Chapter 6: Friday Card

On Friday night I walked out of my father's house through the front door.

Corrado drove me himself, and he did not say a word until the bridge.

"Papà doesn't know where I'm taking you."

"Then he'll find out," I said.

"He knows you're fighting. He doesn't know I'm watching."

"Then don't get in the way."

He nodded and kept his eyes on the road.

The basement was full again.

Word had gone around about the girl who unmasked, and people had paid double at the door.

In the back room my trainer was waiting with the tape.

"Where's your head?" she asked.

"Here."

"It's not. Sit."

I sat on the bench, and Tancredi came in with the wraps in his hand.

My trainer always did my hands.

She looked at him, then at me, then at the roll of tape.

"I've got a bad wrist tonight," she said, and went out.

She shut the door.

Tancredi stood there for a moment.

"This is outside the ring," I said.

"It's inside the room."

"That's a technicality."

"I wrote the rule," he said. "I can read it."

He knelt in front of the bench and took my right hand in both of his.

His fingers were warm and dry and rough along the pads.

He started at the wrist and wound the gauze over the back of my hand, slowly, between each finger.

I watched his hands.

I had been wrapped by my trainer a thousand times, and it had never taken this long.

"Tight enough?"

"Tighter."

He pulled it tighter, and it pushed the breath out of me.

He stopped.

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