Girl in the Arena - Lise Haines [18]
Uber slips my bracelet onto his right wrist and begins to walk across the arena toward the staging area. Officials trot after him, one of them calling him back. Thad starts pushing at me, and Allison . . . I don’t know how to stanch her emotions. The officials are arguing.
Thad cups his hands over one of my ears and shouts, —THE HAND IS POINTING AT YOU, LYNIE!
I turn his head and cup my hands around one of his spongy ears, and shout back, —That’s Tommy’s hand! Tommy’s dead, Thad! His hand isn’t pointing at anything!
It’s hard to forgive yourself for being that harsh, that wrong with someone you love, even if it settles him down. The thing is, Thad doesn’t have an unkind bone in his body. And I think I’m pretty patient with him most of the time, probably more patient with him than anyone except Allison. Really patient. Because he’s one of my favorite people. But sometimes he’s a lot to deal with. Before I can tell him how sorry I am, a bank of cameras light Allison’s head and bust. The media has found us.
Allison blinks into the lights and her image sputters onto the giant screens. I watch her there as she stands next to me, wiping her tears away. She is suddenly luminous, almost together in an instantaneous way, the cracks of her psyche temporarily mended. She mirrors her new role as a GSAW. I think of portraits of Roman noblewomen. Right now that’s Allison.
I am the sliver by her side: the braid of long hair, part of an eyebrow, half an eye. It’s easy to be out of the picture. I can’t move fully into the frame or shift completely out of it, we’re pinned so tight by the crush of people, everyone wanting to get into the shot now, waving to friends, pulling up their T-shirts to show their abdomens, sometimes their breasts.
It’s what we do. We want to be there: on screen.
The sound system issues this alert: Remain seated. Free water will be distributed shortly. Remain seated.
The sprinkler system goes on. Thousands of free bottles of water are handed out.
Like Tommy’s corpse, you can see Allison’s face from any geographic point on the globe now. Even in Katmandu you have only to find an Internet user and see Allison’s splendor. She floats in the Earth’s atmosphere in millions of copies. Allison here and Allison everywhere. She is, for all intents and purposes now, a god.
She grabs my hand. She’s trembling slightly. Turning from the cameras she says, close to my head, —Why are they holding up the blessed ambulance?
Three officials in green-and-white-striped shirts are talking with Uber. They go over and look at Tommy, they get within inches of his body. They point to his wounds with their pens. They measure his body parts with skinny measuring tape that snaps back into their palms.
—I’m surprised they haven’t offered free parking yet, Allison confides in me.
She does a beautiful job with bitter when she’s up for it. Ever since the GSA went through its major restructuring they have frequently offered free parking for anyone who makes it out of the stadium within twenty minutes. They’ve been accused of doing this because it ups the trampling numbers. Caesar’s likes to boast a good trample the way NASCAR likes to have their flameouts. I know how quickly we could get separated and crushed by adulation. She knows this too so she’s keeping Thad as close as possible.
Thad begins to say in a singsong voice, —Lynie’s getting mar-ried! Lynie’s getting mar-ried!
His words volley against my tight eardrums, against my grief. Then Thad is calm and maybe a little embarrassed. He sits down in his chair and looks out toward the spectacle of moistened people.
—Lyn’s not getting married, dear, Allison says softly.
Thad whispers back, —Uber has her bracelet!
I didn’t even think he knew this rule. How can he know some things so precisely and miss other things entirely? In the confusion, I don’t know how much