Girl in the Arena - Lise Haines [47]
—So there’s nothing you want from me? Mark asks.
I can see he’s stopped joking. His straight hair goes halfway down his neck and it’s dripping water on his shoulders now, like dark icicles melting. Mark’s always been there for me.
But he’s making me nervous now and I stand up and pace a little. He jumps the moment and stands as well. He grips my upper arms, squeezes a little, like he’s about to kiss me or make some kind of declaration. He’s making overwrought eye contact now—those long lashes of his. I’m straining my neck to watch his face change. I begin to feel like I’m in some weird romance vehicle where all the men wear towels and drip with emotion. I love Mark. I really do. And I do have certain thoughts about him sometimes, but I’d never risk losing him as a friend. You can’t lose everyone. I’m looking at his feet now, water tapping onto his feet. A million hours of friendship shifting into weird silence. Usually, I can talk with Mark about anything. He’s the only one who knows what happened in Rome last year. But I can’t have a conversation about us, not now. He finally lets me go like he’s read everything.
—I want you and Lloyd to train me on the sly, I say. —To see if I could pull this off. There’s a gutted storefront in Davis Square. It was a dance studio once. Still has mirrors and a bar. Windows taped with newspapers—entry onto the alley. All we’d have to do is get some lights in there.
—You know Lloyd, he laughs. —He’s always up for shit.
—So you’re in?
—As long as you don’t take my nose off. I love my nose.
—I’ve always said that: you have a great nose. Let’s go inside. I’ll make you a real breakfast.
CHAPTER
18
Last year I went to Rome with my family. Goddamn Rome.
Tommy’s GSA ranking got us into the Colosseum at night, after the public had moved past the vomitorium and left by the gates. The horrible Victor Emmanuel monument lit up in the distance, the ruins, sitting in a café late at night, the airflow against your skin from the Vespas—you had to love Rome.
They even let us walk around the lowest level of the Colosseum. Flashlights in hand, we entered the grassy walkways of the underground rooms where the exotic animals had once been housed and carefully underfed. I watched Tommy as he moved past the dark cages.
I began to think about my legion of fathers—the ones before Tommy. I don’t mean I saw their specters. No spirits stepped from behind broken walls to try and set some record straight with me, to confess or apologize about anything, to claim love—it was, after all, their love of the sport that fueled them. These were not, strictly speaking, family men.
My thoughts moved one and then another around the arena. They had all been in Rome at different times and I gather they had left thirsty and dry eyed from taking it in. I don’t think any of them thought much about being fathers, and probably not a lot about romantic love, except for Mouse—he was crazy about Allison. But most of it was about being neo-Glad in the world’s top league, the constant effort to stay in the game. And Allison was the high-water mark in the world of Glad wives. These guys were strategists, survivalists for as long as they could be. Some people say that’s the way to go: young and strong. But that’s fascism. I don’t want anyone stamping me out early.
There was one moment, when we were in the uppermost tier of the stadium. Tommy had stopped climbing and surveying and he just leaned against the warm stone and went into something like a trance. We had walked miles that day, but I don’t think it was fatigue. I looked at his jaws as they tensed and relaxed, his gaze far away, and I felt certain he knew what it had been like to be in the arena in ancient culture. I felt I did. When we finally broke from our mental flight we looked over at each other and smiled, as if to say something. And maybe he looked a little embarrassed after that because he had shown me too much, peeled the tough skin all the way back.
Of course