They went down the hallway, discussing the cages in question, and stopped in front of mine—apparently cage eight. They looked me over, nodded as if satisfied with Driggs’ choice for the main event, and then they proceeded onward to the fourteenth cage.
I pressed my face against the door again so I could see; the prisoners in my line of sight did the same.
“This one,” said the first man; he then raised a gun at the cage.
The second man slid a key into the padlock and opened the door.
“Turn around,” the man with the gun instructed the prisoner inside.
Seconds later, a gargantuan man the size of a bus stepped out and into the hall with his beefy hands bound behind his back.
My eyes grew in my head.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I shouted at the men. “That’s not a fair fight!” I assumed this was to be Peter’s opponent.
The man with gun grinned. “It’s not supposed to be fair”—he chuckled as they walked past—“It’s supposed to be entertaining.”
“Goddamn you! Pick someone else! Give the guy a chance!” But I knew my pleas would fall on uninterested ears. And they did, as the two men escorted the bus out of the room.
Too enraged anymore to even curse my frustrations, I slammed my palms against the door again, and then slid my back down the brick and sat heavily on the concrete floor.
“I know a way out of here,” the woman spoke up.
“If that’s true, then why are you still here?” I never even raised my eyes.
“Well, see that’s the thing,” she said, lowering her voice just above a whisper. “The only reason I’m still in here is because I have a pair of tits. Unfortunately, Ravinia doesn’t swing both ways, so my chances of winning her pardon are pretty much zero. But a guy like you, well, you could probably be out of the trenches after your first fight if you play the game right.”
“She’s tellin’ the truth,” the man with stringy yellow hair said. “You go out there, crush your opponent—”
“But make it bloody—she likes it bloody,” the woman interrupted.
“Yeah, put on a violent show,” the man continued, “and she’ll almost surely send for you within an hour after the fight. You’re a good-lookin’ man. Young. Mad as hell. Got everything going for you.”
I finally raised my head.
“Yeah,” the woman added. “Unfortunately for him”—she nodded in the man’s direction—“looking like a meth-head, no matter how many fights you win, won’t get you anywhere with Ravinia, either.”
“And then once you’re free—” the man said, but was interrupted by the woman again.
“No, let me tell him”—she pushed up on her knees, curled her fingers around the links and peered eagerly across at me—“Once you’re free, then you can come down here and set us free.” She pointed at herself and mouthed “me”, then pointed her thumb at the man in the cage next to hers and mouthed, “not him”.
She smiled hopefully at me from behind her prison door. The man, who did remind me of a meth-head, looked hopeful, too, but also irritated—he shook his head and glanced in the woman’s direction with an expression of warning.
I was not interested in the two; I didn’t care about getting either of them out of this place, or even taking their advice and going through with their plan. Not all the way, at least. If what they told me was true, then I would absolutely put on a violent and bloody show, and I would kill anyone I had to for Thais’ freedom, and I would accept this ‘Ravinia’s’ request that I meet her privately, with false intentions of showing her a good time—but I’d kill her before I ever put my dick in her.
And that became my plan, in a matter of the eighty-four seconds I took to contemplate it: I would kill Ravinia, find Thais, and get the hell out of the place before the sun rose the next morning.
The first fight of the night was over quick, announced by the sound of the door opening again.
Peter did not walk back in; instead, the bus of a man who had killed him strode past without uttering a word, and with Peter’s blood still glistening on his fists.
60
THAIS
I had asked Drusilla how she came to be in Paducah, but she wouldn’t answer. She combed my hair, and she tied my black corset in the back, and she avoided eye contact with me in the oval mirror in front of us, but all the while I felt like Drusilla, despite her silence, had so much to say.
“The biggest mistake you made,” she said moments later, “was falling in love with that man.”
I looked right at Drusilla in the reflection of the mirror, waiting for an explanation. How in the world could falling in love with Atticus be a mistake? Atticus was the only reason I was still alive.
Drusilla wrapped a rubber band around the end of my thick braid and let it fall against the center of my back.
“When it’s just you,” she began, “you’re in complete control; your judgement isn’t clouded by the wellbeing of someone else; you can rise to heights you never imagined if no one’s dangling from your legs, weighing you down.” She stepped around me and reached for a palette of eyeshadow on the vanity. “But you’re only half a person when you give someone else your heart. And everything you ever do or accomplish will always be half as good as it could’ve been.”
I thought about it.
“The only thing I could ever wish to accomplish,” I began, “is a simple, happy life with Atticus, somewhere far away from all of this. If it’s half as good as what our life could be together, then I’ll take it.”
Drusilla stopped tinkering with the eyeshadow, and her eyes found mine in the mirror. “You would choose that over a better world?”
“Well, no,” I said. “Of course—it goes without saying—I’d want a better world, a place where everyone can live a simple, happy life with those they love.”
Drusilla’s gentle hands went into motion again; she swiped a sponge brush across one of the velvety colors.
I waited for her to say something, to explain her point, but I realized I did not need her to. I already knew.
“Without fully understanding the choice I’d already made,” I said, “I put one person before the Greater Good.” Then I turned on the little wooden stool to face Drusilla rather than her reflection. “But accomplishments and hopes and dreams are nothing without love. Besides, there’s nothing I can do about the rest of the world anyway.”
Drusilla leaned forward and touched the sponge brush to my closed eyelid, paused, and said, “Are you sure about that?”
I opened my eyes; Drusilla looked at me with what felt like expectation.
“What do you mean?”