The folding table.
The four microphones, taped together with electrical tape.
The water pitcher nobody trusted.
The media room sat under the north stands, two floors below the ring, in a cinderblock box that had been a storage closet until somebody realized the press would sit anywhere if you put a logo behind it. The logo said THE FOUNDING FIGHT. Under it, on a strip of masking tape, someone had written ALSO LINCOLN in marker, so the room would match the poster.
Overhead, the arena thudded. Nine thousand grapes stamping their feet on wooden benches will come through any ceiling ever built.
The fight was not over. The fight had been reset four times in round three, and the fourth time the banana at the timekeeper’s desk had fallen asleep on his thimble, and nobody in the building could find another one. So the voice on the PA had called an intermission.
Nobody in the building had ever seen the Promoter. They knew him by the voice, which came out of every speaker at once and sounded like a man reading a contract to people who had already signed it.
“Twenty minutes, ladies and gentlemen. Twenty minutes. The Commissary is open.”
Twenty minutes was how long it took to find a thimble. The Promoter would have known that. The Promoter knew how long everything took.