Episodul 37 · The Boxer

Soles woke on Friday with his right hand clamped around his left wrist.

The wrist felt bare. No cord had ever been there. Still, he rubbed the skin above the bandage before he could make himself stop.

The cold pack Varren had left was warm now. The instructions from urgent care lay beside it. Soles checked his chest dressing before he moved.

His ribs hurt when he sat up. He waited for the worst of it to pass, then checked the time. Maxim had left for an early run. A glass of water stood beside the instructions.

He smelled the water before he drank. Chlorine, glass. He tried a sip. Nothing bitter. He set it down, ashamed of the relief.

He closed his eyes. Beneath the tree, the low plant still shone. He read its stone: Phenom. The man beyond it gave him no answer. When Soles opened his eyes, Mina was watching the hand hovering above his glass.

He washed with one hand. In the mirror above the sink, a yellow-purple bruise spread across his cheekbone and a thin scratch ran beside his eye, one he did not remember getting. He looked at them for a long time, then at his right fist and the fresh bandage on his left hand.

You hit after the bell.

He ate, fed the dogs and dressed slowly. He wanted to find her and apologize before he found an excuse not to. He messaged Maxim, then took a taxi to the boat ramp; driving hurt too much to contemplate.

In daylight he could see the trampled gravel, then the streaks between the blocks where he had driven her into the mud. He paid the driver at the boat ramp and went down toward the footbridge.

The door to Ivo’s shed opened halfway. The old man looked at him from the doorway with a mug in his hand and said nothing. Soles gave him a brief nod. Ivo did not return it. He stayed another moment, then closed the door.

Soles walked toward the footbridge.

On the third board was a small dried brown stain. Another farther on beside a nail protruding from the wood. On the other side, where the reeds opened toward the stone steps of the opposite bank, a strip of white tape hung caught on a stalk, twisted and red at one end.

Soles bent toward it, then stopped and left it there. He looked down at the mud beside the steps. Small footprints, short stride, more weight on the toes than the heel. They led upward.

He followed them as far as the street. They disappeared on the asphalt.

Garages lined the street above the steps. Soles asked a mechanic whether there was a boxing gym nearby. The man pointed to a faded sign farther down the road. He could make out two raised gloves.

Beside its metal door, a bloodied ball of white tape lay on top of a trash bin. At the gym’s side door, he stopped with his good hand on the latch. She might hit him again. He could still leave a message and go home. Worse, he could tell himself that she had started it and that the apology was more than she deserved. He had been preparing that argument since waking. He put his good hand where she could see it and went in. If she told him to leave, he would.

Inside, it smelled of old sweat, leather, and iron. The gym was larger than it looked from outside, with tall dirty windows, a ring with sagging ropes, and a row of heavy bags hanging from a beam. An older man mopped the floor beside the ring. He looked up at Soles, at his face and his bandaged hand, then went back to mopping as though he had seen that a thousand times.

The woman from the riverbed was working the bag at the far end.

Soles recognized her by the movement before he saw her face. The same small steps, the same lowered chin. Fresh tape wrapped her hands, and skin-colored tape crossed the bridge of her nose. Her left eye was swollen half shut. She struck slowly, then stopped and pressed the heel of her hand beneath her nose. Even the light work hurt.

She saw him in the dirty mirror on the wall. Her hand left her nose.

— Come for round two? she asked without turning.

— I came to apologize.

She hit twice more. Then she caught the bag with both arms, stopped its swing, and turned toward him. She laughed briefly, and the laugh broke off halfway. She touched her nose.

— For what, exactly? Throwing me in the mud?

— For the last one. You dropped your guard. I saw it. And I hit you.

She fell silent. The man with the mop paused, then moved farther away.

— After the bell, she said.

— After the bell.

She looked him over with her good eye, top to bottom, like a new bag she had not yet decided was worth hitting.

She wanted to be seen as someone who needed no one. Soles knew the pattern. It was usually how people looked when they were the last ones left in a house.

— I’m not apologizing, she said. I hit before the bell.

— I noticed.

— Everyone notices. That’s why it’s called the first punch.

She began unwinding the tape from her right hand with her teeth, starting at the wrist, in no hurry. Soles watched the gesture and something inside him tightened for no reason, like hearing a familiar sound from another room.

— Why did you go to Ivo? she asked.

— Ivo knew my father. When they took Kerr, he looked at me and said “Kale’s boy.” He never got the chance to tell me how.

She stopped with the tape half unwound.

— Kale, she repeated. The crane.

— You know about the crane.

— I know about everything that worked on those banks. That’s why I haven’t slept for the last six years.

She looked at him again, differently now.

— And the lawyer? Where do you know him from?

— I don’t. He waved to me. I don’t know why.

— I do. So everyone could see you.

Soles had not thought of that. He did not like how quickly it sounded true.