Girl in the Arena - Lise Haines [86]
—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.
Lloyd hugs me and once he’s out the door, I turn on the TV, where I watch him get through the crush of people until he can pull away. Our house is being broadcast round the clock. Helicopters chop the air.
I make up a stack of sandwiches, all with the crusts trimmed off the way Thad likes, and then I realize we’ve got these guards now. Today they are Slade and Dave, and I better call them in for lunch. They both like the intensely caffeinated beverages that Tommy liked, and we still have some in the fridge. Dave keeps asking me things, like do I always cut the crusts off the bread, and can he see where Tommy worked out, and after a while I leave them in the kitchen, telling them to help themselves if there’s anything else they want. I take the rest of the sandwiches upstairs for Thad on a tray, garnished with chips and carrot sticks, anchored with a cup of orange juice. He’s up in Allison’s room of course, curled at the end of her bed. He’s been waiting for me to turn the TV on. I remind him that Allison’s bathroom is being renovated so if he has to go he should give himself enough time to make it down to my bathroom.
Then I announce, —Today is ANIME MARATHON DAY!
We will, I explain, be tuned in for hours. He seems very content with this idea, once I get my laptop and bring that onto the bed to work.
My alter ego, Eos, has wings, a short lace-up top, leggings, a small skirt, rabbit slippers, and yes, a spear through her chest. My goal is to make her battle-ready. The clothes are the easy fix. I make a new skirt using a wide leather belt from which I hang other smaller strips of leather. It sits on my hips and hits where a short tennis skirt would fall. When I walk, the strips of leather swing back and forth against my thighs. At the bottom of each strip I attach a silver coin with a peace symbol stamped into it.
I go for bronze chest armor shaped with strong pecs and well-defined breasts and the