John Cena's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

Cena went back to the arena two mornings later because the council clerk told him the empty seat had been filled overnight. She would not say by whom. She only said the new member had asked to be sworn in at the garden, not at the council hall, and that he wanted Cena there at nine. Cena drove out under a low gray sky. The petition table was gone. Gunther's banner was gone. Something else had taken their place. A small log cabin sat on the grass beside the front gate of the arena, brought in on a flatbed and set down overnight. Smoke rose from its stone chimney. A folding chair stood on the porch. On the chair sat Triple H, in jeans and a black vest, drinking coffee from a paper cup. He had driven up from the city without telling Cena. He stood when he saw the truck and walked down to meet it. "Took the seat," Triple H said. "Signed the papers last night." He lifted one hand. A deep green sash hung over his arm, trimmed in braided silver. The clerk had given it to him an hour earlier. It was the mark the council members wore at public votes. "Came here for one reason. You know what it is." Cena asked him if he understood what he had just done. A council seat meant residency, meetings every week, a year of unpaid work, public records, reporters. Triple H said he had read all of it. He said he had sold the house in the city and signed a lease on the cabin behind them. He said his wife knew. He said the vote on the blank stone would come back on the agenda at the next session, and he would be in the room when it did. Then he stopped talking, the way he did when a thing mattered. He held the sash out flat between them so Cena could see the stitching. Cena took one end. He did not know what to say, so he said thank you, and Triple H nodded once and looked away at the trees. By noon the news had spread through town. A wrestler had taken Harris's seat. Two reporters were already parked outside the cabin. A council member emailed Cena before lunch and said the optics were a problem, that a vote cast by the honoree's best friend would not stand, and that the council would meet Thursday to decide whether Triple H could vote on the stone at all. Cena read the email twice in the truck. His rival was in jail. His enemy on the council was gone. His best friend held the deciding sash. And now the council was asking whether that sash could be used at all.