Outlive (The Baggers Trilogy, #1) (17 page)

             
She turned to look at him, as though to see if he was joking. “The Competitors’ dinner is hosted here.”

             
“I don’t know what that is,” he said.

             
“Don’t you watch Outlive on TV?” she asked. Then, after a moment’s thought she added. “No. I suppose you couldn’t afford a TV or a Holovision Box.”

             
They were about one hundred yards away from one of the staircases that descended into the building.

             
“What is the Competitors’ Dinner?” Baggs asked.

             
She chuffed out of her horse nose. “It’s a dinner in which all the contestants and owners and some celebrities attend. Sometimes Emperor Daman comes. Last episode Nikki Wild showed up. It’s a lot of fun. You’ll be in a cage, though, of course.”

             
“A
cage
?” Baggs asked.

             
“Yeah, like with metal bars. It’s so that you don’t attack any of the guests. It’s also to keep you partitioned so that guests can appraise you.”

             
They reached one of the staircases and began to descend undecorated concrete stairs. The stairs continued down, but the two of them turned off onto a hallway and walked until they reached an elevator. The hallway was lined with closed offices with nameplates on them. They got into the elevator, and Caballas pressed the button for the basement. The machine began to hum and they were taken down.

             
“What do you mean by
appraise?
Why would someone want to appraise me?”

             
Her eyebrows rose from atop her eyes near her temples. “You
really
don’t watch Outlive—you weren’t kidding.
The betting.
They want to appraise you so they know who to bet on.”

             
Baggs nodded, and then scratched the back of his head. As he did so, Caballas’s eyes widened.

             
“Wait!” she said. She looked at his arm. She took it in her hand, examined it, and then looked up at Baggs. “Are your muscles real? Like, actually real?”

             
“Uhh, yeah.”

             
Caballas smiled and showed her blocky white teeth. “Oh, honey, people are going to be spending a lot of time looking in at the Boxer’s cage. You’re so lean, though. How do you keep on so much muscle with so little fat? Hormone therapy? Liposuction?”

             
Baggs shrugged. “I’ve just always been like this.”

             
She chuffed again. The elevator dinged, and opened up into another hallway. Baggs walked behind Caballas for a few hundred steps over tiled floor before she turned and led him into a room. “This will be your suite,” she said to him.

             
The room wasn’t too big—roughly the size of Baggs’s apartment—but it was tastefully decorated. The room had many floor to ceiling mirrors, and a glossy brick floor. There was a circular bathtub in one corner; it was as big as a king sized bed. On the porcelain steps leading into the bath were bottles of unopened soaps, adorned with bows made out of metallic ribbon. There was a leather sofa and a coffee table further back. Atop the coffee table were bags of chips, cookies on a tray, and bunches of grapes and bananas. There was a sleek metal fridge flush with the back wall. In the middle of the room was a barber’s chair.

             
Caballas shut the door behind Baggs and walked around him. Though her muscles were taught and she had almost no body fat, her fake breasts were perky and filled out her top in an unnatural way. “Hmmm. What should I do with you? Where should I start?”

             
“Could I get some shoes or slippers or something? My feet are killing…”

             
“Yes. In the closet—that door in the back—there are some slippers. But for good heavens, don’t put them on until after you’ve bathed! God! You stink. Usually we have contestants bathe after their haircuts, but you’re just going to have to take two baths. No way around it. Hold on.” She walked over to some cabinets in the wall and began to open and close them until she found what she was looking for—a black trash bag. She handed it to Baggs. “Take a bath, and put your clothes in there.”

             
“My clothes?”

             
“Yes. Must I repeat everything? Your clothes. Underwear and all. You’ll find some other things to wear in the closet—surely there will be items that fit you,” she said, looking him head to toe. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes. I shouldn’t have to clarify some things, but I will—shampoo all your body hair, head to toe. Use hot water—you really stink. If it isn’t painful, it isn’t hot enough. There is a washcloth with bristles—you’ve probably never seen one before—it will exfoliate you. Put soap in it and scrub
hard,
got it? You may want to wash once and then empty the water and wash again. God, you smell terrible.” With those words, she walked out, leaving Baggs standing there, holding the trash bag.

             
When the door was shut, he took off his clothes and put them in the trash bag, just as she had advised. He didn’t want to throw the shirt away—it was sentimental for him because Tessa had given it to him—but he did anyway. He kissed it before putting it in the trash bag.

             
Naked, he approached the bathtub. He turned on the hot water and was surprised to find that there was no lag between turning it on and the water warming up; it came out steaming. He turned on the cold water until the faucet-water was a comfortable temperature and then got in. He didn’t wait for the water to fill the enormous tub; he thought that would be wasteful. He splashed the water over his body, found a bottle of shampoo, and then lathered up every inch of himself. He was hairy all over, and so in order to abide by Caballas’s terms, he had to cover himself with shampoo. He then rinsed, drained the water, filled it up, and repeated the process.

             
When he was rinsed again, he felt remarkable clean and refreshed. He supposed that this was a result of such expensive soap. He stood, drained the water, and dried himself off with one of the plush towels. He used his fingers to brush his bangs to the side so that the hairs did not impede his vision and stepped out.

             
Now that he was clean, he walked over to the closet and looked in. The closet was carpeted, which was good for his aching feet. He walked inside. There were racks of shoes, sandals, heels, and clothing racks as well. There were also shelves. He found new XL underwear—they were boxer shorts with the Emperor’s face on them—on one of the shelves. He also put on a pair of white socks that he found. His clothing choices were limited, and he ended up wearing a pink Polo shirt and chino pants. Just for fun, he belted the pants and put on a pair of boat shoes. He walked over to one of the floor-to-ceiling mirrors and thought that Tessa would laugh if she saw him wearing these clothes. He didn’t look bad. In these clothes, people wouldn’t think that he was homeless at all. They wouldn’t think that he was rich, either, though. He looked down at his broken hand, and then at the unkempt mop of black hair atop his head.

             
Caballas knocked and then entered. “Much better,” she said. “Now, to work on that hair.”

             
“Do you have to cut my hair?”

             
“It was in the contract you signed.”

             
Baggs nodded and walked over to the barber chair. He didn’t know that getting groomed was in his contract. He was so happy to see that Tessa would be getting so much money that he hadn’t bothered to read it in Tartuga’s office. He wondered what else he had unknowingly agreed to.

             
He watched in the mirror as Caballas used clippers to trim his head. Inches of hair were removed from his chin and from the top of his head until all the lengths were neat and uniform.

             
“I think I’ll leave a little bit of beard,” Caballas told him. “It makes you look kind of wild.”

             
“Thanks, I guess.”

             
“And the color isn’t too bad if it’s cut properly. Hmmmm. Your eyebrows look terrible. They have got to be trimmed.”

             
Baggs looked at his eyebrows. They were bushy and long; he had never even considered grooming them before. She leaned the chair back until Baggs was facing the ceiling. Then, she began applying hot wax around his eyebrows with some kind of utensil.

             
“So, does the betting change the competition?” he asked.

             
“Don’t talk while I’m doing this,” she said. “But it doesn’t really change the competition for you. There are financial benefits to your owners. The bookies like to pay off the owners who draw in the most money as a reward.”

             
Baggs grunted.

             
Caballas pressed paper to the areas where she had just spread hot wax. “This is going to hurt,” she said.

             
Baggs grunted again.

             
With a quick snap of her wrist, Caballas pulled the paper off of Baggs’s face. The sensation stung, but didn’t hurt too much. The paper was covered in long, thick hair.

             
She waxed the rest of his eyebrows, and then took scissors and cut them short. After that, Caballas shaved Baggs’s neck and cheeks so that his beard was sharply outlined. She sat him up and he examined himself in the mirror.

             
“What do you think?” she asked.

             
“I don’t look like myself,” he said. He had always been used to seeing himself with a shaggy haircut and beard.

             
“Good,” she responded. “Now take another bath to get all the loose hair out and I’ll be back.”

             
He did so, only washing his body once this time, and then redressed in the Polo shirt and chino pants. When she returned, she thoroughly took his measurements, left again, and then returned with a tuxedo.

             
“Why do I have to look so nice?” Baggs asked.

             
Caballas sighed impatiently. “It’s a nice dinner. The owners and celebrities don’t want the ambiance killed by a bunch of stinking, underdressed homeless people.”

             
“Oh,” Baggs said. He wished that instead of paying for a personal stylist and putting him in a tuxedo, they would have given the capital it cost to do those things to Tessa.

             
Caballas helped Baggs get into the tuxedo, because he had never been in one before. She then styled his hair with shaping cream that smelled like mint, and rubbed moisturizer into his face. Baggs stared at himself for a long time in the mirror.

             
“Do you like how you look?” Caballas asked.

             
“Like I said, I just can’t believe it. I look like a new person.” He wished that Tessa could see him. He hadn’t even looked so nice on their wedding day. If he were dressed like this when he tried to take the cake out of the Thurman’s garbage bin, they would have given him no trouble.

             
Caballas was smiling at him. “You look very handsome. C’mon, we’ve got to go. Dinner will start soon.” She grabbed him by the shirtsleeve and led him out the door.

6

             
“Wait, I forgot something,” Caballas said. She slipped back inside the room, leaving Baggs standing unattended in the hallway. The area was spacious, with numbered doors lining the walls on either side; all the doors looked like the one Baggs had just come out of.

             
As he was waiting for Caballas to return, one of the doors opposite him opened, and two men walked out. One was dressed in a white shirt with embroidered roses stitched all over it. He had a tasteful beard and no eyebrows. Baggs assumed that he was a stylist, like Caballas. Following the stylist out the door was a man dressed almost exactly like Baggs, wearing a black tuxedo. He was short and gaunt with skin the color of cinnamon. His hair was black and gelled up into messy spikes. Baggs guessed that the other man had also just received a haircut.

             
He’s a competitor,
Baggs thought.
I may have to kill him in the Colosseum if I want to live.

             
Baggs caught eyes with the other man in the tuxedo, and they nodded at each other. Judging by the other man’s solemn eyes as he looked at Baggs, Baggs thought that they were thinking the same thing. He watched as the two men walked down the long hall and noticed that the other competitor was wearing something metal around his neck.

             
The door behind him opened and Caballas walked out, carrying small items in her hands. “I can’t believe I almost forgot,” she said, and then exhaled roughly out of her strange nose. “I could have gotten fired for that. Or at least severely punished.”