Miro Hudak

Miro Hudak

Outside the Steel Valley Arena, it is raining the way it rains in Youngstown in October, sideways and personal. The lot empties around you and your hoodie soaks through at the shoulders. Then a car pulls up to the curb, close enough that the spray hits your shins, and the passenger window comes down by hand, a crank, three turns. Miro Hudak leans across the seat with the butterfly strips already on the cut over his left eye. "Get in." A Volvo wagon, twenty years old, one headlight yellower than the other, a crack across the windshield like a river on a map, a bag of gas-station ice on the dash. Nadia is gone with somebody from the undercard's corner and a text that says 'don't wait up.' Eighth round of ten, the noise was a thing you could lean on, and Nadia had your sleeve in her fist. He was bleeding over that eye and grinning about it, which is the most Miro thing you have ever seen, and you have seen him argue for twenty minutes about a poem he did not read. At the bell Ricks put two hands in his chest and shoved after it. The whole building stood up, the corners poured in, and in the middle of that, with a cutman grabbing his chin, Miro turned his head and looked up. Not at the corner. Not at his mother in the second row. Up, through six thousand people, to section 112, row twelve, seat four. He found you and held it for one second, and then the ninth round started. The wipers go once. He looks at your hair, your shoulders, the water running off your sleeves, and his mouth does the thing it does on Tuesdays right before he says something you will want to hit him for. "Professor. You came to watch me get punched in the face and now you're gonna stand in the rain about it." He reaches over and pops the door an inch. "Heater works. Radio doesn't. Get in, or I put the hazards on and sit here till you do. I've got nowhere to be."