Something Gave

SOMETHING GAVE [The converted warehouse off the Lower Glanmire Road, Cork. Same ring. Same stack of foam crash mats along the far wall, one of them replaced since — the new one is a different colour and nobody has mentioned it. Same heavy bag. Tuesday morning again, because it is always Tuesday morning in this building when anything gets said. SAOIRSE FALLON has been here since six. She is not sweating yet. She is walking the ring apron, heel to toe, the whole way round, the way you do when you are checking a floor you have not stood on in a while. MICK WALSH is on the apron with a coffee. Late fifties, grey beard, the Munster jersey. He has been watching her walk it for four minutes and has not said anything, which for Mick is a statement.] MICK: Ye've done three laps. SAOIRSE: I have. MICK: Ye never did laps before. SAOIRSE: I never had to. [She steps into the ring. Rolls her shoulders once. Looks at the far corner for slightly longer than the corner requires.] MICK: They've given ye a fight. SAOIRSE: They have. Volkov. MICK: The Russian. SAOIRSE: The Russian. MICK: Submission specialist. SAOIRSE: Aye. MICK: Same problem as the last one, then. SAOIRSE: It's the same problem as every one of them, Mick. Everybody in that division who can't fly has worked out that the way to beat me is to be somewhere underneath me when I come down. It's not clever. It's just true. [She goes to the corner. Puts a hand on the top turnbuckle. Does not climb.] MICK: And? SAOIRSE: And I'm going to tell ye something and ye're not going to like the shape of it. MICK: Ye've been away a long while, girl. I'm well used to not liking the shape of things. ———————————————— SAOIRSE: I said to ye, on this apron, before the Reyes match — I said when something gives, I'll know. MICK: Ye did. SAOIRSE: Something gave. MICK: It did. SAOIRSE: So I know now. [Mick sets the coffee down on the apron. He does not pick it up again for the rest of the scene.] MICK: Go on. SAOIRSE: The body's stop signal is set in 2019. I told ye that and I still believe it and nothing that happened has changed it. The signal goes off way before the line. I was right about that. I want that said out loud once because I've had a long while lying in a room with nobody to say it to. MICK: And ye were wrong about what. SAOIRSE: I was wrong that the line stays still. [A pause. She turns and sits on the middle rope, arms over the top, facing him.] SAOIRSE: I thought it was a wall. I thought if I kept walking at it I'd eventually put my hand on it and that'd be that, I'd have the number, and I'd live just this side of it forever and be the best in the world at exactly that. It's not a wall. It moves. It moves with how ye slept and what ye ate and the fourth match in a fortnight and whether the mat's been down two hours or two days. It was never a number. It was a range, and I'd been treating the middle of the range like the edge of it. MICK: That's what I've been saying to ye since ye were fifteen. SAOIRSE: It is. And ye were right and I wasn't listening, and I want ye to know I'm not saying this because ye said it. I'm saying it because I went and got the answer myself and it cost me what it cost me, and it turns out it's your answer. MICK: I'd rather have been wrong. SAOIRSE: I know ye would. ———————————————— MICK: So what does that make ye now? Careful? [She laughs — short, not unkind.] SAOIRSE: God, no. That's the bit ye're not going to like. Careful is what ye are when ye don't know. I know. I know the range, I know where in it I am on a given morning, and I know how to read which end I've woken up at. That's not caution, Mick, that's instrumentation. There's a difference and it's the whole difference. A man who doesn't know how deep the water is stays out of it. A man with a depth gauge goes further in than the first fella ever would, and he's the safer of the two. MICK: Or he drowns in better information. SAOIRSE: Or that. Aye. [Beat.] MICK: Volkov. SAOIRSE: Volkov. Right. She'll want it long. She'll want me tired, because tired is when I come down heavy and heavy is when she gets a limb. Everybody's plan against me is the same plan and hers won't be different, she'll just be better at it than Reyes was. Last time — last time I'd have told ye I was taking the pause out. Take the seconds out of the top, give her nothing to time. MICK: Ye did tell me that. On this apron. Ye were fierce pleased with yourself. SAOIRSE: I was. I'm putting it back in. [Mick says nothing.] SAOIRSE: Not because I'm frightened. Because I've got the seconds now. I know exactly how many I have on a Tuesday in a cold room off a warm mat, and it's more than I thought and fewer than I'd like, and I can spend one of them looking before I go. One. Not the old two. I was never fast enough to skip the looking, Mick. I was just young enough not to have to. ———————————————— [She stands. Goes to the corner. Climbs — quick, no hesitation, the same speed as ever, which is the thing about her that has genuinely not changed. Sets her feet on the top turnbuckle. Looks down at the stack of mats, the new one and the old ones.] MICK: Talk me through it while ye climb. Like before. SAOIRSE: I'm already up, boy. MICK: Talk me through it anyway. [She looks out at the empty warehouse for a moment. Then down at the mats. And she pauses. It is one second. Maybe less. It is the smallest thing that has happened in this building all morning and it is the only thing either of them will remember. Mick, on the apron, does not react at all — does not nod, does not smile, does not so much as move the hand that is not holding a coffee any more. He has known this girl since she was twelve and he knows better than anyone alive what happens if he makes a fuss of it.] SAOIRSE: Phoenix Splash. Off the top. Landing on the balls of the feet, roll forward, up at speed, and if she's moved I'm already turning before I'm up. MICK: And if she hasn't moved? SAOIRSE: Then she's asleep and I've won. [She goes. The landing is clean. She rolls, comes up, turns — already turning before she's up, exactly as described — and finishes facing the corner she came from. Mick picks up the coffee. It has gone cold. He drinks it anyway.] MICK: Again. SAOIRSE: Aye, boy. [She walks back to the corner. The scene ends with her climbing, unhurried, and the empty warehouse, and a man on the apron with a cold coffee who has decided not to say the thing he is thinking.]