had made his name, the one from the clips, the one with the dip and the flourish built into its spine like a signature, and Dee Marenco, who had been shown that signature every third exchange for the whole of a long bout, who had cleaned up after this young man's triumphs and washed his chalk marks off her floors and waited, all night and all her life, in the unhurried centre of herself, saw the chorus coming before the first note sounded.
She did not meet it with speed. She had never once, in thirty years, beaten speed with speed. She met it with the inch of hip she had been practising all night, the small, unglamorous refusal that spoiled the road, and as his momentum carried him past the place of his intention she was already turning inside his turn, her hands arriving where Eddie had promised they would arrive, sleeve and deep collar, her forehead set against him and her weight dropping through her good side in the same family of throw that had put him on this mat in seven seconds a lifetime ago. It was not the same throw. It was slower, and heavier, and built out of everything the night had taught her about exactly where his balance lived, and it took him off his feet not like a trick but like a conclusion.