O! The Tangled Webs We Weave!
“In my first act as Supreme Court Justice, I'm going to vote to close down Guantanamo Bay once and for all.”
“Well that's very admirable, Mr. Russell,” Mike said, nodding his head respectfully. “But I've got one question for you. What do you plan on doing with all the prisoners there?”
“I'm going to shoot them all into space,” Sam Russell said, adjusting his robe. Not an actual judge's robe, mind you, but instead a terrycloth bathrobe of uncomfortably short length, his knobby, gray-haired chicken legs jutting out from its frayed hem. “Obviously we can't let all of those illegal Mexicans back into the United States.”
Mike coughed into his hand. “I hate to contradict you, but I'm pretty sure most of the prisoners at Guantanamo are of Middle-Eastern descent.”
“Really?” Russell asked, suddenly unsure of himself. He blinked uncomprehendingly, his eyes unfocused. And then just as suddenly, once more confident, “I stand by my previous statement.”
“That's good. You need to take a hard line. You try and backtrack and they're going to tear you apart in your Senate confirmation hearing.”
Russell looked at Mike, bewildered, mouth sagging.
“You know all Supreme Court Justices have to be confirmed by the Senate, don't you?” Mike asked, bending over, raising his eyebrow, looking Russell in the eye. “They're going to be drilling you with questions for days and days.”
Russell's eyes lost their focus again, this time slowly falling to rest on the floor. Mike took the opportunity to start edging toward the door.
“I would start preparing now if I were you, Mr. Russell. You need to be ready, especially when the Communists start getting on your case.”
He paused in the doorway to wait for a response, but Russell had lost his lucidity of the moment before, now having degenerated into unintelligible mutterings. Mike closed the door softly in order not to startle him, making sure to lock it behind him.
“Major” Mike Valentine, former U.S. Marine and indy-wrestling hardcore mainstay, had been working for the Institute for five years now, so he should have known better than to give a resident a hard time like that, playing up to their delusions. And usually he wouldn't have, typically all business when on the clock. But for whatever reason the nights on the job were really beginning to drag lately.
It could have been the summer heat, storming in through the walls, easily strong enough to overpower the scant air conditioning provided by the state. Day after day, it really began to wear on a man, even at night hanging heavy like a dozen bodies in a dog-pile, with him at the bottom, struggling for breath. Irritation was the currency of the season. But there was something in the air beyond the heat alone.
A cold desperation inhabited the building, Mike thought not for the first time, as he walked down the hallway. Not cold in the normal sense of the word, but rather a dry-ice kind of cold, capable of scathing all it came into contact with. A burning cold hotter even than the New Mexico summer, a soul burn, straight out of the pages of Dante. A creeping chill of desperation, emanating from each one of the Institute's five hundred and thirty-two residents, taking up the space between them, infecting the air, contagious.
Ever since he had turned forty, early in the spring, he had been more keenly sensitive to the atmosphere of the place. It pricked him when it shouldn't have, made him act in ways he couldn't explain after the fact, and he would look back and wince at what he had done.
Take the case of Russell. Mike knew from talking to his case worker that he had been having a particularly hard time recently, since being transferred to the Institute.
His condition used to be quite mild, really, harmless enough to allow him to live on his own in a low-rent subsidized apartment for thirty years or so. He had had a part time job folding newspapers for distribution at night, and they let him take home copies to indulge in his hobby, which was cutting pictures of luminaries out of the newspaper and hanging them on his wall in custom-made frames and collages. There were nearly a hundred pictures hanging in his room. Here was Paul McCartney, and here was Desmond Tutu, and over there was bald-headed Britney Spears from a few years back.
A humble life, to say the least, but even this was not meant to last. For Russell was a man, and like most men, had a number of physical urges to satisfy, not the least of which was the emptying of his reserves of seminal fluid into a balled-up sock every day at roughly 5:45 in the afternoon.
Completely understandable, of course, if you forgive him his predilection for shorn-headed starlets with bipolar tendencies. There was only one small problem which led to his undoing. The chair in which he chose to relieve himself was in clear view of the main window of the apartment, and while he usually had the foresight to close the curtains, one day he was in such a rush to get down to business that it must have slipped his mind. Gradually over the next twenty-three minutes a small crowd of school children gathered to gawk at the frenzied, feverish act that many had never seen before, or had only heard spoken of in whispers.
In a way, it could have been viewed as an educational demonstration. Unfortunately, this was not the way the parents of those schoolchildren chose to view it after catching wind of what had taken place later in the evening. Calls to the police department soon followed, and by the next day Russell was being taken into custody, forever torn away from his apartment with all his treasured pictures. He was no longer to be trusted with his own freedom. He was a masturbator, and thus a serious threat to the mores of the community.
So now here he was, full-time resident of the Institute, monitored for his own good, not to mention for the good of the community, his mind slowly degenerating in the absence of all stimuli that had been holding him together up until now.
The occupants of the Institute were always called “residents”, not “inmates”, and certainly never “prisoners”.
The institute was not exactly what you would call a prison, but in practice it didn't need to be. Each man was already a prisoner in his own body, a mind destined never to escape the flesh.
Then again, the same could more or less be said of us all.
Mike stepped out to have a cigarette. Though he had kicked the habit after his discharge from the service, he had recently picked it up again after nearly fifteen years. He hadn't been feeling especially healthy to begin with, was his line of thinking, so it wasn't as if there was anything worth preserving. The world was changing, the old forms could not be kept. His free hand fell to rest on his ever-expanding gut, as if to emphasize the point.
“Look at you, smoking,” a voice called out from the shadows, smarmy and cocksure. “Put that shit out, you know it's bad for you.”
“Wally, I never knew you cared,” Mike said, making no attempt to hide the disdain in his voice as he lifted his cigarette to his lips for another drag.
If wrestling parlance ever entered the popular vernacular, few would hesitate to call Wally Styles (Simmonds) the biggest heel in the Santa Fe metropolitan area. He stepped forward with an exaggerated flourish, running a hand through his spiky brown hair before shaking his head.
“I don't, really. But if you're huffing and puffing in the ring, falling down to hack up your lungs three minutes into a match, it doesn't exactly make me look good, now does it?”
“What the fuck are you doing here, anyway? I told you not to bother me at work.”
“I thought we might be able to talk some business.”
It was a challenge for Mike to keep his mouth from turning up into a sneer as he watched Wally remove his sunglasses and put them in the front pocket of his unbuttoned shirt. What kind of person wears sunglasses at ten o'clock at night? The same kind of person who assumes the surname of Styles, yet insists on wearing a wife-beater under his clearance rack dress shirt.
Now that the local federation, DFW, had gotten up and running under new management, in yet another stroke of bad luck Mike had ended up getting paired with Wally to bolster the struggling tag division. From the ensuing weeks of too-close-for-his-own-good observation, Mike felt he had his new partner pegged pretty well. For all his affected swagger, Wally was at root a lonely, friendless guy. For someone like him, who throve on the attention of others, this had the potential to be a crippling affliction. Thus he was always looking for someone new to leech onto in the manner of a parasite, feeding off the substance of other's lives in an attempt to supply the deficiencies in his own. Mike had contracted STDs that were easier to endure than Wally.
“Business? What business could there possibly be that couldn't wait until the card this Saturday?”
“I just came by to tell you I thought of a great name for our team while I was sitting in my office earlier today. You wanna hear it?”
“If my saying yes will get you to leave me alone, then fine, go ahead,” Mike said, masking a sigh behind his exhalation of smoke.
“Great,” Wally said, flashing what he imagined was a million dollar smile, even though it ended up looking like a buck fifty. “So get this: 'The Military-Industrial Complex.' Pretty catchy, huh?”
Seeing Mike's bemused expression, Wally's smile dissipated like a cloud of second-hand smoke.
“What's with that face? You don't like it?”
“I don't get it.”
“What's not to get? You used to be in the Marines, so that's where the 'Military' part comes from.”
“Actually, no, that's not the part I'm having trouble with, seeing as for the entirety of my career I've been pushing the whole military gimmick,” Mike said, piling the sarcasm on generously.
“Then what? So then the 'Industrial' part is obviously me.”
“Obviously? How is that obvious? You have nothing to do with industry of any kind.”
“Well, I'm a businessman, aren't I?”
“You own three floundering rental properties on the west side of Santa Fe,” Mike said, annunciating his words carefully, as if explaining something to a child. “I mean, I guess if you really wanted to you could call it 'Industrial', considering they're surrounded by boarded-up factories, but I think that would be pushing it.”
“Hey now, nobody talks shit about my properties,” Wally said, jabbing a finger into Mike's chest like some kind of tough guy. “Now you better apologize to me, or....”
“Or what?” Mike asked, brushing it away. He blew a cloud of smoke into Wally's face, causing him to take a step back, coughing into his hand.
“I guess I'll let it slide this time,” Wally replied, flipping up the collar of his shirt in a strained effort to appear unfazed. “Anyway, I think it's a good fit. I'm the brains behind the scenes, calling all the shots, and you're the hard-hitter that puts my plans into action.”
Wally began to feel uncomfortable under Mike's heavy gaze, and if he could have imagined the various medieval tortures Mike was imagining putting him through, he would have felt more uncomfortable still.
“Well, just think about it ok,” Wally finally said, breaking the silence. He turned around and took a few steps away, before stopping to turn back, not quite ready to abandon the conversation. “Say, by the way, did you hear the Diego's coming back from Japan?”
“Is that so?” Mike asked, the corner of his mouth turning up in a heavy sort of expression. He hadn't been prepared for that one. It was a name he hadn't heard in months, buried under all of the emotional baggage of the previous year. But the mention of Diego was sufficient to draw his mind back into the past, to revisit thoughts that he and most residents of Santa Fe had spent the better part of a year trying to forget.
The New Mexico countryside had been scarred by a series of murders in the latter half of 2009. The thirsty land had drunk its fill of blood, vampiric, and in the process had been transmogrified into a nightmare landscape. It haunted the dreams of the citizens and emerged like a wraith into their waking lives. The very edge of reality was taken to the grinder and honed down to the length of a threat, ominous and deadly, it hung invisible around the necks of the innocent, daring them to make a move.
The body count had started ticking with the death of “Cowboy” Jack McKenzie, owner of the DFW, and to claim a further twelve lives. Suspicion fell immediately on Diego Foster, who had been seen engaged in a heated argument with McKenzie just days before his death, but the preliminary investigations soon cleared him. It was his estranged father, Fernando De la Torre, that the authorities were more interested in, an ominous figure with deep ties to the underworld, ties he shared with three of the ensuing victims in the case.
Diego, cracking under the pressure of the constant police questioning, feeling increasingly inadequate to what amounted to his first shot at the big leagues in PRIME, became desperate for a way out. So when PRIME announced a promotional partnership with the Japanese league, Five Rings Puroresu (FRPW), he jumped at the opportunity to do a tour overseas. Disobeying the orders of the police, Diego left America and all thoughts of his father behind.
Nearly a thousand police officers from all over the state were mobilized, scouring the countryside for any sign of De la Torre, everyone's eyes searching for what amounted to a ghost. So there was only one lone officer present to witness “Big” Ben Harris, DFW stalwart, stagger into the station late one December night, a blubbering, incoherent, six foot nine inch mess. The noises he was making sounded less like human speech than the soul cry of some animal in trauma. The trembling officer, his gun drawn, could coax no explanation from the giant, but then, he didn't need to. The blood on Ben's hands told all the story he needed to know.
At his house they found the body of a seventeen year old girl reported missing the previous week. A thorough search of his yard dredged up a further six corpses, mostly local prostitutes. All bore the same signs of mutilation as the previous victims. After being strangled to death, the victims eyes were then removed, or to put it more accurately, they were burst by pressing them inwards with the thumbs until the erupted sacs were shoved into the brain matter. In ten of the thirteen victims, the abdominal cavities were also torn open, by hand most likely, and when examined, displayed varying degrees of organ removal. That no sign of these organs were found at any of the crime scenes suggests that they were consumed by the perpetrator. Trace amounts of semen were also found in the body cavities of eight of the victims: seven females, one male.
Big Ben never did calm down. He inhabited a hysteria beyond words, and thus could never explain what drove him to commit such heinous acts, how his previously unremarkable life had brought him to this point. Whatever was left of his sanity had been left behind, perhaps tucked away in one of his numerous victims' abdominal cavities, too fine to be detected even by the delicate instruments of the medical examiners.
A verdict of insanity was never seriously questioned, and so under Article 49, “Big” Ben Harris was remanded to the custody of the Institute. The nightmare was over, though in truth, even with that knowledge few in the city found it easier to sleep at night. Mike was one of them.
Wally's expectant face brought Mike's reverie to a halt, and he set about hastily erecting a levee in his mind to keep thoughts of Ben from flooding back in. Clearing his throat, he said the first thing that came to mind.
“Well, now that the heat's off, I guess Diego's in the clear.”
“Actually, I heard he's not coming back back voluntarily,” Wally said, eager to demonstrate how in the know he was. “I guess PRIME finally released him from the development deal he'd been working with them over there.”
“Shit,” Mike said, shaking his head sadly. “Well it nice to think one of us had finally made it, if only for a few months.”
“Hey man, just you wait. The Military Industrial Complex is going to be knocking on the doors of the big leagues in no time at all.”
“I've got to get back to work,” Mike said, blank-faced. He took a final drag of his cigarette, holding it in long and sweet.
“Yeah, now that you mention it, I've got a lot on my schedule tonight, too,” Wally said, in a display of piss-poor acting. He looked as if he was about to turn around, before looking back at Mike again. “So which room is old Benny-boy in, anyway?”
“Go away.”
“Come on, you can tell me.”
“No, I can't. As he's a resident of the Institute, that's classified information. As he's an “S” class resident, that's doubly classified,” Mike said, his eyes narrowing to a glare. “Now leave before I call security.”
“Ok, ok, I get it,” Wally said, raising his hands defensively. “You mind if I call you later tonight?”
“Go!!!”
“Alriiiight already. See you later,” Wally said, turning away with a wave of the hand. “Partner.”
Mike shuddered in disgust at the word. He spit to the side, his saliva brown with tar. Not good, he thought, dropping his cigarette butt and grinding it under his heel. Not good at all.
He wondered if Diego would be looking for a partner when he got back, before rebuking himself. No sense in getting his hopes up, after all. Besides, Diego had a way of dragging bad luck with him wherever he went.
As he turned to head back into the Institute, a thought suddenly occurred to him. He might be seeing Diego sooner than he thought. And that was meeting he surely wasn't looking forward to.
Amber liquid in a glass, swirling, swirling, tipped back, downed. It leaves a burning trail in its wake, a little taste of hell. His heart seizes in anticipation. Euphoria rises but catches in his throat, numbed and half-felt. Blank-faced but shivering inwardly, he raises his finger for another.
The man behind the counter, face creased with age, set in a permanent grimace, puts down the glass he's wiping and shakes his head. The lone florescent light in the bar flickers, sending the room into temporary darkness, the shadows in the corners reaching out to caress the room before pulling back again, biding their time, waiting for the day they stand to inherit the earth. Diego turns slowly to meet the bartender's gaze, but the man only points at his watch before resuming his half-hearted cleaning.
Save for the two men, the bar is deserted. But the dividing line is already between them and has been all along. One inside, one out. Standing with great effort, Diego throws his money on the counter and stumbles out the door, returning to the wilds from which he never really left.
He emerges to find the shotengai vacant. As he walks down the street, his melancholia darkens his view. The zombified elderly that roam during the day having returned to their tombs at sunset, the late hour only adds slightly to the street's ever-present desolation. His eyes fall upon the boarded up shops, the failing businesses. He can hear the sound of birds chattering behind the locked door of the pet shop, trapped in their dirty cages, diseased and in various stages of degeneration, doomed to spend the entirety of their lives unwanted, unloved, unsold. Preterite.
He soon finds himself walking along the shore of the Dotonbori River. He thinks back to April, when he sat here drinking beer with his friends, looking at the cherry blossoms. For a brief week, the drab gray cityscape made up its face in pink, like an aging whore. Oh, but it was fun, regardless. He tells himself he's not going to miss this country, and he almost makes himself believe it.
His career was in limbo at the moment, waiting for the ruling from some judge from on high. It had been such a freak accident. Even now it was hard to believe it actually happened. To him of all people, why did it have to happen to him?
Since joining up with the Five Rings Puroresu dojo, he had been put into a program feuding with the Osaka Street Cutters, perhaps to make him feel more comfortable that there was another English speaker in the ring, even if he was an opponent. Trevor “Mach” Hawke had become a major star for the promotion, so Diego was thankful for the chance to step into the ring with him on multiple occasions, gaining what he imagined was valuable experience from each clash.
He had dropped most of the earlier matches, but as the tour continued, he felt himself on the cusp, coming closer and closer to victory in each contest. And then one night, he made his move. Hawke kept leaving his arm unprotected, so Diego went on the attack, finally seeing his chance to break through and make a name for himself. Finally he caught the opening he was looking for, twisting Hawke over and locking in a tight armbar. He cranked away at the hold with everything he had, and when the ref finally pulled him off his opponent, he felt exuberant. It was one of the best feelings of his life. And it was a feeling that was soon deflated.
As the officials poured into the ring to check on Hawke, still prone on the canvas, clutching his arm in pain, Diego began to realize that something had gone very wrong in the heat of the moment. Later he would find out that he had severely dislocated Trevor Hawke's elbow. The injury was so serious that it was doubtful if Hawke would ever wrestle again.
He had wanted to win, yeah, but not like that. He had never meant to end the man's career, someone he bore no grudge, someone who had been nothing but kind and professional to him outside of the ring, a guy who by all accounts had his best years ahead of him in the sport.
He had felt bad enough about the situation before he got the news from his English-speaking contact with the organization. It was unprecedented, part-time help having the audacity to end the career of an established superstar. He was to be pulled from the touring schedule until further notice. He was considered a danger to the talent the organization had heavily invested in and was to sit out the remainder of his contract, at which time he would be sent back to PRIME, if they were willing to have him.
So he sits by the shore of the river in the middle of the night, rehashing the match in his head again and again, wondering what went wrong.
This was the second time he had seriously injured a man in the ring. He had broken the neck of one of his opponents in an small independent federation shortly before being signed to PRIME, but since it happened to a no-name, a never-ran, he had suffered no consequences. That didn't stop the guilt from incubating in his chest, keeping him from sleep at night. Injuries were part of the sport, to be sure, but he had not set out to ruin people's lives.
Eventually the first rays of sun begin to lighten the waters of the river, and what Diego sees is not pretty. He's so tired he can't even think straight anymore, his thoughts malformed and hobbling, like the twisted bodies of infants exposed to Agent Orange. He thinks he should be getting home. So he does.
While living in Japan, Diego sought out a roommate. Though he could have easily found a nice room by himself with the money he was making, he thought it more prudent to try and save money for when he returned to the States. In doing so he had the misfortune to meet Gavyn, a dreadlocked Welsh anarchist in his mid-twenties, who would eventually become his self-righteous cunt of a roommate.
Gavyn had watched a lot of cable TV back in Wales, so he thought he knew a lot about America. Opinions which he never hesitated to share.
“You Americans,” he would say, spitting it out in the same disgusted tone as if he were saying 'you seal clubbers' or 'you child-molesters'. “You Americans are always going on about equality, wearing your American flag t-shirts and thumping your chests. But you've got to know, just as well as anyone, that there's no real equality between people. See, I've been around the world, and I know that the only thing equal in the world is that everyone has an equal opportunity to be an asshole.”
Well then I guess you're first among equals, was the first thought to come to Diego's mind. Never mind that he had never seen a single person in his life wearing an American flag t-shirt, what mattered was that Gavyn had, and it told him all he needed to know about the country.
If there was one thing Diego couldn't stand, it was being lectured to for being an American. It was strange how something like a nationality just attached itself to you, unasked. His whole life growing up in America, he had never felt like a real American. He had always been of two minds, felt like he belonged to two worlds, or rather didn't belong to either, one foot in each, Mexico and America, his body hovering in the air between them. For him to come overseas and be branded perfunctorily an American, no questions asked, was a bit of shock.
So when Gavyn stood there and told him why it was America/Diego's fault the world was so fucked up, how America/Diego had caused all the war and misery in the world, how America/Diego was so ignorant and inward-looking, was a hypocrite and closet-racist, it was all Diego could do to keep himself from punching the guy in the face.
Of course, the fact that Gavyn was growing a fat marijuana plant in his bedroom helped made his dickishness slightly easier to tolerate. Slightly.
Then again....
“Wake up! Wake the fuck up!”
Diego's eyes opened, then immediately shut again, offended by the light. He was being shaken roughly, and when he opened his eyes in the smallest possible slit, through the white haze of morning glare he saw Gavyn with a crazed look in his eyes.
“Whaddyawan?” Diego murmured, trying to pull away. But Gavyn was relentless, jerking Diego to sitting position and shoving a leafy mass into his hand.
“You gotta help me eat this plant, man,” he hissed, panic in his voice. “The cops, they're at the door.”
“The cops....?” Diego said, not comprehending. But then he heard the banging at the door, the Japanese voices rising now to a shout, growing impatient at being made to wait in the hallway. Diego knew it was only a matter of time before they got the landlord to let them in. Gavyn already had a big handful of leaves in his mouth, chewing them mournfully, but quickly, tears shimmering in his eyes. His mane of dreadlocks made him look like some sort of pathetic lion, being forced to eat his vegetables. Diego could almost laugh if he wasn't aware of how fucked over they really were.
What had happened was that Gavyn had been visiting Wales when he had the bright idea to send himself some marijuana to his address in Japan. Why he did this, even he could not tell you. He had a healthy supply of pot at the apartment, so it wasn't as if he were desperate, and even if he were, the small amount he sent, roughly four grams, wouldn't even have lasted him a weekend, so it was hardly worth the risk.
He placed the pot in an empty shampoo bottle, shoved it into a box with a few ratty old paperbacks, and wrote 'books' on the customs declaration slip before dropping it off at the post. The customs officials inspected the package, as they are wont to do, and when they discovered the pot, it was not difficult at all for them to connect the dots between the Welshmen who lived at the Japanese address and the Welsh postmark on the package.
For all he claimed to know about America, Gavyn was hardly the brightest crayon in the box.
Diego already felt like throwing up, but there would be plenty of time for that later. For now, he attended to the matter at hand, ripping off a sizable chunk of the remaining plant, no time to brush the dirt off, and stuffing in into his mouth.
It was bitter and he was bitter, and the whole fucking world was bitter. There had been sweetness once, sometime, in the distant past. He remembered it from when he was a boy. What had happened to all the sweetness?
He swallowed it down with a body-wracking shudder just a second before he heard the door open in the next room.
It had been a long day. He had been taken down to the station where he endured hours upon hours of questioning, all the while fighting back nausea. The plant was trying to climb up from the darkness, reaching toward what it imagined was sunlight, but was really the bright light the detective was shining into Diego's face. He could barely make out the man's garbled words as English, could only close his eyes and groan in response. They shoved confessions written in Japanese under his face which he refused to sign. They shouted at him in unintelligible words, all he could understand was the raw hatred in their voices.
And then eventually they let him go. One of FRPW's representatives had come down to pick him up. He beckoned Diego to follow him. The two men got in the back of an imported Rolls Royce, and they drove together to the federation's main offices in silence. Even if he felt like speaking, Diego knew there was nothing to say.
At the office, the Director of Foreign Talent, Kaz Araki, met him in a small conference room, after making him wait for a twenty minutes in uncomfortable silence. He brought with him a small folder, which he slid across the table for Diego to peruse.
“Having been found in possession of narcotics, you are in direct breach of your contract, and thus, with the authorization of PRIME, we choose to exercise our right to release you immediately, without notice.”
Stunned, Diego could think of nothing to say in response.
“We bailed you out and hushed this up with the police, with the agreement that you would be out of the country on the first plane tomorrow morning. Our organization can not be sullied by drug scandal of any kind. Japan is not a country that is so forgiving of that sort of thing. So there's your ticket home, in that folder, along with notice of your formal release.”
Diego opened the folder to find that there was indeed a plane ticket inside. Araki was staring at him, waiting for some form of recognition. All Diego could do was nod his head.
“Well if there's nothing you want to say, then I guess our business is finished here. I'll see you out.”
Araki walked Diego back to the lobby, where he was immediately assailed by a diminutive woman in a flouncy black dress and leggings. Diego could understand nothing of their conversation, all in Japanese, but from what he could tell, she was really laying into him. Sweat had begun to break out on his forward, when she she spat at his feet and turned away from him on his heels.
Seeing her headed in his direction, Diego quickly broke his gaze, turning away in an effort to pretend that he had not been staring at her just a moment before. He wanted no piece of that woman, and indeed, he nearly jumped when he felt a hand lightly touch him on his shoulder.
“Say, you're Diego Foster, aren't you?”
“Um, yeah,” he said, nonplussed. Turning to look at her, he saw her expression had softened since her altercation, as she smiled up at him. He furrowed his brow, trying to place her face. “I've seen you around backstage at some of the shows. You're....um.... Sorry, I'm not good with Japanese names.”
“Thank god, I'd kill to go some place where nobody knows me,” she said with a forced laugh. “I'm Nami. Nami Okuda.”
“Oh. Oooooh. You're the....” He didn't say it, but he thought it. The fallen aidoru. The shabu princess. The former Japanese pop star who had crashed and burned on amphetamines, now exiled to the furthest reaches of the public consciousness. Died and reincarnated as a lesser being: professional wrestling neophyte.
“Yeah, I'm that one,” she said, waving her fingers in the air, before brushing it off. She tilted her head forward, giving him a sly look. “Say, you're American, right?”
“Yeah.”
“When are you going back?”
“Hmm,” Diego said, pull his plane ticket out of the folder. “11:30 tomorrow morning, apparently.”
“Maybe this is a little sudden, but...” she folded her hands together in a pleading gesture. “What would you say if I asked to come with?”
“But I hardly know you,” Diego said, taken aback.
“I know! And that's exactly the reason why,” she smiled. “Look, I'm going to level with you. My career is over in Japan. I've spent the past eight months training to be a wrestler, to work some side show gig here, and now they decide at the last minute that it's a bad idea after all, like I'm going to bring negative press or whatever. Bullshit, yeah?”
“I guess so.”
“What I'd really like to do....” she sighed. “Is just start over.”
“Well, I guess that puts us in the same boat,” Diego said, his mouth turned up in half smile.
“Good, then let's start rowing” she said, smiling as she stepped behind him, pushing him forward toward the door. She paused to shoot a final glare at Kaz Araki, before stepping around to take Diego arm in arm. “But first, how about we get some drinks?”
Later that night, as they lay in bed together, Diego wondered if he he was doing the right thing in allowing Nami to come with him to America. She seemed to have built the country up in her mind as some sort of promised land, a haven that would provide her with everything that Japan had denied her, first and foremost a chance at redemption. But reality was hardly so kind, and he feared for her future. He couldn't help but think of Gavyn's old anti-American rants, and thought perhaps he should disabuse her of her fantasies.
America, the land of opportunity. How many times had he heard that growing up? That no matter what you do in life, if you try hard enough, if you commit yourself to it, you can succeed. Hard work, the sweat off your back, can make dreams come true. There seemed to be endless variations of such pithy phrases, running together seamlessly, airtight. Beatitudes of banality, forming a national character as surely suffocating as a plastic bag tied around the head.
These they were force-fed as children, like veal calves, spoonful after spoonful of saccharine nonsense crammed into their heads, swelling their egos, becoming slowly bloated with a sense of entitlement. And when finally adults, what then? Their doughy mouths opened in shock to realize that the real world was not so quick to reward effort, a lash on the back from harsh taskmasters far more likely than a pat on the head. The truth of the world was that nothing was going to be handed over on a plate. If they wanted a piece of the pie, they were going to have to strangle the baker and claw the already half-eaten slice out of his gullet.
This Diego had realized only too late. He had struggled, had fought tooth and nail for what he had, but in the end it never seemed to be enough. The American dream was a sham, it didn't exist. If it did, if it was true that anyone was capable of making their dreams come true, then what did that say about all the millions of failures, the losers, the zeros on the social scale? That they hadn't tried hard enough?
If anything Diego had worked too hard, only to collapse exhausted at the end of the day into a dreamless sleep that offered no respite from the toil of his life.
But that night, as he fell asleep, he did dream. He dreamt of a future free from fear, free from desperation and madness, where hard work was rewarded, evil was punished, and the sleep of the just was a gift given to all God's children. He dreamt a dream, a dream among dreams, and in this dream, at last, he was triumphant.