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Mild sports violence
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"Here's your card, Mrs. Balwinder. We'll see you in July. Happy New Year," said Alicia, reaching across the desk to hand an appointment card to somebody's great grandmother. She wondered if the 8th was too late to still say Happy New Year. Yes, probably. She returned her attention to her coworker and as close to a friend as she had outside of the Hard Times training floor. "Do you think I'd like snorkeling?"
"Miss Alicia, you would not believe all the coral down in the water. Big, colorful, all sorts of fish and life in there," piped up Maxine, her plump cheeks upturned merrily in recollection of her annual snowbird getaway. "They give you these frozen peas, and when you hold them out, the fish just swim right up to you and eat it! They even had this parachute swing on the boat, and they'd fly you up there and you could jump off into the water. I never did, but people there your age got a kick out of it. I'm telling you: you need to get out to Cancun one of these days." It was the reason she still worked at the age of 72: to go on vacation.
They heard a door swing open from the dental treatment area. "I'll get this one, too," Alicia offered. Maxine nodded and smiled as she turned her attention back to her computer screen. The young office assistant reached for a blank appointment card and her pen, before turning her gaze upwards to a balding man with a really solid effort at a combover. Beneath his black and navy winter coat, she spotted a red, black, and silver-gray shirt bearing three familiar letters: QoW. Their eyes met. How did she know him? She looked at the name on the patient sheet: Jim Stein. "Jim?" she said, eyes half-squinting.
The patient looked at the office assistant's nameplate. "Alicia Winthrop?" He shot back simultaneously.
Her face froze as she scrambled to find her conversational bearings. She couldn't think of a good response, but she wanted to beat the surprise cameo to the punch. "Ohhhhhhhh… this is complicated."
"I knew you looked familiar!" the seat thief shouted, pointing a finger at her.
A thousand half-formed explanations jockeyed to spill out first, but none made it across the finish line. She held up a finger to her lips and tried to keep it professional, "Um. Looks like, uh, $15 is your copay. That's good." She waited in interminable silence as he took longer than anyone ever born to write a check. The office assistant smiled enthusiastically, eyes full of suppressed panic as she received it across the desk. "Thank you. Do you need to schedule a follow-up appointment?"
"Yes."
"Great! Miss Maxine, I'm going on break," she declared, still staring directly across the counter, before silently mouthing to her one-time wrestling tutor, "follow me." She stood up from her threadbare rolling office chair, rounded the reception desk, and met Jim in the reception area. Alicia continued the conversation in a half-whisper, "Hi, let's talk outside." She did a cruel pantomime of walking casually as she turned the knob and pulled the door open, inviting the cold to rush in and snap at her unprotected body. In her nervous haste, the moonlighting wrestler had forgotten her coat. It didn't matter. Treading carefully across the crumbling asphalt parking lot on the less cared-for side of the office, she found sanctuary behind the building by an unused back exit. The wrestler turned around to face the fan and laid it out plainly, "Okay, so the woman at the desk knows. Nobody else does. I want to keep it that way."
With a nod and a shrug, Alicia's heart rate could rest. "I promise I won't tell anybody," Jim assured her. He then circled back to what he apparently felt was the more important part of the conversation. "So you saw your first show less than a year ago and now you wrestle?"
The answer didn't come as easily as she expected, but she was honest. "Probably not for long. They gave me a contract for five matches, and then they're either going to sign or cut me." A plume of steam escaped the tall woman's lips as she broke eye contact in favor of a discarded Itchin' for Millions scratch-off ticket. "I don't think I'll make it. All I do is lose. Nobody cheers for me."
Rather than sympathy, he offered a diagnosis. "Well, you don't really try to pop the crowd. If you want people to be happy to see you, you need to give them a reason." She was momentarily taken aback by the frankness and clinicality of the answer. "There are plenty of women on the roster who lose more than they win. Your first opponent, Connie Rocket? She was around for like three months before she got her first victory."
Misdiagnosis. "Connie Rocket is a famous track star."
Jim responded with a sniff-laugh. "Collegiate track star. Former collegiate track star. In Japan. Name another famous track star." There was that one, what's-his-name. Silence. The freelance wrestling tutor continued, "You think anyone in Illinois knew who she was before QoW? She stuck around because she made people care. People cheer for her because she's The Rocket, not because she won a bunch of track meets." Maybe he could keep his accreditation as a wrestling doctor after all. "You wanna stick around? I don't think it's going to be on the quality of your matches."
The bluntness hit her like blunt things do. "Hey!"
"You want someone to be honest with you or someone to kiss your ass?" asked the man whose combover lost more credibility anytime the wind picked up. "And don't take this the wrong way, but who are you?"
People kept asking that, and she appreciated it less each time. "You're being pretty mean," said Alicia, shivering in the winter air.
His pale features scrunched in confusion for a moment as he seemed to play back the sentence in his head. "Not like that. Don't get offended. Look at your opponents. Anyone can look at them and instantly know what they're about. Nobody knows what an Alicia Winthrop is. You're nobody until you prove you're a somebody," the fan paused for a moment and played that sentence back too. "Pretend I said that in a nice way."
Alicia didn't even know when she would wrestle again after her match with Hellion tomorrow night. "I don't think anyone backstage will even notice me even if I do."
Jim was either too cold or too frustrated to let this drag out much longer. His intensity jumped a notch. "Literally throw your weight around! Make someone demand a match with you. Lots of in-ring stuff happens to settle backstage stuff. There's a pecking order. Don't you read the dirt sheets?"
"That's a little personal."
The self-appointed tutor rolled his eyes. "The wrestling press. Newsletters and stuff. You're not just competing in a sport. There's politics. There's a game."
"How do you know all this stuff?"
He opened his coat with one hand and pointed to his shirt. "I'm a fan."
A sustained wind cold enough to knock the wind from Alicia's lungs cut the conversation short. "Thanks for the advice," she said with a half-smile. "Nobody told me any of this. I really appreciate it." With a polite little wave, she turned and headed back to the nice side of the office. The office assistant had only taken a couple steps when she heard Jim call out to her again.
"Oh! I wanted to ask: is the dentist's name really-"
She cut him off. "It is, but we're supposed to tell patients it's pronounced 'puh-PAY'"
* * * * *
No Hard Times. Not tonight.
She wasn't there for a workout–she needed to clear her head. The sun had set about half an hour before the powder blue sedan coughed, whined, and sputtered before juddering to a stop in the parking spot closest to the lake. Perhaps Alicia might not technically have been allowed in after sundown, but the former hockey player questioned why they would have spent so much money on a lighting system and left the gate open if they really didn't want anyone there. Nearly a month of hard freeze had turned the lake into a perfect meditation spot.
Pop the trunk. Skates around the neck, equipment bag on one shoulder, other arm carrying a portable goal. A short walk to the ice and a change of footwear later, and she was home. She pushed off and picked up speed, circling the lake and reacclimating to her old legs. After the first trip around the ice, she reversed with a sharp mohawk turn, transitioning to a backwards skate, effortlessly carving an arc around about a quarter of the lake before another crisp transition back. Several minutes passed as she remembered and wallowed in the feeling of confidence. The ex-Division II athlete didn't need to warm up - she did it because she enjoyed it.
Alicia swung back around to where her equipment lay and withdrew her stick and puck carrier, dumping out a collection of a dozen black discs onto the ice before pushing the portable goal to the opposite end of the lake. With a flick of muscle memory, she scattered the puck mound onto the ice, snatched a puck with the blade of her stick, and trucked down the ice as if on a breakaway, barreling towards the net. "Top-right corner," muttered the former collegiate hockey star to herself. As she skated into range, she transferred her weight onto the stick. She squared up to the net on the fly with the deke and popped a wrist shot that just painted the inside of the right pipe and crossbar. That was her shot.
It was someone else's first.
Under the street and parking lights of Woodcutter Park, Alicia skated back to the pile and dug another puck out. She spun around, and exited the player's box in the third period of the Hart County 12-and-under rec league hockey finals. If it were a movie, she'd have called it contrived: a three-goal comeback bringing the game even at six apiece with less than 20 seconds left in regulation. Coach had called out the play, but he was wasting his breath. Nicole called it first: get her the puck and clear the skies. Everyone else just needed to show up for the pizza party.
The blonde forward hit the ice first as usual. Her team–what were we called?–had possession. A girl named Clara or Kara caught a glimpse of the ace and reflexively made the suicide pass into traffic to the one player who could receive it–and she didn't. Nicole slipped by the left winger only to get cleared out by an oncoming defender, who slammed into the star player just as Nicole's stick made contact with the puck, sending both girls sliding away across the ice and out of play. Nobody else was close. Alicia smashed through the player her teammate had deftly avoided and handled the puck for the first time the whole tournament.
With tremendous effort and focus, the six-foot-tall 12-year-old managed to keep her forward momentum and maintain control of the puck at the same time. Alicia searched for an open teammate, but everyone had a shadow. She scanned her surroundings again. One-on-one coverage up and down the ice - but they double-teamed Nicole. Wait. I'm the open teammate. Adrenaline flooded her veins as, for the first time, she looked in front of her and saw nothing between her and the net but some ice, air, and a goalie. The realization hit the towering seventh grader about half a second before everyone else, and here came the other team to smother the play and send the game into overtime. One shot. The goalie had been a sieve throughout the third period. Maybe by sheer chance one more could squeak through.
"Double-vision!"
Oh thank you thank you thank you, thought Alicia, hearing her rescuer's voice racing in from behind her as she breathed a sigh of relief.
As usual, Nicole arrived just when she needed to be there. They'd never run the play before in a game. 6 seconds left to go in the season seemed as good a time as any to try. With a sneaky drop pass between the legs to the ace with braces behind her, Alicia swung her stick at empty air, faking a slapshot. She banked hard at the last possible second just as a puck whizzed by her right shoulder and lit the lamp. 3.6 seconds left on the clock. It was academic. No sudden death tonight. She skated behind the pack and watched Nicole leave the ice surrounded by her teammates, sticks high in the air, arms around the MVP, heading for the locker room and Katie's Pizza and the expensive premier league where the kids with talent played. More than the trophy in her hand, Alicia wanted that. She was pulled back to Woodcutter Park by the beam of a police flashlight.
"Hey! Park closes an hour before sundown!" came a voice from a rolled-down window.
Practice over, I guess, thought the former hockey player. So ended the short, brilliant flight of the Shooting Stars.
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