Girl in the Arena Read Free Page B

on Glad sport and Tommy in particular. He gave me a raise of fifty cents an hour the first day on the job when he figured out who I was. And this week he gave me the whole weekend off to be with my family after I gave him two tickets to tomorrow’s American Title match.
    Once I tuck Allison in, I head for my bedroom and turn on  La Boehme.  While I send Mark an IM, I thumb through  Glad Rag  magazine, look at the crawl on a silent CNN, check the weather, download some tunes, and watch a couple of videos on YouTube. Allison can’t stand that I do so many things at once, but that’s her burden.
    Finally I settle into the window seat, where I try to work on  A History of the Gladiator Sports Association.  But really it’s about waiting for Tommy to appear in the backyard so I can see if he looks ready to fight.
    For several days leading up to a match Tommy does a series of limbering exercises on the lawn each afternoon. After that he lifts some weights and soaks for a while in the cool, warm, and hot baths we had built in what used to be the garage, so when he isn’t working he can feel like he’s hanging out at a Roman bath.
    On something like cue, Tommy steps from around the side of the house. Allison worked very hard on the garden this spring so everything’s in bloom: the forsythia, the pink ladies, and the hollyhocks. And suddenly I’m having this horrible thought that if Tommy dies tomorrow we’ll have thousands of flowers for the funeral, because everything she plants has a high yield. And that means her sorrow as well as mine.
    I think about going downstairs and talking with him, but I’m afraid I’d just make him nervous. He spent all morning sharpening his swords in the kitchen. While I slathered the toast with preserves and ground the coffee beans, he spun the whetstone, pulling one of his favorite swords across its rough surface. He seemed uneasy. Usually he looks pretty tough before a fight. I wanted to say something then as well, but we both kept grinding.
    Tomorrow afternoon he’ll take his car in early so he can suit up in the locker rooms of the amphitheater in Boston, Romulus Arena. Allison, Thad, and I will follow an hour later. We’ll sit in our usual box and hope to God he makes it, because if he does he’ll only have two more matches to fight and then he’ll get out of the business for good and maybe we can start to have a normal life the way Allison always promises.
    I told Tommy once, when he first dated Allison, that he would make a good trainer. I stopped short of saying he’s too smart to fight for the GSA. But Tommy takes his responsibilities seriously, that’s the way he is, and it turns out he had already signed his contract.
    Now he’s pulling the long hose out into the yard and he has to stop to untangle it. He turns on the spigot and starts to water the hydrangeas—a bizarre thing to do the day before a fight. He always spends his time in preparation, even if this means sitting in the swivel chair in the library with his eyes closed, thinking about how he’ll take down his opponent. Tommy says it’s essential to see exactly what you’ll cut, precisely where you’ll strike, the way a professional golfer visualizes a ball arcing down the fairway, sailing toward the cup, the effortless hole in one. Tommy has a lot of discipline to see that kind of thing in his head—how he’ll sever a man’s arm or rip into his face. I couldn’t do it. When I’m up in our box and someone gets injured, I typically look away.
    Tommy holds his thumb over the end of the nozzle and a fine spray of water hits the flowers. Maybe he’s worried they’re going to succumb to the heat? I’m trying to imagine when he began to care about Allison’s garden. As soon as he’s finished, he goes down on his haunches and pulls at a few weeds, inspects the undersides of leaves.
    Is he worried about aphids? Is his mind riddled with thoughts of bone meal and mulch? And the way he’s doing it—he