Chapter Nine
Well. I must admit that I was not expecting that.
"What?"
"A marriage proposal - tonight, at our interview. It might help solidify - our story."
"Let's talk to Haymitch about this," I frown, swallowing away the sense of let-down.
We go inside and find Haymitch with coffee in one hand and his flask in the other. Katniss repeats her suggestion and I fully expect Haymitch to shoot it down, but, instead, he nods slowly in apparent agreement.
I sit on a chair opposite him and frown. This is so typical of this ridiculous situation that it is my feelings being offered up for PR and I'm the one left to argue against the one thing I truly want in the world. And every time this happens, it gets harder to swallow my resentment. "Do you think that will really convince the people who don't believe us? A marriage can be just as fake as anything else."
"True, but it offers an opportunity for a distraction - on a silver platter. The wedding of the year. And also - it might put a pause on any rebellious souls using Katniss as an inspiration. If she's so obedient to the Capitol's plans that she'll marry whomever they want …."
"Haymitch," Katniss interrupts, gently.
"No, no - he's right," I say. "Obviously, no one would marry me of their own accord."
"Peeta," she says.
"Don't start, boy," says Haymitch. "This is serious."
"Anyway, that's not what I meant," says Katniss. "You know it's going to happen, anyway. It might as well be now, when we can …."
"Use it to our advantage?" I finish for her, painfully. "What do you mean - it's going to happen anyway?" I add, swallowing.
Haymitch groans. "Peeta, come on."
I put my head in my hands. "How did this happen?"
They both know it's a rhetorical question, so there is no reply. Images flash before my eyes, years and years of train trips to the Capitol, she and I locked together by the relationship the Capitol finds so endearing. Even if we stave off a rebellion, the Capitol will never let us go. So, yes, they will expect us to eventually get married.
"Sure," I say. Then I go back to bed, in my own room, and think stubbornly of anything I can that isn't Katniss or Haymitch.
Later that afternoon, Portia dresses me with an unusual solemnity. I'm in gray trousers with suspenders and a matching jacket. I look like I could be Mayor Undersee, just a bit younger. For a final touch, Portia adds a plain ring. This is for me to give to Katniss when she accepts my proposal. When I come out, I find Katniss dressed in a plain cotton dress, grayish-blue, with puffy sleeves and a knee-length skirt. Her mockingjay pin is conspicuously absent. Her hair is swept up and she wears a long, gold necklace. We look like relatively well-off citizens of District 12 - not fancy, Capitol-sponsored Victors.
"You look good," she says, unexpectedly.
"That's Portia's doing," I reply, somewhat mischievously.
She gives me a smile.
"Do we need to work on a speech?" asks Haymitch.
I shake my head. A proposal speech – from Haymitch? Not in a hundred years. "In my sleep, I could do this." When Katniss' smile starts to fade, I shrug. "Well - we all know it's true."
And that is how I've decided to approach this. I'll never enjoy the privilege of doing it for real, so I'm just going to pretend for a second that it is - all of it, me and her, falling in love in the Games, united in the Tour, planning to spend our lives together. So, when Caesar Flickerman - a twinkly contrast to us in his flashing suit and his blue wig and eyebrows and lips - asks us what our future plans are, I slide off my seat and kneel down in front of Katniss'. I have to wait for the gasps and screams and cheers from the crowd to die down, and in the meanwhile, I look up at Katniss, who has a passable expression of surprise on her face.
And that's when my planned speech goes out the window. There are these shows, in the Capitol, where people pretend to fall in love, to win prizes. The most successful contestants come up with fancy, elaborate proposals to seal their wins. And the Capitol crowd eats them up - they even cover them on their newscasts. I was originally planning to follow that template. But that's not me - and it most certainly isn't her. She deserves even this fake proposal to have every ounce of sincerity I can give it. I wink at her. "Sweetheart," I say - using Haymitch's own endearment. "Sweetheart, you know how I feel about you. Maybe the first gift is the hardest to repay - and you gave me a doozy, saving my life several times over. But I promised you you would get it all back and this - this is just the beginning. What do you say?" I take off my ring and hold it out to her.
For a split second, she gives me a look so raw and unfiltered that I forget the whole act and wait breathlessly for an answer. Then her face slips back into its mask, she accepts the ring, chokes out a yes, and slips it onto her finger, where it is endearingly too big. She knots it onto her necklace - that's what it is there for. After we accept the thunderous applause of our adoring crowd - including cheering crowds on video screen from the districts (I wonder uneasily about the reactions of a handful of people from District 12) - I stand and kiss her to seal the win. I feel that it all looks reasonably unscripted.
In the midst of all this, President Snow himself walks out onto the stage. He is a small man, with papery white skin and hair that is even whiter. He walks right for me, and for a second I feel just what I did when we were crowned winners of the Games - like there is one too many of us here on stage and Snow himself would dispatch one of us - probably me. But he merely claps me on the back, as if I was his favorite nephew, and congratulates me. Then he goes in for Katniss, giving her a kiss on the cheek. I watch anxiously for her expression when he releases her. Will she know, now, his critique of our performance? It's hard to say - her face is unreadable at first, when they are separated. There's a smile plastered to it, but it's still a mask.
Snow takes a microphone from Caesar and addresses the crowd - "What do you think about us throwing them a wedding right here in the Capitol?"
The crowd, of course, goes wild, and Katniss grins and waves at them, even blows a few kisses. I automatically look around for Haymitch, to get some kind of cue, but I can't find him.
"Do you have a date in mind?" Caesar asks the President.
"Oh," he says slowly, "before we set a date, we better clear it with Katniss' mother." The crowd loves this and Snow puts his arm around Katniss. "Maybe if the whole country puts its mind to it, we can get you married before you're thirty."
"You'll probably have to pass a new law," she says, giggling.
"If that's what it takes."
Then, she and I are linked up again as we walk from the stage to the President's Mansion, which is behind it. There, we're hustled into a side room to change into our party clothes - me in an incredibly soft black suit, Katniss in a skin-tight white gown that sparkles everywhere. The party is tremendous. Musicians are suspended from the ceiling so that the notes of their stringed instruments float down over our heads. Seats are arranged in comfortable groupings of four or five around fire pits and water features. Tables of food - fifteen or so long tables absolutely stuffed with food - fill out the center of the room. Dancing is off to the side.
Katniss grabs my hand and with a nearly-maniacal smile says, "I want to taste everything in the room."
I try to catch and hold her eye, but she only smiles at me. "Then you'd better pace yourself," I say at last, having learned nothing.
"OK, no more than one bite of each dish." We walk down a table of soups and Katniss resists temptation to break her vow at every bite - pumpkin soup, cucumber soup, lobster, tomato, raspberry. I follow behind her. My appetite has not returned, even if hers has, so I do the conversing, because Katniss has no patience for the people who come up to us, interrupting her from her eating. And I nibble on her leftovers, which, by the time we get midway through the tables, has started filling me up, anyway.
We run into her prep team there and they are drinking and laughing together - having the times of their lives. Mine is around here somewhere, too - eager and excited to join the important party, for once.
"Why aren't you eating?" asks one of the preps.
"I have been, but I can't hold another bite," says Katniss.
They laugh at her. "No one lets that stop them!" We're shepherded over to a small side table that holds tiny glass goblets filled with clear liquid. "Drink this!"
I pick up a glass, to examine it, and everyone freaks out. "Not here!"
"You have to do it there," says another prep, pointing toward the hallway where the bathrooms are. "Or you'll get it all over the floor!"
I blink a couple of times at the glass in my hand, thinking, what on earth ….? Then, I realize: "You mean - this will make me puke?"
"Of course! So you can keep eating! I've been in there twice already. Everyone does it, or how else would you have any fun at a feast?"
I gape at the glass in my hand. What the hell? There's enough food here to throw a feast for all of District 12. Where people are starving to death. And I'm expected to make room to fill up twice, maybe more. I set the glass back down on the table, still staring at it. "Come on Katniss," I say fuzzily, "let's dance."
The manic fire has gone out of her face for the moment, and she follows me to the side of the room where we can dance. This is some of that easy, slow dancing we've done before. But I can barely register her palm and her hip, where my hands are, as bile comes up. I almost don't need one of those little drinks. "You go along," I say, swallowing painfully, "thinking you can deal with it, thinking maybe they're not so bad, and then you -."
"Peeta," she whispers, "they bring us here to fight to the death for their entertainment. This is nothing by comparison."
Yes, that's true - but the Hunger Games are so pervasive, so set in stone, that I'd basically got used to them. This is excess and thoughtlessness at the most basic level. "I know. I know that. It's just sometimes I can't stand it anymore. To the point where … I'm not sure what I'll do." I frown, thinking of the people who are so much braver than we are - the old man in 11, the crowd in 4, the protesters in 3. "Maybe we were wrong, Katniss."
"About what?"
"About trying to subdue things in the districts."
She jumps, then looks anxiously from side to side, in case I've been overheard. I feel her hand tighten on my shoulder.
"Sorry," I say.
"Save it for home," she says through clenched teeth.
Portia materializes out of nowhere, in company with an older man. He's dressed in a dark purple suit, but otherwise there's not much Capitol about him - no particular body enhancements - except perhaps in his easy expression. Katniss and I stop dancing and look at him expectantly.
"Katniss, Peeta - this is Plutarch Heavensbee, the new Head Gamemaker."
Katniss stiffens next to me, and it's all I can do to manage a polite 'hello.'
"Mr. Mellark," says the man, "would you mind if I steal Miss Everdeen for a dance?"
"Certainly," I say. "Just don't get too attached."
"I wouldn't dream of breaking up Panem's happiest couple."
Eh. I step off the dance floor and watch them for a minute - Plutarch Heavensbee seems to be talking to her very earnestly, and I feel sorry that she has to handle it alone, but what can you do? I wander over to the dessert table and look over the fancy cakes and pastries. The techniques are sophisticated - foam made of sugar, icing carved into intricate patterns. For a little while, I forget everything but these cakes - Katniss, rebellions, presidents all fade to the background - while I try to memorize them for practice later. I think of Portia and art school and of all the amazing things the Capitol could be - is, for the lucky people who are born here.
Lucky? I catch a glimpse of the prep teams, mingling together again, laughing and drinking. The thing about misery - real misery - is that it deepens the other aspects of life - at least, it can. Like using shadows in a painting to draw out the light. Would joy feel as keen without the shadow of misery? Would hope? Would love? What real benefit do these people get? - their lives filled with food and drink, clothes and accessories; raised to root for the bloody deaths of children in sport, so that there seems to be nothing - nothing beneath the surface of them. Except for a few - like Portia ... and how hard her life must be, I think, suddenly, constantly guarding her true feelings, here in the heart of it all.
Portia herself joins me, interrupting my thoughts, and she's brought more people with her. She introduces some of the pastry chefs and we all have a conversation about frosting techniques. My jokes about learning camouflage through frosting are one of the things I'm most famous for, and these silly people confuse my celebrity for real expertise and seem flattered by my praise of them. A year ago, they wouldn't have looked me in the eye. In the middle of this, Katniss comes back to me and grabs my arm. It's rare for us to be separated at these events.
"By any chance, can I take some of these home - to study them?" I ask, and am surprised that my request is greeted with enthusiastic acquiescence. While cakes are being boxed up, Katniss leans her head against my arm. She looks tired and I feel it, suddenly. "Effie says we have to be at the train at 1," I say. "I wonder what time it is."
"Almost midnight," Katniss replies, reaching forward to pick a chocolate rose off of one of the cakes.
As if on cue, Effie appears and touches both of us on our shoulders. We join Portia and Cinna and make a last circuit of the room, greeting and thanking some particular individuals. Some of them look familiar, and I think they were sponsors from last year, who we met at the coronation dinner. I don't like their possessive looks, how free they feel to touch us. But, soon enough, we are headed for the door.
"Should we thank President Snow?" I ask Effie, worried that we are rushing out without acknowledging the most important of the VIPs. "It's his house."
"Oh, he's not a big one for parties. I've already arranged the necessary notes and gifts to be sent to him tomorrow."
We collect Haymitch from two attendants, who are supporting him between them, that's how gone he is in his inebriation. On the way back to the train station, our car is overwhelmed by his fumes. But it's too cold to crack open any windows.
On the train, the rest of us - Katniss and I, Effie, Cinna and Portia - drink mint tea while Effie pulls out her omnipresent schedule. I know that, technically, we're still on the Victory Tour, but that just means a reception in the Justice Building tomorrow and the Harvest Festival the day after that. It feels like it's all over and I can relax again, free of my obligation to pretend to pretend to be in love with this girl who is now my pretend fiancée. But I also know my time with Katniss - my intimate time - is over. It's been bizarre and stressful and dizzying and delicious. Not that we will be ignoring each other this time, when we get home. I know we've crossed that line.
Friends, I remind myself. Allies, Tributes, Victors.
I go to her room after she's asleep and watch her for a bit, while I hesitate. I don't know if she'd mind it, or not, but I've never been denied, and it's the very last night. I'm so tired that I know her proximity won't make it difficult to sleep, as it often does. I tuck myself in on one side of the bed, away from her, and fall asleep.
When I wake, it seems late, but the train is still chugging along. Sometime in the night, we moved together and I wake up with my mouth in her hair, with her head on my arm. I find myself wondering what it would be like, to be married to someone who has been forced into it. It sounds pretty tedious. If I could just completely detach myself - if I could really just be her friend - maybe it would be bearable.
She stirs and looks up at me.
"No nightmares," I say.
"What?"
"You didn't have any nightmares last night."
She looks thoughtful. "I had a dream, though. I was following a mockingjay through the woods, for a long time. It was Rue, really. I mean, when it sang, it had her voice."
"Where did she take you?"
"I don't know. We never arrived. But I felt happy."
"Well, you slept like you were happy."
She squints at me. "How come I never know when you're having a nightmare?"
"I don't know. I don't think I cry out or thrash around or anything. I just come to - paralyzed with terror."
"You should wake me."
I shake my head, slightly. "Not necessary. My nightmares are usually about losing you. I'm OK once I realize you're here."
She looks stricken by this, guilty. But we agreed to the truth, and I've had to sacrifice my feelings to the cause too much already.
"Be worse when we're home and I'm sleeping alone again," I add, not stopping to think of the implications of the words. But it doesn't matter - I see it in her eyes again, and now I recognize it. That look of home that comes on her face during the last leg of the train journey. She doesn't know what to do with me there, how to incorporate me there.
But I refuse to be discouraged. And, because it's the last day I'll really have the privilege, I take the opportunity give her a light kiss on the forehead and to settle back into sleep next to her - where the nightmares can't find me.