As you lean against the wall, dreaming of glory, Sam steps out of the men’s dressing room clad in his briefs and boots, his soon-to-be-lost belt draped over an oiled shoulder, and gives you a pat on the rump.
“She’s not going to know what hit her,” he says.
This is not exactly a wholehearted gesture of confidence or support, but it is a long way from where he began. And you have to hand it to him: the man has been a sport. He was at Lansky Brothers today, too, as were a photographer from the Daily News and six hand-selected members of the Memphis branch of the Gorgeous Girls (no more open calls; they’d certainly learned that lesson). You were all there to hype the event, and hype you did, thrilling customers in the most brazen fashion: straightening ties, fastening belts, and even borrowing some tailor’s tape to measure the inseam of the dark-haired singer, who’d blushed in response. Every time you checked your periphery to get Sam’s reaction, his discomfort was visible, but, to his credit, he showed enormous restraint. He was willing to play his part, it seemed, which left you free to play yours. And as you did, the photographers shot roll after roll, taking pictures that might have appeared in the next day’s newspapers and wrestling magazines if the unfortunate event that was soon to occur didn’t render them wholly unsuitable.
But you don’t know about that yet. Right now, as you and Sam stand with your arms around each other’s waists, looking out at the ocean of people, listening as the set wraps up and mindlessly bopping your heads along to the beat, the outcome is unknown; anything is possible. There is every reason to believe that you and Sam will have a long, happy relationship, which will be balanced by your long, happy career, free of compromises, beginning with a surprise victory tonight. For once, the people out there in the crowd aren’t the only ones prepared for anything to happen.
• • •
Before you know it, it is upon you—the moment of reckoning. Mimi is in her corner and you are in yours, your attention sharply focused despite the low roar of the crowd. Your best shot, you have decided, is to come out guns a-blazin’. If it comes down to who has more stamina, Mimi will win, but if you come hard at the beginning, you at least stand a chance of catching her by surprise or forcing her hand. This is the only way: a fast win, an early win. And so, as soon as the bell rings, you drive toward her.
As might be expected, Mimi stops you with a ref’s hold, but, propelled by your go-for-broke strategy, you twist out and flop her onto the mat with a snap mare. Before she can get up, you stomp your foot into her midsection, putting the full force of your desire into the blow. She doesn’t make a sound, but she curls like a slug, her back to you. Instinctively, you understand that she is hurt; you have discovered—or, better yet, created—a weakness. Now, you must zero in on this spot. Before she can recover, you race around and give her another kick in the breadbasket. This time, she cannot contain her groan.
Another kick doesn’t make for much of a show, but tonight is about winning, not theater. You must take advantage of every opportunity, so you rear back for a third. But before you can make contact, Mimi rolls under the ropes. She may have her vulnerabilities, but the woman knows how to get out of a jam. When you dive on top of her in hopes of an early pin, she snakes her legs around you into the ropes, working them just enough to force the ref’s interference and buy herself some precious time.
After the ref breaks it up, Mimi retreats to her corner, shoots you a look—What the hell was that?—and then paces the ring, studying you. She seems stunned and unnerved—good signs. You better act now, Gwen, while she is still bewildered, because once she figures out that you are neglecting her warning—that you aim to win—she’s going to come at you like a hammer.
You lunge, but it’s too late: in no time, Mimi puts you in a headlock and drops you both onto the mat. It is well within her capacity to roll you onto your back and pin your shoulders, but you know how to handle her. You snake a leg over her neck, and, careful to hold her under the chin and not on the throat, lock her into a head scissors. Mimi twists forcefully, heaving you onto your backside, but you manage to keep her head clamped. She thrashes about, more panicked than usual, perhaps because it leaves her midsection exposed and she senses that you have honed in on this vulnerability. It is difficult to hit her from this position, but you manage to get in one chop, and another harder one. Then, while she is still reeling from this last hit, you roll onto your stomach, cross your ankles, and press down on her shoulders with your shins. It’s working—the ref slaps the mat once—but she twists, gets a shoulder off. You are so close, you sense, and, seeing the rope just in front of you, you reach out for it, hoping to steal that extra bit of leverage it would give you. But, just as your fingers brush it, you drop your hand. Mimi already thinks you have come by your station in a less than honorable way. Better to lose than for her to always second-guess your right to the title. Instead, you concentrate your energy and bear all the pressure those roadworked legs of yours can muster onto her shoulders.
The ref hits the mat again, and then again and again. First fall: Gwen Davies.
The response from the crowd is instantaneous: a roar of approval accompanied by the shaking of seat backs, the stomping of feet on chairs, the piggybacking leaps of Gorgeous Girls onto their escorts. You scramble off the mat and climb up the turnbuckle to take it in. Yes, it is loud and boisterous and spectacular, but the way you experience it is more than sight and sound. It is the force of their collective desire: they all want Mimi defeated. If you can’t do this, you are going to let all of them down. The notion of disappointing them fills you with fear. If there was ever any doubt—if your want of a victory tonight ever wavered, if Sam’s concerns or your own occasional ambivalence ever really made you question its merits—it is gone now, blown away by the winds of their desires. You want to give them what they want, what you have implicitly promised every time you have winked an eye or blown a kiss.
There is only one way this can end. You don’t just want to win; you have to.
• • •
One down, one to go.
As soon as the bell rings, you charge again, anxious to work fast, to act before Mimi has time to think or catch her breath. This time, you manage to get her in a chicken wing and apply much more pressure than theatrics would dictate. She may have been unsure of your strategy earlier, but this, she reads loud and clear: you are doing your damnedest to take this fall, too.
“Is this your idea of gratitude?” Mimi hisses back at you.
You suck in your breath and then exhale, low and slow. “I don’t owe you tonight.”
“You sure about that?” Her nostrils flare. “After what I did for you?”
“What exactly do you think you have done for me?” you ask, giving her wrist another yank.
“What exactly—” When she turns her face toward you, you can see that it is clammier than it should be this early in the match. Perhaps your plan has paid off; perhaps she is more injured than she is letting on. “I could have destroyed you,” she spits.
“Destroyed me? I think you overestimate yourself.” You give her wrist another little yank. “You want to win? Then win.”
“You’re on,” she says, and then sets you straight with an elbow to the stomach.
This blow knocks the wind out of you, but, sensing you don’t have much time, you come back with a kick—not your usual imitation roundhouse, but one that makes full contact—and, landing one, attempt another. It’s too predictable. The second time, Mimi grabs your leg, drops you flat on your back, and dives on top of you. Desperate, you lock your arms and legs around Mimi and roll the both of you under the ropes and over the apron until you both thwack down onto the announcer’s table.
“What do we have here, folks?” he says, scrambling to get out of the way. “Ladies and gentlemen, you won’t get this kind of excitement anywhere else. This is no-holds-barred, going-for-broke grappling at its best. And this is just the women!�
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Both you and Mimi scramble to your feet, rush to adjacent sides of the ring, and climb in. Luckily, you get to your feet just a hair ahead of her, enough time to attack first. You maneuver her into a full nelson and, once your grip is locked, toss her side to side to get her dizzy. You’re running out of gas, but you have to act, so you jump up and put her in a body scissors, using your weight to drag her down to the mat. Mimi comes alive, presses back, nearly pinning your shoulders, but you manage to roll back, lifting her up with your legs, and slam her forcefully onto her seat. She doesn’t make a noise, but you are well aware that the maneuver is hard on the torso, and so, your hold still secure, you roll back and drop her again, and she moans. Still, she has enough in her to roll onto her side, and then her abdomen, push up on her forearms, and twist until she is on top of you. You struggle with everything you have left, but she still manages to work her way up to her feet, your legs in her arms. Your eyes go wide—she is clearly wounded, her face braced, but by the sheer force of her will, she begins to spin.
It is not the first time you have been on the receiving end of the Hollander Helicopter, but it is the most punishing. This time, instead of hurling you safely within the confines of the mat, where you might land on your back with little damage, Mimi launches you into the turnbuckle, lacerating your shoulder blade. Before the ref can see the blood and call time, Mimi drags you, wincing with pain, into the middle of the mat, where she applies just enough force to secure the pin.
The audience groans with disapproval, and as you slouch over to the corner so the ring doctor can stop your bleeding, you feel your confidence waning, doubt creeping in. It is one–all—anyone’s game—but you can’t help but wonder if you have missed your chance. You lean against the ropes while the doc presses a towel against the cut for what feels like forever: long enough, you are sure, for Mimi to refresh and regroup. You try to push these thoughts out of your mind, but with every moment that passes, you feel your victory slipping away.
Sure enough, when the doc signals that you are ready and the bell rings, Mimi springs, whipping you into a hammerlock and then running you around the mat before flopping you down. As soon as you get to your feet, she fires a judo chop into your chest that knocks you back into the ropes.
Everything hurts. It will be over soon if you can’t do something now, Gwen. If there is still some small well of resources for you to tap into, this would be the time.
As it turns out, there is: mercifully, you come to your senses quickly enough to harness the momentum and bounce back with a flying leg scissors. One foot lands on Mimi’s chest, the other hooks behind her knee, sweeping the veteran wrestler onto her back. This move signals a turning of the tides, which the audience endorses with hearty, full-throated glee. You hear someone scream, Take her out!; still another yells, Make her bleed! Bolstered by their faith, much sturdier than your own, you manage to grab one of Mimi’s legs with one arm and her torso with the other, lift her off her feet and drop her back over your knee. Mimi rolls onto the mat, limp with pain, and the crowd goes wild. They make their collective wish known, loud and clear: Drop/the/Bomb/shell! Drop/the/Bomb/shell! Drop/the/Bomb/shell!
You would love to oblige them—for your victory to be as poetic as all the choreographed ones before it have suggested it might be—but sadly, you cannot. The Bombshell is a stunt. If you are going to win, you will have to rely on tactics that are less artful but more effective.
This maneuver, the most infamous of your career, will pass in a flash and occur before you can give it a first thought, let alone a second. For those not in attendance, the only evidence will be articles from the Daily News and Wrestling As You Like It, neither of which will mention the prematch interviews but instead will focus on this moment, describing it in one as malicious and the other as positively criminal. In this tiny capsule of time, brief but eternal, you forgo not only your signature finishing move but all semblance of entertainment, not to mention sportsmanship, by rearing back and planting a Green Goddess squarely in Mimi’s abdomen.
Wrestling As You Like It will describe Mimi’s subsequent scream as earth-splitting. The Daily News will use this more ominous word: deathly.
As soon as you hear that sound, you know something is terribly wrong and drop to the mat, where your opponent lies folded in half. “Mimi,” you say, searching her face; “Mimi,” you say again, listening to her quick, shallow breaths. Before you can say anything else, the ref is on top of you, pulling you away. You have no choice but to steady yourself and take in the scene from a distance. The ref, the ring doctor, and Mimi, quiet now but for those breaths, her pallor graying, take up the foreground; behind them is the audience. Take her out! they cried. Make her bleed! Now that you’ve done what they asked you to do, they have all clammed up. All around you, people stand and stare, their hands over their mouths.
You cannot move. More and more people rush past you toward the injured wrestler: Joe, Johnny, and who knows who else. Again, someone yanks you backward; this time, it is Sam.
“Let’s go,” he says. He holds open the ropes, but you don’t budge. “Through the ropes!” he barks. “Now!”
This does this trick: you move slowly, but at least you move. “Jump down,” he says, and you do. This seems to be working: concrete directions. “Walk faster,” he commands, and the two of you barrel up the aisle, past the audience, still stunned, and march right into the grasp of two policemen, on-site to provide security, who take over the orders.
“This way,” says the elder of the pair, covering the right flank as the four of you hurry out of the auditorium: down the pink marble hallway, under the terra-cotta cornice, and into the squad car.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Early the next morning, these same two cops are in your room, on the phone again. This is how it has been all night, the two of them holed up in a motel room with you and Sam, the phone ringing every couple of hours. Don’t bring her in until we know something. Just stay there, make sure she doesn’t blow out. At long last, they can deliver the final update.
“Good news,” says the older cop.
After the sergeant’s last call, many hours prior, you’d learned of hemorrhaging and understood that Mimi had been rushed to the operating room for an emergency hysterectomy. The word sounded serious enough, but you hadn’t been entirely sure what it meant and had to ask for an explanation, which the officer had given with a stutter and more than a little pink in his cheeks. Still, in that moment, the finality of what this meant hadn’t been of much importance to you. You could only focus on her condition and the images it conjured—a gurney being rushed down a corridor, feverish doctors and blood-drenched gowns—and the most immediate concern: would it be enough? Since then, you have remained in a fog of the past, replaying the events of the evening—no, the last year—on a continuous loop, focused on the moments where the story might have gone differently. You should have gone home when your father asked you to. You shouldn’t have gone to Florida in the first place. You shouldn’t have given Sal Costantini your name or any reason to remember it. You shouldn’t have joined Cynthia on Bandstand. Yes, that is where this whole thing went wrong. That’s when you developed this miserable itch. The officer tells you that the worst has been avoided. Surgery has gone as expected and without complication; Mimi’s condition is serious but stable. The relief that washes over you is so complete that you almost don’t hear the rest: according to the surgeon, a confluence of factors—a congenital abnormality, previous medical procedures, and a decade of trauma to the area—had contributed to her weakened uterus. You aren’t entirely to blame. The cops have been instructed to let you go. There will be no charges.
Before they leave, the younger of the two officers shakes your hand. He has trouble hiding his disappointment. It’s clear by his expression he looked forward to the possibility of booking a minor celebrity. The elder seems more sympathetic. He pats you on the shoulder. “Quite a relief, I’m sure,” he
says.
“Yes,” you say, thinking of Mimi. Only later will it occur to you that he was referring to your own narrowly avoided catastrophe.
Once they leave, you are on your own. You will have to repeat all of this for Sam. He’s gone out to fetch coffee and (at your insistence) the morning paper. Since leaving the auditorium, he’s left your side only one other time, after the squad car pulled up to the Peabody, where he had to walk through the lobby still in the barest of his regalia, pack up, and check out of both rooms, and then bring everything to the agreed-upon meeting place, a nearby motel where you would be safe from scrutiny. He paid for these actions with an ignominious defeat—the commission declared a forfeit and awarded the belt to his opponent—but this news didn’t seem to faze him. If his feelings for you are at all shaken by what has happened, he is keeping it convincingly to himself. His only concern has been for you; he has provided every comfort he could. You are sorry he wasn’t here to hear the news. You don’t want him to suffer any longer than necessary.
The Sweetheart Page 31
