Wrestling

The door of the locker room had barely clicked against th latch behind him when Jey stopped in his tracks.

The floor beneath his sneakers was cool, painted gray, marked with black scuffs from decades of work and dragging equipment carts around. A draft moved down the long hallway, carrying the faint, familiar odors that defined every wrestling venue.

Ahead of him, Bambietta was already three paces down the corridor. She held the car keys loosely between two fingers, the metal rings jingling with every step. Her dark leather jacket was zipped halfway up against the chill of the arena’s air conditioning, her shoulders set in that brisk, no-nonsense posture she always assumed when a long night was finally drawing to a close.

"Come on, slowpoke," she said with sass, without looking back. "Let’s hit the road before the crews start loading the production truck, else we have to wait for them to leave first."

Jey didn’t answer.

He stayed rooted to the floor. In his right hand, he carried his gym bag, the strap biting into his palm. In his left hand, bunched into a compact ball of blue, silver, and black fabric, was his mask.

The cloth was still a bit damp from his thirty-minute war against Nakamuro. The vinyl around the brow was cool, but the interior lining held the faint warmth of his skin. His right elbow still felt a bit numb. His neck, aching by the minute as the fatigue settled into the strained muscle around his upper spine, protesting against the mere tilt of his head.

Every sensible instinct told him to follow Bambietta, get into the car, lean his forehead against the cold glass of the window, and sleep till they get home, then sleep again for uninterrupted hours.

Then his head snapped and flashed back to the corridor monitor. Some other wrestlers were gathered around it, protesting, concerning the unwarranted attack.

Through a small gap between the bodies, he saw Tyler Briggs down. He almost relived watching the sickening clatter of Moonie’s steel chair crushing the kid’s ribs from behind for the first time. He remembered the sound of the second shot...the swing that cracked across the rookie’s spine and folded him flat onto the canvas.

Briggs had worked straight minutes. He had wrestled clean, taken his bumps, outworked the tag team champions, and scored the biggest pin of his career. He had done everything right according to the spoken rules of the ring. And his reward had been a dented piece of metal across his shoulder blades because two veterans couldn’t stomach the humiliation of a rookie upset.

Jey looked down at the crumpled fabric in his fist.

The gold trim caught the harsh white glare of the overhead lighting. His father’s words echoed through the back of his mind. A few of the dramatic speeches Lee Ray used to mutter while taping his wrists on benches in Mexico.

When you’re the guy who can still stand up and fight, you don’t let them walk over anyone.

Jey let out a short breath through his nose.

"Well, what the hell."

He dropped his gym bag. It thumped against the concrete, the zipper jingling.

Jey raised both hands, caught the collar of the mask, and pulled it down over his head.

The dark mesh instantly restricted the glare of the hallway lights. The scent of damp sweat and leather surrounded him again. He adjusted the jawline with a sharp tug, hooked his thumbs beneath the chin strap, and blinked to set his vision.

The click of Bambietta’s boots stopped instantly.

She had heard the dead weight of the bag hitting the floor. Slowly, she turned around.

She stood under the buzzing fluorescent tube, one hand still gripping her keys, her eyes shrinking into razor slits as she took in the sight of him. The plain t-shirt. The dark jeans. The white sneakers. And the blue and silver mask completely covering his face.

"Damn it, I knew it," she groaned, tossing her head back toward the ceiling in expected exasperation.

"Bam--"

"Don’t ’Bam’ me, Jey," she cut in. She took two aggressive strides back toward him, stabbing an accusatory index finger into the center of his chest. "You spent half an hour getting your vertebrae scrambled by Nakamuro! You can barely turn your chin forty-five degrees to the left! One minute ago you were done for the night!"

"C’mon Bam, if someone doesn’t do it, Sun and Moon are gonna walk all over people," Jey said. His voice, muffled slightly by the mask’s mouth opening, dropped into that calm, stubborn register she hated because she knew she couldn’t break him out of it.

Bambietta threw her hands up, the car keys jingling furiously. "There’s an entire locker room full of guys and girls who haven’t even laced their boots tonight! Let someone who isn’t nursing a bruise handle it!"

"Nobody’s going out there," Jey replied, his eyes steady behind the mask. "You know how this roster works. Sun and Moon have strong ties with the office. Nobody steps into tag team business unless they’re booked to."

"And you aren’t booked to!"

"You’re right about that. But I don’t care."

Bambietta glared at him. For four long, agonizing seconds, the hallway was dead silent.

Finally, she let out a harsh, defeated hiss through her teeth. She jammed her keys deep into her jacket pocket and bent down, snatching his dropped gym bag off the floor by the strap.

"I guess your mind is set already," she said, her eyes relaxing. "Please be careful."

"You know I will," Jey said softly.

Jey didn’t wait for a second invitation.

He turned on his heels and took off down the hallway at a dead sprint.

His sneakers gripped the waxed concrete with sharp squeaks. With every stride, his bruises tightened, sending a dull reminder through his body, but the surge of adrenaline drowned out the worst of it. He rounded past the first corner, brushing past a pair of startled production assistants wheeling a heavy audio console.

"Watch it!" one of them yelled in Japanese.

Jey didn’t look back. He accelerated through the corridor, navigating the maze that ran along the belly of the Grand Auditorium. The ambient noise of the building was shifting as he was getting closer. The concluding show had turned sour, replaced by the ugly, chaotic rumble of thousands of fans actively rejecting what had happened inside the ring.

The boos were laced with genuine hatred.

He reached the staging area behind the curtain.

The space was a cramped, a dimly lit junction packed with television monitors, technical directors, and coils of thick black fiber-optic cable. Two junior stage managers wearing bulky headsets were frantically shouting into their microphones, trying to coordinate the camera cuts.

Jey was barreling toward the curtain that led to the entrance ramp when the door to the adjacent private dressing suite flew open with a violent crack.

A broad figure surged out into the narrow corridor, nearly colliding with Jey head-on.

Jey instinctively checked his footing, his sneakers sliding two inches across on the floor. He brought his hands up to brace for impact.

The other man stopped just as abruptly, planting a solid boot on the concrete.

It was Renji Okada.

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