When my eyes adjust to the dark I am sitting between Dudley and Chester, two stools from each. I'm glad you're here, Godfrey says. Otherwise I'd have to take a busload of those goddamn freaks to the TV studio myself. What are you talking about, I ask, not knowing that the studios send buses to convalescent homes and halfway houses to fill seats, especially in the off season. On my first excursion to Joker's Wild, Bobby marries his coin purse and says he will always be true. Don helps Lola burn holes in her bra with his Parliaments. The Tax Man is flying alongside Ada's window and she begins to cry. Ariel stops writing Ray Gun and begins to pray. Her prayer is answered, and the Tax Man is gone. The farm is saved. We go to a nightclub.

I dance with Patty Pineda, the first woman licensed to box. A TV ham keeps cutting in while I demonstrate Ray Johnson's snake dance, but Patty brushes him off with quick swishes of manicured fists. When the ham gets the gall to ask me outside, Mazurki looks at him like he would for John Ford and says, You wanta fight Lowell, you gotta fight me first. Ilene and I were the only visitors at the three-ring match the State Boxing Commission arranged for Patty--to see if she could box. Her opponent was a former Sugar Ray Robinson sparring partner. He had just finished teaching Sylvester Stallone how to box for a movie called Rocky. Ms. has rejected the photographs Ilene took of Patty turning into a boxer. The editors don't think women should box, but women do.



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