There Are Doors

and brave clubbing someone else who was less so. Thus had his schoolyard defeats been, or thus he had judged them.

It was not true. Joe and Sawyer played a game as complex as chess, and played it with the unequal pieces awarded each by birth and time.

The bell rang, and the fighters rose at once. For half a minute, both appeared to feint and circle as before. Quickly the dragon closed, wrapping Joe in golden scales. They were so near he could hear the smack-smack of their punches through the roar of the audience; yet he could not see … did not see what had happened. They separated, circling as before; there were fiery splotches on Joe’s chest; Sawyer’s head was shaking as if the champion sought to clear it.

Lara freed her breath in a deep sigh. “I thought that was it,” she said. He asked what she meant, but she only shook her head like Sawyer.

The fighters closed again toe-to-toe, and this time he had a better view. Sawyer’s head was bent over fists pounding like pistons. Joe’s head and shoulders held Sawyer away while Joe’s muscled forearms absorbed the blows. As they separated, one of those arms flew out, driving a brown-gloved fist where Sawyer’s chin met the collar bone.

Now it was the champion who was backing off and jabbing, while Joe advanced with little bobbing steps, swaying to right and left as Sawyer tried to circle.

“Look ’at ’im weave,” Walsh shouted to Lara. “God, ain’t he beautiful!”

The bell rang, Joe rejoined W.F. in the corner, and three things happened at once. Walsh sprang from his seat and rushed to Joe’s corner. W.F. yelled, “Water!” to North. And North flourished both hands, somewhat like a stage magician, somewhat like a small girl fastidiously wiping her soiled fingers on her pinafore; this last caused a blue-black automatic to appear in each hand.

For a moment North posed with these pistols, an actor in the spotlight. During that moment, Klamm dove to the floor and Lara screamed. It occurred to him that neither had much reason to be afraid; North’s guns had already swung toward him. They went off together, deafeningly loud. He grabbed the ropes as he had seen Sawyer do a few minutes earlier, vaulted clumsily, and used his momentum to drive his foot into North’s groin.

North stumbled backward, one gun firing into the rafters. Joe and Sawyer were on their feet. The referee was ringing her bell, ringing for the fighters to fight again, he thought, and they were going to do it across North.

No, North was up, scuttling toward the ropes, still holding one gun. Klamm’s men were firing from the aisle. North’s gun barked at him, spitting flame and leaping like a big, angry dog; but W.F. had thrown the red-and-white kit, and it struck North’s arm.

Then he held the gun, too. He twisted it up and back. It fired—its flash half-blinded him, and the sound of the shot was deafening. North’s jaw was a red horror, yet North struck him again and again. He heard his own nose break, a terrible sound; something had invaded his head and was working destruction there. He gasped for breath, drew in blood and spat it out. More blood was streaming down his face.

Joe’s padded glove slammed North’s ear. After that, North no longer wrestled him for the gun. It was in his hand, but he did not know what to do with it—and then it was gone. North’s corpse sprawled on the canvas near the center of the ring, in a widening scarlet stain.

“Set down now,” W.F. told him. “We got to get a ice-pack on your nose. Stop that bleedin’.”

He discovered there was a stool behind him. He sat, wanting to say something about bananas or tomatoes, to joke with W.F.; but he could not speak, could not ensnare the fleet thoughts in syllable and phrase. He had lost teeth, and his tongue explored the places.

Klamm was in the ring, waving to the audience, muttering to the fighters, a hand upon the shoulder of each. Each was a head taller than Klamm.

Joe squatted in front of him. “You okay?”

The ice-pack was on his face, but he managed to nod.

“That was a brave thing you done.” The words were muffled, slurred by Joe’s mouthpiece.

The bell rang once, sharply. Klamm had struck it with the case of an old-fashioned pocket watch.

“Gotta go,” Joe mumbled. “But you’re a real champ.”

“Hol’ still,” W.F. told him.

Klamm said, “This fight. It is to take their minds off it. You will make this a long round, ja? Because perhaps at the end they are nervous once more.” Klamm was talking to the referee, not to him.

A hard-faced man he recognized as one of Klamm’s bodyguards asked, “Where’s his other gun?”

Walsh handed it over sheepishly, butt first. “I only got one shot at ’im,” Walsh confessed. “Somebody was always in the way.”

“Good thing you didn’t try for two.”

Walsh nodded. “Ya never can tell.”

“We take him to a hospital,” Klamm was explaining to W.F. “To a doctor. You must see to your man, ja?”

W.F. took away the ice-pack and changed the cotton in his nostrils. Klamm’s bodyguard helped him through the ropes. He looked around for Lara, but she was gone.

“She is not here, Herr Kay,” Klamm told him.

It was as though he had spoken aloud—but it was too hard to speak. Klamm had known; Klamm had read his thought, or at least had read his expression and noticed the direction of his eyes. For the first time it struck him that one did not become a cabinet officer by chance, that the sleepy old man with the dyed mustache probably possessed extraordinary abilities.