Dorian asked her to meet at a diner because his office was being painted. Rae distrusted a man who could conduct business while somebody else improved his surroundings.
He was halfway through a plate of eggs when she arrived. The booth faced the door. A folder lay beside him and his phone sat on it. Not hidden, not displayed. Rae was developing an unreasonable interest in where he put the thing.
"Coffee?" he asked.
"I can buy coffee."
"Good. I was worried."
She sat across from him. The waitress set a cup down without asking and Rae remembered she had come here after the world title. Seven people at three tables pushed together, Mick asleep for most of it, the belt taking up half a seat. The waitress was probably not the same one. It felt unkind to have forgotten.
Dorian moved the folder toward her. Event arrangements, media requests, an updated schedule. She took it without opening.
"My niece says you want the old footage."
"Useful history."
"Some of it's terrible."
"Terrible quality or terrible fighting?"
"Both. I had a haircut that should've been reported."
He smiled and cut an egg neatly through the middle. The yolk ran into his toast.
"The gym looks good," he said.
"It looked the same when you were there."
"People look different when they've been paid."
Rae turned the cup a little. "You should put that on a poster."
"It's good the money helped."
"It wasn't medicine."
"No."
He let the word sit. She picked up the folder and looked at the first page. Her name and Celia's in the same size. It should have pleased her. For most of Celia's early career Rae had fought to get her name large enough to read on a local card. Here it was, perfectly visible, and Rae had spent the photograph session trying to stand in front of it.
"How's your training?" Dorian asked.
"We're training."
"Body all right after Ellery?"
"Don't start sounding concerned. It makes me nervous."
"I'm concerned about everybody. There's a lot of people to pay."
She looked at his breakfast. "There it is."
He drank his coffee. The waitress came to refill Rae's untouched cup. Rae waited until she had moved behind the counter.
"I need to ask you something."
"Go ahead."
"If she doesn't give me what I need in six."
"Then we don't have the result."
"I'm not a clock."
"I know."
"You keep saying it like there's a button."
Dorian set his fork down. "Do you want to do this?"
"I asked you about the timing."
"So am I."
Rae looked toward the window. Outside, a woman was trying to fold a stroller while holding a toddler who appeared determined to get inside it before she'd finished. A man beside her offered a hand. She said something that made him remove it. Rae watched the woman finally get the latch, the sharp satisfying collapse, and envied her a problem that made a noise when it was solved.
"Tell me why six," she said.
Dorian wiped his mouth. Not stalling. Tidying before the next thing.
"Because that's the position. The money isn't just a room full of people thinking Celia wins. It's a particular result in a particular round. Money is backing that exact stoppage. My money, money I'm responsible for. If you lose in seven, the tickets might be happy. The other money isn't."
"And this is worth a hundred and eighty to you."
"Enough for me to offer it."
"Guaranteed?"
"What?"
"Your money. All that clever business."
He looked almost amused. "Of course it isn't guaranteed. You're involved."
She laughed despite herself. Then wished she hadn't.
"Neither is your hundred and forty," he said. "The forty arrived. You have that. The rest follows the result we agreed. Not almost, not an argument afterward about what was harder than expected."
"You think I'm going to complain to customer service?"
"I think people remember conversations differently when they want something."
He had a point. It was the least agreeable thing about him.
Rae stirred coffee she didn't take sugar in. There would be no useful conversation with a referee about intention. She couldn't privately appoint herself the author of Celia's punches. She knew how a body slowed, how a woman stopped answering enough for an official to intervene. She also knew how a real fight could wander off from what you thought it would be. Forty thousand dollars had made the uncertainty seem like a technical detail. Sitting across from the man who'd paid it, she felt the scale of the job again.
"She could stop me early."
"Yes."
"You could lose your money without me doing a thing wrong."
"You mean without you breaking our agreement."
Rae stopped stirring.
"You're very precise," she said.
"Here, yes."
He took his phone off the folder when it vibrated, looked at the screen and silenced it.
"I'm not going through this again after July third," he said.
"You won't have to."
She had said it before deciding whether it was an answer or a promise. Dorian picked up his fork.
The waitress came back to ask about breakfast. Rae ordered toast because she needed another ordinary exchange before standing. When it arrived it came with two little tubs of jelly and butter too cold to spread. Dorian waited while she ate a piece. He didn't fill the time by persuading her she was a good person.
That almost made her like him.
"Celia's people are happy with the matchup?" she asked.
"They want her tested. Your name does that."
"My name used to do all sorts."
"It still does."
He said it without kindness. She found the plain commercial estimate easier to sit across from than the people telling her she still had it.
When she left, Dorian stayed to finish his coffee. Rae walked three blocks before stopping outside a closed nail salon. She opened a blank note on her phone and wrote the date, the diner, the two amounts and the words he had used about the sixth. She corrected a number her thumb had hit twice. At the bottom she wrote: I said he wouldn't have to ask again.
She read it once and closed it. Above the note were Flo's shopping list and a measurement for the upstairs window.
At the gym Flo was hanging a fresh poster on the window. It had come from Dorian's office already printed. Rae held the lower corner while her niece fixed the tape.
"Straight?" Flo asked.
Rae moved it a fraction to the left.
"Now?"
She could see Celia's face through the glass. Then her own beside it, older and pleased to be there.
"That's straight," she said.