Dunphy waited impassively as Naomi fumbled with her camera. Her fingers were unusually clumsy, stiff with cold.
It was cold, drafty in this inhospitable space. And outside it was very cold, Naomi’s fingers had been chilled inside her leather gloves making her way to the hotel.
Naomi saw that Dawn Dunphy’s nails were blunt, just perceptibly dirt-edged, cut close to the flesh and not filed. Her fingers were larger than Naomi’s, her hand large enough (Naomi thought) to swallow up Naomi’s hand in her own if she wished.
And if Dawn Dunphy squeezed hard and would not let go, the bones in Naomi’s hand would be shattered.
Dunphy laughed mirthlessly. “Like last time. But I guess—I look worse . . .”
“Oh no . . . Well maybe.”
Naomi wondered if Dawn Dunphy knew what déjà vu meant.
The drafty utilitarian setting in a hotel. Bleak-fluorescent light of a windowless space. Facing each other across a tabletop of some cheap cork material that would crumble into bits if hit the right way.
“I guess the eye-cut is worse. How many stitches?”
Dunphy shrugged. Dunphy wiped her nose with the edge of her hand.
“I’d guess—twenty? Twenty-five?”
“Yah.” Dunphy’s lips twitched in a bitter smile.
“Does it hurt?”
“What d’you think? Shit!”
“Well. I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK. They give me what’s-it, Ty-len-all.”
“You should put ice on the wound. That will help with the swelling.”
“Yah I did. Last night.”
“Could you sleep?”
“Yah. So tired, you sleep.”
The damage to Dunphy’s face was marginally worse than the damage had been in Cincinnati. Both her eyes were bruised and bloodshot and there were small cuts across her forehead. The black cross-stitches above her right eye were ferocious-looking, ugly. Almost there was a comic-grotesque look to her. But Naomi wasn’t about to smile.
It seemed possible that Dawn Dunphy was wearing slept-in clothes. A stale, not unpleasant odor wafted from her. Dull-gray sweatpants and a pullover with a hood and the front of the pullover stained.
“If it’s any consolation people are saying that you won the fight—or would have won it. In that last round—”
Naomi spoke encouragingly. But Dunphy stared brooding at the tabletop.
“If the fight hadn’t been stopped, if your opponent hadn’t ‘head-butted’ you . . .”
Naomi heard herself speaking as if knowledgeably and wondered if she sounded as naive to Dawn Dunphy as she did to herself.
For this interview Marika had neglected to provide a bottle of Evian water for Dawn. Awaiting her Naomi had been drinking coffee out of a Styrofoam cup, from a vending machine in the hall, and this cup was prominently on the table. Naomi had a sudden sensation of vertigo, that Dawn Dunphy might take up the Styrofoam cup impulsively and drink from it, and her regret was, the coffee was both very poor and no longer hot.
“Would you like me to get you some coffee? There’s a vending machine in the hall . . .”
“Nah. Thanks.”
“It’s no trouble, Dawn. It’s just in the hall.”
Dawn. So naturally Naomi uttered the name, Dawn Dunphy seemed scarcely to notice.
When Dawn didn’t insist no, Naomi went out into the hall. At the vending machine she pushed quarters into the slot. She was feeling disoriented, almost giddy.
She returned with the (hot) Styrofoam cup in both hands. She’d brought tiny packets of sugar, “cream.”
Set the cup down in front of Dawn Dunphy who seemed not to see it at first.
“Thanks.”
“I was saying—everybody knows you won the fight. You should be the WBL champion . . .”
“MBL.”
“I mean—‘MBL.’ You should be the welterweight champion.”
“Yah. OK.”
“They will give you a rematch. People say.”
“Yah.”
“Next time, you will beat ‘Siri Aya.’ Everybody says so.”
Dawn Dunphy shifted her shoulders. She lifted the Styrofoam cup in both hands and peered into it but didn’t drink.
“If there’s a ‘next time.’ I guess.”
“Everybody is saying . . .”
“Yah. I know.”
“You shouldn’t be discouraged. Until last night you were undefeated . . .”
What was she saying? She didn’t mean this at all.
Of course you should be discouraged. You should quit this terrible sport before . . .
Dunphy was saying that her trainer Ernie had told her to take the week off—“Just rest.”
“You’re not still working—are you? At Target?”
“Not full-time. Just when they need me.”
Dunphy sipped at the hot black coffee into which she’d put neither sugar nor cream. The taste had to be bitter in her mouth.
“You know, we could find a Starbucks. I could buy you some really good coffee.”
“‘Starbucks’?”—Dawn Dunphy seemed not to have heard this name.
“Maybe not in this neighborhood. I don’t know where we are, exactly. But—somewhere . . . Is there a downtown in Cleveland?”
“How’d I know?”
“Anyway. There’s all kinds of coffee flavors at Starbucks, and it’s real coffee not instant like this.”
Naomi returned to the interview. Dawn Dunphy had not shown much enthusiasm for Starbucks.