The first person to ask for an autograph was there to have the boiler serviced.
He had a clipboard and a badly folded poster. Rae signed both before realizing the clipboard was for the visit. He laughed, embarrassed on her behalf, and put it under his arm.
"My wife watches you," he said. "She'll be delighted."
"What about you?"
"I watch what she watches."
"Wise."
He went into the yard. Rae took his clipboard back before he left and signed the place he actually needed. The first signature could stay. There were worse descriptions of completed work than her name written very large.
The gym had begun receiving people who remembered her. Not members. Men who had seen a fight in a bar, women who'd gone to school with her cousin, people certain they'd trained here in a year before she'd owned it. They came because Dorian's campaign had found the right old photographs. Rae couldn't resent the attention cleanly. A few bought tickets. A woman asked about adult beginners and stayed to watch until the end of class. Business improved by small, comprehensible amounts.
On Friday afternoon Celia arrived in training clothes and sunglasses she took off before entering. Alone. No Nita, no manager, no person from Dorian's office holding up a phone. Rae was on the floor helping a woman keep her elbow behind a punch, and for a moment she saw Celia in pieces: the shoulder in the doorway, a familiar way of standing, the heavy key ring looped through one finger.
"You're early," Rae said, although they had no appointment.
"For what?"
"Whatever you've come to tell me off about."
Celia looked around. Tony was changing a trash bag. Two men were working at a bag with the seriousness of people who'd discovered a way to avoid talking to each other. The front window caught the light and made the new poster look briefly expensive.
"Dorian said the old photographs were here. Originals. He wants them scanned properly."
"So he sent you?"
"I offered. I was nearby."
Rae did not believe the second half. She was too pleased with the first to challenge it.
"Box in the office. Give me five."
Celia nodded and went past her. People watched without admitting they were watching. The woman whose elbow Rae was holding whispered, "Is that her?"
"I hope so. Otherwise we've got a terrible problem with the poster."
The woman laughed and threw the punch better. Rae made her do it three more times, each one coming cleaner. Then she left her to practice and went to the office with the small satisfied glow of having done something she was still excellent at.
Celia had found the box. It sat on the floor between her feet. She held an old photograph of the gym's first summer picnic, thumb on a face Rae couldn't see.
"That's the one with the bad chicken," Rae said.
"The chicken was fine. Mick put it in the wrong cooler."
"Still became bad chicken."
"It was a potato salad. You keep blaming the chicken."
Rae leaned on the desk. "Have you brought a list?"
Celia put the photograph down. "I can go."
"You just got here."
"You sound busy."
"I sound like myself. You're the one came in wearing a court summons."
For a moment she thought Celia would leave. Instead Celia pulled another picture from the box. This one showed Rae in front of a train, arms wide, a little drunk on something before alcohol would have been permitted. Celia stood at the far edge, holding both of their bags.
"I hated that coat," Celia said.
Rae bent to see. The coat was enormous and brown. Mick's wife, long divorced from him, had given it to Celia during a cold snap. Celia had worn it all winter because she didn't want to insult somebody who might ask about it.
"It kept you warm."
"So would insulation. Didn't make it clothing."
"You looked distinguished."
"I looked like I was waiting for a grandchild at the airport."
They smiled. Rae sat on the edge of the desk, giving Celia room without seeming to. Outside, a jump rope caught the floor in an uneven rhythm. Celia tilted her head toward it.
"Same loose board?"
"It's a historic feature."
"I offered to fix it."
"You offered to take half the floor up with a knife."
"It was a chisel."
"Which you didn't know the name of."
Celia turned the photograph over. There was nothing written on the back. Rae had always intended to label them before the years became approximate.
"You can take it," she said.
"Dorian only needs the fight pictures."
"I mean for you. The coat. Evidence in case they try it again."
Celia looked at her, uncertain, then slipped it beside her bag. The smallest thing. Rae felt an absurd relief.
They went through the box. Celia sorted more carefully than Rae wanted, setting aside images that were faded, duplicated, turned toward a light so the faces disappeared. She knew which fights were which without asking. Rae would have found that touching if it hadn't also felt like another way to keep score.
Then she found the swimming picture.
"Oh, that's getting burned," Rae said.
Celia held it higher. "I'd forgotten this."
Rae sat on the steps of a public pool, wearing a black cap that had crept up until it looked like a second, much smaller head. One foot was in the water, the other planted on the step as if she meant to make a quick departure. Her expression suggested someone had promised a meeting and given her surgery.
"You were sulking," Celia said.
"I was conserving warmth."
"It was August."
"I conserve ahead."
They had gone in 2016. Celia was twenty-one and had a pass to the pool because she liked swimming better than running when she had a free morning. Rae went once to keep her company, then let slip that she could manage enough to avoid drowning but not enough to swim a lap without looking as if a crowd had pushed her in. Celia found this so funny Rae told her to go home. Celia refused and bought her a cap from a vending machine that supplied it folded into a square smaller than a piece of toast.
The photograph had been taken before Rae got into the water properly. She remembered Celia standing at the steps in a plain blue suit, wet hair stuck to her forehead, turning the disposable camera away before Rae could grab it.
"Feet," Celia had said.
"I've brought two."
"In the water."
"Then what are you going to stand on?"
Celia splashed her. Not much, enough to put cold drops across her thighs. Rae tried to look offended and found herself laughing too hard to sustain it. An older woman doing laps stopped at the end and told them the pool wasn't a nightclub. Celia apologized while Rae hid her face in her hands.
They began in the shallow end. Rae could stand easily and nevertheless gripped the rail with both hands. Celia moved in front of her and asked her to put her face in.
"Why?"
"Because eventually the rest of you is going to go somewhere."
"It's fine here."
"Rae. In. Blow out. That's it."
She did it badly, came up with water in her nose and an accusation ready. Celia didn't laugh that time. She put a hand flat on the water and told her to try less. Not a larger breath. Just let some go.
It took three attempts before Rae could do it without the rail and another before she stopped coming up as though the pool had wronged her. Celia stayed beside her, treading easily, a thing Rae hadn't known a person could do while talking. She watched the younger woman's hands make small movements beneath the surface and tried to copy them.
"Not like you're hitting it," Celia said.
"It's resisting."
"You're making it resist."
"You've been waiting to say that."
"A long time."
Rae laughed and got water in her mouth. Celia steadied her by the elbow until she put her feet down. No panic, no audience beyond the woman swimming impatient laps behind them. They stood in the shallow water catching their breath from laughing, and Rae had the strange brief relief of knowing nothing useful about what happened next.
Later Celia gave her a float and made her cross the short side. Rae went too fast, splashed, stopped. Celia waited at the far end, then came halfway to her without comment. The second try went better. The third took Rae all the way across. She touched the wall, turned, and found Celia grinning so broadly that Rae grinned back before asking whether it counted.
"Counts," Celia said.
"Terrible form."
"We're not going to put you on television."
They went three more Sundays. Rae paid for breakfast after because she was hungry and so was Celia. The first time she ordered something so large Celia moved the extra plate out of reach and told her swimming didn't earn two breakfasts. Rae stole a potato off her plate in reply. They argued about which other people from the gym could swim, invented an aquatic competition nobody would win and walked home with towels damp in their bags. Rae remembered being pleasantly tired in places boxing didn't usually reach.
Now Celia put the photograph on the desk beside the brown coat.
"Can you still?" she asked.
"Not elegantly."
"You weren't elegant then."
"No respect."
"I remember the noise you made when you got to the wall."
Rae looked at the picture. She had forgotten the sound until Celia said it. Not a shout. A disbelieving laugh, as if somebody else had arrived using her body. She could hear it now, doubled by the pool's tiled walls, Celia laughing back at her.
"Give me that," she said.
Celia handed it over immediately. Rae turned it faceup instead of putting it away.
There was a picture from the 2017 title, Rae with the belt and a swollen face, Celia behind her holding a towel. Rae picked it up.
"That was a night."
"It was."
"Nobody expected that, did they?"
Celia's mouth moved slightly. "I did."
Rae looked at her.
"I put a hundred on you," Celia said.
"You were broke."
"I know."
"Idiot."
"Worked out."
It had. The title had changed what Rae could ask for, where she stayed, how quickly people returned a call. Celia had still slept in the spare room then. Rae tried to remember whether she'd bought her anything with the money. There had been a trip, maybe. Three days in a rented house with people from the gym. Celia had done the food.
Tony came to the door asking whether the boiler man needed paying today. Rae said it was already paid. Tony looked pleased and went away.
"Look at that," Rae said. "A business. We pay people now."
"Good."
"Don't sound too impressed."
"I'm pleased for Tony."
Rae put the world title picture down a little hard. The edge covered half the pool photograph. She moved it, then wished Celia hadn't watched her do it.
"You know, some of us didn't have a smooth run at things."
Celia stopped sorting.
"I didn't say you did."
"All this." Rae indicated the office, then caught herself including Celia in the gesture and moved her hand toward the wall instead. "It didn't come with me. I had to pay for every bit."
"Did you?"
"What?"
Celia looked down at the picture in her hand. It was a bad one: Rae laughing, someone else's arm cutting across her face. She put it back into the box.
"Did you pay for every bit?"
Rae felt the change before she understood it. Celia's voice had gone quiet, not wounded but resolved. Rae sat straighter.
"Say whatever you're saying."
Celia set the useful pictures in a neat pile.
"Your return. This fight. The preparation budget that made Dorian suddenly so interested. I paid toward it."
Rae waited for the rest to make the first part smaller.
"Through my company. Ninety-five thousand."
In the main room the rope stopped. Rae could hear the man using it catch his breath.
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about the money I agreed to put into the event in February. Your comeback and this matchup."
"You sponsored me?"
Celia gave an impatient little movement of her head. "Not a patch on your shorts. Money to bring you back and get the fight made. To Dorian."
"All at once?"
"Fifty-five in April. Forty this month."
Rae looked at the desktop. The pool picture had slipped under the edge of the box.
"To him?"
"My company paid the accounts he gave Paul. The second one was for the July production and preparation. He said it had to be kept separate."
"Paul just sent it?"
"Paul asked me four times. Don't be mad at Paul."
"Why?"
"You know why."
"No. I don't."
Celia looked at her for a long time. Rae pulled the pool picture free and put it beside the others.
"What do you get?" Rae said.
"This fight."
"What else?"
"Nothing."
"A percentage? The building? What?"
"No. I don't own your building. I don't want your building."
"Ninety-five thousand and nothing comes back?"
"I wasn't buying a savings account."
Rae stood. The desk gave a small wooden complaint behind her. "You thought I'd be grateful?"
"I thought you wouldn't know."
That made Rae stop moving.
Celia looked tired suddenly. She pushed both palms flat against her thighs and then took them away. "I thought we could get to the fight without this."
"Without telling me you paid for me."
"Yes."
"Like a treat."
"If you want to say it like that."
Rae walked to the door and shut it. Too late. She didn't know how loudly they'd been speaking. Flo was out buying supplies; Tony would pretend he hadn't heard anything useful. The gym had become a place where she depended on people not asking.
"Where did you get ninety-five?"
"Mine."
"Celia."
"A reserve. House, business. Whatever came next. It was mine. Nobody gave it to me."
"You could have bought—"
"Don't."
The word hit hard enough that Rae stayed by the door.
"Don't tell me what my money could have bought. I had other offers. There was an away fight that would have paid better. I said no. I can add up."
The color had risen in Celia's face. She kept her hands on her thighs, fingers pressed flat.
"Does Nita know?"
"Not the amount. Not all of it."
"Your manager?"
"Enough."
Rae looked toward the closed door. Somebody outside called Tony's name. He answered from farther down the room.
"You can't buy this," she said.
Celia looked toward the poster visible through the glass above the door. "Apparently I can."
For a second Rae wanted to hurt her. A precise hurt, the sort she knew how to deliver because she had once been trusted with where it belonged. The words arrived ready. Celia still waiting to be chosen, still standing in a room hoping someone would ask her to stay. Rae could put them into the air and watch Celia take them home.
She kept her mouth shut.
Celia gathered the photographs Dorian needed. Her hands were steady now, which Rae disliked. It meant she'd done the frightening part and was already leaving.
"I shouldn't have said it here," Celia said.
"Where would you rather? Put it on the poster. Ninety-five thousand. Very generous."
"I wasn't being generous."
"No?"
"No."
Rae waited. Celia put the photographs in a document sleeve from her bag. She had brought one, expecting the office would not have anything clean to protect them. That familiar preparedness made Rae angrier than the money.
"Then what were you being?"
Celia zipped the bag. "Come and ask me when you're not going to use the answer as a weapon."
She took the sleeve and went to the door. Rae stepped out of the way too late to make it graceful.
The photograph of the coat remained beside the box.
"You forgot—"
Celia shook her head once and left it.
Rae stood in the office until the front door closed. She could feel the room around her differently: the desk, the screen, her name painted on the wall outside. The preparation bills that had been covered, the license work made possible, the renewed interest she'd permitted herself to enjoy. She had called that interest earned. She could still box. She'd won on May eighth. Both things remained true and did nothing useful for the heat in her face.
She picked up the coat photograph. On the back she wrote Celia, winter. Then she stopped, pen hovering, unable to supply the year without guessing.
In the picture Celia was carrying Rae's bag as well as her own.
Rae put the photograph on the desk, faceup, and went out to tell the beginner her elbow had improved.