Lara nodded to him. “Then come along.”
He wanted to say that it had not been “come along” when she had left Mama Capini’s. W.F. opened the door for Joe; there was a thunderclap of questions from the reporters and an incessant lightning from the flashguns of the photographers. Walsh was walking on tiptoe and talking rapidly to Joe, lips as close to Joe’s ear as possible. Joe pounded glove against glove.
He was going with them, but Lara held him back. “They’ll ride up in the same elevator,” she said. “Eddie, Joe, and W.F. That’s their privilege. North too, I’m afraid, but that can’t be helped. When they reach the ring, Eddie will have to leave them. That will be hard enough.” After a few seconds, they stepped out into a corridor that was now empty, and she pulled the green door shut behind them.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“To join my stepfather. Two of his guards will have to surrender their seats to you and Eddie. They won’t be happy about that, but they can stand in the aisle.”
“May I ask a few questions?”
“Certainly.” Lara sounded preoccupied, and he was as much astonished as delighted when he felt her hand slip into his.
“It was lunch time—almost one—when we left Capini’s.”
“Lunch for us,” she said. “Some other people were having dinner. You didn’t notice.”
“My watch,” he glanced at it, “says it’s a little past two. What time is it here?”
“After ten. Why should you expect it to be the same time in different places? If you’d called London after lunch, would you have expected them to tell you they’d just sat down to tea?”
“It’s been years for me.” He tried to count them, but he could not. “How long for Eddie and Joe and W.F.?”
“What does that matter?” They had reached the elevators. Lara pushed the button with the hand that held her purse.
“How long?” he insisted.
“About four months, or so North said.”
“You’re a goddess.” It took an effort for him to force the words to his lips; he made the effort, and they came. “You live forever?”
As they entered the elevator, Lara turned to look at him. For once there was no hint of mockery in her eyes. “There are many forevers,” she said. The elevator rose.
He took her in his arms, not suddenly or violently, but enfolding her as a flower would enfold a bee, if the bee were indeed its lover and no mere go-between. Her kiss stung his lips, smooth and sunwarmed.
Tightly pressed between their bodies, Tina yelled, “Hey!” They ignored her.
The elevator doors slid back. “I am Laura Nomos,” Lara told him. “I am an attorney, and the stepdaughter of a cabinet officer. You are an acquaintance.” In a lower tone she added, “You needn’t wipe your mouth—women paint theirs to look like me.”
The whisper was no more necessary than the wiping of his lips; Sailor Sawyer had grabbed the ropes and vaulted into the ring, and half the audience was on its feet, cheering wildly.
“They applaud him now,” Lara murmured. “But in a few years he will be dead, and so will they. Let them all engage with Death, an opponent worthy of any strength.”
“I thought you liked Joe,” he said as they made their way down the aisle.
“I do. He’s like a big, solemn child, so eager to please and to do what is right. And Eddie, because he’ll reshape the world to fit his dream or die. And W.F., because he loves them both.”
Klamm had already taken a seat in the first row when they arrived; there was an empty seat to his right. Lara gestured to the man on the other side of it, who rose and went to the aisle. She sat down beside Klamm and patted the now-empty seat next to hers.
He sat. She said, “Stepfather, this is my friend Adam K. Green. Adam, Adalwolf Wilhelm Klamm.”
The old man leaned across her to shake hands, eyes stupid as though with sleep. “A great pleasure, Herr Kay.” The words were thickly accented.
He said, “It’s a very great honor, sir.”
“So,” Klamm remarked to Lara, gesturing toward Sawyer. “You t’ink still your Joe will beat him?”
With mock firmness Lara announced, “I know it.”
“Then I bet you. Theater tickets, any play you wish. Or any play I wish, which is how it shall be.”
Lara said, “Never give a sucker an even break,” and they shook hands solemnly.
Tattoos covered every visible inch of Sawyer’s skin from the neck down, pictures and bannered inscriptions that writhed and flowed with the muscles beneath them.
Tina said, “That dragon’s alive!”
He looked down and saw that she had clambered far enough out of his pocket to peep past the lapel of his coat. “It’s just a picture somebody drew on his skin,” he told her.
“I’m a doll, but I’m not just a doll.”
Joe’s robe was off. Eddie Walsh, who had replaced the other guard, had it in trust. As the referee reached for the microphone lowered to her from the rafters of the arena, W.F. opened the red-and-white kit on the canvas just beyond the ropes. North stood to one side, incongruous in a three-piece suit.
Lara whispered, “Do you want to read this?” and handed him North’s confession.
This is to state that I, the undersigned Wm. T. North, did upon the morning of January 21 shoot and kill Dr. Cecil L. Applewood in his office in the concourse of the Grand Hotel. I acted in self-defense only in that I feared disclosures Applewood might make to the police. I had been observing a confederate and saw he was being followed by an officer. My confederate visited Applewood, whom he knew to be one of us, and the officer overheard their conversation. When they had gone, I entered Applewood’s office and shot him twice in the chest, knowing that he was not the man to withstand a sustained interrogation. I then entered the hotel room occupied by my confederate, intending to kill him when he returned, but he did not return.
“I was the confederate,” he whispered to Lara.
She nodded. “I thought you were.”
The bell rang. Joe and Sawyer left their corners, circled, and jabbed. An indescribable sound filled the arena, the whine of a huge animal about to be fed.
Main Event
At the end of the first round, he felt Joe had gotten the worst of it, despite a few good punches. Joe had fought defensively, covering up, edging away, keeping Sawyer at a distance. Vaguely he recalled a night in Walsh’s room. Joe had said his opponent had been an expert boxer but, “I had the reach.” Something like that. Joe had the reach again now, by an inch or two; or so he thought. Was that really so important here? An inch or two?
As the death of a parent or a summer job awakens a boy to manhood, as the accidental lifting of a theater curtain shows us the hurrying stagehands and the sweating actor behind Lear or Willy Loman, so these dim musings gradually permitted him to see Joe and Sawyer. He had always supposed boxing a mere matter of someone strong and brave clubbing someone else who was less so. Thus had his schoolyard defeats been, or thus he had judged them.
It was not true. Joe and Sawyer played a game as complex as chess, and played it with the unequal pieces awarded each by birth and time.
The bell rang, and the fighters rose at once. For half a minute, both appeared to feint and circle as before. Quickly the dragon closed, wrapping Joe in golden scales. They were so near he could hear the smack-smack of their punches through the roar of the audience; yet he could not see … did not see what had happened. They separated, circling as before; there were fiery splotches on Joe’s chest; Sawyer’s head was shaking as if the champion sought to clear it.
Lara freed her breath in a deep sigh. “I thought that was it,” she said. He asked what she meant, but she only shook her head like Sawyer.
The fighters closed again toe-to-toe, and this time he had a better view. Sawyer’s head was bent over fists pounding like pistons. Joe’s head and shoulders held Sawyer away while Joe’s muscled forearms absorbed the blows. As they separated, one of those arms flew out, driving a brown-gloved fist where Sawyer’s chin met the collar bone.