6. The Attrition – Mar
CHAPTER 6
THE ATTRITION
MAR
“Watch, watch. He’s about to do his finishing move!” Verdi wraps her long fingers around my forearm and pulls me closer to her.
Finishing move? “What’s that?”
Her eyes brighten. “It’s the move that ends the match. Depending on which wrestler executes his finishing move first, which is normally The Sihnner, he will render his opponent into submission, resulting in his victory!”
“What is Sihn’s finishing move?”
She rocks me back and forth by the arm. “It’s called The Attrition. Just watch!”
I never knew she was this into professional wrestling. I watch as Sihn kisses his opponent on the forehead before drawing an invisible cross with his fingertips where his lips were only a second before. He then wraps one hand around the guy’s neck and uses the other to grab the guy’s crotch before rocketing the man over his head and dropping him down on the mat. Sihn then flips his opponent over and lays across him while bending up his right knee, pinning him down. The referee then counts to three and the match is over.
It’s brutal, and El Perro Loco doesn’t get up. The crowd roars and Sihn is announced as the winner of tonight’s match.
“Wanna get out of here?” I scream toward Verdi. It’s so loud I don’t think she can hear me, so I yank her by the hand toward the nearest exit.
We’re almost under the neon exit sign when I hear my name announced over the loudspeakers. I shake my head and convince myself I’m hearing things, but then the speakers crack again. “Mar, The Sihnner requests your presence after the show.”
Verdi stops mid-stride. “That’s you, bestie!”
He can’t request my presence. He isn’t like a king. He won a match. “What does that even mean?”
“After every show, an audience member gets taken to the back to mingle with the performers of the night, and you got chosen!” she shrieks excitedly.
Embarrassed, I respond, “Do they always call the person by name overhead?”
“Um, no.” She shrugs. “I’ve never been back there. Let’s go!”
“Do I get to take a friend?” I ask.
“Demand it!”
I laugh as a man with Security printed on his shirt comes out of nowhere and asks, “Are you Mar?” He’s as big as the guys we’ve seen tonight in the ring. His eyes gesture in the direction we should head, and Verdi and I comply while walking arm in arm.
I whisper in her ear, “How did he know I was the right girl?”
She leans in and whispers, “I’m sure Sihn told him what you were wearing.”
The room is dominated by male presence, but I’m wearing what almost every other girl is wearing tonight. Ripped jeans and a black shirt that I have tucked in at my waist. How would they have known I was the one he requested in this crowd? I don’t have time to dwell on my appearance as the crowd begins shoving from the sides and the security man places his hands on our backs leading us behind a curtain that is guarded by two other men who look just like him. So many men.
Above the curtain is a faded sign that reads: Authorized Personnel Only
The room is small and only contains two folding chairs and a small table. I wouldn’t call it a cool hangout spot. The table has bottles of water, a bowl of ice, and what looks like hand towels.
“This place is wild,” Verdi blurts out as I trip over my shoestring I didn’t know had come untied.
When I look up, Sihn wraps his hand around El Perro Loco’s, and they lean in for a manly backslap hug. El Perro Loco has removed his mask and some blood drips down the side of his face, but he doesn’t seem to care. As he exits the small room through the curtain, he points at Sihn. “Hasta la proxima vez.”
Sihn smiles. “Until next time, my brother.”
It isn’t until El Perro Loco leaves the room that I realize both Verdi and the security guard are gone as well. “Shit.”
“Hi, to you, too,” Sihn murmurs. He sits down on one of the folding chairs, and I notice his right hand grab his side and his eyebrows pull in.
“Are you hurt?” I move toward him like I can help. When I was a teacher for one year, I couldn’t even apply a bandage correctly to a paper cut on a finger. What help can I be to this powerhouse?
He winces when he says, “You remember when you dared me to jump off a bridge and I did?”
“Are we really talking about that right now?”
“Yes, because you owe me, and I’m about to tell you what you owe me.”
I blow out a breath and cross my arms over my chest. “I am not giving you a blow job just because you lived, so forget it.”
He huffs, “I don’t want your blow job.”
I try not to sound hurt when I say, “Good.”
His lips pull out into a smile. “Your time, however…”
“What is it you’re asking?”
“Your company.”
I scoff.
“I would like for you to spend tonight with me. And before you say no, it isn’t for sex. I want to get to know you.”
“I’m here with a friend.”
Verdi pops her head in the room and says, “Borrow my apartment, it’s fine. I’m going out of town to stay with this new girl I matched with online…”
Clearly, she has been eavesdropping on the conversation. “No. She could be a serial killer!”
Only her head is on this side of the draped curtain, so it’s hard to take her seriously when she says, “She could also be a man, which would be worse in my opinion. I’m taking a chance.”
I look from her back to Sihn. I’m an adult. I can hang out with an adult male. He might be ten years older than me, but he doesn’t look it. “Send me the address?” I order her more than ask.
“Of course, I’ll drop a pin to my location. I’ll be fine, though. It’s you I’m worried about.”
“Me?” I push her head back and go to her side of the curtain to finish our conversation leaving Sihn alone.
She smacks my ass before saying, “Clean out the cobwebs. Have some fun and then send him on his way.”
“Uh…”
“Or you don’t have to bang if you’re not feeling it, but it’s better to go to my place where you can kick him out if you want. It’s safer than potentially being held captive at his…”
I raise an eyebrow at her. “Like you’re about to be with girl-man two towns over?”
“Or you can take him back to your childhood home… I’d love to hear what ’rents think about him!”
“Shut it. I never even agreed to hang out with him.”
She sticks her tongue out. “But you’re going to.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
Sihn and Verdi in unison, “Yes.”
Sihn pops his head out of the curtain. “Or you could sneak me in your bedroom window. I’m not opposed. I never did that in my youth. I could cross something off my teenage bucket list,” Sihn mocks.
I laugh a real deep belly laugh. I cannot take him seriously when he is practically naked in front of me. His costume leaves little to the imagination as it hugs his package so tight—so tight.
Verdi stops my laughter by saying, “She used to sneak boys in all the time.”
“It was one singular boy, and it was only one summer…” I remind her. Chad happened a long time ago, and I hadn’t thought of him at all until recently.
Verdi looks down at her phone, “My ride is almost here.”
“Verdi?!” I give her the don’t-leave-me-look.
She says, “You’ll be fine.” Then tosses me her house keys before disappearing into what is left of the crowd that is walking out of the building.
Sihn, who is still wearing only black spandex briefs, says, “I’m ready when you are.”
I gesture at his body. “Don’t you need some normal clothes?”
“Right!”
I think he would have walked right out of here without missing a beat if it wasn’t for me suggesting clothes. “I’ll message you her address, and you can meet me there when you’re finished here.”
“You have my number?” he questions me.
“Not until you give it to me.”
As soon as I get inside Verdi’s apartment, I lock the door. I may only have a few minutes before he arrives. I dash for the bathroom and search in the small closet for a washrag so I can freshen up a bit. I don’t plan on doing anything sexual with Sihn, but just in case I give in to an urge, I want to make sure I don’t smell. By the time I have all of my clothes off, I change my mind and decide to take a quick shower. I pull my hair up on top of my head and get in before the water is even warm.
While drying off, I hear a knock at the front door, followed by, “I know you’re in there. Open up. I promise I’ll let you orgasm first next time. Just let me back in, baby.”
That fucker!
I wrap the towel I was using to dry myself off around my body and race to the front door, opening it before Sihn spews out other embarrassing things. “You know this isn’t my apartment and Verdi’s neighbors know she’s a lesbian…”
“It got you to answer the door, so I think what I wanted to get out of the comment worked.”
He walks into the apartment and shuts the door behind him. Locking it. He’s wearing a plain gray shirt and a pair of jeans. His hair and appearance let me know he took a shower before coming here. Maybe I was in the shower longer than I thought. He looks me up and down before shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
“Are you going to parade around in a towel all night or was answering the door in a towel an invitation for sex?”
My eyes go wide, and I tighten the towel more securely around me as I turn and race back to the restroom. “There should be something to drink in the refrigerator, help yourself,” I holler over my shoulder.
He doesn’t strike me as being dumb, so I am sure he knows I was freshening up for him. Now I can’t let him into my pants no matter how bad I want him in them right now. Something about watching him in the ring tonight flipping that guy around really turned me on.
After redressing in what I was wearing before I showered, I find Sihn sitting on Verdi’s sofa drinking out of a cup that says Historians Call Us Gal Pals. I smile, “Nice cup.”
“It was either this one or All The Cool Girls Are Lesbians.”
“What made you choose that one?”
He shrugs. “It was clean. The other one is in the sink, dirty. Doing someone else’s dishes isn’t really my thing.”
“Are you a cool girl, Sihn?”
“Probably not, but that’s okay.” He holds the cup with both hands and rests it in the middle of his lap. “So you invited me here, now what?”
I laugh. “You invited yourself here.” I sit down next to him on the sofa and regret it immediately as heat rises from my core and my toes begin to tingle. How is just his proximity causing my toes to tingle? His stature makes me feel uncomfortably small next to him, even though I’m almost his height. Being this close to him feels right, yet oh-so-wrong.
“Let’s get to know each other,” he suggests.
He doesn’t know, but I’m one of those people who wants to know everything about you, including your favorite grade school teacher’s name and how old you were when you had your first real crush on a person.
I go through several different starter questions before settling on, “So where did The Sihnner come from?”
He leans forward and sets his cup down on the coffee table. He makes an effort to turn his body in my direction to answer. “Are you asking about the name or about why I became a professional wrestler to begin with?”
“Why did you become a wrestler?”
“I won’t bore you with too much of my childhood trauma, but my mother was a professional wrestler, so up until I was about twelve, I grew up around it.”
Curious, I ask, “What happened when you were twelve?”
“My mother was injured and we had to move in with Harvey. Harvey hates wrestling and told me I was not allowed to wrestle like my mom, so I became a swimmer.”
“Harvey is your…?”
“Grandpa.”
“And you became a swimmer and that’s how you were able to jump from the bridge and live?”
He laughs. “Yes, and no. Yes, I can swim, but I also jump off that bridge at least once a week. It’s practice for jumping from the ropes in the ring.”
My eyes bulge.
“I didn’t stumble into the wrestling life again until I was twenty-one when I found POW!.”
“And Harvey?”
“Harvey lives four hours from here. I still visit him one weekend a month.”
I feel like he is offering up a lot about his past. More than I’m willing to tell him about mine, so I change course. “Where did your stage name come from?”
“The Sihnner is my gimmick. Like a character that I play in the ring. Very few wrestlers get to pick their gimmick, most have it picked for them or they become it. ”
“But you go by Sihn in real life.”
“It sounds better than Elwood…which is my real name.”
I’ve never met an Elwood before. “That’s true,” I admit. He seems to be Sihn in and out of the ring.
“My boss came up with The Sihnner. I’m supposed to be what we call a heel. A villain. I am, but the crowd likes me and cheers for me, which is normally not the case for a heel. I’m good at selling. Which means I am good at making scripted fights look unscripted. Some call it being a tweener, but I don’t like that term.”
I pull my legs up underneath my bottom. He keeps his body facing me, and his eyes command me to look at them. “Y’all plan everything out?” I ask.
“Not everyone plans, but the ones who want to look good and succeed do. Do you really care to know about it?”
“I do actually.” I went to school to become a teacher because I love to learn. I don’t tell him this.
“If I answer your questions, do I get something in return?”
I shrug. “More time with me.” It’s late already, but I can tell I won’t sleep tonight.
“Fair. Shoot.”
Even though Verdi suggested that he is about ten years older than us, I ask, “How old are you?”
“Are you asking because you think I’m too old to be a professional wrestler?”
I shake my head.
He scoots his body closer to mine. “Thirty-six since earlier this month. You?”
My voice is breathy, when I say, “Twenty-five, but I have a birthday coming up.” I don’t say my birthday coming up is in six months.
He is so close now that I feel like at any minute he might pounce on me. I blurt out, “You just want me because I’m shiny and new, and you haven’t played with me yet.”
He leans back. “That’s not why.”
I huff, “I know your type, and I’m not it.”
Offended, he says, “You’re fucking hot. How could you not be my type?”
“Now you’re just trying to get in my pants.”
I cannot believe my ears when he says, “But of course.”
I move my feet out from under my bottom and plant them on the floor, but keep myself seated. “Sihn.”
Now his voice is breathy. “Mar.”
“Stop.”
Abruptly, he stands and backs away from the sofa with his hands up in the air.
I stand and panic. “Where are you going?”
“I’m a lot of things, but I’m not into pressuring someone. I would like to stay and chill, but if you feel some type of way, if you’re not comfortable being alone with me, then I gotta leave. Now.”
Did he just say what I think he said?