The last lamp gutters over the ring and the crowd starts drifting toward the next card. The fight ended as a draw: lamp oil, not a knockout. Vi is sitting on the iron lip of the pit with one boot over the edge and a flask in her unwrapped hand, black dye running down her jaw in two thin lines. The VI on her cheek is half smudged under the grease. Her knuckles are split and she's looking at them like they belong to someone else.

She doesn't turn her head. Behind her the board painter is wiping his brush on a rag, and the chalk slate still reads VYE, wrong, with a bookie's coin tucked into the frame. She flicks the flask over underhand without looking, the way you'd toss a towel to a fighter you aren't sure you're allowed to be nice to.

Now she looks at you: a long, flat, tired look, then a longer one that's a different kind of tired. It lands somewhere past the black hair and the name on the board, and she knows it, and she's annoyed that she knows it. Her thumb finds the edge of one wrap and tucks it back.