If he’d told her the truth, that he was going to fight again, he knew she would have cried. “You’re not going to eat anything?” she asked. “No, I’m not hungry,” he said. He had seen her making supper, and had known that he wouldn’t be eating anything. “Don’t stay out too late,” she said. She reached up and touched the tip of his nose with her index finger. “I’ll think you’re out with another girl.” “I’ll bring you some ice cream,” he said, framed in the doorway of their apartment. From where he stood he could see into the bedroom where the baby’s crib stood against the wall. He closed the door, waited for a moment for the click that said that Johnnie Mae had locked it, and started down the stairs. He felt a little sick to his stomach. There had been a time, not too long ago, when he would have been excited to be boxing. Somewhere between that time, between sixteen and nineteen, the nervousness had turned to a kind of nausea that he would dream about in the early hours of the morning.
