Girl in the Arena - Lise Haines [65]
A pet monkey? I write.
Mark’s fingers fly and I read his energized scrawl.
Who’s that guy sitting on your front steps?
I look up at a man in a plain gray suit, a small valise by his side.
Maybe he was selling magazine subscriptions?
So you’re telling me there’s something a little unreal about this version of your life?
I’m telling you.
I see Mark’s mouth moving now though I can’t hear anything because sixty thousand people have started to cheer. Uber has entered the arena, in one of those short Roman skirts and full sterling chest plates expressing his contours—which is a style more about high-ranking soldiers than gladiators—but he looks buoyant and the outfit suits him. He takes a mic from one of the officials and shouts, —FOR CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL!
Fans stand on the benches and begin to stomp. And if you can’t taste iron at a moment like this you never will, because Uber looks ready to go after the fair and the brave for the kids. It’s rare that a fight is taken to the death in benefit matches, so you get a particular kind of crowd ready for fun, willing to stop at solid injury. Uber walks over to the emperor’s box until he’s standing directly below us, some twenty or thirty feet down, in his lace-up high-tops and leather gloves to his elbows that cover everything except his fingers. For all his gear, he looks exposed somehow, his expression somewhere between tough and shy, but I think it’s probably confusion as he tries to read my face without his glasses. I finally had to ask and he told me his eyes swell up so badly he can’t wear contacts.
The stadium quiets as he unsnaps his helmet and lifts it from his head.
—He’s going to fight without his helmet? I say aloud, completely forgetting myself.
It’s not like me to forget about the cameras and mics. There, up on instant replay on all the big screens, my worried little self repeats the same words over and over. —He’s going to fight without his helmet?
The shaved head, the saucer eyes, I’ve become strictly mug shot. —He’s going to fight without his helmet?
It’s a rather benign question, but it expresses too much interest coming from me. And in this moment I’m someone else’s daughter, not Allison’s, because I know she’s dying watching the match at home in bed, Thad curled around her feet. She wanted to come tonight and we got into it and I finally had to say, —I can’t take all of this on right now, and left. You’d think it was enough that I was going, that I was dragging Mark along so she wouldn’t worry. She’s been driving me insane ever since Tommy died. So I get it, but she’s still driving me insane.
Uber turns and watches one of the screens where I keep saying the same thing. And when I’ve finally grown quiet on the monitors, he swings round and throws his helmet up to where I’m seated.
I lean out over the rail and catch it before it tumbles back. Fans start to hoot and cheer.
This isn’t bullfighting, Mark taps hastily once I’m seated again. He’s dedicating the fight to you. Shit.
All I can do is shrug. Then Mark gets up and stands in that blind spot just behind my left shoulder. It feels odd that he doesn’t put an arm around me as he often does when things are nuts, but I don’t think either of us is prepared to answer for a small action that would become large news.
I place the helmet on the ledge in front of me and I can feel how annoyed Mark has gotten. Now he’s up on the monitors, his unshaved face just behind my newly shaved head. The media speculations stream about Lloyd’s scowling son, the very eligible bachelor who is training under his father. My whole body