Cheap Heat, page 5
Looked like a green room, I supposed, not that I knew from green rooms. There was a table set with snacks, another long table with drinks from bottled water and energy drinks to beer, and a huge plastic bowl full of ice.
There were one or two other folks milling around in it. None of them were Grant. None of them looked like wrestlers.
“Uh, I’m here to see Grant Aronson,” I said.
“Yep. He’ll be along,” Glen said, trying to head for the door.
“Uh, maybe you could take me to him?”
Glen shook his head. “Nope. He’s in the clubhouse. Nobody in there but talent. Nobody.”
“Fine,” I said. I found a bottle of water and started exploring the snacks. A bowl of waxy looking fruit; bowls of pretzels and chips that offered a seductive salt-and-carb high. The very thought of entering them into my calorie counting app was enough to move on.
Trays of limp, somewhat shiny lunchmeat, and a tray full of those slightly greasy, springy cubes of cheese.
It was the kind of catering one paid for by the foot. I studiously avoided it, thinking longingly of the carefully curated selection of nut butters in my galley on the Belle.
I didn’t try and make any small talk with the other folks in the room, who looked like family or special guests. It wasn’t hard; people tended not to approach me on their own.
The door swung open and in came Grant Aaronson, wearing his ring gear—the black cavalry hat, the vest, the star-spangled trunks. Spurs jingled on the edge of his boots.
“Jack!” He threw his arms wide to hug me. I was less than enthusiastic about this because his mostly bare chest seemed to glisten with some kind of oil. And it wasn’t as if we’d been all that close.
I was able to intercept his hand and turn it into one of those half-handshake half-hug things. I definitely felt a slick of moisture against my shirt and jacket, though.
“Long time no see, man,” he boomed.
“Yeah. It’s been, what…eight years? Thereabouts.”
“Yeah, ever since the meet with…”
I waved him off. “Why’d you call me here, Grant?” I tried searching his face for any giveaway details, but he was wearing stage makeup and his eyes seemed a bit distant. I didn’t really suspect drugs for that; before any kind of high-stress appearance before a crowd, it wasn’t all that unusual for someone to seem distant. They might’ve been focusing, or psyching themselves up, or just glazing over at the thought of all the pressure. I’d never known Grant to be the worrying kind, though.
“Well, we can talk about that after the show, okay? I go on early, doing a quick undercard with Blake,” he said, as if I knew who that was or what that meant.
“Can you at least thumbnail it for me?”
Grant cast his eyes around the room, clamped one hand around my wrist like a vise, and dragged me to a corner, distant from both the catering fand the occupants of the erstwhile VIP Lounge.
“There’s threats against me, okay? Because of my character. Company doesn’t want to go to the cops, so…I suggested you. Tell you more later!” He slapped me on the shoulder and vanished out the door.
In the small crowd in the green room I heard someone say, “Man, I hate that guy.”
I looked. It was a kid, maybe fourteen, wearing a shirt with the Confederate flag that said “If this offends you, you need a history lesson.”
I figured I could probably scrub that kid from the suspect list, but I gave him a hard stare until he paled and turned back to his mom.
Chapter 10
I didn’t really want to test my willpower against the craft-services-by-the-yard table any longer than I had to. Even the worst, most grease-oozing cube of bad cheddar starts to look tempting after a long enough time spent staring at it.
So with my lanyard around my neck, I looked around for another stage hand or manager type who might direct me somewhere more useful, where I might be able to see the show and get a sense of why Grant might be incurring threats. Though I think I had an idea.
I found Glen rushing by and gently pulled him aside. “There somewhere I can watch the show?”
“You got a ticket, don’t you?”
He had a point. I almost asked if he would show me back to the audience side of things but he had that frazzled look everyone who works in that sort of thing gets just as an event is starting. The kind that says, If I get one more request, I will kill the person who makes it, or myself, or possibly both.
I decided not to see if I was poor Glen’s tipping point and went exploring myself. In a few moments I passed the ‘clubhouse,’ which looked like the largest back room available turned into a de facto dressing room. A black polo-shirted security man stood outside, giving me a hard stare as I walked by. I grinned at him.
Soon enough I was back past the ropes and into the late-arriving crowd. To my surprise, my seats proved to be ringside—not even the permanent seats from the venue, but a folding chair set up just a couple of yards away from the ring itself. I could feel the heat of the lights, smell the scent of it rising off the canvas, see the small scattering of chalk dust tossed across it.
I had very little idea what to expect, and so I craned my neck around the building, looking at the crowd. It seemed like a fairly full house—in vain I looked as if I might see Gen and her dad, but I had no idea where their seats even were.
Suddenly I was startled by the blare of music, and then a pre-recorded announcer voice, welcoming everyone to DELMARVA. WRESTLING.
A sector of the crowd cheered along with the name, then a louder cheer went up as someone in a tuxedo came strolling in from backstage, down a long corridor blocked off with movable metal gates.
My first surprise was that it was a woman wearing the tuxedo. The second was that, damn, she was indeed wearing that tuxedo. The spotlights that fell on her and the stage makeup she wore made it hard to guess her age, and it might just have been rude to do that anyway. North of mine, for sure, but she was giving the years every bit of fight they could handle. She had dark hair falling down her back, neatly waved at the end. She carried a mic in one hand and a cane that she twirled in the other. At each of her hands, and a half-step behind her, walked two men, both wearing trunks, ring-boots, and nothing else. They looked awfully similar—but that could’ve been the distance, the crew-cuts, and the matching oiled six-packs.
When she neared the ring the two fellows jumped into action. One of them hopped up ringside and pulled the ropes apart. The other went to one knee and made a basket with his hands. The tuxedoed woman put one shoe in his hand, stepped the other onto his shoulder, and gracefully passed under the held open ropes. Then the escorts hopped in behind her. The same active segment of the crowd had begun a chant.
“Daphne, Daphne, Daphne…” It would be hard to call it thunderous but there was no doubt it was loud. She acknowledged the cheers by raising her cane, once to each side of the ring. Then, with a dramatic sweep of it, the crowd fell immediately silent. She raised the mic.
“Good evening, Wilmington.” Somehow the woman managed to purr and exclaim into the mic at the same time. I was impressed all over again.
“Who is ready to see the gladiators of the modern day?” A cheer. “Who is ready for high-flying, death-defying, acrobatic grace?” A louder cheer. “And who is ready for some old. Fashioned. BRAWLING?”
Roars. People behind me stood up. A chant of her name broke out again; once more, she silenced it with another flourish of her cane.
“Remember, in the DWF, you choose each night’s best performer! Be sure to get your ballots from the ushers, or the stations near the concessions! Results will be posted tomorrow, and the winner receives a bonus. Because in Delmarva, the FAN’S voice matters!”
I wondered if I could grab a stack of ballots and stuff the box for Grant. Maybe I could sniff some of that bonus. If there was a bonus, I corrected. The thought was unworthy of me anyway.
“And FIRST UP, to whet your appetites…a newcomer to the squared circle here in Wilmington, Delaware. Fighting out of Point Pleasant, Ohio…U.S. GRANT…to be opposed by BLAKE. IRONS.”
With that, the crowd subsided into a kind of dull background roar. Daphne exited, repeating the routine of stepping down out of the ring by climbing down her escort’s body. She sauntered off back to the backstage area. It was a world-class saunter in tuxedo pants that walked the edge from ‘tailored’ to ‘painted on.’ Under usual circumstances I would’ve felt a little slimy for watching as closely as I did, but clearly the woman was a performer. I was admiring her skill and professionalism.
The arena’s sound system suddenly blared out a bugle call. I wasn’t sure which one, because the quality of the sound system, plus the crowd’s reaction, made it a little hard to identify. Some long suppressed, nearly forgotten military instinct in me suddenly woke up, poised to jump into action. Had it been a boatswain’s whistle I probably would’ve broken out into a cold sweat at the very least.
Grant came sauntering into the arena, arms raised high, cavalry hat jauntily cocked. The bugle call kept repeating. There was a bit of a buzz for him, but not as much as one might have expected. That was, until he snatched a Confederate flag someone had been dangling over the barrier and ran with it to the ring. He leapt up to the ringside and threw the flag to the mat.
A few boos rained down.
Then he swung between the ropes, caught the flag with the spur of one boot, pinned it to the mat with the other, and ripped it in half with a wide kick of his legs.
While the boos weren’t really overriding the cheers, I think I was starting to get an idea of why Grant was facing threats in other cities on this circuit.
While he was tearing that flag to shreds, someone had crept up ringside and took Grant’s hat, handing him a mic.
“WILMINGTON,” he called out, shouting the word so loud and so heavily into the mic that he invited feedback, and the crowd did worse than boo—they went quiet.
He tried again, getting it a little more right this time.
“Wilmington!”
There was scattered applause. “I’ve got a very special guest here tonight!”
Oh no.
“A veteran!”
Oh shit.
“A veteran of THE. UNITED. STATES. NAVY.”
Oh fuck.
He pointed to me at ringside. There was thunderous applause. I was blinded by a light being swung into my eyes. “Look at him, ladies and gentlemen! I don’t have to tell you what he risked for your freedom!”
What did I risk? Sodium poisoning through contact with the food? Cutting myself with a dull knife? Scalding from a steamtable?
The applause wasn’t going away. Neither was the spotlight. I awkwardly waved a hand from my seat, and Grant seemed to get the hint that I wasn’t going to do anything more than that.
I was saved from any further attention when Blake Irons trotted out. I had no idea what Blake’s real name was, but there was no gimmick to him in the way that there was for Grant. Not that I could see. He was wearing a black singlet, black boots, elbow pads, and had his wrists wrapped in black tape. He looked a little creaky, to be honest, with a beard that was clearly dyed dark brown, his head shaved. There was almost no applause for him, and his facial expression was completely indifferent. Sweat beaded his head and his back, whether from the lights or anticipation or if he’d been warming up backstage, I couldn’t say.
There was a scattered effort to start a chant of his first name, “Blake! Blake! Blake!” rung out weakly around the crowd, but it died out quickly after he acknowledged it with a wave.
In the interim, a ref had appeared. Blake and Grant moved to the center of the ring and shook hands. If any specific instructions were issued I didn’t see them. Then the two men bounded off to opposite corners while the ref raised his arm in the middle of the ring. Then he lowered it.
I wasn’t sure what I expected. Certainly not anything resembling the collegiate or Olympic sports I recognized. An immediate flurry of highly stylized, carefully faked violence? Someone to immediately leap in the air and deliver a flying kick?
They both fell into something resembling the neutral position, though both too upright. Blake especially so. I had the sense there wasn’t a lot of flexibility left in him. He made a sloppy forward lunge and swung a big looping fist awkwardly at Grant.
Grant caught it and twisted Blake’s arm, forcing his opponent to his knees. That move, at least, seemed pretty convincing as far as the crowd was concerned. Blake’s face was twisted in pain and he sank to his knees. Grant moved up behind him and took hold of the back of his neck with the hand that wasn’t twisting the arm. Blake’s free arm flailed uselessly, raining harmless blows on his opponent’s arm and side.
Then—as if a hand light on the back of the neck is a sufficient come-along hold on a person who isn’t otherwise restrained—Grant let go of the twisted arm and ‘pulled’ Blake to his feet. Then he tugged him backwards and sent him running at the ropes. Blake took a workmanlike run-up to them, leaned far out, and immediately ran back at Grant as if helpless before the momentum.
Grant met him with a clothesline and Blake threw himself hard to the mat, rebounding off the canvas with a great clatter. He definitely made me feel his fall; I had to give him that. Grant jumped on him for the pin but Blake kicked out of it before the ref could bring his arm down a third time, and immediately rolled to his side, then climbed back to his feet using the ropes. It was Grant’s turn to go on the attack, and he did. They traded back and forth shots for a while, occasionally engaging in something that looked a little like real grappling. If you turned your head and squinted and couldn’t see it really well, I suppose it would pass.
It was hard for me not to look at it that way, in light of a sport I’d spent almost a decade learning. It had probably been the thing I was best at, period. Not cooking, not investigating, not even sitting on my boat and drinking. I had started blowing away my high school competition as a tenth-grader, and started winning right away in college. Even though I hadn’t wanted to answer Gen’s dad earlier, if I’d really wanted it—been willing to sacrifice whatever else there was in my life for it—the Olympics weren’t necessarily out of reach.
And yet to actually think of it again took watching athletes pretend—sort of—to wrestle.
I was jolted out of my self reflection and self pity by a roar from the crowd. They were engaged in another grapple with their heads grinding together. Suddenly, Grant squatted beneath Blake and lifted him into the air on his shoulders, straight up, Blake’s legs twisting in the air. He held him there for a moment, the crowd actually invested in the match, rapt, and then jumped and brought Blake down to the mat beneath him. Blake lay, writhing in pain, and I wasn’t sure how much was for the show. Grant covered him, the ref counted three, and his warm-up match was over.
The crowd seemed relatively entertained by the match’s conclusion, and Grant got a pretty sustained cheer. Instead of celebrating the way I might have expected—going to the corners to raise them into a frenzy—he bent down and helped his opponent back to his feet. That got some applause. They shared a kind of handshake hug, the no-hard-feelings, good-game kind of thing I recognized from my sporting days. Then a ringside attendant tossed Grant his hat and he left, victorious, Blake trailing after him, limping.
I would not have been able to make an accurate guess at how much of that limp was real and how much was for show.
Chapter 11
Shortly thereafter, Daphne came back ringside, though without her sidemen, and took up the mic to announce the next match, though it was only moments before some music I vaguely recognized started playing over the loudspeakers, and a man in a suit and mirrored sunglasses came striding down the tunnel, a metal attaché case shackled to his wrist. If the poster was to be believed, this was Derrick Rigg.
Then I realized that the music was the theme from the old soap opera Dallas, and the pun that was his name, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or hold my head in my hands for not having gotten it sooner.
The crowd booed when Rigg tore the mic away from Daphne, but it was a lusty boo, an appreciative boo, a booing that said, yeah, you’re evil and we’re meant to boo you, but we love it.
“I understand,” he boomed into the mic, in an exaggerated Texas drawl, “that there are some ladies here who think they can take on Derrick Rigg in the ring. Now, now…as a gentleman, I do not believe it is right to inflict any violence upon the fairer sex.”
Daphne put on such a sneer as he said the fairer sex that the crowd erupted in cheers for her.
“But if I am challenged, I must also reply in order to uphold that very honor.”
I decided that Derrick Rigg sounded like what’d you’d get if J.R. Ewing and Foghorn Leghorn had a son.
“So if you’ve got…”
With that, the loudspeakers blared again. “Are they playing My Country Tis of Thee?” I wondered aloud.
The guy in the seat next to me, who’d been tapping away at a phone the size of a tablet throughout the entire match—and had shown no sign of putting it away yet—absently said, “Nah, it’s God Save the Queen. Spitfire’s entrance music.”
“Huh.”
Derrick Rigg looked as dazed as if it was the first time he’d ever heard recorded music mechanically reproduced, and then a tall redhead in a British-flag-print leotard and tall red Doc Martens came running down the tunnel.
I was suddenly interested. The guy with the giant phone took some interest in me then.
“So is that true? You a veteran?”
“Huh? Yeah,” I said. “But I didn’t sacrifice anything. I was a cook.”
He nodded and made some notes.
“What are you taking notes for?” I looked down at him, trying to see the screen of his phone, but he hunched his shoulders.
