Chapter 14 #3
“Poor Elki,” I told Brock and Timothy when we rendezvoused in the cafeteria. “It’s JonBenét meets Mama Rose.”
“The shot-putters are really friendly,” said Brock, “but scary, because they’re these beefy giants, who could pick me up and toss me into the bleachers.
When no one was looking I played around with the iron ball, which is actually called the shot.
It weighs a ton, and I tried to cradle it in my neck and spin around but I kept dropping it.
It’s like curling, because all I keep thinking is, I get that these guys are amazing athletes, but why is this a sport?
It’s like trying to bowl while you’re drunk. ”
“I did a little bit of gymnastics in high school,” said Timothy.
“But the only part I ever really liked was the dismount. I’d practically fall off the pommel horse or barely lift myself up onto the rings, but then I’d copy those twelve-year-old Russian girls and raise my arms and do a big ‘ta-da!’ ”
“And the gymnasts?” asked Brock, in his best cut-the-chitchat tone.
“Well,” said Timothy, “they’re pure muscle, especially their necks. They sort of vibrate, like they’re always about to do a triple somersault over my head and end up behind me. The sex is incredible, because for them it’s cardio.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “Have you already had sex with the US men’s gymnastics team?”
“Of course not. Just Ryker and Ian and Mason. I did a group thing with the Egyptian tumblers, and it was so cute, because we made a pyramid.”
I was, as always, in awe of Timothy’s sexual prowess, which never matched the perkiness of his button-eyed, how-may-I-help-you demeanor.
He’d once told me, “A lot of sex workers come from abusive homes or think their bodies are the only card they can play. But I grew up in this tiny little town in New Mexico where the nearest mall is eighty miles away and there isn’t even a post office, so all I had was my laptop.
I’d game and watch movies and reruns of Friends, but there was so much porn.
The only stuff that got me off was when the guys were really into it, and I could tell they kept going afterward.
And I just thought, That looks like an interesting job.
I started my OnlyFans when I was twenty, and the money bankrolled my move to New York. ”
“Does your family know about it?” I asked.
“My mom does, because she walked in on me filming in my room. I had my phone on this tripod thing, and I was wearing bunny ears on a headband and I had food coloring and this little brush and I was coloring eggs. You know, naked, but like an Easter theme. And at first she asked wasn’t I chilly, but then she figured it out and said, ‘What about becoming a psychologist?’ Which is something I’ve always been interested in, and I told her this was helping me save up so I could go to grad school without student loans.
So she got that and asked, ‘Should we start thinking about the Fourth of July and maybe a red-white-and-blue bow tie, with an Uncle Sam hat?’ ”
“And your dad?”
“I met him once and my mom says he’s a deadbeat, so she’s proud that I’m showing initiative.
And I’m still totally committed to grad school, but one day Reggie showed up on my feed and he said that while he wasn’t interested in, like, having me tape a birthday greeting while I was jerking off, he asked if we could talk.
So we had coffee and he said my skills might be really appropriate for the Tuxes, and I thought, First of all, I love that he’d said I had skills, and second of all, I like the idea of helping save the world. With my dick.”
Timothy was his own kind of patriot, and Reggie had been absolutely right: just like with me, it was the unexpected people who can prove valuable, because we don’t come off like obvious soldiers or spies.
Timothy had been essential in the group’s interactions with Fleming Fairmont, who’d need CPR after Timothy posted footage wearing just his Olympic visor and a smile.
Timothy might also become a top-notch therapist because of his unique perspective on human idiosyncrasies.
Everything was on track until, during the morning of the second and final diving competition, Miles began vomiting.
He said it was just nerves and lightheadedness from forgetting to eat, but then he started shivering and foaming at the mouth, so Reggie and I carried him to the medical tent, where things only got worse.
Miles could barely breathe, and then his joints locked; he couldn’t stand up, and his eyes rolled back in his head.
The doctors gave him IV fluids and antibiotics but couldn’t diagnose what was wrong or how else to treat it.
“He’s been poisoned,” Reggie concluded. “Henrik got to him. We have to bring him to a hospital.”
Ambulances were parked outside the Village, so Miles was wrapped in blankets and lifted onto a gurney, with Brock by his side.
Terry, Miles’s husband, was staying at a Tokyo hotel and would meet the guys in the ER.
Reggie wanted to go but told me, “I have to find Henrik and beat the shit out of him for doing this. But first, we’ll grab the ruby and watch for who else is implicated.
I’ve notified the real Sky Collier, who’ll be subbing for Miles.
I’m not sure if he can beat Elki, but he’s really good. ”
I was frantic about Miles and how everything was escalating, but I’d support the rightful Sky Collier and Team USA, with Henrik in sight.
In my warm-up suit, I stood with the other alternates in a cordoned-off area beside the diving platform.
The divers from Australia went first, and as they were slicing into the water, I saw Henrik hissing into Elki’s ear, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying.
He wasn’t clutching anything or reaching into his pocket, so he didn’t have the ruby, at least not yet.
From hacking Henrik’s calls, Marcus had predicted that the handoff would occur just before Elki’s dive, for maximum secrecy and whatever paranormal boost, however artificial, the jewel could deliver.
Reggie was standing nearby, with the American coaches, and scanning the stands and the nearby entrance for suspicious goings-on.
The Americans were up next. With Miles hospitalized, Sky had become one of our team’s two leading contenders, except he wasn’t here.
As Cal Halliman, the other American diver, neared the platform, I got a red-alert transmission from Marcus, via my headband: “No one can find Sky. He was on his way from the alternates’ dorm, and he disappeared.
The video feeds are down. Andrew has to dive. ”
What? WHAT? Before I could even comprehend this unthinkable solution, Reggie was at my side, telling me, “Henrik’s people took Sky, we have no idea where.
They’re trying to make our team default, to eliminate any competition for Elki.
Henrik’s planned the confusion as a cover, for the sale of the ruby.
We can’t let him get away with this. Have you ever dived before? ”
I shook my head no, as the closest I’d ever come was tiptoeing out a few inches onto the diving board, two feet above the water, at a neighbor’s in-ground pool, and retreating within seconds.
I’d been eight years old, but I wasn’t a fool.
Every cell in my very young body had warned me, “Don’t do this.
You’ll die and everyone will blame you. You will never win a Tony Award or finish second grade.
Your parents will be sad but mostly embarrassed.
Pretend you just remembered a dentist’s appointment, get on your bike, and start a new life three towns over. ”
“Just do whatever you can,” Reggie was saying. “Your scores won’t matter, but we won’t get disqualified. Be incredibly careful, and take as much time as you need, so I can scope out Henrik and Elki. This is hard, but I trust you. Is your head okay?”
During my last checkup, the doctor had said I’d completely recovered, and that there weren’t any lingering aftereffects from the incident in Rome. I’d felt like an action hero who, after being trussed up and pummeled with a baseball bat, appears tan and unruffled on the Riviera a few minutes later.
“My head is fine.”
“So are we good to go?”
I could start climbing the ladder, or run away, whimpering and craven, by which I mean behaving sensibly.
Reggie was looking into my eyes, and the fact that he believed I could do this gave me, if not courage, at least the abandonment of sanity.
This was Reggie’s great gift, and why the Tuxes revered him: he was passionately strong on behalf of all of us, and his bedrock decency wasn’t shaming but an inspiration.
His leadership was so reliable it became sexy; this tough-minded, phenomenally experienced man understood something about me that no one else ever had: I was braver than I thought I was.
I was simultaneously flashing on Robert Duvall’s feverishly committed Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, along with Ted Lasso sparking his English football team with a cocktail of compassion and backbone, but mostly I was thinking about that scene in the 1930s musical 42nd Street when a hard-bitten director informs a trembling chorus girl, who’s a last-minute replacement for the show’s ailing leading lady, “You’re going out there a youngster, but you’ve got to come back a star!
” And thanks to this fiendishly rousing pep talk, the completely untried Peggy Sawyer does just that.
I was Peggy Sawyer, storming the beach in Saving Private Ryan.
I told Reggie, “Let’s do this,” as I saw Henrik a few yards away, staring at us, flummoxed that we were going forward.
His scheme wasn’t foolproof, even if thwarting it necessitated my drowning.
His scowl was a goad for me to unzip my jacket and step out of my nylon warm-up pants.
Unfortunately I’d also have to lose my headband, so I’d no longer be mentored by Marcus.