She Told Herself

The penthouse was very quiet.

Viktor had left forty minutes ago; shoes on, jacket zipped, the small purposeful energy of someone with a destination. Candy, he'd indicated, pointing at his own mouth and then at the door, and she'd nodded and said don't be long and watched the elevator close on him. She'd stood there for a moment after, listening to the building settle, and then she'd gone back to the screens.

That had been forty minutes ago.

She hadn't moved since.

The monitors cast their blue light across the room, across the termination notice she still hadn't thrown away, across the half-empty glass of water on the table. The Fighter's face was on the center screen; not the interview this time, not the Morrison clip. Just a still. A photograph from a press event, six months ago, before any of this. He was looking slightly off-camera, the way he always did, like the thing worth looking at was never quite where the lens was pointed.

She said it to herself clearly, deliberately, the way you state a fact you need to remember. She hated him. He had cost her everything; her job, her credibility, two years of her life, and he didn't even know her name. Probably. He was out there right now, probably, eating whatever Raul put in front of him, continuing. Just continuing, as if the Bloodless report had been a minor inconvenience, as if she hadn't built an entire architecture of proof around him, as if she were nothing.

She looked at the photograph.

He was looking slightly off-camera. That specific quality of not quite being present in a room even when you were fully in it. She had catalogued every interview, every press appearance, every thirty-second clip from every undercard event for two years, and he always did this; always looked slightly past the lens, like the thing worth seeing was somewhere to the left of where everyone was pointing. Like he was waiting for something that hadn't arrived yet.

She turned away from the screen. Got up. Walked to the window and stood with her back to the room, looking at Chicago in the dark, the city doing its indifferent late-night thing. She crossed her arms. Uncrossed them.

She did not think about the Morrison interview. She did not think about L-M-A-O said aloud in perfect sincerity. She did not think about it worked a little delivered without shame to an arena full of people.

She went back to the screens.

She could end the story.

Not edit it, not reframe it, not release a follow-up report that repositioned the narrative. End it. Seal it closed the way Morrison's story had sealed itself in a bathtub in Paris at twenty-seven; permanent, untouchable, beyond revision. No one walked out of that ending. No one held a press conference after that and kept boxing and refused the shape of what they were supposed to be.

She would give him a real ending.

She was still telling herself this when she noticed she had pulled up his training schedule on the secondary monitor. Not his public appearances — his actual schedule. The gym. The routes he ran. The building he lived in. She had compiled it two years ago, updated it six months ago, never deleted it.

She looked at it for a long time.

She was still looking at the schedule when the elevator chimed.

She minimized the schedule. One keystroke, casual, the same motion she used to close anything she was done with.

She turned in her chair so he would see her face.

He looked at her for a moment; those eyes that saw things sideways, that noticed what other people's eyes moved past. Then he held out the bag toward her. An offering. Come have some.

He watched her for one second longer than felt comfortable. Then he turned and padded down the hallway toward his room, the wrapper crinkling softly, and his door clicked shut.

She turned back to the screens.

She maximized the schedule again.

The monitors hummed. The city moved outside the glass, indifferent and enormous, not knowing anything had changed.