Turn 64 of 226

Head to the gym and search for sparring partners. I find one. He stands at 7'2" and at at 315 pounds. He is also the most skilled. I incoporate sparring with him into my 14 day cycle. Both of our skill improves by leaps and bounds. Also I work on Cardio, not enough to lose weight, just enough to carry everything without being tired

The gym is called Iron Hand and it is not in the industrial district — it is on the east side, thirty-two blocks from the warehouse, and Lena walks it in the dark because the dark is when the streets are empty and the empty is when the body moves best. The gym is a converted auto shop. The bay doors are open and the light inside is fluorescent and the fluorescent is white and harsh and the heavy bags hang from ceiling mounts that were once engine hoists. The men inside are large. The largest is working the corner bag and his combinations are tight and his footwork is precise and his body is enormous and the precision is not what she expected from a man that size.

His name is Marcus — not her Marcus, not the supervisor Marcus, a different Marcus, a Marcus who fights at super heavyweight in regional circuits and trains six days a week and has been looking for someone who can push him the way heavyweights cannot. He is seven-two and three-fifteen and his reach is not Lena's reach but it is close and the closeness is the point. He sees her in the doorway and he does not flinch. The not-flinching is rare. He nods. The nod is fighter recognition.

"You Cal's?" he says. His voice is deep and flat and the flatness is a fighter's economy.

"Cal sent me. I need a body."

He looks at her. The looking is assessment — reach, stance, weight distribution, the calloused knuckles, the shin conditioning, the way her weight sits on the balls of her feet. The assessment takes four seconds.

"Gear up," he says.

"I don't use gear."

The pause is half a second. Then he pulls on gloves and a mouthpiece and steps onto the mat and the stepping is an answer. They spar. The first round is feeling — jabs at range, footwork reads, the careful mapping of distance that two large bodies must do before the violence starts. His hands are faster than anyone she has faced. His head movement is fluid and the fluidity is the thing she cannot drill alone. He slips her cross and lands a hook to the body and the hook is hard and the hardness is information — she has not been hit by someone who can hit at this weight. The second round she catches him with a push kick that pushes him back four feet and his eyes change and the change is respect. The third round he takes her down. The sprawl is there but his entry is different — a chain wrestle, single leg to double leg, and the double leg finishes and her back is on the mat and his weight is on her chest and the ground game drills fire and the hip escape creates an inch of space and the inch is enough to recover guard. They go four rounds. Both of them are breathing hard at the end and the breathing is the sign that the work is real.

They agree to spar twice per cycle — day four and day nine. Marcus's schedule accommodates it. He trains at Iron Hand every evening and the evenings are when Lena's workday ends and the logistics close. The arrangement is simple: no money, no contracts, just two bodies that need something the other has. He has ground skills and head movement and the experience of fighting at super heavyweight. She has reach and combinations and a clinch game that he has not seen. The first session is the baseline. By the third session the improvement is visible to both of them — his timing on her push kick has sharpened and her sprawl reaction to his takedown entries has shortened by a full beat. The legal pad fills with notes: 'M. reads push kick early — needs more feint setup. Sprawl reaction faster but still late on chain entries. His hook to body is the threat — guard up in phone booth. Ground transitions live — hip escape to closed guard to upa attempt. Working.'

The cardio work is careful. Lena does not want to lose weight — the weight is the wish and the wish is the point — but the tournament's third fight exposed a gap. The chasing was exhausting and the exhaustion is a limitation and limitations are targets. She adds steady-state runs to the cycle — not sprints, not intervals, but long slow distance through the industrial district at night. Two miles, then three, then four. The pace is easy. The heart rate stays under one-twenty. The body carries three hundred and eighty pounds over four miles of cracked asphalt and the carrying does not tire her and the not-tiring is the adaptation she wanted. The weight stays. The weight goes up — the scale reads three-eighty-five by the end of the cycle. The cardio is a floor, not a ceiling. The floor is the ability to fight nine minutes without the lungs failing and the floor is built and the weight stays and the weight grows and the two coexist because the wish makes them coexist. She writes: 'Cardio — four miles steady, under 120 bpm. Weight 385. No loss. Cardio is foundation. The body carries itself.'