“Are you kidding me?” Levendale said throwing the magazine on Elizabeth’s desk. He strode across the tiny office in his odd way that always reminded Elizabeth of a vulture. His head pushed forward, his wobbly, wrinkled neck moving back and forth, his legs thrown ahead of him waiting for his body to catch up. He was the master of international sports for the magazine and fancied himself the boxing expert in South Africa. “The Hitman has been retired for eleven years. How can you talk about him defending his IBF title? That’s over and done with. He’s a has- been. You really need to understand boxing if you’re going to write about it, Elizabeth. A column like this is going to have you losing all credibility, but I always expected as much. It’s really not good for the magazine. I don’t know what Chako was thinking when he gave you the column. You know nothing about the intricacies of the sport. Nothing.” Elizabeth nearly laughed. In Levendale’s eyes she never had creditability in the first place so how could she lose it? He didn’t care too much when she was only writing articles about athletics for The Sports Review. She’d been a 100 metre star during her university days at WITS so that gave her a bit of cred in his eyes, but that was only for athletics. When the magazine’s long time editor, Rre Chako, let her do a column on boxing, now that was stepping on Levendale’s toes and he didn’t like it, didn’t like it at all. Rre Chako knew enough about the boxing world, though, to know no one would take a columnist named Elizabeth seriously, and so asked her to write under a male pseudonym. Elizabeth wasn’t happy about that but loved boxing enough to do it. Ever since she was a little girl and would go to matches with her father, she adored the sport. So she agreed to write the column under the name E.B Diseko. The column, Punch Drunk, was a bug up Levendale’s nose. Every issue, he’d pitch up at Elizabeth’s office complaining about what she’d written. Plenty of night’s at Gino’s, the local work hangout on the ground floor of their office block, once Levendale got enough Black Label flowing in his system, he could be heard spouting off about how a sports magazine had no place for women. Since Elizabeth was there (albeit the only woman besides the tea lady in the office) there must be a place for some women at a sports magazine, and Elizabeth suspected any woman who could tolerate Levendale earned a place next to her. Elizabeth learned to accept that Levendale was a sexist pig and nothing in this lifetime would shift him from that position. The world would just have to wait for him to move on to the next life where, one could only hope, he came back as an equality- committed sea slug. “Gimba Kwabizani wants to prove that he’s the best heavyweight boxer South Africa has ever produced. He can only do that if he gets a fight with The Hitman. He’s the only IBF heavyweight who never lost his belt. And in any case, the Hitman was just a kid in 2001 when he won the title. He was like 20, that’s make him only 31 now. We don’t know what he’s been doing, he disappeared, we don’t know where he went. Maybe he’s been boxing in Cuba or something. For all we know he might be at his prime. Besides, it’s not like it’s some wild request from left field. Felix Steyn has been insinuating that his boxer is fit and ready to get back into the ring at any time. In my column I’m just speculating about what the problem might be. That’s all.” “Calling The Hitman a coward is not going to make you any friends.” Elizabeth smiled up at Levendale. “Unlike you, Levendale, I have enough friends.” Levendale stormed out just as Marea arrived. She poked her head around the door, “Is it safe?” She was dressed in her normal Marea way: green tights to match her currently green hair, a black leather mini skirt, black Bob Martins, a green blouse with a ruffle down the front and a playing card, the queen of hearts, hanging from a loop in her ear. Marea and Elizabeth had been best friends since primary school, and she’d always been dressing weird, but still, each day was a surprise- even for Elizabeth. “What’s with the queen of hearts?” Elizabeth asked as Marea plopped down in the only other chair in the tiny windowless office. “It’s all about love. I may have met someone.” Marea smiled. “Ooo… tell me more!” “He moved into my building, one floor up. So far no woman in the picture. We met in the elevator. There was a connection. I’m feeling him, that’s all I’m saying for now. I don’t want to jinx it.” Elizabeth pulled her handbag out of her bottom desk drawer. “Is it okay if I invited Zakes to join us for lunch?” “Errrr… I don’t know. You know how it is…it’s still sort of weird me and h….” She stopped talking when Zakes walked in. Zakes was the magazine’s football reporter. He wore his usual: Manchester United T-shirt and jeans. He had a compact footballer’s body thanks to years of playing the sport like an addict. This was in direct contrast to his silly, boyish face with the deepest dimples Elizabeth had ever seen on a man. Marea popped up from her chair and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Her voice suddenly all jolly and accommodating. “Really wonderful to see you, Zakes. Elizabeth tells me you’ll be joining us for lunch. I’m so pleased.”