The fight went on and on, gloves on flesh on bone, fighters clinging to each other like they were so tired they could drop dead. The referee pulled them apart and made them keep fighting. How could this be normal, pleasurable, thrilling even, watching two people burst each other’s flesh with the force of their punches? Why was it an occasion for the people on TV to dress up in suits and jewels, and for my parents to throw a party? Why did they all love this misery? Every time the bell rang I crossed my fingers, wishing for it to be over, but the boxers just flopped onto stools in opposite corners, drooling as they pulled out their wet mouth guards. I cringed when their coaches squirted water in their faces and in their mouths. Then the bell and they were back to the center of the ring, bouncing and attacking, crouching, blocking, bleeding gooey ropes from busted lips, then back to their corners, then back to the center again. Finally the one in blue had become a zombie, slick all over as if every part of his body was weeping. His punches stopped connecting and he couldn’t block the hits that sent him to the floor. He tried to get up when the referee counted to ten, but it was no use. Everyone was shouting now—some of them cheering in high tones, others flinging long bare arms over disappointed faces. Three . . . two . . . one. The boxer I’d put my money on lost.

I was still upset when my mother put me to bed. She kissed me on my temple and went back down to watch the second fight and I lay in bed and listened. The door of my room was ajar, the clang of the bell and the shouts of the crowd on TV and the crowd downstairs coming to me through the thick gray smoke ribbons lying on the air.

A shape stepped into the slice of light in my doorway; I heard the sound, and the sizzle. And then the smell. Downstairs a few people screamed. Something must have happened in the fight. The shape exhaled a lungful of cigarette smoke and came in. There was a small thud as he put his beer bottle down by the far wall. More screams from below. The smell of the beer-wet cigarette butt was so close now it stung.

I tried to be very still but my eyes were wide open. I thought he wouldn’t be able to see them. I don’t know why. Then he spoke to me. “I’m sorry you didn’t win.”

His sweat was oil, grease. What you might sweat if you were a machine. That’s what I remember about him, skin so slick with sweat it was too shiny to look at.