Living the Gimmick

  The WWO gave its employees Christmas Day off. I worked a match with Beastie in Minneapolis on Christmas Eve, and we were scheduled to work again the day after Christmas at the St. Louis Civic Center. I arranged for a stopover in Chicago to see my mom. Over the phone, I apologized to her about not being able to bring a gift. She cut off my excuse about the blur of travel making it difficult to even think with, “Just you coming will be gift enough.

  “Even if it’s only for a few hours,” she went on, referring to the just under five hours I would have for my visit.

  When I mentioned this to Shawna, she asked if she could come along. “Sure,” I replied, stunned. “I mean, I’d like that.”

  We were standing outside the Minneapolis airport, waiting for our rental car to pull up, when I finally asked her why she wanted to come.

  “I want to see where you come from,” she replied, her cheeks lighting up like small cherries against the sub-zero temperature.

  The next day, Christmas, I called my mom just before we were leaving and learned that Harry and Shirley were “dying” to see me. I knew something was up. Finally, my mom spilled the story. Jim had been apprehended in a sting operation regarding the collapse of a savings and loan. Apparently, he had been involved in the disappearance of several hundred thousand dollars worth of bonds. There had been so many that he figured the government wouldn’t miss a few. However, the bonds he had chosen to steal had been marked by the Treasury Department. The percentage of these marked bonds in relation to the total amount that had been issued was comparable to the percentage of bicentennial quarters Jim had managed to disfigure as a child before giving up. But now, his ambition carried a penalty more severe than a simple surrender to the odds; he had been sentenced to ten years in a federal penitentiary.

  “Harry and Shirley are still in shock,” my mother said, then warned me not to mention Jim.

  We all met at Barnaby’s, a darkly lit pizza place in a Chicago suburb. The booths were the kind that, when I was a kid, had always made me feel like I was sitting in the cockpit of a race car. But my bringing Shawna and my mom bringing Irling made us a party of six, too many for a booth.

  I had always pictured Irling as a gruff, large man, similar to the way my father was supposed to have looked. To my surprise Irling was tall and thin with a face of neatly arranged features. His demeanor was unassuming and tinged with gentleness. All of his movements, even those as simple as pulling out a chair for my mom, were conducted with the swiftness of a deer bounding down a hillside. When Mom introduced us, he immediately recited what he did for a living (administrative assistant for a microchip company) and listed his hobbies (golf, pinball, and tinkering) with the shaky eagerness of a game show contestant.

  Harry and Shirley had both become a bit chunkier, and Harry’s hair was now a field of gray. But they seemed in determined good spirits, with both of them expressing how proud they were of my current position as, in Harry’s words, a “sports superstar.” His advice to me now was to simply “get married” with no mention of “and have children.”

  He told me this while Shawna was in the ladies’ room. “Now that’s a woman to settle down with,” Harry said. I glanced uneasily at the ladies’ room, as though Shawna might be able to somehow hear through the door.

  “She seems nice,” my mother added with a distant approval, touching my frizzed out, dyed-black hair with a puzzled finger.

  “She seems very . . . forward,” Irling commented.

  “Bet your ass she is,” I agreed.

  Ten minutes later, Shawna had returned to the table and Irling had excused himself to the washroom. “What do you think?” my mom asked me as soon as the men’s room door had swung shut behind him.

  “He seems all right,” I replied, realizing too late that I was mimicking her generic evaluation of Shawna.

  Before I could add anything, my mother announced: “We’re moving.”

  “No!” Shirley exclaimed.

  “When?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” Mom said. “Irling’s getting transferred to a new plant opening in Nebraska. I think it’d be good for me. To get away from the city—”

  “Are you going to marry him?” Shirley asked, her mouth opening and closing like a fervent guppy.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Mom said casually and continued munching her pizza. I stared at her in the candlelight and noticed she had accumulated some gray hairs herself. The sight of them triggered a thought I had never before allowed myself: Bonnie Harding was a person with her own collection of fears and confusions. For so many years she had been strong and raised me, never once complaining or feeling sorry for herself about losing a man she had loved. She suddenly seemed like someone who might like booths as much as I did. Even though it scared me a little, I began to flirt with this newfound concept, wondering if she might also have trouble distinguishing dawn from dusk.

  “Congratulations, Mrs. Harding,” Shawna said, smiling.

  “Thank you, Shawna.” My mom’s voice unfolded into a genuine appreciation.

  “Yeah, Mom,” I said. “That’s good. I’m . . . glad.”

  “Thank you,” Mom repeated with a girlish smile. I wanted to grab a flower from the table’s vase and tuck it behind her ear.

  “Well,” Harry said, his voice as skeptical as a foregone conclusion.

  “I’m glad to see you’re doing so well for yourself, Michael,” Shirley announced loudly.

  “Why?” I wondered aloud. “You never supported the idea of me going into wrestling. If it had been your decision, I would’ve gone into the same field as Jim—”

  Mom choked as Harry’s face settled into a rigid vexation. “Jim is . . . ,” Shirley paused, then turned anxiously to Harry as though waiting for him to tell the rest of a joke she had fouled up.

  “Jim is gone,” he related this information to Shawna in a stern flat tone, no doubt assuming she was the only one at the table who didn’t know what had happened.

  “Jesus!” she exclaimed. “He’s in prison, not dead. He’s still your son!” (“It got to me,” she would tell me later. “I don’t like parents that write off their kids.”)

  Irling suddenly reappeared, landing in his seat like an excited bird. “You know those sinks in the bathroom?” he asked, “My company’s working on a chip that will give them an eye. Soon you won’t have to turn a faucet at all. Just stick your hand under and—ta-da!—water comes out. Tell me that won’t cut down on germs.”

  He spun a proud smile around the table, seemingly oblivious to the silence usually reserved for blind dates that are failing miserably. My mom reached over and squeezed his hands. “That’s great, sweetie,” she said.

  Harry and Shirley left hastily before the check arrived, offering only a few murmured farewells to mark their departure. As soon as they were gone, the table’s mood unwound. Soon my mom was telling a story about the time I had named a turkey we bought at the store “Daffy” (having convinced myself it was a duck) and then broke down crying when my mom tried to cook it.

  “I remember that,” I said and grinned. “You wound up taking it back to the store, where you told me they would bring it back to life there because it was a ‘special duck.’ ”

  “Actually,” she smiled, “I kind of pulled a fast one on you. I just circled the block and came back with the same turkey. We had it for supper that night and you never noticed a thing.”

  I laughed along with everyone, a little chagrined that this possibility had never occurred to me. I wondered how many other things in life I had missed.

  Outside the restaurant, Irling and I shook hands. When I hugged my mom I noticed she was wearing perfume. “Mom, what kind of perfume is that?” I asked her.

  “Concord,” she answered. “The same kind I’ve always worn, kiddo.” She leaned in closer and whispered into my ear, “I really do like her.”

  “And I like him,” I whispered back.

  “Hey, Mom,” I said, as we pulled back a little, “I’m sorry, you know,
about missing Christmas that one year. And about . . .” But what exactly I was sorry about escaped me. It didn’t matter. She reached through flying snowflakes and touched my cheek with a warm hand.

  “Dawn.” She smiled.

  The next morning, before leaving for St. Louis, I called information and tried to track down Bryan and Marty. Marty’s old number was disconnected, and Bryan’s parents promised to give him a message the next time he called from Spain, where he was now living with a young woman he had met in a youth hostel there. This inability to reach two of my oldest friends only underscored a growing realization that I had nobody close enough to talk to about my growing feelings for Shawna. I had begun sketching a life-size drawing of her on a six-foot-long scroll of leaf paper I had tacked to a wall in my Brooklyn apartment. I didn’t know whether that could be classified as deranged or not, and there was no one around to ask. B.J. and I hadn’t spoken much since I had joined the WWO. During a four-day vacation in the slushy weeks of February, I finally got in touch with him one night. Ever since lying to Terri about Ricky Witherspoon remembering B.J.’s father, I had been reluctant to talk to B.J. Maybe he would be able to tell that I had lied. Maybe he already knew. What really scared me was that he would ask me why I had lied, because I knew how hard I would have to probe myself to come up with an honest answer.

  But when I got him on the phone he made no mention of Witherspoon. He was working at a warehouse and going to night school. Terri was studying nursing as well. “We’re gonna need two incomes real soon,” he told me. “Families are expensive.”

  “What do you mean, ‘families’?”

  “What do you think I mean, bro? We got ourselves a little Bobby Joe Junior!”

  “What?” I cried. “When?”

  “Damn, Mike,” he laughed. “We’ve been married for a year and a half.” With a start I realized this was true. Kansas City still felt too close and too real for that kind of time to have passed, but there it was.

  “How come you didn’t tell me sooner?” I asked.

  “Terri wanted to surprise you. When you came to visit,” he added pointedly.

  “Sorry, B.J.—”

  “It’s cool. The travel schedule must be hectic as hell, but try and get out here soon.”

  “I will,” I promised, knowing I probably wouldn’t. These little lies, exaggerated promises . . . each one peeled another strand off the rope of our friendship. What had once seemed unbreakable was now stretched by miles and time to the point where I couldn’t mention something that would make me vulnerable. Telling any of my fellow wrestlers about Shawna would only have been inviting ridicule. Her absolute refusal to get involved with pro wrestlers was well known by one and all. Even Chuck Beastie was off-limits as a potential confidant. Although we got along well, his intense demeanor frightened me too much to be able to confide in him.

  Our feud was ending soon anyway. SlamFest, the WWO’s yearly pay-per-view extravaganza, was set to take place the first week of April. Chuck Beastie and I were about to engage in a series of cage matches that would see him emerge victorious. He would then challenge “The American Dream” Sonny Logan at SlamFest, while The Chameleon would most likely be retired. This made me exceedingly nervous; I had no idea what other gimmick could replace it.

  A day after I learned B.J. was a father, I was spending the final evening of my four-day vacation working on my giant sketch of Shawna when I heard the knock.

  I stared at the door with curiosity and a dash of fear. Nobody had ever come knocking before. The sound came again, a bit more violent this time. I crossed over and opened it, revealing Shawna. “Surprised?” She grinned.

  “Yeah,” I lied. Shawna’s arriving at my door totally unannounced seemed right. At this point in our relationship, if she had sprouted wings I doubt I would’ve done much more than wonder what took her so long.

  We hugged and, before I even had a chance to remember it was there, she caught sight of her portrait. “My God,” she exhaled, “I don’t know whether to be completely flattered or fucking terrified.”

  “It’s just something I do to pass the time,” I mumbled.

  “Sure,” she intoned, drawing the word out with an exaggerated gentleness that made me blush until I saw she was laughing. “So,” she piped, “what’s good around here?”

  I was held speechless, searching for an answer. On my days off I rarely went outside, preferring instead the cool gray walls of my apartment where I could listen to jazz and sketch life passing by outside the window. My living room window provided me with a pleasant view of the tree-lined street outside. The houses stood with a quiet dignity. Many of them looked as settled as the families that inhabited them; these houses were possessors of secrets, collections of memories, and catalysts of dreams. They were the kinds of buildings, I realized while sketching one day, my grandfather had taken pride in building.

  I had never ventured far past the small corner grocery store that stood at the end of my block, its rusted sign boasting Best Prices. I often looked at that sign as a silent signal, bidding me not to wander out of its sight. Alone, I had been able to pass it and continue on for a minute or so, only to feel my resolve dissipate after about twenty paces. Then I would turn back and trudge underneath the sign and into the store to purchase boxed pastas and macaroni and cheese, the only two meals I ever cooked when off the road.

  “I don’t know,” I heard myself confessing to Shawna.

  We took the subway into Manhattan and strolled along a small crowded street lined with bars. We passed a blues bar with harmonies riding waves of cigarette smoke out the open door. A saxophone broke into life, swelling within a horn’s rhythm. I grabbed Shawna’s hand. “Come with me,” I said.

  I guided her into the bar. Two dark-suited men with fedoras were blowing while people watched and clapped from just a few feet away. I swung around and began dancing with Shawna, who matched my strides. When they saw us, the musicians kicked it into a jazzier mode. After a five minute session they wrapped it up and we finished with a flourish that had me dipping Shawna down to within inches of the hardwood floor. We applauded with sweaty hands, and both men tipped their hats to us.

  Then we were back on the street. “Pretty good moves in there,” Shawna was laughing. “When was the last time you danced like that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “probably high school prom.”

  “Long time,” she whistled, and bumped my hand. But I didn’t take it. I was too busy remembering the last woman, Charlotte, I had danced with like that. The last woman who had insisted I give up professional wrestling for her.

  We stopped at a corner and debated whether or not to buy a couple of hot dogs from the vendor leaning against the streetlight. He immediately noticed our interest and pounced. “I don’t sell hot dogs!” he barked. “If you want a hot dog, go up to Seventh Street where all them amateurs are. These,” he informed us, his cheeks pushed up by his smile, “these are genuine Fourth and Broadway chili cheese dogs with the works.”

  “Sold me,” Shawna said, pulling out her wallet. She cut off my mild offer to pay with, “You buy the drinks, I’ll buy the food.” I watched as she opened the wallet. There was a photograph resting in the top fold of transparent picture holders. It was of a sinewy young man with long blonde hair and skin whose tone almost matched Shawna’s. He was wearing wrestling trunks, and it was obviously a publicity shot of some kind. I quickly looked away, and was sulkily absorbed in the dynamics of the street as she turned to me with a chili cheese dog.

  We parted later that night at the door to my building. With the trace of her perfume still on my shoulder from when we had hugged, I lay in bed with indigestion. Because I didn’t consider myself the jealous type, I told myself it was just the result of the chili cheese dog. Across the room, her sketch hovered in the shadows strewn against the wall.

  The cages in WWO were similar to the ones in the SWA. They consisted of four walls made up of the same chain-link fence that surrounds school
playgrounds. But WWO cages possessed a unique feature: a trapdoor in the roof allowed wrestlers to actually clamber on top of the cage and brawl there in order to give the marks an extra thrill in hopes that one of them would go flying off and plunge thirty feet onto the arena floor.

  Naturally, Beastie and I worked out a spot toward the end of the match where we brawled on the top of the cage. The finish of the match had Beastie kicking me back through the opening. After I fell back onto the mat he would scale over to the turnbuckle, unload with a flying elbow, and pin me.

  The afternoon before our first match, Beastie responded to my greeting with a grunt. When I suggested we go over a few spots, he merely grunted again and started out toward the ring. I scanned the backstage area. No Mimi.

  The cage had been lowered from pulleys so that it fit neatly over the ring. After about twenty minutes of working on spots, he suddenly snarled at me: “You can’t be drunk or fucked up on pills when we do this match, kid.” It was the first full sentence he had uttered all afternoon.

  “I don’t do it to get drunk,” I responded carefully. “I do it to kill pain. My knee’s still fucked up from—”

  “What the hell do you know about pain?” he retorted. “I’ve been in this business eleven fucking years, wrestling at least three hundred nights out of every goddamn one of them. So don’t tell me about pain.”

  He stormed out of the cage and stalked down the aisle toward the backstage curtain, leaving me alone in the ring. I stared at the fence, through all those tiny separate holes, out into the empty arena.

  Backstage, Chuck sat alone in a corner speaking to no one. Mimi finally arrived at ten minutes before show time. As soon as she peeked into the community dressing area, Chuck shot to his feet and hustled her into a private room. I made sure to pass by the closed door a couple of times. Instead of the expected shouts, I picked up snatches of what sounded like an earnest conversation.