Chapter 4: Fight Eleven

The stairs I can't climb in the daylight, I can go down at midnight in my socks without a sound.

I did it that Friday with my shoes in one hand.

I went past the guest room door, down both flights and out through the kitchen.

Two flights down, no trouble.

Then a cab to Delaware Avenue, and four more flights of iron stairs into the dark.

I have never once been tired at the bottom of a staircase.

The poster was already up over the bar.

EIGHT GYMS NIGHT. DEV KILBRIDE, MIDDLEWEIGHT CHAMPION, VS. HUSH.

Somebody had drawn a small crown on his head and a small bucket on mine.

"The champ is going to take her apart," a man said at the bar, to nobody.

I tied my wraps and kept my face still behind the hood.

My opponent in fight eleven was a hooded woman a head taller than I am, from a gym in Port Richmond.

She came out swinging and gave the crowd a good first minute.

Then she dropped her right elbow to throw a hook, and I put my left hand in the space it left.

She went down on her knees and held her stomach, and the referee counted her out.

Eleven and zero.

I climbed out through the ropes to cheering and a man with a broom.

"Hush."

A boy with a clipboard stood at my elbow. "Mr. Stahl would like a word upstairs."

Upstairs at the Cellar is a glass booth over the ring, with a desk, two leather chairs and a view of the crowd.