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Descriptions of blood and injuries
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Alicia gave herself the time to let it out. Minutes passed as the weight of everything wrung the tears from her eyes. She stood up, tossed her singlet in her gym bag, and wiped away the tears with her fingers. There would be a tomorrow. Alicia pushed through the silver-gray dressing room door.
Jill McKill rose from the bench where the faction had gathered and reengaged, "We were just giving you a- hey!"
Alicia brushed past the solidly built brawler the hard way.
Bridget and Jaime stood up and joined their commanding officer in storming after Alicia. They caught up in the hallway a few feet from the star dressing rooms. "Hey, what's your problem?" barked McKill.
This was not the night. Alicia wheeled around and shouted, "What's yours?" Even if it was just for five matches, she wasn't about to let herself become the new locker room punching bag. She knew what happened to those.
McKill stood with a hand on her hip. "Hey, I've seen you wrestle. I don't think you want to start picking fights around here. I was messing around. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, alright?"
Alicia was happy to have escaped the night without taking a second beating. Her expression softened. “It’s alright. And I’m sorry for bumping into you. I was mad. It’s just- nothing went right for me tonight. My debut didn’t-”
A barely stifled snicker gave way to a belly laugh as Jill, Jaime, and Bridget shared a get-a-load-of-the-rube look before turning and directing the full brunt of their laughter into their victim's face.
"Oh wow. You are not going to last here," said Jill, gasping for air.
For a second, Alicia thought she saw panic in their eyes as their gaze drifted to something behind her.
"Jill! So good to see you! How'd the divorce go?"
Alicia peered over her shoulder to find a young woman with flawless skin, a beach tan, and a head of long, pink-tipped blonde hair with a swath of pink dreadlocks on one side. It was Giselle Tillman. The 23-year-old fashion mogul stood in the middle of the hallway adorned in thousands of dollars of pinks and yellows bearing her own brand logo. Cradled in her arms was a rotund Persian cat. She had dyed the ends of its orange fur pink to match her life. It looked just as confused about the situation as Alicia.
"Did you ever find out who he was seeing?" asked Giselle, her golden, forever-summer complexion aglow with a camera-ready smile. Her gaze flitted to Bridget Slaughter, who shook her head in denial as her expression turned to a furious scowl. "Hm," squeaked Giselle shrugging her shoulders. She locked eyes once again with McKill. "Did you get custody, or did you lose that fight, too?"
It took an Army to hold Jill back as she lunged for Giselle. Anticipating the reaction, the other members of The Reinforcements latched onto the fuming, red-faced McKill to keep her from attacking the young celebrity. Unspeakable delight washed over the millionaire’s face as she knelt to the floor to let her cat down, cold blue eyes locked with her prey.
The two mostly calm members of the faction held tight, pushing the furious wrestler towards the locker room and out of fighting range. Giselle showed off her manicured pink fingernails as she cupped her hands around her mouth for a parting shot, "Good luck in your match tonight! When you see your ex in family court, tell him Bridget says hi!"
The Two-Woman Army dragged McKill back into the locker room as darkness poured from her mouth. Giselle's attention remained fixated on her outmatched victim.
Alicia gave the undefeated* wrestler a smile and a nod of appreciation. "Thanks."
Despite looking in Alicia's direction, the pop culture sensation only just seemed to notice the six-foot-three, 193-lb. professional wrestler standing in front of her. Giselle reflexively flashed a magazine cover smile in confusion, "For what?"
The exhausted wrestler considered explaining what she meant but thought better of it. Polite little wave. She headed for the parking lot.
* * * * *
Sabrina had been excruciatingly right about being useless the next day. Alicia awoke mottled head to toe with angry bruises. When she could bring herself to look in a mirror, she saw her nose had swollen noticeably and a ring of blood around the left nostril seemed to have leaked out and dried overnight. The shiner on her right eye didn't distract from the purplish-black streak of bruising covering the cleft of her chin and entire right cheek or that her lip had been split down the middle. Save for the couple kitchen trips when she could bear to chew and the several more to refill ice from the bags Robert bought, Alicia remained in bed nearly the entire weekend.
She lay stiff and aching, playing the tape back on loop. Wrapped in bags of ice, watching the match on repeat on the popcorn ceiling, Alicia asked herself what went wrong. That list was simple enough: everything. But what went right? My fist into her stomach. She needed a new strategy.
The reruns continued into her morning commute, soundtracked to the hits from the '80s, '90s, and today. Every strike, every impact, every rough landing replayed in crystal clear detail, recounting the story of the aches that still lingered up and down her whole body. Even as she pulled into the parking lot and the Perletta whined to a stop, she was still backstage getting dressed down by her trainer to the hottest summer jam of '93.
The slam of a car door and the frigid morning air jolted the secret wrestler back into the present. Each step wracked the office assistant's body with reminders of the battle she had endured. She took a few seconds at the entrance to brace herself. Breathe in, breathe out. Alicia turned the knob of a door that belonged on a two-story colonial instead of a dental practice and stepped inside.
Instantly, Maxine rose from her seat and came through the reception door like it was a fern emergency. "Oh my goodness, honey, are you okay? Look at you! How could they let this happen? You can have my- Miss Alicia? Alicia. Alicia, it's okay."
The tower of bruises walked wordlessly past her coworker and into the break room.
Please no Dr. Pupe, please no Dr. Pupe, please no Dr. Pupe.
"Oh my God! Alicia, what happened?! What happened to your face?! You look awful! Oh. My God. Were you in an accident? Have you looked in a mirror? Do you need me to call 911?" rapid-fired the wide-eyed, blonde-haired woman in medical scrubs. There was Sherry: the squat, rosy-cheeked happy-Mondayer with the still-80s hairspray coif–a woman too good for this era. The young-for-her-age mid-40s hygienist jogged across the linoleum to check on her badly hurt coworker. "Do you need me to call somebody for you? Do you need a place to stay?"
Any other time, the aching office assistant would've been moved by the concern, but on a day she wanted to be invisible, this wasn't how she wanted Sherry to find out.
"Hi, Miss Sherry!" said Alicia with the confidence of someone about to lie very badly. "I'm fine. This was an accident. Whatever you think it looks like, it isn't, unless you think it's an accident, then it is."
Sherry threw up her hands like she didn't know what to do. Then she thought of something. She turned and marched out of the break room. Not that. Please not him.
He came around the corner seconds later: hair the color of charcoal, mustache the color of used charcoal, coffee-stained doctor's coat. Dr. Pupe's expression dropped the instant he saw his wounded employee. Sherry followed close behind into the break room. Alicia could tell the hygienist felt at least an iota of remorse when she saw the annoyance on her bruised, swollen face.
Sherry shrugged uncomfortably. "Sorry! I don't know what else to do."
Alicia threw up her hands in frustration. "Well, not that! Why would you tattle on me for hurting my face?"
Sherry crossed her arms, indignant. "I didn't tattle!"
"Alicia, this isn't about Sherry being a tattle-tale," said Dr. Pupe, playing peacekeeper. "You can't come to work like this. Go home and try to clean yourself up. The patients… it looks bad. It's just not the impression we want to make on people."
"That I hurt my face?" asked Alicia flatly.
"Yes."
Alicia once again felt ganged up on. She kicked the linoleum floor and stifled a sneer. "You're sending me home until I look better?" The doctor nodded. She shifted her stance, hand on her hip. "Can I come back tomorrow?" Alicia asked, testing her boss.
For once, he didn't push back. "That's your decision, Alicia."
She turned and lumbered away, each step a shifting kaleidoscope of pains and aches. "Then I'll see you tomorrow."
There was just one stop on the way out the door. At the reception desk, beneath a hand-knitted blanket sat the 72-year-old beating heart of the office. Alicia's gaze fell to the floor.
"Were you there?" asked the still-defeated wrestler.
"Yes, hon. I was," said Maxine. "I'm sorry for how it turned out. You tried your best."
Please don't let that be my best. As Alicia opened the door to leave, her eyes met Maxine's sympathetic gaze for the first time. "Thank you for coming and supporting me," she said, trying to smile. "It meant so much to me to have someone there, but please don't come anymore. I'm sorry."
* * * * *
"Welcome to your first day of wrestling school! Have you ever been inside a ring before, or are you coming in completely new?" asked Sabrina.
Alicia bowed her head slightly, staring at the canvas as even her hair seemed to burn with embarrassment. "I'm sorry," she mumbled, knowing the answer was unsatisfactory.
That hadn't been one of the options, so Sabrina chose for her. "Completely new? Okay. Then we're starting with back bumps. A hundred of them. Let's go."
Alicia found some of that bravado she had in the break room. "I don't have to take this."
The trainer looked unimpressed. "I don't see anyone else training you," said Sabrina, matter-of-factly. And there went the bravado. "One hundred back bumps," she repeated. "Good ones."
Alicia had already suffered this side of Sabrina before. She felt her blood pressure start to rise, recalling the month she endured as her trainer's human stress ball. The warm-up was meant to embarrass her: back bumps, flip bumps, no-contact rope runs--literally day one stuff. Each exercise subjected her to further scrutiny and hypercorrection. The ordeal only seemed to end when Sabrina ran out of ideas. Alicia had bottled up the urge to confront her trainer about the hostility, but that bottle was nearing its fill line.
They met center-ring while Alicia sucked air after the workout. Sabrina spoke up in her husky alto, "They're giving you a match next week. You know Kunoichi?"
Alicia's face screwed up in confusion. "Does Japan have a problem with me or something?"
"It's an open contract. You get who you get. Sorry," said Sabrina, not sorry. "I'll just let you know now: it's not a good matchup. Longer the fight goes, the more it favors... well, not you." She shot a look at the equipment area. "Exercise bikes are over there, by the way."
"Hey," said Alicia, checking her trainer. She didn't feel bad about disappointing Sabrina anymore. A thousand unspoken retorts boiled in her throat. She wasn't doing this again.
"So we're going to try and end this one quick. You've got size on her, so if you can reverse a submission into a pin attempt, you've got a chance to steal one. We're watching tape and practicing technical pinning combinations out of reversals. Think you can follow directions?" The trainee nodded. "Can you still remember them during the match, too?"
Alicia scowled harder internally than she thought possible. She bit back the brunt of her anger, but she couldn't help a tiny bit of sass. "Don't talk to me like I'm stupid."
“I didn’t say you’re stupid. I implied there’s a problem with your memory.” Sabrina leaned in and looked her student hard in the eye. “Stick to the gameplan.”
Alicia mentally rolled her eyes. She hadn't abandoned the gameplan--it was the other way around.
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