D.D. Dunphy had been issued dark-red trunks, dark-red T-shirt trimmed in white. Her shoes were not black shoes but a girl’s shoes, dark red with tassels. There had been some reason for this, she’d had to accept.
She was a soldier now. She was a robot-soldier. Her trainer had instructed her: fix your gaze on your opponent and never look away. “Rivet” your opponent with your gaze “like a viper” and never, never look away.
Did she understand? Yes. She did.
For weeks she’d been told that the fight was hers to win. She could not lose. She believed this.
In the seconds before the bell rang for the first round Ernie spoke matter-of-factly in her ear giving instructions. She was a killing machine. She was a deadly viper. She was a pitbull. She had only to fight as she’d been taught and as she’d been practicing. So many times her trainer had led her through the sequence of punches which she executed flawlessly, tirelessly. She must get inside, for her arms were short. She must move forward, never back. Executing her practice-routines in the gym D.D. Dunphy was near-flawless but with a sparring partner she was less predictable and in this unfamiliar setting, in a vast arena of hundreds of seats, very bright lights, isolated shouts and cries and whistles, and facing an opponent with whom she’d never sparred, she was feeling like one who has opened a door and is about to step inside, trusting that there is a floor on the other side and not—nothing.
The bell rang at last. The boxers emerged from their corners staring at each other like sleepwalkers who have been rudely awakened.
As a cougar might approach a viper Lorina Starr approached her younger opponent with caution. Lorina Starr paid no heed to catcalls from the audience. She was skilled in prevarication, evasion. She had no wish to be hit for she had (many times) been hit and knew what being hit could mean. She was poking at Dunphy with her left jab, looking for an opening to hit the big-shouldered chunky white girl square in the face with her poised right hand and send the girl staggering back into the ropes but this did not happen for Dunphy crouched low, shielding her face with her raised gloves, and managed to slip Lorina Starr’s blows. This was the peek-a-boo style Ernie Beecher had drilled into her, which had been Mike Tyson’s defensive strategy drilled into him by his great trainer Cus d’Amato.
You’re short, short-armed. You need to go shorter.
The welterweights circled each other as isolated calls and whistles came from the arena. D.D. was surprised that the rapid left jab of her opponent scarcely registered against her arms and shoulders, awkwardly thrown, with no evident force behind it.
Strange, unnerving, to see the other’s face and eyes so close to her! The small white scars in the eyebrows that had been darkened with eyebrow pencil, glittering piercings in the ears that were not a good idea (D.D. was sure) to wear into the ring. The skin was damply flushed like her own, somewhat pale, coarse, without the red-tinged beige powder that was meant (D.D. supposed) to suggest “red skin.”
Sensing herself the stronger of the two D.D. pressed forward, hitting with her jab, harder than the opponent could hit, forcing the opponent backward, off balance. Always she was pressing forward, trying to get inside the reach of the taller boxer. As she positioned herself to throw a right cross the opponent jerked away like a frightened rabbit. Yet D.D. managed to hit her, a rapid right, a rapid and hard left hook, striking the opponent on the right temple, and sending her down onto one knee.
Immediately, a flurry of excitement in the arena.
The referee began his count. Five, six, seven . . . Dazed and blinking Lorina Starr rose to her feet at seven. She might have taken a count of nine to give herself a little more recovery time but she seemed defiant, brash. She was bleeding from a cut lip. Already she was badly out of breath. The referee peered frowningly at her but allowed the fight to continue as Lorina Starr backed away raising her gloves to prepare for an assault which she knew was coming, and which she could not prevent.
The younger and stronger boxer pushed forward aggressively, swarming over her, striking with both fists, a powerful volley of blows as cries lifted from the arena in approval.
The sight of blood on the opponent’s face was exciting to D.D. like the sight of something forbidden. She had not expected to wound the opponent so quickly. She had expected a more experienced opponent, and a more dangerous opponent.
Go forward! Get inside! Hit her!—there came her trainer’s urgent voice, or the memory of his voice.
A kind of madness came over her. A red mist. She was exultant, pushing forward. It was as if she and the opponent were drowning together in some terrible bright-lit place and D.D. had to fight the other woman off, defeat her utterly, to save herself.
Cries of the crowd like the shrieks of rapacious birds.