and then fell to the ground. The camera zoomed in on Bunny, who was smiling around her mouth guard and holding her fist in the air, walking in tight circles, trying to burn off the rest of the adrenaline.
I must have watched this video of the pinheaded girl a hundred times. The pinheaded girl did not look like Ann Marie. Her hair was darker than Ann Marie’s for one thing, and her eyes were not wide set. But it was the smallness of the head, and perhaps the way they were built, the angles of the shoulders, something. But I could not stop thinking of that pinheaded girl as Ann Marie.
“You are clinically depressed,” Conor told me.
“Maybe,” I said.
In the end, I finally called her. Obviously, it was all leading up to that. Calling her was the only thing that would break the spell and allow me to resume my life. And so I found her website, she wasn’t on Facebook for whatever reason, and I sent her an email, very short and sweet in case she didn’t read her own emails, and I got a note back, with her number, that appeared to be from her, and which said: OMG, CALL ME!!! Xoxox.
So I called her right then, afraid I would lose my nerve if I waited, and she picked up on the first ring and said, “Well, that was instant gratification!”
“I know!” I said. “I just got your message.”
“I just sent it!”
“Modernity!”
“Or whatever,” she said. “You serving up some academic realness now?”
I laughed. “I guess so.”
“God, I’m so glad you called!” she said. Her voice sounded exactly the same. I felt seventeen again. It was truly surreal.
“I don’t have long hair anymore,” I blurted out.
She laughed. “How do you wear your hair now, Michael, my love?”
“God, I feel so stupid.”
“Don’t.”
“So you’re a boxer?”
“Yep.”
“And do you like that?”
“I love it. It’s like I was born to do it,” she said. “I mean, I’d much rather do MMA because that’s where all the money is, but I’m too big. The UFC’s highest weight class for women is featherweight, which is like one forty-five, and I just can’t cut enough weight to get down there and still, like, keep my eyes open.”
“Oh yeah,” I was saying, but I had instinctively withdrawn. I realized I was hoping that she would say she hated it, that Ray was making her do it. I didn’t like the idea that she was born to do it. But on the other hand, boxing was a legitimate sport. What she was doing wasn’t wrong. It was like a televised thing, not something to be ashamed of. She was an athlete, which is what she had always been.
We went on talking about the trivialities of our lives, catching up as best we could. In moments it would feel like everything was the way it used to be, and in other moments I would catch sight of a side of her I didn’t recognize. She swore a lot. About her most recent fight she said she “dominated that binch.”
“Ugh, binch. Don’t say binch,” I said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Wait, what were we talking about?” she asked.
Then we started talking about meeting up. She was going to be in New York City the following month for a match, would I come down? I said I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
“I’ll get you tickets to the match!” she said. “I’ll book you a hotel! I’m writing a note so I don’t forget!”
“Oooh, yay!” I said, even though the idea of watching the match live horrified me. But I agreed to meet her at a diner she particularly liked off Union Square on the Wednesday before her match. I would take the campus-run bus down. She would book us in the same hotel. It was all arranged.
* * *
—
I entertained fantasies of missing my bus accidentally/on purpose, or of standing Bunny up in some way, only because I was so nervous, but in the end I caught my bus, and I took a cab downtown, and I was a little bit late, but not too late, and when I walked into the diner, my heart dropped down to my stomach. Ray and Bunny were sitting in a booth in the back, and they both waved at me. She had said nothing about Ray joining us, and I was deeply unprepared. I had thought since I was an adult and no longer brought my parents everywhere, Bunny would be the