BUTTON
by BOS, cashley216@woh.rr.com
								


Suki was overwhelmed by the public reaction to her match against Curtis, the
black American boxer who had come to Japan to learn kickboxing and had
stumbled into Suki's club just as a TV reporter had been looking for somebody
to match Suki against for broadcast on the evening news. Suki had only agreed
to the match reluctantly -- as her only way of getting on TV -- and had been
surprised when what she had thought would be a sparring session turned into a
full-fledged match, and even more surprised when she had taken the measure of
the man in a tough seven rounds, despite giving up 8 inches in height and 30
pounds to the 5'l0", l40-pound American.

The evening news show had only broadcast part of the match, and there were
immediate cries of fraud. Curtis, embarrassed and disoriented, had
disappeared, and the doubters pointed to this fact as an indication that
something was fishy. Suki, who had not been out to prove anything in the first
place, was embarrassed and enraged to be called a liar in front of the whole
country, including her parents, who -- much to Suki's further chagrin -- were
being bombarded by reporters seeking information about their daughter. Finally
the television had shown the complete match on a prime-time special. But the
taping had not been done with that in mind, and the cameraman's pursuit of
colorful angles had led to charges of trick photography, and the debate
continued to rage. Suki found herself being challenged to kickboxing matches
by angry Japanese men, not so much by other kickboxers as by ordinary men off
the street who were enraged by her effrontery and who insisted that (A) this
was no activity for a Japanese girl to be engaging in, that fighting other
females was bad enough, but THIS!, and (B} any normal man could beat just
about any woman under any circumstances, especially any woman Suki's size.

But what shocked Suki more than anything were the offers she was getting from
promoters who wanted her to take on a guy publicly. The promoters, convinced
they could sell tickets to such an event by the droves, guaranteed Suki
amounts of money -- in advance -- that boggled her mind. Suki was a poor
working girl from a working class, traditional family. She had seven brothers
and sisters. She had gone into kickboxing -- at a tender age -- to try to
escape her deprivation and maybe even be able to help out her parents, who
still had most of the other kids at home. But she had never allowed herself to
even dream about the kind of money she was now being offered.

Suki turned down the offers. She would not make a spectacle of herself by
getting into the ring with some novice. She would not subject herself to the
charge that she was taking advantage of some would-be macho man's foolishness,
that she was willing to knock some untrained jerk silly just to make some
money. She had her pride and her standards. The promoters looked for a bona
fide Asian kickboxer to take her on, but none was interested, at least none of
the good ones, who didn't need the money. Even the weaker ones felt it would
be a blow to their pride to get in the ring with a female. After all, they
were not embarrassed by Suki's defeat of Curtis; he was not an experienced
kickboxer, and he was not Asian. They had nothing to avenge. They even

felt some pride in the victory of their fellow Asian.

But there was out there one fellow who was embarrassed -- mightily em
barrassed by the whole thing: Maynard Mayfield, like Curtis, a black American
who had come to Asia to learn kickboxing. Unlike Curtis, he did not have a
great deal of boxing experience before arriving. But he had been there over a
year now and was widely known throughout the kickboxing community there,
though more for his attendance at matches and for his sparring and training
activity at various clubs than for participation in formal competition. He had
trouble getting matches because he was so much bigger than most Asian men, at
6'2", l80. Between his race and his size, there was nothing Maynard could do
to avoid standing out in a crowd. And because he was such an unusual sight,
many people assumed he must have been the fellow who lost to Suki when they
heard it had been a tall black American. Now, whenever he went to a club or to
see some matches, he felt people staring at him more than they had before.
They would even point at him and whisper about him. Even his acquaintances --
who knew he had not been the one -- would rib him mercilessly. They would say
they could understand why someone in his position would want to change his
name temporarily when undertaking such a venture; after all, they would say,
the embarrassment could prove overwhelming should he lose. Then they would
break up in laughter. Maynard had had enough. He was going back to the States.
He had never much liked Asia anyway. He probably would have left months ago if
he had had the money for the fare. He had been caught in a cycle. He wanted to
leave in part because he couldn't get any matches, but he didn't have the
money to leave because he couldn't get any matches.

The solution to his problem came out of the fact that he had complained in a
television interview about the unwillingness of the Asian men to fight him. A
promoter, casting about for an opponent for Suki, one she would consider
worthy enough, remembered the black American he had seen on that interview.
Maynard, who was amazed by the kind of money the promoter was talking about,
and who figured he didn't have to worry about the public abuse that could
devolve on the male in the fight under consideration -- win or lose -- because
he was going to be leaving Japan anyway, accepted the offer gladly.

"I'll just take the money, and be ashamed of myself all the way to the Bank --
of America," he laughed to himself. The way he figured it, Asia owed him this
money.

Suki by then was finding that her family -- even as it claimed to be
embarrassed by her excessively modern form of notoriety -- was already
spending the money she had been deriving from personal appearances; that money
and then some, as a matter of fact. Their lifestyles were changing, and so was
hers; no one wanted to go back. Even so, she was very reluctant to fight
Maynard.

But that changed when Maynard went on television and slandered Japan. He said
that a combination of racism and the fear of the Japanese men had kept him out
of matches and in poverty for a year. He said he didn't care if he hurt Suki.
What was the difference between a man getting into a ring with a woman and an
experienced kickboxer like Suki getting in with a novice like Curtis? Given
his ignoring of the size question, the question struck a lot of people as
rather silly. But then Maynard went on to say -- rather illogically, given his
previous statement -- that he didn't believe the Suki-Curtis fight was real
anyway and that Suki was only willing to get in the ring with him -- Maynard
-- because she thought he would take it easy on her, but that she had another
think coming.

Between all that and his oft repeated remarks about how he couldn't wait to
get out of Japan and back to civilization, Maynard managed to anger both the
Japanese people and Suki herself against him so deeply that for Suki to turn
down the match became out of the question. Much of Japan now wanted Maynard's
blood. Suki felt an obligation to her nation.

The match drew more attention in Japan than even the Bobby Riggs-Billie Jean
King tennis match had in the United States. It was not broadcast on
television, but auditoriums throughout the nation were jammed with spectators
paying huge prices. There was not much betting, though, because Maynard was
such a prohibitive favorite. Nevertheless, the pomp and ceremony was enormous.
After Maynard danced out to the ring in the long flowing robe usually
associated with professional boxers in the U.S. -- taunting and being taunted
in return by the partisan crowd -- Suki, in the manner of an American movie
the promoter had seen, was carried to the ring on the left shoulder of a large
male bodybuilder, who was dressed only in a tiny loincloth. He was Japanese.
She was no more a burden to him -- sitting there on his shoulder -- than a
grapefruit would have been. As they got to within a few yards of the ring, the
bodybuilder pushed Suki up into an almost vertical position in the air, her
little rear end resting on his massive paw, and his right hand wrapped around
her right ankle. Overwhelmed by the warmth of the crowd and amused by the
situation, Suki smiled broadly and waved to the crowd from her perch, then
stepped nimbly onto the ring apron.

She was dressed elegantly in an enormously expensive evening gown. It was
black, accented only by a lovely strand of pearls around her neck and two more
around each wrist. The gown had a dramatic slit -- in the old Asian fashion --
up her right leg almost to her hip. The gown left one shoulder bare, but a
mink stole around her neck covered all but a few small patches of her tannish
skin. A tiny, brimless black hat covered her head and kept her long hair piled
atop her, secured by a strap under her chin. From the front of her hat hung a
diaphonous black veil that did little to hide her broad smile but -- when she
had certain expressions on her face -- added an element of sexy mystery to her
presence. She was able to accomplish her entry between the ropes gracefully
only because she had practiced in secret. But the male eyes which watched the
lower part of her anatomy during that maneuver were not disappointed.

As all eyes focused on her, Suki was surprised to find her disrobement
accompanied by a popular Japanese tune that paid homage to the beauty of the
Japanese girl and was arranged in a particularly sexy manner for tonight. The
first thing she removed -- slowly, as she had been instructed -- was her
stole. It was the first time Suki had ever worn a stole, and she hated to part
with it. She hung it lovingly on the ringpost for easy retrieval later. Then
she slipped out of the delicate high-heeled shoes she had been provided,
shocking the audience with the realization that the difference between her
size and the man's was even greater than had first seemed. The movement also
had the effect of bringing their attention back to the matter at hand. It had
been wandering as they watched Suki. This is for real, some spectators
reminded themselves. Next Suki slowly, teasingly -- knowing full well what the
sexual atmospherics of the place were -- began to pull off her black velvet
gloves, one dainty finger at a time. She threw each one into the audience,
causing two mad scrambles. Then her hands went to her nearly revealed hip.

She raised her revealed leg up onto a toe out in front of her and -- having
turned sideways to Maynard so that he had a full view of the leg, which was
not exactly bare, but rather covered in black nylon mesh hosiery -- she turned
her attention to her hip, much in the manner of a woman straightening a garter
or tending to a run in her nylons. But what Suki did was to pull on a zipper
that began where the slit ended. She pulled ail the way up to her hip --
slowly -- and the lower half of her gown came off in her hand, finally.

Both her legs were now revealed up to her waist, which was covered by a black,
dancer-like leotard panty which, on the sides, consisted of not much more than
a strip of material at the tops of her hips, which were mostly covered by the
nylon mesh, which extended all the way down to her toes.

To the surprise of nearly everyone, that was where Suki's unveiling ended. She
stepped back and rested her back against the ringpost and her arms along the
tops of the ropes that met there, indicating she was done. The referee -- who
had been given clear instructions not to interfere unduly with the drama of
the evening -- shrugged his shoulders and called the fighters to the center of
the ring for their instructions.

The tension mounted to what for some spectators was apparently an unbearable
lever as the two fighters approached each other for the traditional setting
out of the rules for the combat which was to follow. In that stadium and in
stadiums and auditoriums all over

Japan, people literally squirmed in their seats as the big man and little
woman -- in her dramatically sexy attire -- approached each other, then stood
staring into each other's eyes, the man having to peer through Suki's veil.

As they received the instructions, Suki's manager laced on her gloves, his
actions being ignored by all concerned. (It had been widely agreed that for
Suki to have entered in the aforementioned attire and boxing gloves would have
somewhat detracted from the intended effect. And, although the gloves in
question were somewhat smaller and less awkward than American boxing gloves,
it would also have required that somebody else remove Suki's lower gown. And
that was getting a little bit sexier than even these money-happy promoters
were willing to get.

The spotlights flickered off Suki's necklace and bracelets as the referee
talked and the fighters tried to stare each other down. Suki's arms were
otherwise bare, like her left shoulder. Her top was covered -- at least to the
degree it was covered at all -- by a black blouse that clung tightly to her
body. The blouse had small, odd-shaped holes here and there, in front and
back, one even above her right breast. And it disappeared into her leotard,
which it seemed to be of a piece with. It was dotted with tiny silver sequins.

The fighters shook hands and returned to their corners. Suki stood still as
her manager removed her necklace, then her bracelets. Unaided she pulled the
little string beneath her chin, and her hat came loose. When she pulled it off
her head, her long black hair cascaded down her semi-bare back. She dropped
the hat at the foot of the ringpost, gave her head a shake to fluff her hair,
and looked across the ring at her opponent. She was ready, dressed now only in
the meshed-hosed leotard and the black, peek-a-boo blouse. The bell rang and
the crowd hushed and -- finally -- after months and months of negotiations and
false starts and anticipation, finally Suki and Maynard approached each other
to do battle. All over Japan people were wishing they could watch this in
private.

Round One. Throughout Suki's performance Maynard just got madder and madder;
yet he started to feel a crotch-bulge. That's all I need, he thought: to let
the whole world see that! When the bell rang, Maynard came in for the kill
immediately. He was looking for one punch. One punch, he kept telling himself,
that's all. Suki, seeing his strategy and hardly being surprised by it,
decided to play cat and mouse with him. She backed away and ducked under his
blows and taunted him about his inability to land. Behaving in a way which she
had never thought possible of herself -- but which she definitely enjoyed --
she mocked him, Muhammed Ali-style. She waved her hands toward herself,
beckoning him to try to hit her. He threw a long right cross, and she ducked
under it by bending her knees. And, in the process of twirling out of the way,
she managed to land a stiff-armed fist in his belly. Maynard pretended not to
notice, and when the crowd -- by now primed to react to anything – let out a
cheer, he waved and shook his head in a way as to indicate that he had not
been hurt. Suki stood still in the center of the ring with her gloves on her
hips as he gestured; then, with a look that said "Are-you-done?", beckoned him
toward her again. He came again, and after that incident was determined to
prove that he was not slowed one iota by Suki's blow; that would show the
laughing crowd. He plowed in after her, threw another long right, missed, and
after a decent pause to show he wasn't frantic, threw a left uppercut,
followed with a right that came down at almost as sharp an angle as the
uppercut had gone up, missed and, finally, thinking he would catch her by
surprise, kicked out with his right leg at Suki's body. The leg was too long
for Suki to step all the way back out of the reach of, and Maynard had aimed
it too low for her to bend under it. And she didn't want to try to absorb it.
Whether it hurt or not, it would certainly send her reeling; and she didn't
want to give Maynard the satisfaction. So she jumped over it. The move even
impressed Suki. She had never even tried anything like it before, had never
even seen it before, except in kung-fu movies, where she had always considered
it unrealistic. It was as new to the crowd as to her. After a gasp, the people
rose to their feet, laughing and clapping. Maynard kept plowing in, pretending
-- once again -- that nothing unusual had happened. Now Suki was smiling as
she backed away. For another 30 seconds or so, Maynard chased her around the
ring, failing to land, sticking now to punches, not kicks. Finally, in
frustration, Maynard turned to the ref and complained that Suki was not
fighting. The crowd booed the big man and laughed at him more. The ref just
motioned to both fighters to fight. Again Suki backed away, beckoning Maynard
toward her. This time though the man was able to trap the girl in a corner. As
he moved in now, certain that here at least his punches would land on some
part of her body, even if she covered up, and that that would prove sufficient
to shake her up, Maynard was the one who was smiling. Now he had her. His
smile spread from ear to ear. To his amazement, though, even in this position
the little Japanese chick continued to tease him, continued to beckon him
toward her. All right, she wants to play that way, I'm game, he thought. But,
still, he came in carefully. He wasn't going to let this opportunity slip
away. He came in swinging from below. It was the best angle he had on her
under almost any circumstances anyway. She could duck under his level blows,
and he felt awkward on those that came down from above. But there was no
ducking under an uppercut, and he felt just fine delivering it. And it seemed
particularly suited to this situation, because her only hope seemed to be to
duck below one of his arms and slip out of the corner. Her eyes told Maynard
that she saw the wisdom of his strategy and the hopelessness of her position.
His smile now became a demented leer. She leaned back out of the way of one
blow, then another. But, even though he wasn't quite sure how she did that, he
wasn't worried; it would just take one. He was sure the percentages were with
him. He threw another and missed again. Damn. Another. A miss. Then he started
to catch on. She seemed to be within striking distance, and she couldn't move
backwards. So how could she avoid his blows? It was her head, it finally
occurred to him. She moved her head close enough to taunt him, then she
snapped it back at just the right moment. That's it! Now I got her. Then the
bell rang.

Roung Two. Each fighter was alone in his/her corner, Maynard because nobody
was willing to be associated with him and because he was unwilling to admit
that he was going to need anyone; and Suki because she didn't want to have any
advantages. Suki did make one allowance for her gender, though. She had her
manager hold up a mirror from her purse so that she could check her make-up
and hair. She found them to be satisfactory. Maynard just sat and listened to
the taunting of him for his failure to end the fight in the first round. Even
though the words were in Japanese, he knew what was going on. Though he needed
time to catch some breath, the period between rounds seemed endless to him.
When the next bell rang, the crowd began chanting Suki's name over and over
again, slowly, deafeningly. Suki was inspired by it all and began the second
round with yet another move which she had never tried before but which seemed
appropriate to the occasion. Leaving her feet entirely, she scissored her legs
sharply in front of her, the left one reaching its peak a little above her
head, then starting downward, being met and passed in mid descent by her
upwardly mobile right foot, which had its trajectory slightly -- only slightly
– altered by its collision with MaYnard's chin. By the time Suki executed an
imperfect but fundamentally successful landing, Maynard was leaning against a
rope. In the next instant, the stunned crowd was on its feet, continuing and
increasing the volume on its chant. What with the man literally on the ropes
and the intensity of the crowd reaction, the atmosphere -- all of a sudden --
was one of climax. As to the crowd reaction though, it derived not so much
from the damage done to Maynard -- at least not the physical damage, which was
not awesome -- but from the growing feeling, suspicion, hunch that the weapons
in the little lady's arsenal were unlimited in number and as totally unknown
to Maynard as to the audience. At the very least, Suki had demonstrated that
even Maynard's altitudinous head was not out of her reach. At any rate, Suki
summoned all the self-restraint she could muster and avoided the crowd-induced
temptation to go in for the kill. She just didn't think Maynard was hurt badly
enough for that, yet, though, given her inexperience with this movie-type
move, she couldn't be certain. She preferred to just wait near the center of
the ring for Maynard to come back at her; and the reaction of the crowd to his
embarrassment rang all the more loudly in his ears because he did not have to
focus his attention on continuing ring action. She just stood there smiling,
with her hands on her hips, waiting for him. As he started toward her, Suki
took a sudden step forward and raised her left leg, apparently preparatory to
another kick. Maynard jumped back quickly and covered his face, landing
against a rope. But Suki followed up not with another leap but simply by
following him to the ropes and taking advantage of the fact that his arms were
raised to his face. She simply began throwing a barrage of blows to his
unprotected belly. She did this from such close range -- her head actually
resting on his broad chest -- that he could not get his arms down between him
and the girl. The other effect of the close range, of course, was to decrease
the power of Suki's blows. Still, she enjoyed being in there blasting away at
the big guy, forcing him to slide sideways in pursuit of escape, following
him, blasting him, hearing the crowd reaching yet another crescendo. Finally,
unable to find a way to either escape or retaliate, Maynard was reduced to
pretense. He dropped his arms to his sides and just stood there, trying to
convince one and all that Suki's blows were as nothing to him. It might have
worked to some degree had not Suki -- noticing that she was no longer being
opposed -- cocked her final two blows by pulling her elbows all the way back
before projecting her fists forward. She delivered them into his abdomen, as
low as was legally possible, and the man fell to his knees. Realizing that
this turn of events had rendered his pretense absurd, Maynard put his hands to
his crotch and signaled to the referee that Suki had hit him low. The ref
didn't buy it. He had, after all, had an unobstructed view of things, given
Maynard's posture. And he so indicated in a way that was entirely visible to
the crowd, which actually didn't need him to form its own conclusion. The
cheers for Suki, the chanting of her name, turned into another chant, the
Japanese word for baby, a word which Maynard knew and which he further knew
was aimed at him. Over and over again, the crowd chanted "BA - BEE! Bay-bee!"
Meanwhile, the little girl was just standing in the center of the ring, her
hands once again on her hips, her head tilted to the side in impatience with
his pretense. He got up slowly and came at Suki slowly, both because she had
slowed him and because he now considered that course the better part of valor.
Like Curtis before him, Maynard knew what he wanted to do: Get Suki in a
corner and blast away at her. He didn't like being out in the open with her
anymore. How he got her to a corner didn't matter, whether he knocked her
there or just cornered her, even if she landed some blows on the way, just so
he got her there. Suki, a fast learner, saw what he was trying to do. Suddenly
she put up her right hand like a traffic policeman signaling a motorist to
stop. Maynard stopped. Suki turned her back on him and walked to the corner
behind her. Then she turned to face Maynard and signaled him toward her with
her now familiar wave of her hand. Maynard looked at the ref in mystification,
but that official was following his instructions to play as small a role in
this event as possible. He just shrugged. So Maynard went in at Suki, but
slowly, carefully, his eyes on his opponent's feet. But Suki didn't move them.
She waited for her man to come to her, raised her fists to meet him and
noticed that he was remembering his instructions to himself. Uppercuts. The
first one he threw missed Suki for the same reasons those in round one had,
and the second flew past her left ear because Maynard had caught on to her
strategy and was careful to aim deeply enough to take it into account.
Flustered as he was that he still hadn't connected, he was confident that he
soon would. He threw another and felt something hit his face, then something
else. Once again the crowd's screams were ringing in his ears. But this time
he didn't know what was happening. Something was moving before his eyes, but
he didn't know what. He felt yet a third blow to his face, hard enough to jerk
his head back. He covered up with his hands, then felt another blow, though
this one just hit one of his forearms. He saw the striking object as it was
receding. It was a foot! A little, nyloned, mesh-covered foot. How was that
possible? Wasn't he too close to her for her to do that? Following the foot as
it backed away, he realized the answer: It didn't really go down, but just
sort of backed away. So that was it. Suki was sitting on the ringpost. She
must have jumped up there while he was throwing his uppercuts, confident as he
was that she had no escape. Now she was not just smiling at him. She was
laughing at him! At his confusion. At his pain. At his ineptitude. His
humiliation. Her gloves rested atop the ropes, holding her in place, and she
simply sat there, laughing. Maynard looked over at the ref, who had decided
that he would not interfere even in this flaunting of normal rules unless one
of the contestants -- which one it would be was rather obvious -- complained.
After all, they had bbth been told of the almost-no-holds-barred ground rules.
When Maynard did complain, the ref motioned Suki to get down, and she promptly
complied, with a shrug. But even now she remained in the corner and beckoned
Maynard to her. She figured she seemed to have pretty good luck against these
guys in the corners, and if that was where they wanted to play, it was okay
with her. Maynard came at her again, a little less confident in his uppercut
strategy, or else forgetting it in the press of the moment. At any rate, after
his first right cross he noticed that Suki was no longer in front of him. She
had indeed executed precisely the duck-under escape which he had been guarding
against during the entire fight. What's more, before he had his balance
entirely, he felt one of those nyloned little feet in the seat of his pants.
It projected him until his face hit the ringpost. Off balance, he slipped to
all fours. Then he heard the bell ending the round. But before returning to
her corner, Suki bent over above the now inoffensive man and whispered
something in his ear, some English words she had learned just for this
occasion. "Maynard pussywhipped faggot." Then she kissed his ear and returned
to her corner, turned and draped her arms over the ropes and imperiously
watched the large black man drag himself to his feet. The crowd didn't know
what Suki had said to Maynard, but everybody had certainly seen the gesture,
and the auditorium now buzzed with speculation.

Round Three. In the process of getting to his feet, Maynard again directed
some verbal anger toward the ref, having to do with Suki's kick to his ass,
which was not exactly Hoyle under normal circumstances, he thought, though, in
fact, he was wrong. Since he was not down before the kick, he was still fair
game. As he stood there between rounds, Maynard had some depressing thoughts.
His problem, he figured, was that the chick was doing all kinds of stuff he
had never come up against before: jumping over a kick, bending her knees to
duck under a blow, leaving her feet entirely to deliver a kick (he had seen it
in demonstrations, but never in combat), jumping up on a ringpost to kick
from, even ducking under his arms to escape a corner and then kicking him in
the ass. Maynard knew he was not much of an improviser. When a new kind of
ball was brought into a racquetball game, he would be the one whose game would
suffer most; when he moved from one version of an electronic game to another
version of the same game, his game would suffer more than that of others. He
did not flourish in new circumstances. Why had he not thought of that before?
When the third round began, he was not feeling optimistic. And he knew that
Suki was, that she felt he was hers now. The fact was that the look in her
eyes shook him up. Maynard panicked. Flipped out. Threw caution to the winds.
When the bell rang, unwilling to go through another three minutes of
frustration and humiliation, the man forgot everything he ever knew about
kickboxing -- which did not seem to be helping him anyway -- and started
throwing leather, started throwing arms -- as came naturally to him -- not
feet. His arms came in long swooping arcs. From the left, the right, below,
everywhere. Suki recognized the danger in those strong weapons, and she backed
off accordingly, thinking only about staying out of the way while the man shot
his wad. He chased her all over the ring, missing and missing again. He was
breathing harder and harder, but he was not worrying about getting tired. He
figured if he caught her, that would be it, no matter how tired he might be.
But he couldn't catch her, that is, not until, in the process of backing up,
she backed into the ref, who was not nearly as swift as she in reacting to
Maynard's bull-like charges. The next thing she knew, she felt a crushing blow
to her right temple. Maynard just kept swinging and swinging, not even paying
attention in the mania of the moment to who was the ref and who was his
opponent. All he knew was he had finally -- finally!! -- hit that little
bitch, and now he was going to put her away, come Hell or high water. His
first blow after his connection missed Suki but caught the ref rather squarely
in the face. He fell against a rope and bounced back to a position between the
male and female gladiators, where he caught another of Maynard's blows and,
once again, prevented the girl from escaping, so that she caught one too. Both
the ref and the girl went down. The ref was unconscious, lying halfway across
the girl, who was not. But Maynard didn't stop. With the crowd now beside
itself with rage at Maynard, even to the point of throwing things up into the
ring at him, the big man just got madder and madder. He roughly threw the
unconscious body of the little Japanese man off his prey: and he proceeded to
go after the downed girl, the boos ringing in his ears. Suki rolled away,
then, seeing Maynard still coming, scooted backwards on her ass, finally doing
a backwards somersault that put enough distance between her and the man to
allow her to roll to her feet. But Maynard kept coming and coming, bulling her
back into the ropes, where she managed to put one of her gloves on the back of
his head. As he kept pushing in on her, she stepped out of the way and hurled
him through the ropes, much aided by his crazy momentum. As the big man fell
to the floor below the ring, he was immediately encircled by angry Japanese.
But Suki shouted and waved them away. Maynard crawled back into the ring under
a deafening crescendo of boos and screams, and under not a few improvised
projectiles, some of them landing on the unconscious referee in the corner.
The crowd was surging toward the ring, about to break through the cordon of
police holding them back. Suki quieted the chaos. She held up one hand high
above her head, asking for peace. With her other glove she tapped her chest in
a gesture that said, "Let me do it." That being the preferred outcome of most
present anyway, the crowd began receding, and the man and woman in the ring
faced off again, this time without a referee, without restraints, they both
knew. Maynard was suffering the effects of his own fit; Suki was affected by
the two massive blows she had taken. Now the games were over. They circled.
Suki knew the man's reactions would be slowed now. So she could do a move
which started with a retreat -- a sort of windup -- which she couldn't have
done before, even though her delivery was pretty darn quick. She leaned back,
raised her left leg, pointed it at Maynard and thrust herself at him off a
ringpost. Because he was expecting a kick rather than this kind of shove, he
was off guard, and her foot found its way into his belly. Hard! He might have
doubled over if the angry lady had given him a chance. Instead, using his
belly for her own leverage, without her left leg ever coming down, her right
leg went up in an arc, her body turned until it was pointing away from him,
and her right foot came across his face, its mesh pattern leaving an imprint
on his cheek for a few seconds. The two attacks had really been part of the
same complex move. Maynard backed away, groggy and nauseous. Suki followed him
across the ring. Her right hand came up hard into his face and her left
followed. She had him against the ropes. She stepped back and brought her
right foot directly up from the floor into his chin, then her left at him from
the side into his temple. She backed away from him, slowly walking all the way
back to the opposite rope as the crowd reached a relative hush of
anticipation. Reaching the other end of the ring, Suki came at him again. She
wasn't running, but she was building up enough momentum that -- given her
skill -- she was able to get both her feet high off the ground. She
drop-kicked him in the face and chest. He was done now, but he didn't fall. So
she stood in front of him and threw a left to his temple. It wasn't enough. A
right to his face sent blood spurting from his mouth. Not enough. A left
uppercut -- she chuckled to herself at the thought of using his move -- to his
belly. Slowly, then, he began sliding to the floor. Slowly, as the girl who
had done this to him stood in front of him, he slid until his knees hit the
floor, his face roughly at the height of the girl's chest. There he stayed.
She stood above him for a while, waiting to see if he would recover. Then she
walked back to her corner. Having taken control of her opponent, she know took
control of the whole situation. Using her teeth, she undid her boxing gloves
-- all eyes still on her -- and draped the black stole once again over her
soft shoulders. Turning to face the fallen man, she picked up her brimless
little hat and perched it atop her head, though this time without piling her
hair under it, and tied its strings beneath her chin. She moved deliberately,
every eye in the place riveted to her. She picked up her gown and draped it
over one arm, then walked back to Maynard. She stood in front of him for l0
seconds, then, as he watched her helplessly, brought her right foot up from
the side into his left cheek. He fell all the way to the mat, still not
unconscious. As he tried to turn from his back to his knees, she put the same
foot on his chest and pushed him back to his back. He stayed there under her
as she posed.

END