Girl in the Arena (25 page)

I just have to laugh.

—My mother illustrated that there’s nothing easy about widowhood. It only seemed to lead to more widowhood.

—I don’t have full authority to make this happen, but I’ll start the meetings on it right away. I’ll hope to have an answer for you by the end of the day. Are you staying in New York tonight? Can my wife and I take you to dinner?

—I’m going to see the superheroes exhibit at the Metropolitan.

—See if you can get some ideas for a fighting outfit?

—Something like that. Then I’m taking the train back.

He goes over to his desk again, picks up a piece of paper and a pen and says, —Could I get your phone number?

As I recite it, he seems to write this out, then he hands me the pad.

—Is this right? he asks.

I read: 
I think you should see something.

—Yes, that’s right, I say.

As I gather my things to leave, my eyes wander around the office. Maybe I’ll find a mic popping out of a flowerpot, a hidden camera. When he opens his office door, staff members are lined up in the hallway, waiting for a look at me.

—Everyone get back to work, he says with a broad smile.

Though they shift a little, they remain essentially in place, whispering among themselves, until we go through the large doors back to the lobby. Here he summons the elevator and then asks the receptionist to go on some errand that I sense might be bogus. Once we’re inside, he puts a key into the control panel to get us up to the fifteenth floor, which is one more floor than I understood Caesar’s to own, given that there is no thirteenth floor. I start to open my mouth to say something but he shakes his head just enough to make me wait. Before we get out of the elevator, he punches a button to send the car back down to the lobby. We step out into a large space with a wet bar along one wall, chairs stacked in high towers. It appears to be a kind of banquet room, with a small stage and a wooden floor, perhaps for dancing. Again the windows onto the city. The sun has just crested the high-rises.

He leans in toward me and I flinch.

I can barely hear him when he says, —If I turn on the lights, someone might find us.

—Okay, I whisper back.

There are two doors leading to another room, maybe a closet. He unlocks these and pulls the doors open into another dark space, this one windowless, I can’t tell how deep. I’m not sure what I’m looking at at first. It seems to be some kind of tank. There’s a strong chemical smell. Even when my eyes adjust, it’s just too dark. He turns on a tiny penlight and hands it to me, standing just behind me.

There he is. There’s Tommy.

tommy.

He’s floating in a sealed glass tank, a vitrine full of formaldehyde. All of his parts have been sewn back together. His eyes shut, he’s still wearing his gladiator costume. They have made Tommy into something like Damien Hirst’s 
Tiger Shark 
once displayed in an art exhibit titled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.

I gasp and LeRoy gently covers my mouth. Then he whispers, close to my ear.

—They’re trying to sell him to a foreign collector.

I shake my head back and forth, tears run from my eyes and over his hand that he gently removes now. I turn around and face him. We both whisper now.

—
They? 
Not you?

—If you learn that Tommy’s body has disappeared into an unmarked plot, long before it’s sold off, you’ll know there are more than party-liners around here. But it might not be safe for you to come here again.

I nod in agreement.

—I’ll do what I can to get your contract through, though I wish you could see some other choice. I almost died when my daughter married her gladiator.

Then I ask him to give me a moment.

I touch the case and tell Tommy that I don’t want him to worry about Thad.

After a while LeRoy takes out his handkerchief and wipes my fingerprints away. He tells me we are to take the stairs down to the ninth floor. From there we will both take the elevator down to the street and then he’ll travel back up to the office. He tells me where I need to walk to catch a taxi and wishes me Godspeed.

*

It’s good that I take the last train back. It’s dark and quiet now and I’ll get home to Thad soon. At the speed of the Acela, I get out the superheroes catalog. It’s so much easier to think of oneself in a comic book.

The costumes are broken down into eight basic types: 
graphic, patriotic, virile, paradoxical, armored, aerodynamic, mutant, 
and 
postmodern. 
Although some might consider me paradoxical, or even a little armored, I think postmodern will suit my time in the arena. 
Adorned with skulls, hellfire, and other symbols of mortality, they embody... the postmodern body of both fiction and fashion and the darker terrors of our contemporary world.

I don’t know what comes after postmodern, which is already turning old when five-year-old girls can go into local department stores and buy tights with skull and crossbones all over them. Maybe the next phase is to crank up the particle accelerators, rev up the nuclear reactors, peel the ozone away, spew oil from the offshore platforms, take Russia or China on. But I would like to imagine something else. I don’t know. Something.

CHAPTER 29

Thad waits for the first pancake off Julie’s griddle, his jaw tipped open. She’s made it the size of his face and plans to decorate it with Thad’s basic features.

I see he’s wearing a new gladiator costume. The work is so good it looks almost like one of Tommy’s outfits. His wooden sword and shield, painted bronze, rest next to his chair as if he’s going into battle as soon as breakfast is over. They’ve even purchased a new pair of sandals for him with the right number of straps. I know there’s no discouraging Julie in this kind of gift, and God help me if I try and take it away from Thad now.

—Would you like tiny marshmallows or little bits of butter for the mouth? Julie asks.

Thad furrows his brow. —Lyn’s going to lose everyone, he says in his point-blank way.

—He really missed you. I think that’s all it is, Julie says, but she looks away, clearly worried.

Just once I wish my Thad would say I’m going to win something or take a pleasant trip or meet an interesting stranger.

Now Julie steps away from the stove long enough to kiss me on the forehead. Then Mark leans into me with that look like I need a distraction. One eye on his computer, he starts to whisper to me about just how bad things have gotten in Myanmar, about the things they do to albinos in Tanzania.

—I was only gone for a day, and I read those articles online, and I’m really getting this, that the world is going to hell.

—Sorry, he says, rubbing his goatee.

—I’m just tired, I say.

Lloyd, who’s probably only caught a little of our conversation, begins to shake his head, his eyes fixed on the sports section. —A lot can happen in a day, he says vaguely, more to himself than us.

I want to tell him that it already has. I got the call last night from LeRoy as soon as I got in. Caesar’s is sending signed copies of the contract today.

—Jesus, since when did the army get into Ultimate Fighting? Lloyd says, smacking the paper.

—Since they figured they could make a buck airing it on primetime, Mark says.

—No shit.

—Lloyd, Julie scolds, nodding toward Thad.

—Sorry. Cute pancake, Thaddy, he says. —Looks just like you.

—I’m the most famous person you’ll ever meet.

In a low tone I say, —Tommy used to compare ultimate fighting to cockfighting.

Lloyd folds the newspaper back. —Listen to this from some Major Crigger.

—Crigger or Trigger? Mark asks.

—I quote: 
The Ultimate Fighting Championship provides a great venue to get the Army name into the minds of millions of young Americans.

—Why don’t they just brand us at birth? I say.

—Right on the frontal lobe, where my sense of humor is, Mark says.

During the conversation Thad has picked up the uncapped maple syrup bottle. He holds it in front of his right eye at a slight angle until his T-shirt is spattered syrup. I realize how much he loves the amber view but I know in time he’ll drop the bottle. I gently nudge it away from him, saying, —My turn.

Then I look through the glass at him and say, —You’re my favorite person, Thad.

He watches Julie set his starkly happy pancake on his placemat, and I know he’s hungry. But when I get up to wash my sticky hands at the sink, he jumps up and moves to the floor next to my legs, as if he’s there to catch the tiny drops of water that splash against the stainless steel. He hums to himself while I wet some paper towels and crouch next to him, washing the syrup off his hands and face and T-shirt.

—I’m sorry I had to go to New York, I say. —I missed you.

—Let’s go home and see Mom now, Thad says.

Lloyd gives me a sympathetic look.

—Julie would feel very sad if you didn’t eat your pancake. And I have to talk with Mark a little. Then we’ll go home.

I signal Mark to meet me in his bedroom, then I lead Thad back to the table, where I cut up his pancake for him. He watches, tapping his index fingers against his thumbs as if one hand is talking to the other hand. Once he starts eating, Julie tells me to go on.

Sometimes Mark’s room is barricaded, but rarely on purpose. It’s just that the dirty clothes and dishes and cereal boxes and things end up by the door like he’s planning on taking this stuff out to the kitchen eventually. But he gets caught up with the computer a lot and he trains every day, and I don’t think he realizes he’s creating burial mounds. I have to lean my weight against the door to gain entry. Once I do, I slump down at the bench press, close to Mark’s desk, where he’s already signed on.

He offers me a Coke out of his mini fridge but as I told Julie, I’m just not thirsty, not really hungry. He forces it into my hand, saying I look too thin.

—He doesn’t understand that Allison’s dead, I say. —And he still hasn’t figured out what happened to Tommy and he was right there in the stadium when he died. He saw everything, but nothing sunk in.

—Maybe it’s better if he can’t remember?

—Maybe. But then he asks for them and I can’t produce them, and then he runs and hides under his train table for hours.

He gives me one of his long, considered looks, like he’s about to doctor me.

—I’m worried about you.

—Me? I’m okay.

But I can never bullshit Mark. He pulls up the latest photos circulating the Internet. There I am, running down Fifth Avenue.

—I do look rabid.

I tell him about the kids who dogged me. And then I tell him that I need his help. Mark puts his hands around one of my knees.

—Anything, babe, he says.

I tell him about LeRoy, and outline the business about the contract. He drops his hands and tips back in his desk chair. He says, —I’m going in for you. You get that, don’t you? I’m taking this fight.

—I appreciate that. More than you know. But I have someone else in mind.

—That stings.

—No, listen. Do you remember that woman in Sacramento who projected her avatar into the courtroom where her divorce proceedings were taking place, because she was too nervous to personally attend?

—That woman’s going to fight for you?

—You know, she rigged the avatar to a Living machine.

—Shit, you can’t be serious.

—If she could that, why can’t I put my alter ego into the arena?

Mark cracks up.

—Didn’t they catch her? he asks.

—Only after it was in action for ten full minutes.

—And wasn’t her avatar a troll? Okay, but the thing is, I’m not sure if we can get your alter ego to lose a limb or bleed if she’s hit—without making her look really stupid—like a gushing fire hydrant. And what if she goes crazy and tries to take one of your arms off? But hey, I’ll bring my computer over tonight and we’ll see what we can do. What the hell.

—I’ve already started to build someone. I’ll tweak around with her, see if I can lose the wings and spear.

—Spears are good. Keep the spear.

—It’s going right through the center of her chest.

—Yeah, well, lose the spear. And look for a current face shot of yours that we can patch in.

—Just so you know, I’m fighting if this doesn’t work—and you’re not responsible for anything.

—I told you I’m going in for you.

—No, I’m serious. Just help Julie with Thad if I go down. And loan me your electric razor. This stubble is driving me crazy.

—I love your bald self.

*

The paparazzi’s in my hair, though I have none. If I did I’d be pulling it out, strand by strand. After Thad tucks his share of pancakes away, Julie checks my stitches and says they’re dissolving nicely, and encourages Lloyd to see us home. Lloyd explains that he decided to camp at our house while we were gone, and he caught one of the photographers trying to break in. Lloyd made the man strip and he hosed him down with the garden hose. That’s when he decided to send tag teams from his trainees over to the house to keep guard—one by the back entry, one by the front—round the clock, in eight-hour shifts. They love Lloyd, otherwise there’s no way they’d stand around in the heat, glaring down the paparazzi all day.

The van is swarmed. We can’t even pull round to the back.

After Lloyd leaves his van in the middle of the road, he and Mark clear a route to the front door. When we’re almost inside, I let this slip to one of the female reporters:

—Caesar’s will be making a big announcement within the next forty-eight hours.

Of course Lloyd wants to know the second we make it into the house what the big announcement is. So after I get Thad settled upstairs, I spell it out for him. Not the part about my alter ego. With Lloyd, you either fight or you don’t fight. He’d rather we all burn in hell than send artificial life into the arena. But then Lloyd’s a pretty straightforward guy. And there’s no way I’d bring up the thing about Tommy’s corpse. God knows how freaked he’d get about that. So I stick to the essentials, and tell him that I’ve settled on my fate: 
No 
to the wedding, 
Yes 
to combat.