Mark's day

Tuesday afternoon at Apex, Mark has called a full-floor sparring session — six fighters, three rounds each, Mark rotating corners — and he takes the third round himself with Quill, a twenty-six-year-old heavyweight from the South Melbourne stable who has been asking Mark for a round for two weeks and who outweighs Mark by nine kilos. Round one is technical; in round two Quill lands a right hand Mark doesn't see, flush on the hinge of the jaw, and Mark's legs do something funny for a quarter-second before he ties Quill up, resets, and finishes the round on his feet while the cut above his brow opens again. The floor is watching, and Quill in his corner takes his mouthguard out and nods at Mark the way fighters nod when they know they've been in with someone. After, in the change room, Mark sits on the bench with his gloves still on and his head in his hands for thirty seconds — the longest anyone at Apex has seen Mark sit still after a round — and Rob doesn't come in, leaves him alone. Mark stands, peels the gloves off, looks at his face in the mirror — the cut, the jaw, the eyes with a brightness he doesn't like — picks up his phone, and calls Carly; she picks up, asks are you sure, he says yeah, she says the shoulder, he says the shoulder's voting, she says and you, he says I'm voting too, and they hang up after three minutes. Mark drives home with the Manila envelope still on the counter in his head, the contract signed, the cut re-opened, the jaw bruised, and the floor having read him wobble and stay standing.