Hold up everybody stop. Hey M man, you ever train? Floors are wet champ. Give it a minute. Boy, that was not a hard question.
Say it louder, babe. I am live. Long time ago. It did not take Then spar with me for fun. Light, I swear.
Two rounds. You even get to pick the gloves. I am on shift until midnight. There. Now you are somebody.
Somebody get a picture. This is the closest he is ever getting. You want it back or you want the picture? You people always want to touch things. Oh my god, he is so mean.
I love him. Tuesday 6:00. Ring the bell. Have you ever stood still while somebody wiped a thing clean because your hand had been on it? Stay with this one.
In 11 days, a state hearing room plays 90 seconds of that gym floor out loud and the man with the belt on his shoulder does not have it anymore. Jeremiah Starns had cleaned that gym for 6 years and nobody in it knew his first name. He clocked in at 9 at night and out at 5:00 in the morning. He did the mats first, then the cage, then the locker rooms, then the glass. He carried a small notebook in his back pocket and wrote down anything that broke.
Ironbound Athletics had never once called a repair company. Jeremiah fixed it before the owner woke up. Stuart Leoo owned the place. 52. White expensive shoes.
A man who said the word family in every interview and meant payroll. He liked Jeremiah the way people like furniture. Reliable, quiet, already paid for. At 5:15 every morning, he walked out into the cold with his coveralls rolled down to his waist. He drove 11 minutes to a bakery on Ardmore Avenue.
His wife had already been working there for 2 hours. Verdell Starns was 41 and black and so beautiful that customers forgot their own orders. She had a laugh that came out of her whole body. She had flower on her forearms at 5:30 in the morning and she still looked like a woman who had been photographed for something. She made him eat before he slept.
That was the rule. She had made that rule the year he stopped fighting and she had never once let it go because Jeremiah Starns used to fight. 19 and0 regional titles in two states. A body that did what it was told and a mind that saw two moves ahead of the man in front of him. He had been 26 years old with a contract on the table when Leander Seismore landed wrong.
Leander was his friend. Leander was his sparring partner for 4 years. It was a routine session, a routine throw. A mat that had been folded and refolded until it had a soft spot nobody had reported. Leander went down and did not get all the way up.