“I know what it’s about.”
“Then you know it matters.”
Frank set down his pen. “Tyler brings in a lot of money, Sarah. Do you understand what that means right now?”
“I understand exactly what it means. You’re afraid to make him angry.”
“It’s more complicated.”
“Is it?”
Frank gestured toward the rent notice, the broken ventilation fan, a stack of insurance forms. “I’m trying to keep fifty people employed and trained.”
“Martin is one of the people you employ.”
Frank looked at the floor. “I spoke to Tyler.”
“What did you say?”
“Told him to knock it off.”
“When?”
“Last week.”
“And did it stop?”
Frank didn’t answer.
Sarah sat across from him. “I grew up in a gym where the coach used to tell us there were three kinds of fighters: the ones who hit you when the bell rings, the ones who hit you before the bell, and the ones who watch and decide it’s not their problem.”
“I’m not one of those.”
“Then prove it.”
Frank pushed back his chair. “You don’t get to tell me how to run my business.”
“Maybe not. But the kids who train here are learning how the business runs.”
She left before the conversation could turn into something worse. Outside, Maya Chen’s mother was waiting to ask whether the evening class would be canceled. When Sarah reassured her it would continue, Mrs. Chen hesitated.
“Maya saw that video online,” she said. “The older man cleaning the floor?”
Sarah nodded.
“She asked me why nobody helped him. I didn’t know what to say.”
There were questions that a coach could answer with a drill and questions that required an entire building to change. Sarah felt the weight of the second kind.
That evening she asked Jake and Danny to write down what they had witnessed. Both hesitated. Jake had hopes of getting better fight opportunities. Danny was afraid of being pushed out of the program. Sarah told them they could choose whether to sign, but they should keep their own notes in case the situation became serious.
“Frank’ll know it was us,” Danny said.
“He already knows what happened. That’s the problem.”
Jake took a pen. “I’ll sign.”
Danny waited, then signed too.
When Sarah went to find Martin, he was cleaning the lockers in the men’s changing room. The smell of soap and old sweat was so strong she could barely breathe from the doorway.
“I’ve put in a report,” she told him.
Martin paused. “I appreciate it.”
“You don’t sound relieved.”
“Reports can start a process. They don’t finish one.”
“I want you to be safe here.”
“Then make it safe for the next person who takes this job.”
She knew he was right. It would have been easier if the problem could be solved by revealing that this particular janitor was special. But she remembered Danny freezing with the towel in his hand. She remembered Maya asking why nobody had helped. Martin’s safety mattered. So did the lesson the gym was teaching everyone else.
She promised to follow through, then returned to her class.
In his office Frank opened the complaint and read it a second time. On the other side of the wall, Tyler was laughing about his latest video. Frank put his head in his hands and wished responsibility came with a more convenient schedule.
CHAPTER 9 — SUNDAY AT LENA’S
Martin’s daughter lived twenty minutes away in a narrow white house with a porch swing that creaked even when nobody sat on it. Lena was forty-one and worked as a nurse at the county hospital. She had Celia’s impatient eyebrows and Martin’s tendency to go quiet when she was hurt.
She met him at the door with a dish towel over her shoulder.
“You’re early.”
“Your mother’s influence.”
Lena smiled. They hugged longer than usual.
Inside, Martin’s granddaughter Nia was spreading papers across the dining table. She was twelve, all elbows and questions, with curly hair tied back by a band she was forever losing. She had to make a presentation about an important person from her family’s past.
“I’m doing you,” she announced.
Martin set down the pie he’d bought from Ruth’s neighbor. “Not much of a mystery there.”
“You used to box,” Nia said. “Grandma’s photos have you with a belt.”
“A lot of people box.”
“Not a lot of people box at Madison Square Garden.”
He glanced toward Lena, who lifted her eyebrows as if to say she had not told the child to ask.
Nia brought out a photocopy of the old program. It was the same photograph Ruth had shown him at the gym. Underneath, Nia had written: MY GRANDFATHER, MARTIN IRVING, ALSO KNOWN AS IRON MARTIN.
