Girl in the Arena Read Online Free PDF Page A

him.
    GSA women wear a certain kind of boot made from Italian leather, sometimes sandals with at least fifteen straps—not the pseudogladiator style you see everywhere now—and tunics on occasion. But I wear jeans and T-shirts mostly. Sam and Callie and I used to wear these cutoff  stolas  of our mothers’—the layer that goes over a toga—but that’s when you get really annoying comments so I stopped doing that. Of course Sam’s the kind of girl to wear barrettes dipped in the blood of gladiators, which she claims they did in Imperial Rome, and this, I think, kind of encapsulates her personality. The most I’ll do now is wear a few bloodless beads, a little gold—my beat-in leather jacket always. I really couldn’t care beyond that.
    And sometimes it’s almost easier to be in uniform. At my fast-food nation job, it’s really hot and you have to lift heavy boxes of frozen food substance and you get spattered with sizzling grease. But you have this uniform and this cap and you’re just one of the underpaid and completely marginalized jerks like everyone else and no one asks if you come from seven types of men—you just fry and salt and squirt and slap and wrap and bag.
    I get Thad settled in the backseat and we drive down Cambridge Street to avoid as much rush hour traffic as possible, past the medical facilities, the library, the tattoo parlor, restaurants, the Garment District, the courthouse where Allison has always managed to avoid jury duty, and God-knows-what shops. You can get a freshly killed chicken on Cambridge Street.
    Thad’s anchored by his seat belt but each time he sees neon lights he ducks. My friend Callie used to go with us, and her presence made for less wear and tear on Thad.
    —We’re almost there, I assure him.
    —We’re almost there, he repeats, in his self-soothing way.
    Finally we hit the upscale condos, the Cambridgeside Galleria, and the parking ramp to the museum. Inside, we get a locker for our jackets and Thad and I use this machine where we turn a penny into a thin piece of copper with a T. rex imprinted on it. This he will rub for hours between the thumb and index finger of his left hand, because that’s what Thad does. He has long eyelashes and soft downy hair that people admire. But he’s a big guy, nearly twice the height of his classmates at school, and he has a solid girth, so even though he’s only eight sometimes he’s mistaken for an older boy and there’s a lot of confusion about his behavior.
    We head for the cafeteria, where we sit by the big picture windows and look at the lights of Boston reflected on the Charles. A tour boat is anchored at its helm. The stern makes a slow arc across the water as it’s pushed back and forth by the current. This always has a calming effect on Thad. We eat french fries in paper cups and watch our reflections in the glass as we become full and satisfied.
    Live musicians play jazz and the IMAX lines bulge. After we’ve slurped up all the Coke we can manage, Thad takes my hand and pulls me through the lobby into the turnstile where we show our passes. The crowds have already thinned out, so pretty soon there’s no waiting to punch buttons, lift handles, open drawers, move levers, spin wheels. We ride up the escalator until we’re right there in his favorite place: The Playground. Here Ping-Pong balls are sucked up air tubes, people watch their heartbeats on monitors, and try to outrun a sequence of flashing lights. In one room kids leap into the air and if they time it right, they can see flat shadows of themselves frozen on a blank white wall until those impressions start to fade, and then they press the light button again and start over.
    The only exhibit Thad likes is the one where he can make a small digital recording of himself on a monitor. He likes to get it to replay and replay and that makes him laugh some and then he says,  I love that.  Though we could certainly make videos at home, I think there’s something