Girl in the Arena Read Online Free PDF Page B

bylaws, there’s no reasoning with her.
    We go past Harvard now, Dunster House, and farther up the fat white trees that line the Drive. The traffic slows and we can hear Friday night sounds from the Square. I have to wonder if my friend Mark is there raising hell with his boys before tomorrow’s fight.
    —We’ll be home soon. Maybe you and Tommy can soak in the tubs tonight before Mom tucks you in, I say.
    But when I look back, I see Thad has already fallen asleep. Tommy will carry him upstairs when we get home, even though he’s so little and Thad is such a big boy. Allison will make sure his night-light is on. She’ll put a glass of water on his bedside table in case he wakes up thirsty. Then she’ll unfold his green and yellow plaid blanket and tuck this in so he doesn’t wake up cold in the middle of the night. She will look in on him a couple of times before she goes to bed to make sure he hasn’t had a nightmare or kicked his covers off. He can get pretty scared if he wakes up alone. I think he forgets that we’re just down the hall.

CHAPTER 4
    I wake up the next day to the sound of the LAWNMOWER. Even though my head is still glued to my dreams, this is way too familiar. I get up and go over to my window seat overlooking the backyard. Tommy’s got that antique mower going again. I worry that he’s going to snap. It happens to Glads sometimes.
    I watch him move from the shade into the sunlight and back again. It’s a hot day already and his skin—he’s got this kind of shine, like a horse’s coat when he’s been overworked. I want to rush down there and ask if everything is all right, but he seems oddly content mowing up and back. I decide not to break his concentration. But I’m thinking: this is one much-mowed lawn. When Tommy was out there yesterday, he trimmed the exact same swath.
    Tommy skirts the cypress tree now, the mower slowly eating into the bark of the thick exposed roots—could anything test Allison’s patience more?—then he stops abruptly. Dropping the handle, he walks to the middle of the lawn. He looks at the ground and then right up at my windows. He waves. Not his usual burst of pleasure, but an almost regal motion. I raise my hand to wave back, when I realize his face is almost expressionless and his body appears to be shifting in the breeze. How can I say this? It’s not that he’s swaying from the hips or dancing to something on ear buds. It’s more like his whole image is rippling.
    Then I get it.
    I get the whole damn thing.
    Allison is running the Living machine.
    All this time I’ve been looking at a virtual man, a false father.
    I sprint down to Allison’s bedroom.
    She signed us up for Living a few years ago. For the cost of a movie download—equipment sold separately—we are able to invite movie stars, athletes, or even despots, famous dead despots if we want them, and a variety of Glads into our home for a bit of genuine  living . That’s how the Living machine started, as a safe way to train against some of the world’s best Glads. And it’s definitely a recruitment tool: “Not every young boy has an arena, but if he has a backyard and the Living machine, he can  learn the moves .”
    Living is virtual reality without goggles. Caesar’s Inc. was in on the launch and has large holdings in the company that produces the equipment as well as the media that the machinery runs. Soon they realized they could add a roster of celebrities. The historical and artistic figures followed.
    When Allison lost her fourth husband, Truman, there was a sizable pension, since he had been willing to fight hyenas. Most Glads prefer not to. Allison has never been one to hold on to money. The remarkably expensive equipment arrived in three large boxes with ample warning labels about the use of lasers and what they can do to wall insulation and the cerebral cortex if used improperly.
    It took days to put it together and we had a couple of falling-outs over the directions. But once