He gets one under my ribs and I can’t breathe. A yelp escapes from under my breath.

Rube stands.

So do I, but crooked.

‘Finish him off,’ Perry tells him.

Rube does it.

When I wake up, the first thing I see is Miffy’s dogugly face pressed into mine. Then I see Perry, smiling. Then I see Rube, worried.

‘I’m okay,’ I tell him.

‘Good.’

When they get me back up, we all walk back into the kitchen and Rube and Perry sit down. I slump down. I feel like death warmed up. A strip of green flanks my vision. Static reaches through my ears.

Perry motions to the fridge. ‘Y’ sure you don’t have a beer?’

‘Are you an alcoholic or somethin’?’

‘I just like a beer now and then.’

‘Well,’ Rube is forthright. ‘We don’t have one.’ He’s a bit upset about knocking me unconscious, I can tell. I remember him saying, The only things I care about in this life …

Perry decides to get back down to business.

What he says is a shock.

It’s this:

‘I want both of y’s.’

Rube sniffs, with surprise, and rubs his nose.

Perry looks now at Rube and says, ‘You …’ He smiles. ‘You can fight all right. That’s a fact.’ Then he looks at me. ‘And you’ve got heart … See, one thing I didn’t go into detail about before was the tips. People throw money into the ring corners if they think you’ve got heart, and … it’s Cameron, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, you’ve got it in spades.’

Trying not to, I smile. Damn guys like Perry. You hate them but they still make you smile.

‘So what will happen is this.’ He looks at Rube. ‘You’re gonna win fights and you’ll be popular because you’re fast and young and you’ve got a rough but somehow attractive head.’

I look at my brother now as well. I examine him, and it’s true. He is good-looking, but in a strange way. It’s sudden, rough, rugged. A wayward kind of handsome that’s more around him than on him. It’s more of a feeling, or an aura.

Perry looks now at me. ‘And you? You’ll most likely get hammered, but if you keep clean enough and stay off the ropes, you’ll get close to twenty bucks on tips, ‘cause people will see your heart.’

‘Thanks.’

‘No need for thanking. These are facts.’ No more time-wasting. ‘So do you want in or not?’

‘I don’t know about my brother,’ Rube admits to him, with caution. ‘He can take a beating in the backyard, but that’s different to taking it week in week out by some guy who wants to kill him.’

‘He’ll fight someone new each week.’

‘So what?’