𝐒𝐏𝐀𝐂𝐄 𝐅𝐋𝐘𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐈𝐆𝐄𝐑 █ ００１: 𝐕𝐄𝐍𝐆𝐀𝐍𝐙𝐀 𝐂𝐈𝐄𝐆𝐀

CW: slurs, violence

𝐒𝐏𝐀𝐂𝐄 𝐅𝐋𝐘𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐈𝐆𝐄𝐑 █

              ００１:

      𝐕𝐄𝐍𝐆𝐀𝐍𝐙𝐀 𝐂𝐈𝐄𝐆𝐀 . . .

---

               The beginning.

---

TAUNT & TORMENT: A VILLAIN’S ORIGIN

“You ain’t gone be no wrestler.”

“You too small.”

“And plus you got glasses.”

“And you pale as a ghost!”

“Don’t you ever go to no beach?”

“I can see right through you.”

“We all can!”

“You a four-eyes.”

“I never seen no wrestler with glasses.”

“Gimme them.”

“Four-eyes.”

“Let me try them on.”

“C’mon.”

“Let me.”

“C’mon man.”

“You a little bitch.”

“Man y’all shut the fuck up and leave his ass alone.”

“Fuck you Kody you ain’t the boss of us.”

“What you gonna do about it I decide I am the boss of us?”

“Fuck you Kody.”

“What if I did boss y’all?”

“Fuck you.”

“What if I boxed y’all? Y’all box?”

“Naw man nobody watches boxing.”

“I’m not talkin’ ‘bout watching.”

“Well only one of us here thinks he’s gone be anything. We just giving BLIND shit on account of he got stupid-assed ideas about bein’ some type wrestler.”

“Least he can take a hit. You all just talk.”

“Fuck you Kody.”

“Boy keep singing that song and you ‘bout to find out about it.”

“Hell I don’t even watch any of that gay-assed crap, I don’t know why y’all wanna watch a bunch of men in fancy panties pretendin’ to kick each others’ asses.”

“They got women too.”

“Well I don’t wanna watch no woman punchin’ on people, or gettin’ punched.”

“I like it.”

“You a weirdo, you would.”

“Some of ‘em got real big titties.”

“He a serial killer for real, daaaag, like for real for real.”

“Four-eyes the one acts like a serial killer.”

“Don’t know how to be normal.”

“I seen one them lady wrestlers do a frankenstein once.”

“Frankensteiner.”

“Four-eyes ‘bout to jump in trine correct us tell us about ‘it’s huda-con-rana’ what a faggot.”

“Why you keep picking?”

“Cuz he thinks he knows everything, boy he thinks he’s the God of Wrestling and this-and-that.”

“Think you smart cuz you talk like a computer.”

“Huh!”

“Like to break you like a computer, smash them four eyes.”

“Fuck that even means? Fuck you talkin’ like that for?”

“Cuz I want to.”

“Well you makin’ me want to do some things my-self, and you ‘bout to force my hand. You already told me you don’t box, that you ain’t never boxed, so I’m thinking we box.”

“Fuck you Kody.”

And that was the day Donnie’s orbital socket fractured.

I don’t remember his last name, but when I think about him, I hear Limp Bizkit’s “Re-Arranged.”

He never looked the same again, and I think he ended up at a different school, or maybe out of school, or maybe at some special school.

Donnie wasn’t much of a learner, but I’d like to think he learned something that day.

I like to think.

Kody got a football scholarship.

He wasn’t much of a learner either, but whose D2 O-Line is gonna say no to a 6’3” 240 pounder?

I think he went to jail before it started.

They probably don’t hold your place for you, huh?

---

---

ARDUOUS FIGURE TRAINING

Yamagata-sensei entered the dojo and loudly farted, his crisp seafoam short-shorts register-rippling a puffed rear exit’s whisper of cut-rate plenty piled high, echoing the Chinese buffet — creatively named Chinese Buffet, yellow-and-red sign, looks just like you think it looks, tastes just how you think it tastes — adjacent to Yamagata Burning Spirits Dojo.

He was a burp-and-fart man, open, given to blunt talk, sometimes disagreeable.

Big head.

Really Big Head.

And hard.

He was 60 but he simultaneously looked 40 and 80.

He knows all the nerve endings, and he’d be glad to spoil them for you.

He’s a stretcher.

He’s a hooker.

Legs like tree trunks.

Thumbs built for eyeholes.

You follow?

Good.

Because he doesn’t like questions.

Not a man with a lot of time.

“Brusque,” they’d say, if they knew the word.

But they don’t.

They’re pro wrestling trainees.

Good Homes don’t permit them, don’t produce them.

Being paid nothing to be publicly beaten in a spandex passion play is not — probabilistically speaking! — a wise decision.

They don’t know a lot of words.

Might know the ins-and-outs of the tanning bed or have particular theories about recovering from a heavy anabolic cycle, and they know damn-well where to get the best value on a burger at 1 AM at any given point on the Pennsylvania turnpike, but they aren’t big Word Guys.

Some of ‘em are talkers though, and they’re the ones who stand a chance.

“Workrate” — BLIND had learned that word on the Internet — workrate didn’t put asses in the seats, or so the heads of the big promotions thought.

There were three — three heads, and three promotions.

Used to be more, but hey — used to be more of everything.

Even when there was less.

Consolidation, huh?

Yamagata’d come up older-than-”old school,” which is to say he’d trained in an environment of broad unchecked physical and verbal abuse.

Relative to his origin, he was gentle — I’m pretty sure he pulled the slap everso-slightly when he called me “prettyboy,” and commanded:

“Haircut.”

Advice I did not mind.

To which I did not pay heed.

Probably have a meniscus tear to show for it.

If you’d care to see the X-Rays.

Stout bastard dead-assed me on a suplex lift.

Tried to bring him up and he just Did Not Comply.

Trying to teach me something, I think.

Haircut.

Evil.

---

---

CREATIVE DOESN’T HAVE ANYTHING FOR YOU

“I think you should call yourself Edipo.”

“Tell me more.”

“Well . . . you wanted a Spanish name, cuz of the mask, and you wanted to play off of blindness.”

“Right.”

“Edipo. Oedipus.”

“You want me to run an incest gimmick?”

“Edipo RX.”

“Sounds like over-the-counter boner pills.”

“No, it’s good. Sounds like one of those young exciting puroresu guys, like the Murasaki Dojo crew and all them.”

“Man, I don’t know about it . . .”

“Just think on it . . . Edipo. Edipo, Edipo, Edipo. Roll it around in your head.”

“Hell, much’s Yamagata-sensei had me rolling around on my head this afternoon I don’t know if I need to do much more’a that, and besides, you gotta figure there’s an easier way to feed the marks an ‘I Fuck My Mom’ gimmick if I gotta resort to cheap stunts.”

“How you feel about carrying a sword around?”

“What type of sword?”

“Katana probably. You could be Zatoichi. Zatoichi the Blade . . .”

“I don’t wanna do a ninja gimmick.”

“Not a ninja.”

“People’ll think I’m Japanese.”

“You want a Spanish name now.”

“It’s different.”

“Is it?”

“You know it is.”

“What about Samson?”

“Like, the Bible?”

“Yes, that one.”

“Why Samson?”

“Philistines blinded him. Figured it might resonate with you.”

“Isn’t Samson, like — big? Or, wasn’t? Or was he?”

“He’s mythological.”

“Of course. We all aspire to that.”

“What about MAGOO, but all capital letters, or maybe you spell it like M-A-G-U—”

“Magu.”

“Magu.”

“I don’t know about Magu.”

“People would call you Fagu.”

“It’s cheap heat. I’d take it. But do I need it?”

“Fagu.”

“They would absolutely call me Fagu, and they would throw garbage at me.”

COMPANION pulls out a pocket-sized Japanese-to-English dictionary.

“You know I don’t really know how this language works, so you might want to check with Yamagata-sensei before you roll with this one, but looks to me like ‘Magu’ means ‘mug’ in Japanese, and maybe some other stuff.”

“Well if I get over in Japan are they gonna think I’m working some kinda beverage gimmick? I mean I guess I could, could be kinda cool. I could get Calpico to sponsor me, or U.C.C. — hey, you don’t think I could pass as Hawaiian, right? No — . . . or maybe I could wrestle as Coca-Cola Boy. Could be a one-off. Gotta get the costume made, then, though . . .”

“I don’t think that’s a good route for you. Let’s stay with Magu for now.”

“Fagu. Fagyu beef. Faygo Boy.”

“You’re just saying stuff.”

“I mean, yeah — you too. That’s what we do.”

“I’d like to think I’m saying stuff, not just saying stuff.”

“You’d like to think a lot of things, cuz you like to think. As for me, I’d like a drink.”

---

---

GUISE

Mask-maker, mask-maker, make me a mask.

You see I am blind.

It’s a special task.

I’ll need a window.

I’ll need some glass.

Five-percent tint.

Y’all can’t see my ass.

Gonzalo and Alma’s home smelled of long-simmering cooking.

Warm and receiving.

I’d come to Texas for their services.

They’d made masks forty years.

Some of the greats found their faces here.

The Veiled Pantheon.

Panthers and tigers and champions.

Hundreds of faces, millions of masks.

Low stucco slung flat modest in the desert borderland.

And when I look out my window — what do you think I see?

Black-cats pumpkins dragons and all manner of diablerie line the shelves of the tight workroom, equipped with heritage tools in the rear of the small house.

And how shall I obliterate my visage?

“You don’t talk like a wrestler.”

Gonzalo is laughing.

I assure him I talk all type of ways.

“You gonna scare the fuck out of them in this one.”

Alma gives him a disapproving look.

“It’s over here, over here — hold on, I put it somewhere over here . . .”

He’s got a pile of — looks like Power Ranger heads?

The guillotine’s come to Angel Grove.

He’s sifting.

Sorting the decapitants.

“Here we are.”

Emerges from his hunch.

Adjusts the tuck of his flannel and stands back proudly into his heels.

Raises his work.

It is Medusa’s head,

Slain victorious.

And it is mine now.

Envenomed all-black.

Chryselephantine galactic emperor.

Venetian kaiju carnival.

Max Ernst returned from Mars.

Obsidian sandscape.

Guilty tragicomedy.

Murdered out space-time.

Mythic riff.

I’d told Gonzalo I’d wanted to Be a void, and he’d delivered.

He hadn’t known the word.

I hadn’t expected him to.

That was fine.

I’d spoken it to him in other words.

Put it another way.

And he’d put it together.

“Me llamo 𝐕𝐚𝐜í𝐨 𝐀𝐫𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚.”

I’d pulled all my bullshit from a Spanish-English dictionary I’d forgotten to return to the library.

“That’s your ring name? You wrestling in Méjico?”

He’s fucking with me, just a little bit.

This whimsical man.

Maker of marionettes.

“A veces.”

“They’re gonna love this shit.”

Alma’s prim frown.

Karma comedown.

Gonzalo’d found the void.

Full-force.

“Try it on!”

She insists.

And Gonzalo, lordly.

Gleam-white teeth under neat moustache.

Hands it over.

I know the word — orgulloso.

Feels like it’d be a cognate.

Isn’t.

Better in Spanish, I think — sounds swoll-up, ballooned.

I swish it around in my head as the elderly couple regards me.

Proud, proud.

Gonzalo and Alma take pride in their work.

Why work with anyone who doesn’t?

We make an incredible team.

Gonzalo proceeds over my coronation, slipping the mask on.

Takes a step back.

Alma adjusts.

“How it’s feeling? It’s sitting right?”

Just right.

Beaming secretly.

I nod.

Silent.

“And you can talk?”

“I can talk.”

Gonzalo again laughs, whinnying hyena, endearing.

I ask:

“You can hear?”

“We can hear.”

Confirmed.

All smiles, though mine’s hidden.

As all of me is, and will be.

“You can see?”

“I can see.”

. . .

“Can you see me?”

“Better than ever.”

My constructors surround me, circling 360.

Take me in.

On the outside, I am eyeless.

Clever Gonzalo’s fitted the mask with prescription glass.

Seamless.

Fits right in.

Approval reigns.

“Does it look cool?”

“Looks cool as fuck.”

“Alma?”

“Intimidating.”

She speaks seldom.

But voluminously.

And with illumination.

I unmask, placing my new head carefully in a paper box.

Had been for cowboy boots.

Gonzalo’d had it laying around.

Convenient.

Some company he’d used to work for.

He’d made shoes.

How he got into maskmaking, apparently.

Fucking around in the workshop.

An awl and ambition.

Told it to me over pozole.

As Alma observed us quietly.

Periodically interjecting to ensure that the fast-talking Gonzalo took his meal warm.

We discuss wrestlecraft and stagecraft and maskcraft and all manner of costumery.

My occasional busted gringo Spanish utterances serve as a continual source of amusement.

Gonzalo laughs and laughs, twinkles.

He reminds me of a misplaced leprechaun.

I remind him of everyone.

She tolerates me, and sweetly.

I remind her of the void.

Night falls on El Paso.

As we wind down, I decline a buñuelo — “you young guys all on some crazy diet now!”

Gonzalo’s from another time.

A time of big men and hard chops.

Concrete rings with no give.

Head full-up with Santo movies and memories of rowdy crowds.

We’ve all got the barely-suppressed desire to riot.

“Vacío when you’re a big big star down in Méjico” — grinning, grinning, he is still fucking with me — “you give that motherfucker Salvador a slap in the face for me.”

Pounds his flannel chest with a small bunched fist.

He speaks of Salvador Quintanilla, infamous Mexican wrestling promoter.

The lucha libre world had long been stuck with this scourge.

They say he fucks kids.

Lot of young boys around.

All the time, all the time.

They talk about him on the Internet.

And in real life, too.

Say he’s a pimp.

Heard he’s killed.

Or had people killed.

Can have people killed.

They say a lot of things.

I hear a lot of things.

All the time.

Rumors of sodomy and mayhem follow him.

But he’s got money, somehow.

No one’s sure.

Drugs?

No idea.

You’d have to know the man.

Buena suerte.

The show goes on.

Though he’d asked for a slap, I promise Gonzalo a closed-fist.

He blesses the initiative.

Mask in box and box in trunk.

On the road we go.

12 hours time to Los Angeles.

Where my bodysuit awaits.

Vacío Arpista is born.

---

---

A MINOR MANGLING

A trampoline is in many ways like a wrestling ring.

In certain critical ways it is not.

Derek-or-it-might-have-been-Derrick-or-fuck it and his cousin Will — likely spelt Will, smelt of sour milk — were at my house, my mother’s house.

The family home, or something like it.

Derek was someone I called the “diagonal across the street kid,” and I think he thought of me as the “cattycorner kid,” though he’d say it like “kitty-cowrner” and it really burned my ears up, it did.

We weren’t friends but for convenience.

In the easy manner of children.

We weren’t friends.

We were alone.

Us and the powerlines’ hum and sky grey.

Will and Derek both watched wrestling, but they liked all the guys I didn’t like and didn’t like all the guys I did.

Conversation spare.

Backyard bouncing.

I the youngest and lightest.

Highest if not mightiest.

Calls for a contest.

But what doesn’t?

And so it’s flips forward and flips backward and trips and spills too.

Twists and swerves and jukes and jolts.

A new contest:

Who could yell the worst word the loudest?

I didn’t win it.

Wasn’t willing to go far enough.

Derek won.

I think Will had some civility.

Too much.

Even when he got his hand caught in the metal tension of the trampoline’s springs as Derek gave me a botched powerbomb Will didn’t say anything that bad.

I bounced three or four times and he screamed along with each return.

I remember blood.

Concerns of lawyers.

I remember there was an ambulance.

I don’t know who’d have called it.

Maybe a neighbor.

Man, I gotta tell you —

I don’t really remember my childhood anymore.

I don’t think.

Never did see Will again.

Didn’t see much of Derek either.

---

---

THE TOTAL LOOK

I’d met her at the buffet.

She liked rock-and-roll from another time, and I looked like it.

An easy mark.

She’d been on tour with some band.

“Merch girl.”

Pouty tout.

Candy.

Ass.

Some graphic tee, black, all shredded up and resewn.

Jeans, same.

Wild eyes built for SSRIs.

But it’s a little early for that.

We don’t live in that world.

Not yet.

Perhaps we’ll come to describe it later.

Unwrap the present.

If we should survive.

Work a safe style.

Work smart, kid.

Could have a long career ahead of you.

Legend, legacy.

No idea what’s ahead of me.

But I see what’s in front.

She’s alone, this girl.

In a restaurant.

“You want to join us?”

I’d blurted it out unknown and possessed.

There are no accidents.

Our party grew.

I was with two other trainees.

The mood was a groan.

I’d pissed Yamagata-sensei off something strong about an hour ago.

Didn’t care for my push-up form.

He had other ideas about things.

He’d had a lot of shoulder surgeries, too.

Think those might go together.

“What’s the band called? That you’re out here with?”

She told us.

It sounded dumb.

Garrett, who aspired to wrestle as a Mortal Kombat knockoff character he called “Kabal” (it wasn’t going to work out) pretended to know the band.

He’d been staring at her tits since she’d sat down.

I’d noticed because I’d been sneaking glances myself.

I resented his overtness.

Envied his shamelessness.

If not its unbecoming outcomes.

“I mean . . . they’re shitty to be honest with you, I just . . . I —”

She disavowed them.

Garrett — Kabal, really — Kabal had overplayed his hand.

“Well . . . my ex is in the band, and . . .”

She shrank a bit.

Shoulders-in.

Trailed off.

I prompt her:

“Well, what about you? What do you want to do? I mean, like — for yourself?”

Back to life.

“Well, I’m a seamstress . . .

My mother . . .”

Trailing again.

She spoke in gestures.

We all do.

Her moreso.

It would irritate me in most people, but she’s cute.

So cute.

All day it’s been me and Kabal and this other sweaty fellow, wants to do some creepy male stripper gimmick, calls himself Mr. Entertainment — no way in hell that’s not taken, right? Like get your own ideas — anyway I’ve been spending all day with Kabals and Mr. Entertainments all manner of wannabes imposters and frauds — and I but one! — and the easy sweetness of Jenna — her name is Jenna — invigorates the weary spirit.

“So you’re all wrestlers?”

I wonder where she’s from.

(it’s L.A.)

“Yes.”

Mr. Entertainment has entered the chat.

Taps a heavy forefinger on the Yamagata Dojo logo — a suggestion of a mountain at the breast of his cut-out muscle-tank.

Not a talker.

Despite his name, he can’t work the stick at all.

Any of them, probably.

Can’t cut a promo worth a damn.

He’s a void in his own way.

Charismatically.

Shitty worker, too.

Loose where you’d want tightness, stiff when grace calls.

Crazy body on him, though.

Betting it came from a needle.

Bet his dick doesn’t even work.

Not at all.

Bet he killed it dead with that juice.

He’s trying anyway.

He’ll droop-dead one day soon with an exploded heart for sure.

I’ve seen that pimpled back.

We all have.

We all know what it means, Mr. Entertainment.

Unless you roll around in shit all day.

Which in a sense I suppose you do.

We didn’t fuck that night.

Me and Jenna.

The ex thing made me wary.

But we did a couple weeks later.

When she came out on a bus, alone.

Ex begone.

I had a match that night, at an autoworkers’ union hall.

One of my first.

I hadn’t totally figured it out yet, the Final Gimmick.

Pennsylvanian audiences can be very discerning.

I knew I didn’t want to wrestle under my “own” name, my “real” name.

But I didn’t want to be some ripoff artist like Kabal and all the others.

She didn’t care at all.

She didn’t care about wrestling.

That was ideal.

I did care about tailoring.

“You know . . . I might be able to use your skills, if you want to put your skills to use.”

Quantum entendre.

As ever.

It worked.

It’s a work.

The gimmick fits.

And I need outfits.

Looks.

A UAW Hall one night.

Korakuen the next.

Or that’s the hope.

Then on to the Tokyo Dome.

Arena Mexico.

Madison Square.

Circle the globe.

Piss territorial.

Collecting hardware.

And hype.

Amassing victories and heat.

Disqualification defeats.

Seven-league boots.

Heeled.

Heavenly layers of belts.

Robes, ornate.

Sleeves regal.

A ring jacket.

Custom kickpads.

The whole bit.

Give me everything.

Storied gold.

But for now I am squalorous.

So I ask you —

One Thing.

Can a beheaded jester play the role of a king?

Can fairness bear to shine in Lucifer’s bringing?

Am I born witness?

Blessed in being?

In my nonsense she acquiesced.

And in that fling,

Pegasus wings.

Now dear-girl Jenna does my tailoring.

---

---

TEN BELLS FOR FARGO

Fargo Riggins is a fat fuck who owes me two hundred-fifty dollars.

We are in the back of the autoworkers’ hall now, a place it seems likely that some genuine and vicious beatings have gone down over the years.

I am in his face.

Jenna’s in the car.

It’s running.

Jenna has been advised to stay in the car.

And to keep it running.

Fargo Riggins is a fat fuck who owes a lot of people a lot of things, money being merely the most vulgar and outwardly accountable avatar of his owings.

He will bear accountability now, grisly.

Thusly:

A fist or three.

He’s pissed off Kabal too, and for All the Bullshit of the World, for all its fizz and kayfabe:

Kabal is a man named Garrett Barlow who served in the Special Forces, and Garrett Barlow In Real Life is properly a Judo Joe Psycho Mother Fucker.

That’s a shoot.

I mean I’m not saying I couldn’t kick Fargo Riggins’ ass — he might have four inches and a hundred-fifty or so pounds on me, but let me tell ya somethin’ kid it’s four inches a hundred-fifty pounds of SHIT is what it is, and I’m gonna punch this fat fuck in the FACE if he doesn’t give me my FUCKING MONEY.

“Fuck you Garrett.”

 “Fuck you say to me.”

  “Fuck you Garrett.”

“Fuck you say to me.”

 “Fuck you Garrett.”

   “Fuck you say to me.”

♲

They’re both in loops.

They’re stupid.

Genuinely.

I weigh in.

Cruise missile.

Dropkick.

“Fargo you bitch ass mother fucker you told me and Kabal we’s goin’ home with two-fifty each you crooked son of a bitch and it’ll be three-fifty each if you don’t find the cash in the next fifteen minutes!”

“You think I take orders from you, pipsqueak?”

“I don’t think you could take orders at a drive-through you saggy-tittied fuck, now crawl up your own ass and find the goddamn money or we start breaking shit, starting with you!”

Goblin nostrils.

Fargo steamed.

“That mouth of yours! I oughta pull every tooth out of it! You deserve every horrible thing in this world!”

“Well bring us five-hundred the most horrible things you can find, you got ten minutes.”

Kabal spat:

“Asswipe.”

Suggestion of a shove but Not Quite.

It’s not time to fuck yet.

Kabal and I retreat to the corner of the (alleged) “dressing room.”

You can imagine Fargo’s cheap ideas.

Kabal’s in a smoke-grey futuristic ninja costume.

Looks cheap, too.

They’re all just so cheap.

So, so cheap.

Cheap, cheap, cheap.

Me I’m turned out in Jenna.

And her mother was for real.

She’d passed down significant wisdom and handicraft.

I looked pro.

Better than.

Plus‐que‐parfait.

I’m the be-all end-all.

The destroyer of worlds.

I am the most stylish professional wrestler to ever lace boots.

Ever.

“Kali fuckin’ Yuga, man,”

Kabal makes no sense, but does it in his own way.

“Cowabunga, dude,” I offer back.

Fargo Riggins is out at the payphone, desperate.

Doesn’t look like he’s having much luck.

Doesn’t look like.

“What you figure the security deposit is on this place? We can tear up camp and really hit Fargo in his pocketbook if he tries to fuck us.”

“Fuck the deposit, think about how mobbed up the people running this place probably are — we fuck shit up in here and Fargo’s in deep shit with Vic Cardamone and probably the Colangelos, too.”

“The fucking Colangelos . . .”

“The shit we’d do to the big fat fuck would pale in comparison to what Carlo Colangelo will do to that man, if you could even call it a man what would be left when Carlo got done doing . . .”

“You blow one venue and word gets around, too. Fargo Riggins won’t be booking anything in the Northeast ever again if we get to havoc.”

“I say we just start bustin’ fuckin’ pipes.”

“You don’t think he’s got a gun or nothing?”

“Doubt it. Maybe some lousy-assed cousins.”

“Fuck his fucking cousins.”

“Fuck him.”

Fargo is sweating cold in his plain red collegiate singlet.

Keg of a man.

Dialing for dollars.

All sloppy balls.

He’s got a little notebook out, he’s dropping it.

He’s dropped it.

No Rolodex I guess.

Makes sense.

Piece a shit.

Fargo fuckin’ Riggins.

Guy in a referee shirt’s pacing around us.

Last guy left.

I’d call him The Referee, but the show’s over.

He’s Clint, now.

Little wisp of a fellow.

Clint.

Little wisp of hair.

Hands on hips.

Everyone else’s split.

Nervous circles.

Clint works at the mall, when he is not The Referee.

He got paid tonight, twenty-five, from Fargo.

He’s made good.

“Look, look —” he gulps for air.

“I think I can solve this.”

Whips it out.

NOKIA.

“What’s with the fuckin’ communicator, Spock?”

Kabal’s mockery.

“You guys know damn well Fargo’s burnt everyone. Tonight’s just your night.”

                Hell no.

“The fuck it is. Tonight’ll be our night alright, but in our way. Not his.”

A jabbed finger.

Clint’s not built for this.

Kabal interrogates.

“How you affordin’ that thing on your refereeing and RadioShack money?”

“Man I quit RadioShack two years ago, they got me on at the Verizon’s now.”

“Shit man I don’t ever go to the mall, I thought you’s still at RadioShack.”

“Naw man like I said I quit there, then I’s at Payless for a minute, then I cut lawns with my dad for the summer, then they got me on at Verizon’s.”

“You working that kiosk?”

“Yeah man they got me out in the open with them Israeli perfume boys but listen — before y’all kick Fargo’s ass or rip this place apart or whatever you’re set on doing let me try to call in a favor. One perk of the job,” Clint pauses with an uncharacteristic slyness, performs an altogether unpleasant and uncanny gesture with his eyebrows. “Other than looking at chicks all day long, I mean . . .”

More eyebrows.

“I get this phone. So I can just collect digits all day long, baby.”

“The fuck you talking about, Clint?”

“Y’all might not know it but when I’m not reffing I’m honestly kind of a freaking pimp.”

“Yeah, you? . . . I could see it, sure . . . Go on.”

“Well the other day this real rich bitch come in the mall, wagging ass in one them li’l bodycondom dresses I think they call ‘em, you know the ones, and she’s passing me up one time two times three times and after a while I’m like God Damn, enough, woman, I get the message. And I was about to make my move when Yigal and Joel from the damn perfume kiosk totally freaking cockblocked me.”

“Sounds like you took a tag team finisher, Clint.”

“Boy I’ll say.”

“So what happened — they dragged her back to the apartment complex and partied her?”

“Naw Garrett.”

“Call me Kabal.”

“Even now, after?”

“Kabal.”

“Alright Kabal. Naw, they just warmed her up for me, know what I’m sayin’?”

“I don’t know what you’re saying Clint. Anyway, how the hell’s this get us our money?”

I took to the doorway:

“FIVE FUCKIN’ MINUTES FARGO. FIVE FUCKIN’ MINUTES AND THIS PLACE GOES UP IN FLAMES, WITH YOU IN IT. DO YOU HEAR ME?”

He’s “on the phone” but I think he’s pretending.

He acts hard, like he’s gonna do something about it.

Holds up one finger.

“THREE FUCKIN’ MINUTES RIGGINS. FIGURE. IT. OUT.”

I tear a promotional flyer for the show from the front door.

It’s a dramatic business.

And all the world’s a trap door.

I get back and I’ve missed the resolution of Clint’s story.

A pity.

He’s on the phone with Doris Duke or Catherine the Great or whoever the fuck.

She’s at least given him the courtesy of picking up.

Fargo’s received no such courtesy.

Still out there fishing but nobody appears to be biting.

Couple minutes’ time and we’re in demolition mode.

90 seconds to sabotage.

One fuckin’ minute, Fargo, and then me and Kabal are gonna break your fuckin’ knees’ knees.

Clint’s at ease.

“Alright, alright, cool . . .

Yeah, we’ll be right by.”

What the fuck?

What type of shit did Clint pull off here?

“You told her we’re to get six hundred, right?”

“I did.”

Good boy Kabal.

“FARGO YOU PIECE OF SHIT GET OVER HERE AND MEET YOUR SAVIOR.”

Riggins drops the telephone receiver.

“I just about had it! I’s on the phone with Wade Albemarle promotes shows with me sometimes out in Delaware, and he said he could wire out some money tomorrow, and—”

Drops the act.

“Fuck your tomorrow, Fargo. Get over here, get down on your hands and knees and kiss this man’s boots.”

“Clint ain’t even wearin’ boots.”

“You know what, you’re right.”

“He is right.”

Fargo is right.

“You know Kabal I think Mountain Man Jack left his damn gym bag behind, why don’t you go and get Mountain Man Jack’s gym bag, and we can get his boots on out of there and put ‘em on Clint’s feet, and Clint can take them ugly fuckin’ sneakers off and play with the big boys for a minute, and you Fargo, you can take six slow licks on them boots, on Mountain Man Jack’s boots, cuz what you are is a forktongue devil and you know it, so it’s three sets of six licks on them boots for you.”

“You’re outta your fuckin’ mind!”

Looked him dead in the eye.

“I’m compost mantis.”

Pointed at my head.

The Genius Gesture.

“Kabal, get the boots.”

Garrett tossed his head back and roared.

Kabal came right on out, emerged.

Live the gimmick.

He performed a throat-slitting taunt, staring down Fargo, then set about the task of retrieving Mountain Man Jack’s deserted duffel and its promised pungence.

“You fuck with us we’re gonna fuck you. This man just saved your ass. You better up his pay. Next time he’s reffing it’s fifty bucks for Mr. Supermodel Pussy. You get me? Matter of fact, with that phone of his, that’s a hell of a gimmick — next time we come through your territory, which is never, by the way, we’re gonna run you off the circuit altogether — but next time we come around here and are working for a promoter worth a damn and not some shameful snake in the grass piece of trash, Clint’s gonna be our damn manager, and he’s gonna bop people with that phone when the ref ain’t looking.”

I was on one.

“Fargo you got no fuckin’ vision. People like you got no place in this business, and it is a business. That’s what it is. That’s where you fuck up. You’re playing games . . .

This is war, baby.”

Kabal’s back with the boots.

“Damn, Jack’s got some big-ass feet, man.”

Clint’s in awe of the 15EEE custom stompers.

They’d had quite a night

Mountain Man Jack had bled furiously in a mid-card deathmatch with some new guy — called himself The Arsonist, a recent parolee who may or may not have been lying about having ever trained.

Now Mountain Mad Jack tolerated bleeding, but The Arsonist seemed to love it.

They’d bled buckets for all the hundred-fifty or so people who’d shown.

They’d horrified children.

That was the first time Jenna’d gone out to the car.

She liked horror movies, too.

Not that kind.

“Good thing you’re fully compliant with all the state regulations on blading and medical testing, Fargo.”

Clint slipped on the first of MMJ’s boots.

“Caring for your talent ensures a safe workplace environment.”

And the second.

On this night, Fargo Riggins gave thanks, paid tribute.

An unknown benefactor’d saved his ass, if not his dignity.

The UAW Hall escaped destruction.

Carlo Colangelo’s telephone does not ring.

A caravan of vehicles formed, off to secure the collection of payment — Jenna and I in the rental Lexus (we’d been upgraded), Kabal in his dayjobbers’ Ford Ranger, Fargo in the Econoline (I think he does HVAC sometimes), and the newly minted King Clint the Pimp leading the way in his Pontiac coupe.

As it turns out, he’s the kind of guy with an underglow kit.

Makes sense.

---

                 Not the end.

---

𝐉𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐒 𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐍 𝐃𝐄𝐕𝐈𝐍𝐄 / a / k / a ＪＱＤ is a self-taught integrated media company founded and incorporated in 𝙻𝙾𝚂𝚃 𝙴𝚁𝙾𝚂, 𝙲𝙰.

“Thank you . . .

Thank you.”

💙

💙

💙