He Fixed My Fight, So the Champion Vanished novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Old Corner

Lou looked straight at me.

I was behind the desk with a pencil in my hand and my hair cut off, and his face did not change at all.

Then he turned to Cal.

"Gannon," he said. "I trained out of the Scranton Boxing Club for thirty years, before it closed. I thought you might have a spot for an old corner man."

"We don't have the money for a trainer," Cal said.

"I'm not asking for money."

Cal's eyes went to the duffel bag and the windbreaker.

"Where are you staying?"

"The Lackawanna Motel, on Route 6. I'll be there all week."

"I'll think about it."

"That's all I'm asking."

Lou put a card on the desk.

He wrote a number on the back of it, in the blocky pen strokes I had watched on the margin of a thousand fight programs.

"Miss," he said to me, and nodded.

Then he left.

I sat there with the pencil snapped in half in my fist.

"You know him?" Cal asked.

"No."

"You went white again."

"I know what I look like."

He studied me a moment, then went to find a clean towel for Bea's nose.

At two o'clock I took the trash down the back stairs.

The alley behind the tire shop was wet and narrow.

Lou was standing next to the dumpster with a cup of coffee in his hand, and I knew without asking that it had four sugars in it.

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