Live! Booze! Girls! Ali! This Is Fighting?

At 10 o'clock in the morning there were two couples at the counter in the hotel coffee shop on the Nevada south shore of Lake Tahoe. They were solid-looking people who talked about the snow and played Keno while they ate breakfast, glancing up at the electric scoreboard on the wall.

"Does Mo-hammid Alley eat in here?" one of the men asked a waitress.

"Sometimes."

"Does he eat regular food like everybody else?"

"Sure. Steak and prunes. Things like that."

"Steak and prunes! Hear that, Ethel?"

Just then Muhammad Ali himself walked up to the counter and ordered a cup of tea. Ali had been running. He still wore his sweat clothes and had a towel around his neck.

"That's him, Ethel."

"Think I don't know it? I want to touch him."

"So touch him," her husband said.