I read while Grant slept. The fantasy epic was not gripping me, but it was better than the highway or the wrestlers that wouldn’t talk to me.
Grant was suddenly yanked out of sleep by the bright, brassy fanfare of his phone ringing from an incoming call. It took me a moment to recognize that the ringtone was the fight song of our alma mater.
I guess only his alma mater, technically, as I hadn’t graduated.
He stared at the screen stupidly before answering it and immediately cracking a giant yawn into the ear of whoever was talking. I could hear the voice, slightly tinny in the phone’s speaker, loud and concerned.
“Everything’s fine, mom, I’m fine. Don’t pay attention to whatever the blogs say.”
My head snapped up. My stomach started churning. I waited for Grant to finish assuring his mother that everything was indeed fine, and hang up, before I cleared my throat.
He looked at me expectantly.
“Grant,” I said, “you want to check out a wrestling blog called Squaring the Circle?”
“Oh, I love that one,” he said. “He actually covers us. All about the local scene, you know?”
“Yeah. Why don’t you pull it up.”
He did just that, and almost immediately his face brightened, and not just from the glow of the screen, but from the huge smile that broke out on his face.
“Well, hot damn,” he said, “I’m on the front fucking page of Squaring the Circle! I’m the top goddamn story!”
Grant immediately paraded into the aisle, brandishing his phone at everyone on the bus—breaking up card games and ending naps, showing his phone to a host of bewildered and annoyed fellow wrestlers and employees.
With a sigh, I looked it up on my own tablet.
“DELMARVA DEATH THREATS: U.S. Grant Traveling with Body Guard” read the headline and the kicker beneath it.
“God. Dammit.”
I opened the article and scanned it, my rising anger not allowing me to absorb any too much of it.
What I could read, I didn’t like.
“…angry fans are not new to the world of professional wrestling, but threats of death and harm are few and far between. Surely this is the first time a regional promotion such as the DWF has been forced to hire round-the-clock personal security for their talent.
“DWF have hired professional bodyguard and investigator Jack Dixon, of Elkton, Maryland, to investigate these threats. Dixon has been spotted at the two most recent DWF shows by our own field reporters; in at least one case, sources have referred to Dixon having a special operations background…”
I had to close the folding case over the tablet and stop reading. I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes for a moment.
Grant came bouncing back into his seat, a huge grin still plastered over his face, brimming with excitement.
“Man, I can’t believe it. The heat I’m gonna get for this…”
“Heat? You’re fucking excited about this?”
“Of course I am.”
“Grant,” I said through clenched teeth, “now whoever is making threats knows you have security. They know who I am. Thank Christ, at least there isn’t a fucking picture of me. But this puts us at a serious goddamn disadvantage.”
“Look, man, you’ll handle it. But this is gonna make for some electric crowds.”
Grant did not seem to see the threat at play here, and I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of that. I’d never had a particularly high estimate of his intelligence and it was dropping by the second.
“Your confidence in me is flattering, if completely and totally unwarranted,” I said through still-clenched teeth. “But anybody who reads this article is going to know I’m there. They’re going to recognize me. And if they mean you harm, they can try and get me out of the way first.”
Daphne, having quietly watched all the hubbub from her seat at the front of the bus, came stalking back toward us.
“We can make this a win-win,” she said with a smile. “You get to stay close to Grant. And we get to make use of the publicity.”
I didn’t have the faintest idea what she meant, but I could tell I wouldn’t like it if I figured it out.