Chapter 15: The Rope Pull Final
Morning came in through the glass dome grey and milky, the neon off, the atrium full of crew.
Two men in black polos were taping an X-marked circle to the floor. A woman on a ladder was cleaning the dome's lower panes with a squeegee, and the sound of it was the only thing in the room that wasn't a whisper.
David stood at the edge with his shoes on.
He had slept in them. Not on purpose and not all night, but he'd woken at some point with the laces biting his ankle and had not taken them off, and now here he was at nine in the morning in stiff denim with grit in his eyes, watching the tape go down.
The house arrived in twos and threes. Joey first, showered, loud. Kyle in a robe with his nomination still hanging off him. The twins came together and stood together and looked at the circle like it belonged to them.
Renee came last. She had her neon orange bandeau on and her hair pulled back wet, and she walked straight to David and stopped an arm's length away.
"You sleep at all?"
"Some."
"Liar." She looked at his shoes and then at his face. "You look like a man who got interrogated."
"I did."
"Mm." She rolled her shoulders once, both ways, and cracked her neck. "They're the third pairing of the day and the last. Lance and Diana took the far side. You saw it."
"I saw it."
"He's strong but he gets too wide. Diana's fast and she cheats the grip early, every time, looks at the ref after." Renee spat into her palm and rubbed her hands together. "You hold the way you held against Kyle. Don't be a hero. Don't step out."
"I know."
"Do you." She looked at him a while, then nodded at the circle. "Then let's finish it."
Zola came down the spiral stair at quarter past, in the emerald jumpsuit, gold cuff flashing as she lifted her hand for quiet.
"Good morning, house." Her voice came out of the ceiling as well as her mouth. "Last night's bracket stands. Kyle and Mia are on the block. The final of The Long Pull is this morning, and the winners take the nomination power. Two rounds. First pair out of the circle loses the round. Best of three."
The house made the small noise a house makes when it hears money.
"David Dupree and Renee Adeyemi," Zola said. "Lance Whitfield and Diana Reyes. Take the circle."
They walked in. Lance came in on the far side with his shoulders squared, and Diana followed him in and touched his back once, high, between the blades.
The rope came off a hook and got laid in the middle of the tape.
Renee picked it up first. She wrapped her right hand, then her left, and set her feet wide. David stepped into her side and took the rope behind her grip and felt the whole thing go tight along his forearm like a wire.
"Ready," Renee said.
Zola raised her hand. Dropped it.
Lance drove first. He came across the tape low, the way a lineman does, and Renee took it in the hips and held. The rope sang. David's heels dug and slid an inch and stopped, wedged against the seam of the tape.
Nobody moved for eleven seconds.
Then Diana flicked her wrist and the rope popped, and Lance gave way a half step, and Renee leaned into the give and put them both a foot back inside the circle.
"Time," Zola said. "First round, David and Renee."
The house clapped. Kyle didn't.
They reset the rope. Zola gave them thirty seconds, and the crew shuffled the camera on the dolly, and the lead operator crouched down to get the faces under the rope.
That's when Diana stepped close to Renee. Close enough that her mouth was at Renee's ear. She said something, one short sentence, and Renee did not react. Not a blink. She just looked straight ahead at her own hands on the rope.
"Ready," Zola said.
Diana went back to her corner. Renee did not move.
David leaned in, low. "What did she say?"
"Drop it."
"Renee."
"Drop it." Her jaw was set. She tightened her grip on the rope and the veins came up along the back of her hand. "Second round. Hold like your life."
Zola dropped her hand.
This one was worse. Lance came in and stayed in, and Diana hooked the rope with her forearm and cranked it sideways, and the line went diagonal across the tape. David's right foot lifted off the floor for a second before he got it back down.
He could feel it coming. The pull was heavy and patient and it was not going to stop, and there was a line six inches behind his heel.
He looked up.
Beatriz stood at the edge of the circle with her arms crossed. She had her hair up. She looked at him the way she'd looked at him in the laundry room with her weight on his chest, flat and total, and she lifted one finger off her bicep, one inch, and put it back.
One finger. Off, then back.
Renee saw it. Her head turned a fraction, then came back. She didn't say anything, but David felt her decide something, some small hinge in her turning over, and her shoulder dropped two inches closer to the rope.
David's heel found the tape line. It was right there. He could take one step back and be out and the round and the whole thing would be over, and Beatriz's side would have the nomination power, and Renee would never speak to him again.
Or he could hold.
The rope was biting into his palm. His forearm was on fire and his shoes were gripping the seam of the tape and behind his ear he could hear his own heart like the mic under his collarbone.
He planted his heel on the tape line and held.
Diana leaned into the rope with everything. Lance leaned with her. And Renee, without a word, walked two steps forward into the pressure, right through the middle of it, and the diagonal went slack.
David moved with her. He stepped off the line and rolled his shoulder over the rope and put his weight down through both feet, and Lance's boot crossed the tape at the back corner.
"Time," Zola said.
The atrium was quiet.
"Round two," Zola said, "David and Renee. Winners of The Long Pull, and the nomination power."
Renee let go of the rope and stood up straight and did not look at him. She looked at Diana.
Diana looked back and shrugged, easy, like the sentence she'd whispered had been nothing at all.
The house broke apart. Camera crews swung toward the kitchen. Kyle got up off the bench and walked out of the atrium without a word.
David stayed in the circle. His palm was bleeding a little where the rope had opened the old burn back up, and he looked at it and then looked up and found Beatriz still standing at the edge with her arms crossed.
She didn't applaud. She caught his eye, and she gave him a slow, small nod, and then she turned and walked toward the terrace, and David understood, with a cold clean feeling in his stomach, that whatever he had just done belonged to her now.
Renee came back.
She stood in front of him with her arms folded and her jaw working itself loose.
"You saw her finger," she said.
"I saw it."
"So why'd you hold?"
David looked at his hand. The blood was beading along the line of the burn, thin and bright, and he watched it run to the heel of his palm and drip onto the tape.
"Because you told me to," he said.
Renee looked at him for a long moment, and then she laughed, one short hard note, and unfolded her arms and walked off toward the water table alone.
Behind her, Diana was watching them both from the kitchen doorway with her head tilted, exactly the way she'd watched David through the mirror on day six, and she did not look away when he caught her at it.