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After the first time Feinberg caught Couriway in the midst of a lie, it became disgustingly easy to catch the ones following. Couriway lied almost compulsively, meticulously, without any of the typical, standard remorse you’d catch from other kleptomaniac liars. Guiltily, he thought himself capable of the same dishonesties given the appropriate scenario–as the ones who were untrained in the art of waxing falsities would always be at a disadvantage in any social context–and Couriway was a man who built himself for the stage; naturally, his untruths would need to come much easier.
It made no difference–the trait carried–to who Couriway was behind the curtain. Dishonesty in a showman was the type of thing no one blamed very deeply.
Feinberg came from the other side of the ladder. Having run out of pleasantries to trade early on in the life, he had spent raw talent and effort in its proxy; hand-carved himself–through bona-fide sweat and blood–a place on the hall of names redolent with the promise of legacy. But by the time he’d made it to the top–as it did for all career victors–the world had ceased its initial glimmering promises of shiny motorcars and bigger, better inventions; the foxtrot he’d learnt based purely on the requirement of such to be classified as a ‘cultured’ man. He didn’t often do things for the sake of reputation-sanctioned appearances, but he disliked half-measures even less, and even to a mistakenly austere person like himself the rotten revelry of the Capitol was terribly alluring. Maybe for it, even moreso.
Couriway, for all he was showy and dishonest, had limpid eyes which suggested an unusual anchoredness within the Capitol fever–and that had drawn him in. He had a face that was a familiar currency which the bourgeoisie capitalised on rapidly and frequently after his 94th Playoff’s win. He had been spun like cotton candy straight into the showbiz from the arena with no intermission remembered; but even as they sold his face, Feinberg could see from the shutters of his own eyes that Couriway was still some part the boy from district 10.
Feinberg’s own win was much too brutal for all the world of advertising, and his a face too harshly cut from the stone. In comparison, Couriway was absurdly marketable. A Playoff’s win from attrition which tanked his initial popularity with the blood-sniffing crowd, but was rapidly made up for in his overwhelming, charismatic demeanor for the public. Eyes for the fine tip of a brow pencil, cheekbones for a well-placed splash of water cream, lip for tint for days, and he carried a brand sensitivity about him that when speaking it felt at any given moment he would break into– “Haha, yes! It’s a good time to tell you about this skin tint I’m wearing. It’s by 6CE and it’s their—”
Feinberg catches him all too often blown-up on some billboard, lips curled into a slow, sweet smile. Holding delicate containers of makeup and skincare up to his cheeks and saying some inane catchphrase. He sees that version of Couriway more often than he does the real person, and sometimes he doubts if the real person is any different at all.
And then he would catch the starboy–minimum annually, sometimes monthly–and speak with him, and it would become nigh impossible to deny the natural gravitational pull Couriway had about his person which made him a media darling. Even lingering on the outskirts, Couriway had himself a solar system with an increasing orbital pull which built itself upon his intrinsic charm. A titillating, ridiculously warm laugh, with the distinct feeling you are not being laughed at, but laughed with; an understanding, low timbre of voice which oscillated between confidently assuring and abashedly sly; an effervescent gaze which promised exciting new things.
An irreproachable pluckiness which allowed him to say things to the Capitol and get away with it. Some other tributes have tried to replicate it before, given a short acclimation to the grandiose splendor of the Capitol and Couriway advertisements, and were harshly condemned in consequence. None of the other Victors even dare to toe the line—too smart and cautious to even attempt an imitation of that lightly-joking displeasure with the hand that feeds all of them—least of all himself, who while possessing many opinions on the state of the world, withhold them to the cage of his ribs.
There doesn’t need to be any clear declarative that stated his incredible loathing for the Capitol–folk and place. For most Victors the hatred was unutterable in its intensity, coldly festered from the sickness of over-glamour and gold plated patina. It was built of people who smashed up things, creatures and other people and then retreated back to their money and vast carelessness to let others clean up the mess and take the fall.
The lights decorating the oversized bloated stomach of a ballroom grows brighter as the world lurches away from the sun. Laughter grows easier minute by minute until the entire setting buzzes with a chittering vitality. The groups collide and mesh and pull apart to crash again, the numbers of people mingling about like seafoam on a calm beach
Feinberg shows up to the party indulgently late, head throbbing with the silver metal inserted into his very skull—cosmetic surgery, the third one this year, because saying he’s harder to market than Couriway is simply saying he’s less shiny than a literal star, and even bronze can be polished into mirrors given enough push, he is a Victor after all—and wandered sickly amongst the swirls and eddies of people he did not know. Often, a hand would surge from the crowd to come to grasp his own, and it would be his tongue that shared sweet pleasantries, but the recollections of such washed from his head one moment to the next. He felt a little untouchable amidst the whole feverish revelry, drifting along the human seafoam aimlessly as if some amorphous specter.
He spends an appropriate amount of time in the endless halls before finally calling it for the night, given the perfunctory nod by the security and more importantly the president. By then, the night had grown harsh and cold, a knife’s edge from the Capitol at daytime, where an everpresent mist of gay bustle was rampant.