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.She won’t hold me and she can’t comfort me.I’m all alone in this.Baggs lay there, cherishing the gentle way her bare chest rose and fell against his arm.He cherished her warmth, and tried his best to perfectly capture this moment in his memory so that he could return to it in times when he was scared.After two hours, he thought, I’d better go.But he just couldn’t get up.It felt so good to be in bed with Tessa, and to know that the girls were in the next room.He thought about Olive’s full belly after licking all the crumbs she could find at the bottom of the cake container and smiled.The girls each had protruding stomachs from how much they ate.At three hours, Baggs looked over at Tessa and thought about dying in front of 200,000 strangers in the Colosseum, instead of here with her.The thought made his heart race, and after a moment, he thought that if he didn’t leave soon, he might start crying.He kissed her head and gently slid out of bed.“Where are you ‘oing?” She croaked sleepily.“Bathroom,” he said.He went over to her side and kissed her head five times.“Love you.”“Love you.”Baggs walked out of the bedroom, then he walked back to Tessa and kissed her again, pressing his lips to her warm forehead and enjoying the last time he would ever touch the woman he loved.“Love you,” he said again.“’ove you,” she whispered.Baggs didn’t think that she was awake.He stood and looked down at her, and then felt the tears begin to fall from his eyes and roll over his cheeks.He stifled a sob, and thought, I’ve got to get out of here.He went into the bathroom and changed into the clothes he had stored under the sink as quietly as possible.With his jeans and bloody shirt back on, he looked one more time at his daughters, who were asleep on the mattress.He hoped that he did not wake them as he left.Baggs removed the chair from beneath the door handle, unlocked the deadbolts, the chain locks, and the door handle.He relocked the door handle after opening the door, and glanced back at his redheaded daughters, sleeping peacefully on their mattress one last time.Baggs stepped into the hallway and shut the door behind him.He had left his keys on the table; he did not need them anymore.He turned, opened the door to the stairwell, and as he walked down the stairs, he tried to not think of the fact that if he survived Outlive he could see his daughters again.If he survived, they could have meals like that once a month, and he could hold Tessa again while he slept.If he survived, he could finish reading the Harry Potter series to Maggie.He tried not to wish for these things, because the hope scared him.It made him feel soft, and weak.He wanted to feel fearless and ready to die as he entered the arena.Historically, bravery seemed to pay off in the Colosseum.Baggs lit his last cigarette for the month as he stepped out onto the streets and began to walk through London at one in the morning.Part 21Baggs had made it all the way to the Media Tower by three in the morning.His feet were aching and swollen by that time.From reading medical books in the library, he suspected that he had plantar fasciitis, but had no means of getting this checked out.Whenever he walked for long distances, his heel and the bottom of his foot ached.At three in the morning, as he sat on the stone steps in front of the Media Tower and took off his socks to examine his throbbing feet.He saw that the tissue had swollen so much that where his arch should have been, his foot protruded further than even his heel.“Damn,” he whispered.He took off his other shoe and began doing some of the stretches he had read about in the library.He stretched each individual toe backwards, and forwards, and then stood and stretched his calf muscles on the steps.Then, he sat down and rubbed the sore areas of the bottoms of his feet with his right hand; his left was not dexterous enough for such a task.Baggs chided himself for not taking any ibuprofen with him on his journey when he knew that he would be walking such a long way.There was nothing he could do about it now.He slipped his socks on, then his shoes, and walked up the steps towards the Media Tower’s entrance.The Media Tower was a tall, black triangle of windows that came to a point 40 stories above the concrete.As Baggs walked up, he saw that the point at the top of the building happened to be centered with the moon from his point of view.The door was, as he expected, locked.There was no writing on the glass to give any indication of what time it would be opening back up.Not knowing what else to do, Baggs walked along the wall a ways and sat down with his back against the structure.At least it’s not raining, he thought, looking up at the sky.Actually, I couldn’t have hoped for better weather.He looked among the moonlit streets and masses of concrete, wondering if Tessa and the girls were still asleep.He hoped so.For most of his twenty mile walk towards the Media Tower, he had been fearful of Tessa catching up with him, teary eyed, and begging him to come back.Baggs shook his head as he looked out at the streets that the weeds were reclaiming.Even though Tessa was usually the rational one of the two of them, he thought that he knew best when it came to this issue.They now were really out of CreditCoins, and there was no one who would intervene and save them as their bodies slowly deteriorated until they didn’t have enough energy to breathe anymore.No one cares about us.No one cares about the poor.On his way to the Media Tower, Baggs had gone through downtown.He had seen whores dressed in fishnets and high heels with gaudy makeup caked onto their faces.He had expected this.What he hadn’t expected was that so many of them were so young.“Hey, sugar,” one girl had called to him, and when he turned to her, she winked and beckoned him to come over.“Wanna play?” she asked.Baggs thought sickly that she appeared to be eleven.She was a child.A few blocks later, Baggs had moved into a richer part of town, where at two in the morning, men and women smelling strongly of colognes and perfumes were waiting outside a nightclub called “The Circus.” Paparazzi were standing outside, cameras idle, talking to each other—they were apparently waiting for some celebrity to exit the club.Men and women stood in a long line, many of them swaying drunkenly.The bouncer at the door to The Circus wore a clown outfit with a painted red mouth.He spat when Baggs walked by.The music was so loud on the inside that Baggs could feel it in his chest as he passed on the street [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]