The Games

tongue. He wouldn’t let her off the hook. What she’d say without him asking would be more important than the response to any question. Questions—no matter how carefully worded—always carry their own baggage of expectation, an unspoken optimal response that the asked person is aware of. The answer then becomes about proximity to that response. How close are you willing to come?

“He’s different from you.”

That was something, at least. “How are we different?” He kept his eyes on the road.

“The important ways.”

He looked at her then, and her hair was dancing, reaching into the wind.

“I should tell you we live together … or that we … lived together before I came here.”

“You’re close?”

“Close, sure. He slept right on the other side of the bed most nights. Other nights, the couch. Or wherever.”

“The couch. I guess he is different from me.”

“I told you.” She was still looking out into the desert and didn’t offer more, didn’t make any promises. John, he thought. Just an old, common name. Old, common-issue. Let it be. Let it be. He forced himself not to ask more.

PHOENIX. A place of cactus and rock and mountains and heat.

Phoenix is a place without history. It is new and air-conditioned. It defies the desert. On the side of the highway, as decoration, colored pebbles lie arranged in intricate Indian designs, pastels and browns and pinks, alternately anthropomorphic or zooplastic—strange totems and zigzags—all of it sloping upward and away from the road, an artistic canvas that five thousand pairs of eyes might see every day. And it goes on for miles, glass buildings and blue skies and mountains looming in the background.

The city isn’t so much surrounded by mountains as interwoven with them. But it is not a mountain city, not really.

Phoenix itself is flat. Phoenix is desert. The houses and roads and buildings have accreted between the rocky outcrops of higher ground. Human habitation sits everywhere in the lee of stone, as if the city were a liquid poured onto this jagged landscape and had found level.

Silas and Vidonia arrived in the downtown area at about three. The hotel, the Grand Marq, wasn’t hard to find. Vidonia dug their reservations from the clutter of the glove compartment. Two reservations, two rooms. She put one back and let him check in. The desk clerk was more than happy to cancel the second reservation. This week, the hotel could probably book the room almost immediately at triple the normal rate.

Walking back outside to the car, Silas saw where the first of the protesters had assembled their tents along the stony median between the parking lot and the road.

There is hot, and there is hot. And there is Arizona in the summer. In Phoenix, the heat is a ten-pound hammer.

A dozen men and women stood sweating in the sun with their signs, but he knew their numbers would grow as the competition date approached.

The protesters came in all types. There were your animal-rights people, anti-genetics people, anti- technology people, and, of course, your everyday basic religious fanatics. There were also game puritans protesting the corporate sponsorship of the Olympics. And then there were your run-of-the-mill crazies. All united by their desire to see the gladiator event shut down.

That they stood in the Phoenix sun was testament to their commitment.

He knew for certain those tents had been erected illegally on city property, but the Olympic Commission had learned from experience that it was best to ignore them rather than to have them removed. The protest groups craved conflict, and the last thing the program needed was a crowd of riled malcontents screaming police brutality into a hundred rolling news cameras. The commission wanted the media circus to focus on what went on inside the dome, not in the parking lots.

Silas climbed behind the wheel and circled the parking lot, making a point to swing near the street. As he slowed past the group of protesters, the words on the back of one woman’s shirt caught his attention.

BLOOD SPORT

She turned to look at him as his car rolled past, and he thought he saw recognition in her eyes. He wondered what crossed through her mind in that moment. Her hair was gray and wild, and in her arms she cradled a big cardboard sign with thick block letters painted in black marker.

FOR THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH

He shook his head. Those wages were paid to all men, sinner and saint alike.

FOR SILAS, the next three days were spent in a whirlwind of activity. He had meetings with regulators by day, dinner parties with dignitaries by evening, and Vidonia by night. Still Vidonia by night, John or no John.

“I met with the president today,” he told her, while they ate chicken wings at midnight in the hotel bar.

“President of what?”

He just looked at her. Took another bite.

“You’re serious.”

“Yep,” he said. “We were at a luncheon together. There were several heads of state there.”

“They’re staying for the competition?”

“Yeah. Most of them are going to spend the entire week here. They were even making friendly wagers.”

“What kind of odds were they laying?”

“Not sure, but I think we’re the favorite.”

“What were they betting?”

“The usual trifles.” He took another bite of chicken wing. “You know, sovereign languages, submarines, space stations.”

She smiled and thumped his shoulder.

“I don’t even want to tell you what language we’ll be speaking if we lose,” he went on. “There must have been a dozen members of Congress there, too. This thing is getting bigger every time.”

“You make it sound like that’s a bad thing.”

“It’s turning into something.”

“Into what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a kind of”—Silas paused—“international sociopolitical economic summit.”

“That’s a lot of words. There’s no way you made that up just now.”

“I’d been working on it.” He turned serious. “Actually, that came from a reporter. I’m not sure I know what this is anymore.”

“Any talk of the protesters?”

“They used euphemisms. Mentioned security concerns but nothing specific.” And Silas had been grateful for the euphemisms. He wasn’t up for high-level talks about protester issues. He thought of that sign. Blood Sport. A description Silas was having more and more trouble arguing against.

“Next month, in Monterrey, those guys don’t realize how lucky they have it.”

“Meaning what?”

“Nobody protests the human portion of the Olympics.”

She shrugged. “They don’t compete to the death.”

“The president said something to me. He pulled me aside to ask if we were going to win this thing or not. That’s just how he put it: ‘Are we gonna win this thing?’ ”

“What’s so wrong with that?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it. It was the look he had, though. Like it was important that he hear a yes from me.”

“What did you say?”

“I gave him his yes.”

They finished their wings and took the elevator up to their hotel suite.

He waited until she was naked. “Should I sleep down the hall?” he asked her.