Chapter 21: The New Kid

Gina's face closed.

I saw it happen from the hallway.

She stood in her bathrobe with her wet hair dripping onto the collar and her mouth set.

"Come in," she said, with a stiff courtesy that was nearly cruel.

"I don't want to come in. I want you to take this."

The woman held out the envelope.

She was thirty, maybe, with tired eyes and a hospital badge clipped to her pocket.

I could see her hands shaking as hard as Gina's had on the first night.

"It's two hundred and forty dollars," she said. "Six weeks. I counted. I don't want charity for my son."

"It isn't charity."

"Then what is it?"

"It's the program."

"Then the program can take my money."

Gina didn't move.

I watched her stand there, huge and rooted, with that familiar jaw.

She looked at the envelope the way I had once looked at a gym key tag on a counter.

"I can't," Gina said. "It's free. That's what it's for."

"I know that."

"I read the sign." The woman's voice cracked. "But my boy comes home talking about footwork and he doesn't ask for anything."

"I can't stand it."

"I can't be the person who got everything for nothing."

"Nobody's keeping score."

"I'm keeping score."

The two of them looked at each other under the bare bulb of the side hall.

I understood, all at once, that I was watching a conversation I had already had.

I stepped forward in my bathrobe.

"Can I say something?"

Gina glanced at me, startled.

"Please," the woman said.

"My name is Rae."

"I keep the books." I smiled, a little embarrassed. "Gina has a fund here."

"In the name of a woman who paid for this building."

"The fund covers gloves and shoes and entry fees."

"If you give her two hundred forty dollars, it doesn't buy your son a session."

"He's already in."

"It goes into the pot for the next kid who comes to the door."

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