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Ozzy was already there.

He stood in the opposite corner with his gloves at his sides, in a pair of ancient black shorts, and looked at me with a calm, watchful, faintly sad expression. His face was a map of old damage. His eyes were a soft brown.

“Kid,” he said.

“Ozzy.”

“You okay?”

“I’m great.”

“You look like a man that got dumped.”

“You’re supposed to be fighting me, not doing therapy.”

“I’m supposed to do whatever you pay for.” He shrugged. His shoulders were the size of doors. “But it’s your ten grand, and I’d rather earn it honestly.”

The bell rang.

I went after him like a train.

I don’t remember the first minute. I know I threw everything. I know that every punch I landed carried a face with it, a pale, sharp, gray-eyed, ancient face, and every time it did, I hit harder. Time apart. A jab to the ribs. I think that texting will not be possible. A hook that snapped his head sideways. I am sorry. An uppercut that lifted him half an inch off the floor.

Ozzy took it. He covered up and slipped what he could and absorbed what he couldn’t, backing along the ropes, and every so often he threw a short, heavy right hand of his own that landed on my chin with a sound like a door slamming. It rang my skull, and I liked it, because I wanted it, and I came back for more.

There was blood in my mouth and blood on the mat. The crowd was on its feet, and somewhere a man was shouting, and I heard none of it. I heard only the roar in my ears and the heat behind my eyes and the one clean, terrible thought that had been circling all week.

He didn’t want you. He never wanted you. You were a hockey player with a good smell.

I threw a right hand as hard as I have ever thrown anything.

Ozzy didn’t slip it.

He took it on the jaw and went down on one knee. And he stayed there, on the canvas, with his glove pressed to the floor, his head bowed, his breath rasping. The crowd went silent.

I stood over him with my fist cocked.

I saw his face.

It wasn’t hurt. That’s what stopped me. It was blank, patient, and gentle. He’d let me hit him. He’d stopped defending himself two punches ago. He knelt there with his eyes on the ground, and waited, and I understood that he was doing it on purpose. That he’d looked at me, at forty-one, at the end of a career spent teaching men how not to fall, and decided to let a kid who was falling take it out on him.

“Get up,” I said.

“No.”

“ Get up. “

“No.” He lifted his head. Blood ran from his lip. “You’re not fighting me, kid. You’ve never been fighting me. You’re fighting somebody who isn’t in the room.”

The air went out of me.

“Who is he?” said Ozzy, quietly.

I stood in the ring with my fist in the air and my chest heaving. I opened my mouth to say something cruel. Nothing came.

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I don’t— I don’t know. “

“Yeah, you do.”