Stage lights like the fucking sun. The smell of smoke. Cheering, cursing, a hundred conversations. An audience around the ring filled with every kind of New York filth: the old men in those three layer, thousand-dollar suits with trophy wives as delicate as their ivory cigarette holders, the ash-coated dregs from the Queens in their ragged clothes, the Swingers from Harlem, the flappers, the columnists from Manhattan, the immigrants with bushy mustaches, the tourists with wide eyes and empty wallets, the drinkers, gamblers, mobsters, betters, workers, the policemen, firemen, longshoremen, and the rest of them. Smoke like a veil hanging over them. Like the curtains of a stage. The faceless eyes. The cacophony of voices. Moonshine spilling from their flasks. They gathered here in this pit, in this damp, dark belly of the beast, to watch a fight.