Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
And nothing happened.
I mean, something did. I faced the truth. Which, on some level, I had to have known. I just didn’t think about it before. I didn’t spend time thinking about the well-being of my opponents.
Why should I? When we faced each other in the ring, we both knew one of us would be dead when it was over.
And every time I stood in that ring—every single time—I was looking at a dead person.
That’s what they were to me. All of them. They were just dead people.
I take a deep breath, push back from his chest, and then feel even dumber because I don’t even know this guy’s name. I refuse to call him Dead Eyes. “What’s your name?”
He offers me a small smile. It’s one of those sad smiles. I recognize it because that’s how Maart looked at me that last year I was in Brazil.
“Forget it.” I walk over to the door, open it up, and nod my head at it.
He presses his lips together for a moment, then accepts my invitation to leave. But on the way out he says, “Eason.”
All morning long I just lie there on my mat and stare at the ceiling, wondering why it all has to feel so complicated. It doesn’t have to be. Nothing has to be complicated, it’s the emotions that do that.
But how do you stop feeling? I can do it up to a point, but any further and it’s too much.
This encounter with these men this morning feels like too much.
My phone buzzes. So at ten forty-five I get up, put on my uniform, and walk to work because someone couldn’t work today for whatever reason, and I’m the fill-in girl.
I like waitressing because if you work at the right place, there’s no downtime. You’re on your feet, bustling all over the place, talking to people, practicing your new American accent. And the time goes by quick. The tips add up, the tables fill and empty, and the food comes and goes.
Plus, all these people here really do feel like family. I’m the only outsider working here, but I don’t work much. They only call me in when they’re short.
But it’s OK with me because I don’t need the money. I don’t have any credit cards, I don’t own a car, and I don’t have a mortgage. The only thing I really need to pay for is the HOA for the condo. But there aren’t any perks at my place. Just those palm trees and cement benches. Sometimes the fountain works. So my HOA is only three hundred and fifty a month.
I still have almost seventy thousand dollars in my bank account.
I spend a little bit on food, but I don’t understand three meals a day. I have never eaten three meals a day in my life.
I don’t need much.
And this worries me because I’m afraid that one day I will wake up and I won’t want anything. Won’t need anything. And there will be no more reasons to go on.
Normally, this is not how I think. I don’t dwell on the past. I don’t really think about the future, either. I’m just existing. And I’m getting tired of it.
When I was in Cort’s camp I wanted to live so bad, I would do anything to see another day.
Now, I don’t really see the point of any of this.
Why even bother? Why even be here?
It doesn’t make any sense.
But I’ve been thinking about this all day in between pouring coffee and delivering rice bowls to tables. We don’t get a choice to come here. To be born. That just happens to us. Now, if you wanna get philosophical, perhaps there is another realm under this one where we all decide, “OK, we’re gonna be born now.” But that’s magic, I think. And not real.
So we don’t get a choice to be here. But we do get a choice about how we spend our time here. And we all know, even though people like to pretend it’s not true, that this is a little journey. A temporary trip no different than a bus ride.
You get on, you get off.
And so, because people like to pretend that they are the only person in the history of people who will never die and will live forever, they mostly play it safe. They worry about what they will eat each day, and where they will sleep each day, and how they will pay off bills.
God, that’s sad.
The first time I heard the phrase ‘cost of living’ I thought this was a joke. I was eavesdropping on a conversation between Romero and Luis’s wife, Floramaria. And she was complaining about the ‘cost of living’ going up.
I am maybe not the smartest person in this restaurant. But it’s not because I’m dumb. I’m not dumb. It’s because my perspective is warped. I came up a certain way. I see things a certain way. And when I heard this expression ‘cost of living,’ I took it literally, the way a child might.