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loving son, then disappeared beyond the dark curtain. The crowd still cheered, “LL! LL! LL!”
    Within two hours, Lavender, his manager, and his bodyguard were in the penthouse suite of the hotel. The three men were having sex with three different groupie women in the same room, and then they swapped. And the women were happy to oblige, as long as they had their chance to fuck the amazing and talented Lavender Lewis.
    Three days later, early one morning once back home in Miami, a conservative-looking Italian doctor in a white coat stood over Lavender and his grandmother as they sat in a small examining room at South Miami Hospital.
    The doctor’s face was blank. He spoke slowly. “The magnetic resonance imaging scan shows two subdural hematomas.”
    Lavender asked with question marks in his eyes. “What the hell is that?”
    “You have bleeding on the brain,” the doctor said. His face was apologetic.
    Lavender’s grandmother spoke up immediately. Her words were rushed. “What? What do you mean bleeding on the brain? He’s been feeling fine, just a little groggy, that’s all. He can’t possibly have any damage. Our boy barely got hit.”
    The doctor seemed to choose his words wisely. He talked while giving both Lavender and Mrs. Lewis equal focus. “One of those blows caused a traumatic brain injury and blood has collected between the outer covering of the brain and the middle layer. Basically, there were small perforations in the vein caused by a punch. Symptoms have a slower onset in that area. That’s why you described some confusion or disorientation. The MRI we took before the fight was totally normal.”
    “Oh Lord Jesus.” The elder Mrs. Lewis put her age-worn hands over her mouth.
    Lavender asked quickly, “So what’s next?”
    “We’ll monitor you for a while. Sometimes a craniotomy is required, which requires opening the skull and removing the clot.”
    Lavender’s grandmother’s eyes told on her level of alarm. She shook her head. “Oh no. Please no.”
    Lavender put his hand on his grandmother’s knee.
    The doctor spoke to her and then to Lavender. “We just don’t know. There’s a chance that the hematomas can heal, though we’ll just have to wait and see. But, Lavender, you won’t be traveling anywhere right now. We want you to stay put and relax and come back to chart the injury.”
    “Doctor, my grandson will be okay. In Jesus’ name, I’ll see to that,” Lavender’s grandmother said, placing her hand over her grandson’s hand while a weighted tear rolled down her seventy-year-old cheek. “I’ll see to it.”
    Monday, October 4, 2004

3:31 p.m.
    Lavender sat still in his sprawling home office in Miami. His boxing memorabilia and cherished Plexiglas-framed gloves and trademark lavender shorts graced the maple-paneled walls.
    The custom-made walnut plantation shutters were barely open. The afternoon sun seemed to beg to enter through the narrow slats. As was the case recently, Lavender had planned it that way. Even one year after his last fight, the light of day battled with his moods. His gloom and doom thoughts had won over long ago. And so the darkness remained a welcome resident. It was his comfort zone.
    He had been sitting at his desk for hours, wearing royal blue sweats and sports socks. His longer than normal hair was unkempt, and his five o’clock shadow was at ten o’clock.
    Lavender squeezed and released a hand exerciser over and over with his right hand and held on to a glass of Hennessy in the other. It was Crown Royal yesterday and Rémy the day before. His manager entered the dark room and Lavender stopped his grip but started hittin the Henn. He gulped, admitting the liquid into his system as though it could cure his ills. He drained the last of it.
    His eyes were stuck upon one wall in particular, seemingly without blinking. It was the wall where a photo of his last fight hung. It stared back at him in an annoying way.
    Lavender’s speech was monotone and