BRIGHT INDUSTRIAL LIGHTS hung in neat rows on the ceiling. Raymond was alone in the dressing room. It’s how you know you lost. He knew it would come to this. They only ever talked about winning and knockouts and the ways in which he didn’t measure up. But, in his mind, the joy of boxing was in the small details no one was there to see. He loved what it took to get here—the routine, the training, the discipline. And the buildup before the fight, the few moments after he finished wrapping up his hands and put on his gloves, his heart racing, and before he entered the ring and touched gloves. Before anything had been decided about him, when the possibility that he might win this one—just this one time—was a chance as good as any and all he had to do was step into that opening. Even when that didn’t happen, being in the ring still meant seeing a champion up close, becoming a small detail in his list of bouts. It meant he, Raymond, had been there.
And it was hearing his sister’s voice in his corner that he loved the most. Raymond heard the excitement of the crowd, their chanting, screaming, and jeering. But no matter how loud they got, his sister’s voice always broke through. The way she would cuss out the other guy or the audience when they turned on Raymond. He came from nothing, and to stand up anyway and to try for something—well, if that wasn’t courage, he wasn’t sure what was.
Raymond didn’t know what had happened out there in the ring—a flurry of jabs and punches, and then he was out. At the time, none of that hurt. The pain came afterwards, and matched the sadness he carried around in him, anchored in his body like an extra set of bones. He knew he would lose even before the fight began. Knew it for sure once he was in the ring and he couldn’t lift his arms or his head, couldn’t see his opponent’s face or understand what he was doing in the ring. He couldn’t think out there. Couldn’t move his feet fast enough, couldn’t move out of the way when a punch came. They landed in the middle of his face. Quick, hard, sudden. He was trained to see them coming, but he just stood there like some fool waiting for them. When he played back tapes of the fights his sister had recorded for him, he saw the punches in slow motion, how the impact rippled across his nose, his cheekbones, his hair. And when it was over, he could see nothing but black light, those little dots that peppered everything in his vision. He knew it was about time for him to be through with fighting. He had to get it out of his mind that he could ever be a champ. Truth was, he had become what they call a trial horse. He was just there for someone to punch, a body to pass through on the way to some victory belt. He said he’d quit if it ever got to be like that, and it got to be like that. This wasn’t the way he wanted to leave boxing, but it was over now, and he knew it.
Raymond wasn’t the only person who’d ever lost the place he saw for himself in the world, but that’s not how it felt to him then. He lived in a mouldy, cold basement with just one window. When he first got the place, he thought he would be able to see sky once in a while, but the floor wasn’t down low enough so all he saw were shoes and boots and heels. Feet.
Raymond’s sister did well for herself. She owned Bird Spa and Salon. The slogan was “Nails! Cheap! Cheap!” It was catchy. She wanted him to come work with her. She said he didn’t have to go to school or nothing. He just had to listen to what she told him to do. It would be just like it was in the ring. She’d yell at him like he was in the corner and he’d just go out and get it done.
Instead, Raymond had gotten a job scooping out ice-cream flavours at the mall, and when that shift was over he started another one frying bland cabbage. He hadn’t seen his sister in weeks. Hadn’t called her or picked up the phone when she rang. But she