He Fixed My Fight, So the Champion Vanished novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Front Desk Girl

Cal hires her as Callie Banks and gives her the gym's three rules. At night she hits the heavy bag in the dark, and the light comes on.

Hollenbeck's Gym was up a flight of stairs next to a tire shop, and the stairs smelled like rubber.

At the top, a glass door had the name painted on it in peeling gold letters.

Inside there was one ring, six heavy bags and a front desk with a coffee can on it.

A man was taping a bag with his back to me.

He was tall, with broad shoulders and dark blond hair cut short at the sides.

"We open at seven," he said without turning around. "It's six-forty."

"I came about the flyer," I said.

He turned.

There was a scar through his left eyebrow, and his eyes were a flat, tired blue.

He looked at me for longer than I liked.

Then he looked at my gym bag, my hoodie, my hair that I had cut with tape scissors.

"You ever work a front desk?"

"I've worked a lot of desks."

It was true. I had signed autographs at a hundred of them.

"Name?"

"Callie Banks."

It came out easily. I had picked it off a bus ticket in the station, the last name on the list.

"Cal Hollenbeck," he said. "Fifteen an hour, cash, Fridays. Open the doors at seven, run the sign-in sheet, answer the phone, sweep the locker room. Don't touch the money in the can unless somebody hands you money."

"Okay."

"Where are you staying?"

"I haven't figured that out."

He nodded.

He took me down a hallway to a storage room with a cot, a space heater and a window onto the alley.

"The last guy slept here. It's free if you don't burn the place down."

"I won't."

"Three rules," he said. "Nobody spars unless I'm standing there. Nobody needs a real name. And nobody touches the heavy bag after hours."

"Why not after hours?"

"Because the last person who did put a hole in my wall."

I almost smiled.

By eight the gym was full.

Teenagers with jump ropes. Two men in their fifties who argued about knees. A woman who came every morning after her night shift at the hospital.

The girl who came in last was loud before she was through the door.

"Cal! Who's the new girl? Did you finally hire somebody who can spell?"

She was nineteen, maybe, with a blonde ponytail dyed pink at the ends and a chipped front tooth.

"Callie, Bea," Cal said. "Bea, Callie. Bea talks. Ignore eighty percent of it."

"That's rude." Bea leaned over the desk and held out a fist. "I'm the best amateur in northeastern Pennsylvania. He'll say I'm not. He's wrong."

I bumped her fist.

"Nice to meet you."

"You've got good hands," she said, looking at my knuckles. "Calluses. What do you do?"

"Dishes," I said.

"Sure you do."

Cal said, "Bea. Bag."

She went.

I sat down behind the desk and looked at the television bolted to the wall above it.

It was tuned to the sports channel, with the sound low.

My own face was on the screen.

It was the highlight reel from my fight in March. My right hand landing. My arm lifted by the referee.

The ticker underneath said CHAMPION KELLER STILL MISSING.

I did not move.

Cal came to stand beside the desk with a cup of coffee and watched the screen.

"Pretty good, isn't she?" he said.

"I guess."

"Best I've seen in ten years. And then she walks out on her own title fight in front of a camera."

My mouth had gone dry.

"Maybe she had a reason."

"Maybe." He sipped the coffee. "Everyone's got a reason. I don't have a lot of patience for fighters who quit."

He changed the channel to the weather.

I sat very still until the lunch rush.

That night, after he locked the front door and went down to his apartment behind the tire shop, I lay on the cot and listened to the building settle.

I couldn't sleep.

At one o'clock I got up, wrapped my hands the old way, left over right, and walked out to the dark gym.

I wasn't going to break his rule.

Then I looked at the nearest bag.

It was just one round.

I hit it.

The bag swung, and the chain rang, and I hit it again, a jab and a cross, and for the first time since the walkout my shoulders came down.

I was in the third combination when the lights came on.

Cal stood at the top of the stairs in a gray T-shirt and jeans with his keys in his hand.

He watched me for a long time.

"Your left drops," he said.

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