Chapter 21: Mama Maysilee
All is quiet in the sterilized hallway outside of the medical wing of the Remake Center. This is the place where all new Victors are sent to recover upon extraction from the arena. I recovered here fifteen years ago, in the very hospital room now in my sights, the door currently closed. A doctor was sent in about ten minutes ago for an examination, which required him to politely kick out the successful mentor. Mags Flanagan is currently around the corner at the coffee machines, getting a cup. After a few sleepless nights, she needs it.
Not as though the outcome has ever been in doubt, at least for the past week. Maybe even before then. Young Finnick Odair has created a media bonanza unlike any Victor I have ever read about or come to personally know, either before or after my time. The camera crews had to be lightly admonished for giving him a monopoly on airtime during the parade, and that was only after several prominent escorts and Victors on the mentoring beat this year complained. Peacekeepers had to stun and taze several women attempting to bullrush the stage during his interview. And of course, when the Gamemakers gave the 14-year-old boy a rare training score of 11, well, everyone just had to meet him. They had to see him live. Had he not, I think there would be riots going on in the Capitol streets far below.
Heck, Finnick Odair is safe and snug in the finest medical ward in all the Capitol, and there are still riots going on down in the streets below. People desperately trying to get in and catch a glimpse of the latest Victor. Mags' first order was to have all the window curtains in the ward drawn. The Peacekeepers have taken care of the rest – no one gets in or out without the proper identification. Essentially, if you are not a licensed doctor or a Victor, you ain't getting into the Remake Center.
I am here with a small handful of my friends, waiting to spell Mags the moment she asks, if she does. She likely won't – though she's starting to get on in years (she's comfortably in her 70s), Mags is still as sharp and no nonsense as ever.
I feel a buzz in my pocket and check my mobile phone – it only has a temporary SIM card, as Victors can only have access to cell phones when they are in the Capitol and on Games business, but I make a point of relaying the number back to Merle in the Twelve Justice Building through a secure channel, who then passes it on to my husband. It is indeed a call from Danny, no doubt asking me how the new Victor is and when I'll be on the train bound for home. Not for the first time, I wish I had a cell phone year-round, that both of us did, so we could at least text. But texting capabilities are not included in Victors' phone plans anyway; I've only ever seen the elite of the elite use the function a couple of times. Besides, if we have to engage with sponsors, I think the Capitol prefers to hear our voices. It makes us easier to wiretap.
I recognize the number as the one belonging to the bakery's landline – he and the boys must be over there, working. I decide to ring it back. When the dial tone goes straight to voicemail, I leave a brief message: "Hey, baby, I'm here in the Remake Center with a couple of the fellas, ready to spell Mags. Finnick is recovering nicely; interview with Caesar may be the day after tomorrow if all goes well. Then I'll be back. Kiss the boys for me…. I love you." I hang up, noting with embarrassment how the silence allowed my voice to echo throughout the whitewashed corridors. I am grateful that no one glances up.
In the chair next to mine, Gloss Delacroix is using the magazine table to play a lazy game of chess with Chaff. Well, it might be a lazy game for just Chaff – the handsome young man from One who triumphed only two years ago has his face scrunched up in rigorous concentration. Chaff moves a pawn into enemy territory and flicks over Gloss's Queen with his finger.
"Checkmate, mofo."
Gloss lets out a frustrated growl that sounds more mutt than human. Cornered, he lashes out with his knight – a reckless move; I turned myself into a decent chess player studying at Chaff's knee. Chaff knocks over that piece, too. Gloss attempts to feint with a pawn; in three moves, using his bishop to jump over several other pieces, Chaff has him.
"I win."
Gloss upends the entire board in anger, so the queens and kings go skittering down the polished linoleum at our feet. In a chair across the hall, Beetee Latier jerks, startled, but doesn't glance up from the tome he is reading, authored by his fellow District 3 Victor, Gates Gramdan: The Properties of ElectroMagnetic Waves – A Thesis. I didn't know Gates had been a PhD recipient, Panem Rest His Soul. I only met him a handful of times early on in my career – he was a sweet, sweet man.
I tune back in to hear Gloss and Chaff arguing:
"You cheated!"
"I did nothing of the kind, boy – you're just a shoddy player – now pay up!" Gloss reaches for a necklace of shark teeth round his clavicle, but Chaff stops him. "Nah, nah, the earring, give me the earring…"
Gloss scowls as he removes the earing from his left lobe. "How about best out of five?"
"Let it go, Gloss," I murmur. "He'll kick your ass."
Gloss glowers at me, but it lacks any malice. I've always thought the young hothead has a bit of a crush on me, which would be flattering, if I wasn't happily married and already past 30 – which, in my view, is considered old.
The commotion settles down just in time for Mags to re-enter the corridor, carrying two mugs of coffee. She whistles sharply.
"Hey, Adonis, Maysilee's face is up here," the old lady barks, redirecting the ex-Career away from checking out my cleavage. Catching him blushing beet red, she hoots out a laugh before passing me one of the mugs of coffee. "Just sugar, right?"
I smile at her goodnaturedly. "You know me too well." I've never taken cream in my coffee – not since the day I visited Haymitch's mother after arriving home for the first time. It seems a strange thing to memorialize, but for old Rhona's sake, I do it.
All of a sudden, we hear voices raise to a shout from inside the patient's room.
"No! No, STOP! Get your hands OFF! Get off me!"
Gloss frowns. "That's new," he quips, and he, Chaff, Mags and I charge into the room before anyone can blink. A man in a white lab coat is cowering against the windows – which have somehow been conspicuously left clear of their curtains. A mere step away, Finnick Odair is actually lifting his entire IV stand high over his head, ready to bring it down on the doctor.
Chaff and Gloss size up the situation faster than I do, and ambush the doctor, driving him into a fetal position in one corner where both men proceed to pummel him. As a finishing touch, Chaff lifts the poor blighter off his feet and slams him into the panes with such force, a crack appears in the glass. For a Victor with only one good hand, it's a pretty impressive feat.
"Where are your credentials? Who authorized you to come in here? – tell me, now!" Chaff bellows in the man's face.
The doctor appears in danger of wetting himself, lip protruding out and trembling like a small child. He even sounds like one (though, I note with pride, none of my sons have ever sounded this pathetic and groveling, even in the rare instance where Dannel and I have had to discipline them), as he warbles. "I… I just wanted to look. My cousin gave me his coat and keycard pass; he's the one who works in this clinic. It's just…. " and he gazes past the burly black man at Finnick. "He's so beautiful…." The man actually breaks down weeping.
Chaff sneers. "That explains it. Because you definitely aren't... Dr. Pseudolus Ram?" He checks the keycard taken off the imposter's person. "I know him personally. And he will hear about this!"
"Yeah," Gloss jeers. "Cause it sounds like you were doing a lot more than just looking." Rearing back, he actually punches the imposter in the side of the head. I almost warn Gloss to be careful, but don't get the words out. "Fucking pervert! Sticky hands are for five-year-olds! Get out!"
With that, Chaff hurls the fake doctor clear across the room. The man dithers out, glancing back fearfully to find both Chaff and Gloss bearing down on him again, out the door and all the way down the ward, to make sure he leaves.
It isn't until they're gone that Finnick finally lowers the IV stand – his own impressive feat of strength, as I know those devices can be heavy. He sinks down onto the bed, and for the first time since I laid eyes on him during the Reaping Recaps, the perfect façade the Capitol has dotingly cultivated cracks. The perfect Victor, as some commentators have taken to calling him, appears near tears. I drift over to his side, announcing my presence before even laying a gentle hand on his shoulder. I know from experience how skittish one can be to even innocent human touch, after such trauma. After my first…. job, it took a few nights before I allowed Danny to touch me in bed… and that was even before we were married.
"It's Maysilee Donner," I coo. "That IV stand of the mobile variety?"
A slow nod.
"You wanna go for a walk around the ward?"
Glancing to me this time, Finnick nods his head dumbly. I smile friendly-like. "OK." We begin a slow shuffle out of the hospital room, where Mags is hovering at the door, looking like she wants to intervene. Though I don't presume to usurp her role as the mentor, I nod to my friend to stand down. If this is the only opportunity I'll have to spell Mags, I will do it – the dear lady still needs the rest. It's part of the sportsmanship that Ahenobarbus, Brutus and the others take so seriously – though you might still be grieving for the tributes you lost, you do whatever you can to bring the winning tribute, the new Victor, into our family and keep him/her safe.
Emerging into the hallway, I lock eyes with a concerned Beetee, Gates' thesis text lying open in his lap. I nod to him that everything's OK, we've taken care of it. He reluctantly turns back to his reading.
The linoleum is so clean, Finnick and I can see our reflections in the floors as we patter down the hall, side by side. For a long stretch, neither of us speaks. I finally indulge a big gulp before I break the silence:
"He shouldn't have done that – absolutely unethical. I hate even more that that was the way you were informed about some of the duties…. we Victors perform here."
He takes this in with less surprise than I imagined he would. "The President telephoned me the day before last. He said there were many… clients who want to meet me." He wipes at his eyes with the back of his palm, his sea-green orbs glassy. "Is he really going to sell me?"
I want to say no, that at his age, it's sick, but I cannot bear to lie. When Jonadab was old enough and asked me why Mommy sometimes wakes up screaming at night, and why does Mommy have a large knife on the wall, I didn't lie to him then. Nor did I lie when Rye came to me with the exact same questions; Peeta is still too little, though those kinds of conversations will be soon. I won't lie to this boy before me now.
"…. Yes. As soon as he can. I was first sold when I was 17, my first year as a mentor. And it's happened off and on fairly regularly since then, except for when I was pregnant with my sons."
It is a credit to this boy's empathy that he looks even more devastated for me than I am for him. "You're married?"
"Blissfully for 13 years, as of yesterday," I smile fondly.
"Does… does your husband know? About you being…. whored out?"
An interesting question. It took many a nightmare before I was finally able to come clean to Danny. I was so ashamed over what I had done. What I am still forced to do. I have always suspected that Danny sensed some of what I was being subjected to, but had never let on. When I finally did admit everything, soon after Jonadab was born, he had kissed my hair, then my lips, and told me he still loved me anyway. I really do have the best husband in all of Panem.
I nod slowly. "He does. He holds me through everything, but he never discusses it unless I broach the topic first – something I do rarely." I shrug. "I've also told my best girlfriend. My sister." The conversation with Kaydilyn had happened once, and only once, as my twin was clearly too repulsed to hear any more. I know she has never blamed me, but I do know that Kaydie clearly has inherited the weak heart that plagued our mother. I hope for the sake of Madge, my niece, that the trait hasn't been passed down.
Finnick wipes at his eyes again. "How do you do it? Get through it?"
"I do what we're doing right now – talking about it." I squeeze his shoulder comfortingly. "Don't you feel better now that you've told someone how you really feel?"
He nods shakily. "I do. I…. I really appreciate that you would stick up for me. Even though I'm not your tribute." Finnick looks askance, and I know he is thinking about spearing my boy tribute, who just missed the Final Eight as a result. I turn his head to make him look at me, smiling easily.
"How could I do less? I have three sons – all between the ages of 11 and 7, so my oldest isn't that much younger than you are. And if anyone had touched any of them like that, I know I would have done what Chaff and Gloss did."
A single tears streaks down Finnick's cheek. "Thanks… Mama Maysilee."
I blink at the nickname, but shrug it off with a smile, finding that I quite like it. My boys have only ever called me Mom or Mommy, and sometimes in Peeta's case 'Mother' – my baby is a very formal little man.
A clearing of the throat makes us turn around, to find Mags watching us. She wraps Finnick in a hug. "C'mere, boy." Over his shoulder, she nods to me. "Thanks, dearie."
"I just want to help," I smile.
"Well, if you're that eager, I'll tell you another way you can help: track down Barsetti for me. He needs to settle up with me on a bet we wagered." Rubbing Finnick's back and checking that he can't hear, she hisses to me, "You might check the pleasure posters."
I nod my head in thanks and sweep out of the Remake Center, ignoring the flashing bulbs of the paparazzi, the microphones shoved in my face, asking for a statement. Hailing a cab, I take it the brief jaunt around the corner to Games Headquarters, before getting out and riding the elevator up to the floor labeled, Victor Control Center.
I pass through the Mentor's Bar –eerily deserted; yet a place chock-full of mentors (including me) a handful of days ago. Drained shot glasses and dark datapads still litter some of the tables. An array of phone booths is positioned on the far right wall. In the very back of the place is a door labeled REST AREA, which I enter.
"Pleasure posters" is Victor lingo for the series of four-poster beds that now line both walls, directly opposite each other, as I emerge. These beds are specially reserved for Victors to use when they need their sleep during the Games, or when they need to entertain sponsors and high-profile clients with…. other activities.
I quickly focus in on the one four-poster that still has all its curtains drawn. The light of likely a small candle bathes two undulating forms in silhouette, the svelte curves of the woman voluptuous as she sits astride the man, making love to him. I can hear groans and grunts and tiny feminine squeaks coming from inside, and fight the urge to cringe and run in the opposite direction.
"Mmmmmm…. Oh, no…"
"Hell, yes…."
"Oh, fuck… Gods…. Brutus…"
"Fuck, Cece – what you do to me, woman…. That's it – bounce on me, babe! I'm gonna cum!"
I draw back the curtains with neither fanfare nor warning, just in time to see Brutus come apart from where he is impaled in Cecelia Rheys of Eight's dripping wet pussy. Cecelia has a heart-shaped face, with long strands of chestnut brown hair that drape down to kiss the perky nipples of her bare, jiggling breasts. She is smirking impishly, swiveling her hips to further bring my one-time mentor to completion. Turning her head, the viciously seductive grin only broadens; if there is any surprise in her big brown eyes, the young lady doesn't show it. Nor do I offer up any of my opinions (though I have plenty of those) on the subject of Brutus bedding a Victor a dozen years his junior.
As for Brutus, from the look on his face, he is the happiest son-of-a-bitch in the Capitol, maybe even alive. He's only been lusting after Cecelia Rheys for the past eight years, much to Cora Shutter's displeasure. Cecelia herself has been flirtatious back, coyly demurring at his advances. Even so, I never expected the pair to actually leap into bed together.
"Ah. Little darling. Fancy seeing you here…." Brutus waggles his eyebrows at me. "Wanna hop in? The water's fine!"
I cock a ruffled eyebrow at him, annoyed. "Mags told me I'd find you here." I have even less to say to Cecelia, the christened Angel of Death with ten kills to her name. Despite Cora informing me that she and Cecelia had first met when the latter started working the brothel (which Cora runs) in District 8's working class neighborhood, I still find slutty behavior distasteful. I do have the chutzpah, however, to get out to this young woman before me, her legs still spread, "If I were you, I would explore more. There are much better men, and men your age besides, than this jolly old fuck. 23-year-olds shouldn't be sleeping with dudes in their mid-thirties, unless he's a sponsor and you've got no choice!"
Cecelia shrugs, swinging her thighs off of Brutus to let him up, and they unjoin. Brutus glares at me. "You're one to talk all hoity-toity, Maysie – by the time you were 23, you were married with two kids and a third on the way!"
I decide to ignore this jab. Cecelia is biting her lip.
"I didn't know you were a mom," she attempts to make conversation with me. "I have a daughter, Cardella – she's five."
"How nice," I tell her politely. Then I point at Brutus. "Mags wants to see you – something about paying up on a bet."
My old mentor scowls, snorting, his own brow disappearing into a non-existent hairline. "Bitch." (The pejorative is probably directed at Mags, though it may very well just as easily apply to me). "All right, I'm coming."
I turn my face away long enough to let him wrap a bathrobe about himself. When he is decent, he strides for the door. Pausing to give the still-naked Cecelia a little parting wave, I follow him out.
