To: Steve Garcia
From:
[email protected] Steve,
Brilliant column. You’ve got an open and shut case that’s going to change wrestling forever. This was an amazing night.
Bruno Stanton
New York
At one time, Steve received regular emails from Bruno Stanton. Bruno was a longtime reader of the Tuesday Hangover. But when Steve started the FTG crusade, Bruno, and a hundred people like him, disappeared. Seeing Bruno’s name in his Inbox, couched among lots of familiar but long-absent names, brought about an unusual nostalgia in Steve. He was accustomed to thinking of the past few years as an unmitigated failure. Now he wondered, for the first time in memory, if that time was well-spent.
When Joey’s statement was read on the air, traffic on Wrestlinghotline.com shot through the roof. Sensing a once in a lifetime opportunity, Steve immediately posted the story, the complete story, about Max Zeffer’s payoffs to Goliath and the FTG. He opened the story with a new paragraph:
Greetings. It is now nine o’clock on Sunday night, and Joey Mayhem’s statement, recently posted on this web site, has just been read live on the air to everyone watching Apocalypse.
Unfortunately for Max Zeffer, he made the decision to read Joey’s statement without all the facts. Max must not have known or realized that someone knew the entire truth about Goliath’s faked injury in his match with Joey Mayhem on GWA Burn. Max couldn’t believe that I was preparing to post the entire sordid story of his payoff to Goliath, his payoff to the Family Television Group, and his money laundering through an investment fund in Canada.
Slugs, what you are about to read is entirely true, and comes from very credible sources. Be forewarned, for fans of Goliath or Max Zeffer, the truth isn’t pretty.
The column went on for close to three thousand words, Steve’s longest ever, with every detail included. Traffic on the web site increased steadily for the next three hours, as news of the shoot fight and accompanying expose on Wrestlinghotline spread to those who hadn’t purchased the pay per view.
By Monday morning, it was safe to say that the entire wrestling community had read Joey’s statement and Steve’s column.
Now, on Monday afternoon, with traffic finally starting to slow down, Steve was ready to post his third and final shocker, his interview with Jade. Of all three columns, he was most proud of this one, entitled, “What You Never Knew About the GWA Locker Room: An Interview With Jade Sleek.”
The column was written in Question/Answer format, beginning with the story of Jumbo’s attempted rape of Jade and Duke’s silence on the matter. In three devastating pages, Jade explained to the entire wrestling world how Duke first ignored her charge, then dropped her to the bottom of the roster. She explained how a group of veterans grew jealous and ultimately bitter at Joey Mayhem’s success, culminating in Jumbo pissing in Jade’s gym bag. She described in detail the backstage fight between Joey and Jumbo, and the aftermath. And she recounted the life of a woman wrestler in Duke’s GWA, where bikini wrestling in horse manure was a job requirement.
Steve watched the file transfer run to completion, made a pass on the live site to ensure that the newest column had properly posted, then closed his web browser. He was done. He felt relief, but also sadness. He wondered if he would ever again experience exhilaration like that of the past few days.
Back to the email box, where Steve hoped to plow through all five hundred of his unread messages. His eyes immediately picked out one from the hundreds. He opened it.
To: Steve
From: Anonymous
Dear Steve,
Congratulations on your successful columns. The entire wrestling world is talking about you this morning.
I have recently left my long-time position as head booker for Revolution Wrestling. I am planning to start my own promotion. I’ll be doing the booking, but I need a writer. I need someone young, who’s in tune with what the fans want to see. I’d like you to have the job.
Let me know if you’re interested.
Anonymous, aka Gene Harold
Steve clicked on reply. As he typed his response, an acceptance, he realized everything in his life was about to change.
He clicked Send. Then he pulled his hands from the keyboard and took a big breath through his mouth. In the past week he had flown to Canada to make a cold call on Joey Mayhem, a wrestling megastar, then boldly challenged his well-connected Anonymous source, then written and published a column that shook the entire foundation of North American wrestling, then watched in stunned surprise as it was read live on the air. Now he had just sent an email that would soon result in him moving out of his mother’s house and living the life of his dreams.
But it was his next task that made him truly nervous.
Three hours earlier, he had done a search for Irene Maxwell, from Rosemont, Illinois, age 24, on a person locator web site. It cost him $4.95, and it found for him the address and phone number of the love of his life, the one that got away.
She lived in Philadelphia. Her address suggested she was in an apartment complex. She still had her original last name.
“You only live once,” Steve said aloud as he picked up the phone.
It rang twice before a woman answered, a woman he hadn’t spoken with since she was a girl, but whose voice was still familiar.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hello, is this Irene?” Steve asked, knowing the answer.
“Yes, it is. Who’s calling?”
“Hi Irene. This is Steve Garcia.”