Girl in the Arena - Lise Haines [94]
—You’re a funny movie, Thad tells Lloyd.
It’s hard to say how many hilarious movies and whacko shows we’ve watched in the last thirty-six hours. Thad and I burned through some Woody Allen and Marx Brothers, and then he just loves that one with Steve Carell and all those animals, and I insisted on Stranger Than Fiction.
When I couldn’t sleep, and I haven’t slept since that lasagna dinner, not really, I began to surf stations that know how to wring the last bit of dopiness out of a day. Candid footage of people hurting themselves and their relatives (but not seriously, the disclaimer says) is always good for a late-night belly laugh; talk show hosts that can’t stop mining the beaches of dysfunction and stupidity in the celeb world; the cheesiest stars from the worst reality shows back to savage each other. Unsuspecting people who think they’ve lost their cars, their wallets, their dignity, ha, ha, you’ve been punked! will get you through a full two hours. Or those people who dress horribly and they’re told why, in excruciating detail, as they stand in front of a thousand mirrors, or the one where parents try to pawn off their ugly daughter on some new guy because her current boyfriend is chronically calling her mother a whore. And people worry about the impact of television.
This morning—the morning of our competition—I wake up and quickly feel just how suffocating the air is. The AC churns so slowly I realize we’re in a brownout and the LED display on the clock is blinking so I know we’ve lost power at least once during the night.
I call Sheryl to make sure she’s awake. She plans to come over while it’s still dark out. As soon as I get her on the phone, she complains heavily about the sudden heat wave. At least she’s there so I can slip out of the house before Thad gets up. She knows to keep him fully occupied, and far away from the stations that carry the match, or anything on popular culture. She knows to call Julie if there are any problems she can’t handle.
Mark and Lloyd retrieve me from the media circus so we can travel over to the bread and circus. Lloyd has rented a fancy car for the occasion. I’m running on raw nerves, no sleep, and strobe lights everywhere. If the seats are plush or scratchy, the ride smooth or rough, I can’t feel a thing.
CHAPTER
31
I shift about now, my feet cold on the damp stone floor. I’m aware of the thunder of people overhead as the last of them enter the stadium, find their seats, and purchase their food and souvenirs for the big match.
I’ve been here all day, checking my weapons, getting a massage, doing limbering exercises. I had a quiet lunch with Lloyd.
Mark is up in the emperor’s box. He’s hiding behind the curtains with his computers. Once the horns sound, he’ll put down his burger and fries and Rock Star, and activate Lyn. She will suddenly appear next to me, identical to me, eager to be me in the dark passage leading into the arena. I wait behind an iron gate, breathing, hardly breathing, considering my sins, my digressions, my lineage, my reasons for fighting, where I’m going, and how insane is this?
There’s something about Mark being planted up there that makes me think of assassination attempts, only this assassination is about my identity, and even though he’s turning the dials, I made it clear to him that I’m the one squeezing the trigger.
Last night, in between all that funny stuff, I drifted down to the library for a while. There The Bhaghavad Gita jumped out at me, the way books often do in our library. You can look at the same shelf a thousand times and suddenly a title pops out. It’s not like I know Sanskrit—ours is an English translation—but as I read I was thinking about this guy Arjuna who had to go into battle. As he wrestles with the moral