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4:35 PM. In a few short (long) minutes, Alicia would be living the daydream of any wrestling fan who ever punched a time-clock. A pro wrestling legend would show up at her job and whisk her away to team together in the biggest match of her life.
She stared at the Boston fern doomed to photosynthesize its last far from its native land. The sickly, yellowing crime against botany hung in the window suffering, clinging to life, and blocking the view of the parking lot. She wondered if Sabrina was already outside waiting. There was no way of knowing from where she sat behind the desk.
Dr. Pupe had already taken the last patient of the day back. She could probably move it now. As long as she re-hung her horticultural nemesis before the doctor finished, she'd be fine. Better to die a hero than live a coward. Alicia slipped out of the office, shut the door behind her, and sauntered to the entrance. She unhooked the decorative atrocity, gritting her teeth through the pain as she cradled the hanging basket in her right hand and eased the weight off its support. The potted horror show went to its usual time-out spot between the magazine rack and a chair in the corner. Justice having been served, the rogue employee headed back towards her desk.
Just as Alicia reached the exact midpoint between the fern and the office, she heard Dr. Pupe’s honking down the hall. "Your teeth are fine. I'm not even sure why you keep coming back. I'm not getting them any cleaner."
Is it too late to live as a coward? Run to the office and hope he doesn't notice, or go back and re-hang the fern and risk getting caught?
A man's voice replied, "I would just feel better if I came back in six months."
She covered the distance at a tiptoed sprint. Craning her head to watch for her boss, the worst fern heist-doer in Illinois struggled to carefully guide the basket back onto its hook with her uncoordinated, bruised hand and stiff, barely responsive fingers. She slipped it into place with her left hand just as she lost her grip on the pot with her right, spilling a mountain of dirt onto her cream-colored sweater. At least her pants were black. Fortunately, the dirt that fell on the carpet was barely visible beneath all the dry, brown fern leaves. Are they called fronds? It didn't matter. She would look it up later.
"Suit yourself. I'm just going to tell you the same thing in six months," Dr. Pupe reiterated, somehow rolling his eyes with his voice. "Maybe floss less? Hi, Alicia. How's the fern doing?"
The back of Alicia's scalp burned hotter than the sun. "Yep, looks good." With quiet, shameful urgency, she returned her greatest adversary to its stronghold and office-jogged through the door and behind the reception desk. "Um, thank you, Mr. Woods. No copay today. How's July, uh, 16th? Same time okay for you?"
"Yeah, that's fine. What were you doing with the fern?" asked the patient, distracted by the still-swinging decorative flora.
"Making sure it looked good," Alicia explained, knowledgeably. She braced herself and glanced at her boss. Stern eyes. Brow furrowed. Arms folded across his coffee-stained scrubs. Lecture locked and loaded. She scribbled a date gingerly with her aching hand onto an appointment card and handed it across the desk. "See you in the summer!" Please stay, the condemned office assistant pleaded silently. Don't leave us alone. The door swung shut.
"I notice you left the office door unlocked," observed Dr. Pupe helpfully. She hated that tight, smug little grin. The gotcha face.
Alicia hoped Sabrina brought a book. This one would be a while.
With the turn of a handle and a blast of freezing air that carried all the way back to the reception desk, in walked Sabrina wearing a black winter coat and wool cap, casual as Alicia had ever seen her.
"Hey, I thought I'd come inside. I got tired of waiting in the car. You ready to go?" She looked past the man in blue scrubs with the beef jerky tan as a flavor of confusion Alicia had never seen before settled upon the dentist’s cured features. She looked past the man in blue scrubs with the beef jerky tan. "You ready to go?" A flavor of confusion Alicia had never seen before settled upon the dentist's cured features. Finally, Sabrina regarded Dr. Pupe with an up-nod. "Hey. I'm Sabrina. Nice to meet you Doctor… uh…" she checked the bicuspid-shaped nametag, squinted, and then squinted harder. She stifled a laugh. "Sorry."
"She's my ride," explained Alicia, smiling at her tag partner yet again making the save. "If you want to sit in the lobby or something, go ahead. I can't clock out until 5:00."
The dentist's prominent frown bent his ash-gray mustache into an upside-down U. He seemed to wonder exactly how and when he lost control of the situation.
"We've kind of got something we need to get to," Sabrina told Dr. Pupe matter-of-factly. "She can go, right? It's like 4:50."
Alicia checked the clock. It was 4:42.
Dr. Pupe saw the opportunity and seized it. He spun around to face his grinning employee behind the desk. "It's fine, Alicia. You can go. I'll clock you out."
It was comforting to know that nothing Alicia's opponents did tonight could floor her quicker than that. She sprang from her chair, shooting the rolling office furniture into the copy machine behind her with a crash. She slung the strap of her equipment bag over her shoulder before launching her gym bag over the desk and into Sabrina's waiting arms. The liberated employee burst through the door, shut it behind her, and jogged to her friend before flipping a U-turn.
"Ohhhh! Almost did it again!" Alicia chastised herself through an irrepressible grin, wagging her finger as she trotted back to the door, keychain in hand. "Seriously, thank you Dr. Pupe." Seeing Sabrina struggling to keep a straight face made Alicia struggle, too. "Have a great weekend!"
On her way out, Alicia shot a quick glance at the window-hanging on death's door. This isn't over, she threatened, in case plants can read thoughts.
Out the door. Seatbelts on. Hit the gas.
Sabrina checked her blind spot and merged onto the highway. "At least he let you go early, but I believe the stories. Guy’s got a real kick-my-ass face. Seems like the kind of guy who would rig up a bunch of mirrors so he could watch his own ass when he fucks."
Alicia slowly nodded in agreement, face frozen in shock.
"Hey, Alicia. Alicia! You've got a spider on you," said Sabrina. "Big one."
Her eyes reflexively went to her left coat pocket where Sabrina was looking. Many more eyes stared back. Hirsute, spindly, segmented legs. Mandibles. A thorax, probably - another word to look up later.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!" shrieked the spider chauffeur as she squirmed and contorted in her seat. Alicia turned to her tag partner in the to articulate further. "AAAAA! AAAAAAA! AAAA!!" It was a toss-up who looked more shell-shocked, but maybe the spider.
Alicia finally hit her limit on frozen terror and switched over to the violent kind just as an eight-legged hamster the size of a drink coaster started galloping up her chest to say hello. Defaulting to the wounded right hand, she gave the literal hobo spider a fatal handshake. It was full of pudding. The thorax(?) popped like a lukewarm water balloon in her sizable palm as she wrung her captive into marmalade. Alicia held her goopy mitt out in front of her as the aggressively nonsolid innards clung to her trembling, contorted claw.
"You feel better?" asked Sabrina. Alicia shook her head and tried not to wonder how long she had been carrying a hitchhiker.
The remainder of the drive passed a quarter to a third as eventfully. With the arena still on the horizon, Alicia could still blame the butterflies in her stomach on the spider guts in her hand. Now, in the parking lot of the Plunj Drain Cleaner Arena, there was no more denial left. She was scared. Alicia helped herself to a final moment of calm before everything mattered. Breathe in, breathe out. Sabrina popped the trunk, and the partners piled out to claim their gear.
"What'd you bring to the potluck?" asked Alicia with an eager me-next smile.
The Professler explained her thought process, "I figured they'll have plenty of chairs under and around the ring, so we're good for blunt-force." Sabrina craned her neck looking up at her towering partner and slapped Alicia's bicep. "I mean, look who I'm talking to." She unzipped the side pocket of her gym bag and pulled it open to reveal a half-dozen wooden slats about the size of a man's wallet. Mousetraps. "So you know how I'm always talking about ring awareness? Might want to watch your fingers." The rookie's eyes went wide. This felt like an escalation. "And, of course, psychological warfare is just as important as the regular kind."
With giddy dread, Alicia's eyes turned to the unopened pocket. The head trainer unzipped it and reached right in, withdrawing something bulky, shiny, and needless.
"A staple gun?" sputtered the lunatic's former student.
"Staple guns," Sabrina corrected. "Brought one for you, too. What about you?"
"Well, shoot," remarked Alicia. "I should've gone first. Now I'm embarrassed because yours are too good." She felt her cheeks flush and made sure the zippers on all her bags were closed. "You'll just have to see, but don't get too excited."
Sabrina shut the trunk and the pair strode into the venue. As they crossed the threshold into the arena, something felt off. Alicia's pulse had quickened ever since the city limits, but this was a different rhythm entirely. She barely held up her end of the conversation as her nervous eyes darted from corner to doorway to shadow. There was the trainer's room, only a few feet from where Black Violet ambushed her.
Alicia pointed to the alcove with the locked maintenance access door. "Have you ever been in there?" she asked.
"What? Why? No," Sabrina answered, confusion evident on her face. Her eyes trailed down to the compression wrap surrounding Alicia's injury. "How's the hand?"
Alicia shook her head as she held up the wrecked appendage. "Bad. No Gut Checks tonight. I doubt I could even get Bridget up over my head. Even a little thing like Jaime will be tough."
At the sight of her locker, Alicia’s priorities righted themselves. It was gameday again. Gym bag open, ring gear out. She no longer had to pretend to be an office assistant. Only one thing felt more comfortable than jeans and a hockey jersey.
She knelt by her black hockey bag and unzipped it. Her fingers closed around the maple wood goonclub, and she unsheathed it from its polyester scabbard. Alicia didn’t know how she knew that word. Probably Zack’s renfaire phase.
The locker room thinned considerably as the night wore on until Alicia and Sabrina sat alone side-by-side on a bench near the back. The rookie took a sip of H-Twenty and set it on the bench by her gym bag. "Hey, Sab, thank you for everything. For training me, for saving me last week. Doing this match. You've been amazing. Whether or not I get signed, thank you."
Sabrina seemed to tense a bit. "Yeah, you too. Thank you for working hard."
Alicia didn't have a better segue. "And I'm sorry for saying you want to take my spot."
The 29-year-veteran looked at the floor in silence, "Well, it's not like it wasn't true. For what it's worth, I never thought you were ingrateful."
"Ungrateful."
"I was also going to apologize for hitting you, but I think I'll hold off on that one for now," remarked Sabrina.
The locker room door creaked open. A tall, dark-haired woman wearing a headset leaned through the doorway and asked, "Sabrina, you ready?"
Sabrina's demeanor visibly lifted for the first time since arriving at the arena. She snatched her gym bag in one hand and bounded to her feet. With a little up-nod to her partner, she headed for the door. "Alright, I'll see you out there."
Alicia reached for her hockey stick leaning against the wall, and then stopped. "We’re not going together?" she asked.
"Oh! You've never seen my entrance," replied Sabrina with a genuine glimmer in her eye. She couldn’t contain her smile as she explained, "I need to go get into my gimmick. It's a thing that comes up from the floor." Unable to find the words to describe it, she made up the difference in gestures. "It's- you'll see. It's really cool."
It was the first time Alicia had ever seen Sabrina act like a dork. She hoped they could still be friends if- she shut down the thought. One way or another, she was getting signed.
The heavy door slammed shut as Sabrina and the crew member exited into the corridor. A pit opened in Alicia’s stomach, and she remembered her fear. Not again. She sprang to her feet. "No no no no no no no," she whispered, panic rising in her voice. Alicia rushed past her open locker, pushed the door open and prepared to step out into the hallway.
CRACK!
Alicia's heart jumped into her throat. She wheeled around 180 degrees expecting to find pure hate staring back from behind the voids of unblinking eyes and a thick stench of blood and tooth-rot. Instead, she saw nothing. Nothing wasn't necessarily good, either. Subconsciously holding her breath, Alicia took a couple furtive steps closer to where she heard the sound. Her stick had fallen on the floor. Okay. Okay, I can do this. It just slid and fell. What are you scared of? You are a professional wrestler. Alicia crept towards her stick, shaking, breathing shallow, awash with dread as she bent down and slowly reached for her weapon.
"Alicia!" called the same raven-haired woman with the headset.
Kinetic terror shot through every extremity. Alicia stood bolt upright as panic seized the controls. She brandished her stick like a baseball bat. "HI! OH MY GOSH! WOW!" she shouted back, her eyes halfway out of her skull.
"You're almost up," said the crew member. "Did I startle you?"
"Yes!" answered Alicia, nodding earnestly. "Can I please walk with you?" The woman dressed in all black shrugged.
Nerves had left Alicia's mouth arid. One more swig of H-Twenty for the road. She checked the bench where she had set it down, and then the rest of the locker room. "Where is it?" Her blood turned to ice.
"Where's what?" the crew member asked
Only whimpering a little bit, Alicia powerwalked anticasually past the woman in black and into the corridor. "Don't worry about it. Hurry up, and I'll follow you."
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