Chapter 11: The Long Pull
The crew taped the circles onto the atrium floor while the cast warmed up, two of them at either end of the hall, each one about eight feet across and marked in black gaffer tape that stuck to the polish and buckled at the corners. A scoreboard the size of a garage door hung from the dome rigging, its bulbs dark for now. The ropes came out of a canvas bag, thick coil after coil of it, hemp, pale and fibrous, and the smell of it carried across the floor like the inside of a barn.
David picked one up and it was heavier than he expected. Renee took the other end out of his hands and wrapped it twice around her forearm, testing the bite of it against her skin.
"Hold it like this," she said. "Not in your fingers. The rope will peel them off you. Across the palm, thumb over, wrist locked." She watched him adjust. "Better."
"It's just standing in a circle."
"It is never just standing in a circle," Renee said. "It's leverage. Whoever gets low wins. Kyle is strong but he's tall, and tall men fall forward. This is why shorter, more stockier people are stronger. Low center of gravity. I’m shorter than you, and… you know all this thickness. Low center of gravity. It’ll be more difficult for me to fall.” Renee said, teaching animatedly.
David didn't tell her he already knew how to stand. He had spent a week watching her lift crates off the kitchen floor and settle her weight. He had spent another week learning that knowing a thing and saying it out loud were two different skills. So he kept his mouth shut and copied her grip until the hemp lay flat across his palm.
"Good enough," Renee said. She rolled her shoulders twice and spat on the floor, which the crew pretended not to see.
The atrium filled while they warmed up. Stools scraped across to the glass wall. Crew ran cable in thick coils and taped it down at the edges. Zola walked the perimeter with a producer at her elbow, one finger pressed to her headset. She nodded at something none of them could hear.
The scoreboard came alive with an electrical thunk that David felt through his shoes. Sixteen bulbs, one for every pair, all amber, all waiting.
"First round," Zola said, and her voice arrived from every speaker in the building at once. "David and Renee, against Kyle and Mia. Into your circles."
Renee went first. She stepped over the tape and tested the ground with both feet, finding the part that didn't slide, then held out her hands for the rope without turning around. David took in the space. The two circles sat four feet apart under the dome, twin black rings on white polish, and every camera in the rigging had rotated inward to face them.
Kyle crossed the floor with his arms swinging. He stepped into the far circle like a man stepping onto a stage he had paid for. Mia came behind him, arms folded, chin up, eyes on the rope.
"Rope up," Zola said.
Renee passed the tail to David and settled at the front of their circle. "Get low," she said. "Behind me. Both hands. Don't lean back. Lean down."
He wrapped the coil the way she had taught him, across the palm, thumb over, wrist locked. He could feel his pulse in the pad of his thumb.
Kyle had his end looped twice around his wrist. He looked across the four feet of floor and grinned at David the way a man grins at a parking space.
"Hey. Virgin. You want to trade before we start?" he said. "I'll take the big one. You can have Mia. Give you something to hold on to for once. Never had one of those…”
David looked at the rope. It was easier than looking at anything else.
"That's what I figured," Kyle said.
"Kyle." Mia's voice came out quiet and flat.
"What. It's a joke. Nobody died."
David lifted his eyes off the rope and looked straight at Kyle, the way Remy had taught him, slow and unmoving.
"Keep talking," he said. "Every word you spend on me is a word you're not spending on holding your ground. Let’s see what happens.”
Mia's head turned, just slightly. Kyle's grin went thin at the edges.
"Pull," Zola said.
The word came through the speakers and the rope went live in his hands. Kyle hauled without a count, without a warning, and the hemp peeled across David's palm and dragged him forward half a step before Renee's weight landed on the other end. She dropped her wide hips, dug in, and the rope stopped dead.
The scoreboard bulbs flickered once and held.
"Low," Renee said. One word over her shoulder. Nothing else.
David bent his knees. The polish was slick under the tape and his sneakers squeaked against it. Four feet of floor between the circles, and that was the whole world now.
Kyle leaned back and pulled again, and this time David felt it in his shoulders, in the long muscle down his back, the kind of pull that had nothing to do with anger and everything to do with mass. He held.
"You feel that, virgin?" Kyle said. "That's what it's like when somebody bigger than you wants something you got."
"Don't talk to him," Mia said.
David's eyes came up off the rope. She was holding her own end with her chin tucked, arms flexed, and she was not looking at Kyle. She was looking at him.
The rope bit into David's palm, and he looked at Mia's face, and he understood exactly what losing this round would cost her. So he stepped backward out of the tape on purpose, let the rope go slack, and gave Kyle the round. Renee spun around with her mouth open, and Zola's voice came down over the speakers before anyone could speak. Zola's voice came through the speakers with the flat, incurious tone of a woman reading a receipt.
"David and Renee forfeit round one. Kyle and Mia advance." The scoreboard clunked, two bulbs flipping from amber to red on one side and a green light blinking on the other. A low murmur rolled through the stools along the glass wall.
Renee let the rope fall out of her hands. She turned around fully, and she did not shout. She just looked at him with her jaw set and her arms loose at her sides, the way she might look at a rookie who had walked into a cellblock without checking the door behind him.
"What the hell was your plan?”
"I'll tell you later."
"Later is not going to help me explain to my kids why their mother got nominated on national television."
Kyle, still in his circle, released his end of the rope and spread his arms wide.
"That's it? He just quit." He looked around the room as if asking the stools and the cameras to witness him. "The man stepped out. I didn't even have to pull."
Mia had not moved. Her hands were still wrapped around the rope, though the tension was gone from it. She was looking at David across the four feet of tape, and her face had opened in a way he had not seen since high school. It was not gratitude. It was something more careful than that, something closer to fear, and he knew he had just put it there.
Zola let the murmur run its course, then lifted one hand and the noise went down like a lid.
"Round two. Same pairs. Into the circles."
Renee caught David by the wrist before he could step over the tape. Her grip had the meat of her thumb pressed into the bone and he felt it all the way to his elbow.
"I don't know what you're doing," she said, low, "and I'm not going to ask in front of these people. But you pull this again and we're both up for nomination, and I've got two babies at home who don't care how noble you are."
"I know."
"Do you."
He looked at her. "I know."
She held it a beat, then let go and turned back toward the circle without another word. He took his place behind her, found the slick part of the floor with the soles of his shoes, and wrapped the rope across his palm the way she'd taught him. Thumb over. Wrist locked.
Mia was already in the far circle. She had her end looped twice and her weight set, and she still had not looked at him. Kyle was stretching, pulling his shoulders across his chest like a swimmer, and his grin had grown a hard little edge on it.
"Round two," Zola said. "Rope up. Pull on my word."
The speakers clicked off. The dome went quiet except for the vents and a stool leg scraping somewhere along the glass.
Kyle put his chin down and said it low, just for the four of them.
"He's going to quit again. Watch. Big man won immunity twice and now he's scared to pull on a rope." He rolled his shoulders. "You know why, right? Because he's never had anything to lose before. Rope, girl, job, doesn't matter. Guy doesn't know how to hold on."
Mia shifted her feet. "Shut up, Kyle."
"Truth hurts."
David kept his eyes on the rope. The hemp was warm from his own hand already. He could feel his heartbeat up in his throat and a thin line of sweat going cold along the back of his neck, and none of it mattered, and all of it mattered, and he did not say a word.
"Pull," Zola said.
This time Kyle came in with a warning, leaning back and walking it, and the rope went live and David felt the first hard jerk rattle up through his wrists into his shoulders. Renee dropped her hips and leaned into it and the rope came up off the floor and stopped, humming.
David bent his knees. He put his whole weight down through his heels and pulled the rope in until his elbows were at his ribs, and something clicked into place. Renee was right. Kyle was tall. Every time Kyle hauled, his center of gravity went forward and up, and Renee's low squat ate all of it and gave none of it back.
The rope did not move.
"Come on," Kyle said, and there was no joke in it now.
David pulled. He was not strong. But he was heavy and low and he had his feet planted where the floor didn't slide, and Renee was in front of him doing the work of two women, and slowly, one inch at a time, the floor between the circles got shorter.
The stools along the glass wall leaned in. Owen said something David couldn't hear. The camera rig over their heads rotated a degree on its track, following the rope.
"Hold," Renee said. Just the one word.
Kyle's face had gone red. He looked down at his own feet and saw how close his rear heel had come to the tape, and his eyes went wide and he planted and hauled.
And David understood, in the middle of it, exactly what was happening. If he held, they won the round. If they won the round, Kyle and Mia went down a point, and Mia would go up for nomination with Kyle's name on her partner line. He would save himself and Renee and hand Mia to the block.
His arms were shaking. The rope was eating into his palm.
He looked up at the far circle. Mia had her chin tucked and both arms locked, and she was straining, and she was losing. Her back foot was sliding on a slick spot and she knew it, and she was fighting it, and as he watched she looked up at him and their eyes met and he could read her face as clearly as a line of code.
She knew exactly what he was about to do. She had the same plan in her head that he had in his.
Her mouth shaped two words at him across the four feet of floor. Don't. You. Don't you dare quit for me again.
David did not go slack.
He pulled. Renee felt the change come up the rope and made a noise in her chest that was not a word and leaned in with everything she had, and Kyle's rear heel crossed the tape and hit the polish behind it, and the whole thing let go at once.
"Round to David and Renee," Zola said. "Kyle and Mia go down one."
The scoreboard clunked. Kyle's bulb went amber to red. Kyle stood in his circle with his hands on his hips, breathing hard, looking at the floor as if it had betrayed him personally. Mia let the rope drop out of her hands and stood up straight and looked at David across the space between them, and her face was not grateful and it was not angry either. It was the face of a woman doing arithmetic she didn't like.
Renee turned around. She was glistening at the temples and breathing through her nose, and she looked at him for a long second.
"You held."
"I held."
She nodded once, short. She didn't thank him. He didn't want her to.
Meanwhile, along the glass wall, Claire leaned over to Denise and said something behind her hand. The twins watched David with their heads tilted in perfect, unnerving mirror. Somewhere on the other side of the atrium, Remy stood with his arms loose at his sides, and Beatriz stood beside him, and his face was doing nothing at all, which was its own kind of information.
David flexed his right hand. The rope had left a red line across his palm and a small raw spot at the base of his thumb where the hemp had turned under once. It would blister by the evening.
He looked at it and, for the first time since the challenge was announced, felt something settle in his gut. It wasn't winning. It was the quiet certainty that he had just stopped being the easiest thing in this house to predict.
Zola raised her hand for quiet again.
"Round three," she said, "In five minutes. Same pairs. Kyle and Mia need this one or they're both on the block." She glanced at David and Renee, and the smile that came onto her face was small and private and entirely for the show. "And the house wants to see if the underdog has anything left."
Mia walked out of her circle, past Kyle, and stopped at the tape nearest David. Up close he could see the little crease between her brows that he remembered from a high school hallway, the one she used to get before a test she hadn't studied for.
"You should have just let me lose," she said quietly.
"Then you'd have two rounds on you and I'd have one."
"I know how the math works, David."
"Then you know I didn't have a choice."
"I know you think you didn't." She looked at him with those dark, level eyes and something in them moved that he couldn't name. "You quit for me once in front of the whole house. You Do it twice and they'll put me on the block just to take some of the blood off your hands.” She stepped back over the tape without waiting for an answer. "Next round, you hold on tight. Don't you look at me once."
She walked back to Kyle's side.
David stood in his circle with the rope in his hand and the raw spot on his thumb pulsing, and Renee came up beside him.
"I like her," Renee said.
"So do I."
"Then hold the rope."
The scoreboard ticked down the five minutes in red numbers. Kyle rolled his neck and spat on the floor and said nothing at all, which was somehow worse than anything he'd said all morning.
The five minutes ran out in red digits on the scoreboard, and Renee did not wait for Zola to call them. She walked into the circle and set her feet wide, and David came in behind her and got low on the slick spot this time, knees bent, heels down, the way he'd learned in round two.
Kyle was already in the far circle. Mia took her end of the rope with both hands and kept her chin tucked.
"Rope up," Zola said. "Pull on my word."
Kyle didn't look at Mia. He looked at David, and he started talking before the word ever came, low and flat, the way a man talks to himself between sets.
"You know what your damn problem is?"
The vents hummed overhead. David kept his eyes on the hemp.
"It ain't the nerdy glasses. It ain't the shirt." Kyle rolled the rope once around his wrist. "It's the fact you already decided you lose. Walked in here first night and decided it. Everybody in this room can smell it on you."
"Pull," Zola said.
The rope snapped taut. Kyle came low this time, hips dropped, and the first haul took David a half step forward before Renee's weight landed and stopped it dead. The bulbs held amber. David's thumb locked over the coil.
"You're pulling for her," Kyle said, and it came out through his teeth. "Look at you. Look at your face. You're pulling for a woman who wouldn't have said two words to you in high school unless the teacher made her. Fucking simp.”
"Kyle." Mia's voice. “Quiet.”
"Am I lying though?”
David's arms were burning. His shoulders had gone past burning into something duller and worse, and the rope was eating the raw spot at the base of his thumb, and Kyle was breathing hard now too, and neither of them had gained an inch.
"You ever think about what happens when the cameras go off?" Kyle said. "When the money's gone and the show's done and everybody in this house goes home to somebody. What do you go home to? Huh? Do you even have someone?”
Renee felt it. David knew she felt it, because the rope jumped once in his hands and she turned her head a quarter inch.
"Stay with me," she said. Not loud. Just for the two of them. “Don’t listen to him. Wait until after.”
David pulled. He pulled with his legs and his back and his stinging palm, and Kyle's rear heel came up off the polish and found the tape and set down again on the wrong side of it for one breath.
Kyle's rear heel came up off the polish, crossed the tape, and set down again on the wrong side of it for one breath, and in that breath half the stools along the glass wall came off the floor. Zola's hand was already rising to call it. Kyle felt the loss before she said it and wrenched his foot back inside, but the moment had already gone around the room, and everyone in the atrium had seen what everyone else had seen.
"Play on," Zola said.
The rope went slack for half a second while both sides reset, and Renee used it. She took the slack up in a quick two-handed haul that pulled David's elbows tight to his ribs, and when Kyle leaned back into the tension again it came with Renee already low and already braced.
"You still with me back there?" she said, not turning her head.
"Yeah."
"Then get lower. He's taller than you and he's tired. Give him nothing to pull against."
David dug his heels deeper. He found the seam where the gaffer tape met the floor, that thin raised lip that the polish didn't reach, and he wedged the outside edge of both shoes against it and sat down into his own weight. It wasn't a clever move. It was just a thing he could do with a heel that Kyle couldn't do with a neck.
The rope stopped humming. It went dead in his hands, the way a wire goes dead when two currents cancel out.
Kyle hauled. Nothing moved.
He hauled again, and this time David heard him breathe, a short hard sound through his nose like a man lifting the last rep. The floor between the two circles had shrunk to a yard, and Kyle's face was over it now, red to the ears, and he was looking at David the way he had looked at the rope all morning.
"How long you gonna stand there and let a woman do your pulling for you?" he said. "Huh? Big bad two-time winner. Let go of that rope and try me one on one. No rope. No circle. You and me, right here."
Renee spat on the floor beside her shoe. "He's not going to do that, and you know he's not, and that's why you're asking."
"Wasn't talking to you."
"You were talking to me the whole time," Renee said. "You just didn't know it."
David pulled.
He pulled with his legs instead of his arms, the way Renee had told him, and the rope came in two inches and then four, and Kyle's rear heel slid on the slick spot he'd been fighting all round. Kyle tried to plant it. The tape caught his heel, tipped it, and for the second time in five minutes his foot came down outside the black line.
"Pair out," Zola said. "Round to David and Renee."
The scoreboard clunked. Three red bulbs on Kyle's side, three green on theirs, and the atrium made a noise that was mostly feet on the floor. Kyle stood in his circle with his hands on his hips and his chest heaving, staring down at the tape like it had personally set him up.
Mia let the rope drop. She stood there a second, both hands open at her sides, and then she looked across at David, and her jaw was doing something he couldn't read. She didn't come over. She turned and walked to the water table on the far side of the circle, and she did not look back at him once.
"That's the bracket decided on our side," Zola said. "Kyle and Mia, you're both up for nomination this week. Nothing you can do about it now except be good at the next one." She turned her head to the far end of the atrium, where the other circles sat under the lights with their own rope still coiled on the floor. "And David and Renee. You know what a bracket means."
"Play the winner," Renee said.
"Play the winner," Zola agreed. "Which means next round, when this side finishes, you take the rope against whoever comes out of the other side of the dome. I'll tell you what I'll tell everybody. Win your side and it's a coin flip. Win your side and lose the final, and it's both of you on the block with Kyle." She let that sit. "Go drink some water. You have twenty minutes."
Renee walked out of the circle and picked up her towel off the floor and wiped her face with it, and she waited until they were both turned away from the cameras before she said anything.
"You dug your heels in."
"I did."
"I felt it. Mid-pull. You found the seam." She folded the towel over her shoulder. "Who taught you that? Because it wasn't me. I never said anything about the seam."
"No one taught me," David said. "I saw it. The tape sits on top of the floor. There's a lip."
Renee looked at him for a second. Then she laughed, short and rough, and shook her head. "Okay," she said. "Okay. Twenty minutes."
The water table sat in the shade of the bar, and half the cast was already there. Tasha handed David a paper cup without being asked. Simone put a hand flat on his back for a second, said nothing, and took it away. Joey gave him a nod that David didn't entirely know how to read.
Across the atrium, Mia had her cup against her mouth and her eyes on the far circles where Lance and Diana were pulling against Owen and Daphne. She had not come over.
Remy stood at the far end of the water table with Beatriz. He'd been watching the whole round, arms loose, and now he looked at David over the rim of his cup and did not smile and did not nod and did not look away. It was the same look he'd given him on the dais that morning. The check. The tally.
David drank his water and flexed his palm and felt the blister coming up under the base of his thumb, and said nothing to anybody.