Girl in the Arena (5 page)

She calls after me. —Virtual reality is very successful in treating trauma victims! Burn patients! Look it up.

I trudge down the blue carpet of Allison’s grand staircase.

—You’re not a burn patient! I call over my shoulder.

—You shouldn’t be so hard on me! Your father was always hard on me! she calls back.

—Which one?

—All of them! All seven! They’ve all been hard on me like you!

CHAPTER 5

By now Tommy’s stepping into his competition gear in the locker room of the amphitheater. But his family is having a later start than planned because my mother kept changing her outfit. Now we take the surface streets, hoping to avoid the afternoon rush hour. The sun is too bright, the heat without letup, and I know just how nervous Allison is because she keeps sliding her fingers off the wheel to dig her nails into her scalp. We’re all just nerves and we almost hit a brown Audi that swerves at the last second to avoid us.

The driver, a man with thin gray hair, looks pretty rattled. Allison’s hands shake as she lights a Marlboro, trying to calm down. She stays put in the car. The man and I get out of our respective vehicles and look at how close we’ve come. Our front bumper is less than an inch from the Audi. Like that space between God and Adam. The man looks at the decals on our bumpers and windows.

—Goddamn gladiators, he says.

Then he gets back in his beautiful car, backs up, and speeds away.

*

It takes Allison a while to calm down from our near miss and she takes a wrong turn and we get lost for a while—which, if you know Boston, is an easy thing to do no matter how long you’ve lived here.

Normally, we sit in the heirs section, way down in front where cameras are trained on us the whole time, but not so close any blood hits you. But we’re nowhere near our box when we arrive, so we just grab the first seats we can find in the stadium because the match is about to start.

Romulus is an open-air arena built to hold sixty thousand fans and it’s pretty close to capacity today. I look around at the people who have painted fake wounds and gashes on their bodies. Drinks slop from plastic goblets. Styrofoam truncheons and axes are waved about. Beer is consumed—kegs, buckets, rivers of it. The hot dog buns are in the shape of lances and there are lots of folks with banners made from sheets and flattened boxes: some for 
TOMMY
, some for 
UBER
. Crazy hats meant to look like helmets and broken skulls. Tattoo concessions, piercing vendors. All of them call out, hawking for business. At home I have one of those giant foam hands with the thumb you can turn up or down or just wave in the air but I’ve always felt too embarrassed to bring it to the stadium.

This is the American Title fight, so people are watching this one all over the globe. When a gladiator wins the American Title, this is his job: to look large, to be the largest man on Earth really. His name appears in novels, it’s shaved into hair art. He might sign a movie contract and he can always get plenty of cameos. Game shows, no sweat. In two weeks his name will be printed down the length and over the breadth of thousands of condoms. His name is packaged and unpackaged and rolls out before us. He grows larger and larger. He becomes the sign. He becomes a giant where endorsements are concerned. He helps the population to buy poorly assembled vehicles with tires that will blow out, and small over-wrapped meals, and trillions of bottles of diluted water. His face stops the world. I’d say 
she 
but no woman has ever won the title, though a couple have gotten close.

We take heat because there’s no Glad Husbands Association. But give Caesar’s time. They’ll find roles for all of us.

We’re pretty high up in the stadium here and in many ways I actually prefer this. Because when the American Title is awarded and the victor raises his fists, the fans start pushing against the reinforced steel fencing around the arena. If they knock it over, they flood the arena and hoist the dude up on a carpet of shoulders. But then a lot of fights break out and sometimes people get trampled to death, the tally of bodies appearing in a small box in the upper right-hand corner of the jumbo screens, each one a tiny skull and crossbones.

Uber enters the arena first to thundering applause. I’ve read in 
Sword and Shield 
that he rubs a quart of Glow on his skin before a match. With the black lights that rim the stadium, as soon as he starts to overheat it will look as if that peacock green sweat is pouring out of him like in those sports drink commercials.

Thad tugs at me until I get a Freeway bar from my sack and peel back the wrapper for him. They make my mind too speedy and I think it would be easy to go into road rage even if you weren’t driving, but with Thad, they soothe him. His whole sense of time and space has always been jumbled up. Sometimes I think he’s living at the speed of light, only I can’t see it.

Uber checks his helmet repeatedly and then crosses himself.

When Tommy steps into the arena, all of us stand and flood the air with sound. Everyone loves Tommy.

I see he’s chosen the short sword today. But he still looks off to me. There’s almost no swagger as he walks into the center of the arena and raises his arms.

—Tommy looks good, I say to Allison.

—Do you think so? Allison shouts above the cheering.

—He’s all over this, I say.

—I’ve heard Uber wasn’t 
born in 
to the Helmet Wearers, she informs me.

Allison likes to make a point of these things. Born Ins are first-generation Glads, their relatives and descendants. Tommy’s a Born In. It’s a point of pride. I don’t know if Uber’s a gladiator born and bred but the blog 
Desperate Glad 
says: 
He lights up the game. 
And the 
Chicago Tribune 
says: 
He’s money in the treasury
.

Time feels sped up as the cheers build. Tommy and Uber start to circle. I don’t know why, but I thought they would take longer to size each other up, that time would stretch out on this one. Competitions often feel slow to me, especially at the beginning.

Tommy slams his shield against Uber’s. They deliver several blows in succession, each one striking the other’s shield or sword, each sound enlarged by the sound system and the roar of the arena. I want to look away, but today I can’t.

Tommy knocks Uber’s shield so hard it flies out of his hand. As Uber moves to pick it up, Tommy makes several small slices up Uber’s left arm. That’s Tommy’s signature as he’s warming up, to make the small cuts. The crowd loves this. They chant, —
Tommy, Tommy.

But then in one move, Uber suddenly grabs his shield, turns, and strikes Tommy with his long sword. When I open my eyes I see he’s practically taken off Tommy’s left kneecap. There’s blood everywhere, spurting and soaking into the sand. Before Tommy can right himself, Uber slices him across his stomach. Thank God that one’s a shallow cut.

—Why isn’t he fighting back? Allison asks.

—He’s waiting for the right moment, I say, though I’m wondering the same thing.

Thad’s trying to say something now, his mouth full of thick, sped-up chocolate. Everything about him looks urgent as I glance over. I don’t know if he understands what’s going on with Tommy, if he understands fully, or if this is about something else, because thoughts are often urgent with Thad. I kiss his forehead. I’m trying not to cry, and I tell him to chew slowly, and to wait, just wait. I tell him everything is going to be okay.

A low rolling chant starts as Uber seems to be giving Tommy time to concede, to pull himself together—I’m not sure what. I’d say this is not the kind of calm you want. If I were a forecaster, I’d say we’re in earthquake weather, just before it hits.

When Thad can’t take another moment of stillness, he stands in his chair and starts to leap toward Allison, jumping up and down. As I try to restrain Thad, I look at his big eyes, his soft square face, and I imagine how much would die with Tommy. Maybe everything, everything as we know it. Then Thad gets quiet again and slumps back into his seat. I want to take his hand and run away with him but this is one of the first bylaws I was taught; number 96:

Never leave the stadium when your father is dying.

So I’m here when Uber raises his sword suddenly and slices off Tommy’s right hand cleanly at the wrist joint.

I’m out of my seat, standing in the bleachers as his hand drops to the sandy floor like a chicken wing into flour. Tommy’s bludgeon flies and the bracelet I lent him for good luck launches from his arm and rolls to a stop at Uber’s black athletic shoes.

Sixty thousand fans rise to their feet shouting:

—UBER! UBER!

For a moment Tommy stands there in his blood-drenched Nikes as if he’s thinking over his next move. Of course the point, the whole point, of Glad existence is to die well. And I know Tommy G. is going to die well when it’s his time. But I’m looking at Allison now, looking for something in Allison’s face to say he’ll pull through this one. That the ambulance will scoop him up and get him to the hospital in time.

I stare into Allison’s mirrored sunglasses, where I see Tommy suddenly arch back. His chain-mail guard swings out from his hips and lashes his groin. His legs buckle, and his body drops in both halves of her.

Tommy dies right there in Allison’s lenses. 
tommy.

A doctor steps into the arena, checks his vital signs and walks back to the sidelines. Nothing to do.

Just then a couple of ring tones hit the air, like the sound of lone flies trapped between a window and its screen. This is what Glad culture does when a hero dies. They get their phones to ring in unison. After the first few, they all start. We have ringing in our ears now. Massive ringing in our brains, a good way to go deaf and drown out everything.

When the sounds start to quiet, I feel my grief like blood pressure. It pumps in my chest, fills my ears, runs through my hands. It knocks at my temples to get out. I look at the sweat beaded on Allison’s forehead. I know her heart is working so fast it could rip through her chest. Mine has already torn in two.

She says, —No. She says no as if someone’s offered her potatoes with her dinner. That’s the way she does shock.

I say, —Seven.

It’s a stupid thing to say even if it’s true. But everything has changed for my mother. She will be a GSA Widow till life cuts her from its belly.

i don’t know what to do.

I whisper this to her, that I don’t know what to do. But I know she can’t hear me.

now
. 
now the whole thing hits her
. I can see it. Like a high-rise set off by dynamite charges. I watch the demolition begin in her jaw. Her cheeks go slack, her nose pulls downward, her forehead creases. Her hands fly up as if to hold her brain in place. Her earrings swing back and forth. She’s wearing the tiny executioner blades Tommy gave her one Valentine’s. Allison drops into the seat next to me. 
and i don’t know
.

i don’t know anything anymore
. The stadium noise cranks and I realize everyone’s looking at the scoreboards. Officials have raised a flag.

—Look. A penalty! I shout, as if this will bring Tommy back to life.

—What? Allison says, clearly disoriented. Her lashes are soaked through and her teeth have cut into her lower lip.

—You have to go down there, I say, pulling at her arm.

She shakes her head. I want her to do something with that bead of blood on her lips. But she’s paralyzed.

—Not Tommy, she says.

If I were Allison, I’d be halfway down the stairs by now, trying to breathe life back into him, into his guts, his heart. But Allison sits there like the ambulance on the other side of the gates with its motor running, lights on. Waiting for the officials. Waiting for nothing. What do you wait for after death? Sixty thousand expressions of waiting all around us.

I look at the series of cuts up and down Uber’s legs, across his chest, and over his shoulders. The coagulated blood looks like wax dripping down a candle. Each cut made by Tommy, so I know they smart extra hard.

If Uber’s weapon is illegally balanced, he’ll be dismissed from the league. I’ve heard that Glads who cheat are sent to live on abandoned ocean platforms, the ones out near the Caymans, where they have no companions or toilet paper—only get limited food drops—and the televisions are primitive and often receptionless. But that could be an urban legend.

The media talk about the ugly relief map of Uber’s face as he removes his tight helmet. They became chatty and informational about how to eliminate those marks from the forehead and cheeks. How to get the best fit in a helmet. And one sportscaster talks about which tattoo needles to use if you want to make a permanent tracing on your face: to have that tight-helmet look all the time.

I try again.

—You have to go down there, I say.

But Allison’s lost. She’ll be better when the cameras are on her and she has to pull herself together. But right now, all she can do is sit in her seat and shake while Thad tries to lean against her. I look for a friend, even Sam or Callie, anyone we know in the crowd who might help out, but I can’t spot a soul.

The officials are looking at Uber’s helmet now. Tommy once told me that Helmet Wearers spend more time scrounging material for their gear than they do killing. They can’t cover all the vulnerable parts of a face—the eyes are left bare by tradition and for visibility’s sake—but Tommy believed that real Glads went for exposure, that you shouldn’t be anything less than exposed when you fight.

The woman behind us has started to gripe about the penalty flag, shouting, —What the hell are they doing?

She must have taken hours to paint this red gash that starts on her forehead and goes down the length of her nose and splices her lip. She has mock bone and cartilage sticking out.

Thad pulls on my jacket. 
TOMMY G. 
is stitched in gold letters across the back. He pulls so hard I feel the seams rip. Even though he’s on elevator drugs he doesn’t have any real control. It’s hard to know if he’s even registered Tommy’s death.