On Monday, I arrived at the Factory shortly after five o’clock, wanting to get a feel for the ring before everyone showed up. Not that I was a stranger to it. Sometimes, when I went to the Factory to work out, if the place was empty, I’d practice taking bumps and running the ropes, which weren’t ropes at all. They were steel cables covered with a thin foam padding and rubber tubing, meaning they hurt when you bounced against them, until your body grew accustomed to it.
Falling on the mat could be painful, too. It was made of canvas, with a two-inch thick cushion and sheets of plywood underneath. The bottom of the ring had a suspension system that reduced the impact, but wrestlers still had to learn how to bump properly to avoid breaking their necks.
Based on what I’d seen my father do in the past, I figured one of the first lessons he was going to teach was how to run the ropes, and I wanted to brush up on the skill, hoping to impress him.
When I walked in, I was surprised to see Misty and Valen sitting at the merchandise table, doing what appeared to be homework. They had a stack of textbooks next to them and were typing on their laptops.
I debated whether I should introduce myself or act as if they weren’t there. On the one hand, I didn’t want the girls to think I was trying to flirt with them. On the other, I didn’t want to seem rude or standoffish.
Come on, Baron, your father’s the Angel of Death. He’s going to be their trainer. They’ll be thrilled that you gave them the time of day.
I made my way toward them casually and said, “Hi, I’m Jesse.”
The girls looked up from their laptops and smiled. A good sign.
“Nice to meet you,” Misty said. “I don’t know if you remember our names, but I’m Misty and this is Valen.”
“Actually, my name’s Valentina,” she said. “I was born on Valentine’s Day, which is where the name comes from. But I had a teacher who called me Valen for short. Anyway, I loved it ’cause it was different, and I’ve been going by it ever since.”
“You sound like my girlfriend,” I said. “Her name’s Wally Ann, but she prefers to be called Wally for the same reason.”
“Oh, so you have a girlfriend?” Valen asked.
“Well, she’s not really my girlfriend,” I said. “I mean, we go out sometimes, but it’s nothing serious.”
I don’t know what made me say that. Wally and I had dated exclusively for a long time, and despite our recent spats, we hadn’t broken up. At least not yet. Was I trying to leave the door open for Valen or Misty in case things went sour between Wally and me?
Switching the subject, I asked, “So what are you guys doing here so early?”
“We’re taking summer classes at San Antonio College,” Misty said. “We live in San Marcos, and it’s too far to go home and come back, so we’re just hanging out here doing our work until the training starts. Coach Ellis told us it’d be okay.”
“That makes sense,” I said, thinking their plan was similar to mine. “Are you working toward a degree, or are you just getting your basics out of the way?”
“Both,” Valen said. “I’m taking English and history right now, but I’m going to major in kinesiology. I’d like to be an elementary school P.E. coach someday.”
“Cool.” I turned to Misty. “And you?”
“Computer science, but I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it.”
“You might want to talk to Steve Dalton, one of my father’s wrestlers,” I said. “He’s a software engineer. He may be able to give you some ideas.”
“Thanks. I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Your dad mentioned that you’ll be leaving for school in the fall,” Valen said. “Where will you be going?”
“Not too far. UT Austin.”
“Wow, that’s awesome. Me and Misty and Noreen, the girl who was with us on Saturday, applied there, but none of us got accepted.”
“I just lucked out, I guess,” I said. “Listen, I’d better let you get back to your studying.”
The girls were a lot friendlier than I had expected. I was afraid they’d be like some of the ones at my school who automatically set up their invisible shields whenever certain guys tried to talk to them.
I went behind the curtains to work out in one of the practice rings. The moment I set my duffel bag on a chair, I heard my phone chime. I took it out of the bag and saw that Wally had texted me two drawings—a detailed Máscara de la Muerte mask, and a full body image of a wrestler with a mask like it. The wrestler had white tights, white boots with skulls on the sides, and a long, white cape lined in black and silver, with an upturned collar.
The picture Wally had drawn at my house was great, but these looked professionally done. If Shirley Washington could design my wrestling gear to match them, I’d be one classy-looking luchador.
I started to answer Wally when it struck me that the drawings may have been her way of breaking up with me. Why else would she have sent them with no message? If she was just upset with me, she would’ve waited until we made up before giving them to me. And she would’ve handed them to me in person.
I didn’t have Wally’s witticism, but I could imagine her thinking: I’m submitting a final payment and closing my account. Adiós, Jessup. Au revoir. Auf Wiedersehen. Goodbye.
Strange, but I didn’t feel hurt or bothered by it. Nor did I feel happy or relieved. It was as if my brain had gone numb, incapable of processing the fact that in all probability, Wally had just dumped me.
I thought about calling her to make sure I hadn’t misinterpreted her text. But if it turned out I was right about what she meant, I didn’t want to end up getting into another argument. Regardless, I felt I should let her know that I’d received the pictures, so I replied with a single word.
Thanks.
I climbed inside one of the rings and worked on my drills. Before long, I heard male voices coming through the curtains. I glanced at the wall clock. It was six-fifteen. The other trainees were beginning to arrive.
I toweled myself off, then went out to mingle with them. It was important to me that they saw me as a fellow trainee, not as Mark Baron’s kid, who was simply killing time at the Factory until he left for college.
One of the guys I met was Joaquín Luna. He told me he used to play basketball in high school and had hoped to go to college on a basketball scholarship but didn’t get any offers.
“They used to call me ‘Wild King’ Luna,” he said. “You know, ’cause it sounds like my name.”
“Oh, great,” a trainee named Pete Vogel said. “We’ve got another Hilarious Beasley in our group.” Pete was a barrel-chested guy with tree-trunk arms and legs. He wasn’t ripped like some of the other trainees, but my guess was that he had the strength of at least two ordinary men.
“Make fun all you want, bro,” Joaquín told him. “But when I start wrestling, I’m gonna call myself Wild King Luna. And one of these days, I’m gonna be a household name.”
I also met George Galloway, a former NFL tight end, who’d played for a number of teams, including the Houston Texans. Now he worked as a real estate agent.
“I’m doing this to stay active and to enjoy the limelight again,” he said. “But you never know. I may turn out to be even more famous than your old man.”
One of the trainees who initially creeped me out was Bobby Lee Taylor. I was leery of him, knowing he’d been in prison for holding up convenience stores at gunpoint. Plus he was scary looking. Bobby Lee was almost as tall as my father. He had a shaved head, dark-brown caterpillar eyebrows and a Viking beard. Along with his jacked, tattooed body, I thought he’d make a perfect heel once he turned pro.
“Your name’s Jesse, right?” he said. “I remember you from the tryouts. I’m Bobby Lee.” His voice was low and raspy, like the one my father used as the Angel of Death, except his was natural.
“Good to meet you, sir,” I said, and shook his hand, which was twice the size as mine.
“Sir? Ain’t no need to be so formal with me, friend. I’m just plain old Bobby Lee.”
I responded with a weak, “Okay.”
“I got a good feeling about being here, know what I’m saying? I think pro wrestling’s gonna give me a new direction in my life.”
“My father’s a great trainer,” I said. “You’ll learn a lot from him.”
Bobby Lee Taylor may have looked like a psycho killer, but he seemed like a nice guy. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
At promptly six-thirty, Travis and Joe gathered us in the fitness room for calisthenics. Then as I predicted, they took us to Henley Park behind the Starlight Shopping Center for hill runs. They started us with power walks, then short runs, long runs, slow ones and fast ones, up and down the park’s hilly terrain. The warmups were tiring, but not exhausting, like the ones on Saturday.
When we were done, we were given a dinner break. We had been told that the concession stand would be closed, and we’d have to bring our own food. I took my lunch sack out of my duffel bag and ate with Goose in the back row of chairs
“Hey, take a look at these,” I said, and showed him Wally’s drawings. “This is what I’m going to look like when I wrestle as Máscara de la Muerte. Wally designed it for me.”
“Man, that’s awesome,” he said.
“The thing is, she and I had a huge fight yesterday.”
“Another one?”
“Yeah. Then today she sent me these pictures, but you’ll notice that she didn’t write anything. What do you think that means?”
Goose studied the drawings again. “I don’t know. Maybe she’s still mad at you and didn’t feel like adding a message.”
“No, I think it’s more than that,” I said. “I think this is Wally’s way of breaking up with me.”
“Oh, yeah? Hey, you know what? You may be right. She’s kinda weird like that.” Goose looked across the room at Misty and Valen, who were eating together. “Maybe now we can try to hook up with those chicks.”
“I told you, I’m not interested in them,” I said, although I wasn’t ruling out the possibility. “Besides, I don’t know for sure where I stand with Wally.”
“Well, even if she didn’t dump you, you need to get rid of her, man. She’s old news.”
Goose had never cared for Wally. She was too offbeat and brainy for his taste. And she only tolerated him because of me. She described him as being “half ignoramus and half cretin.”
I knew my feelings for Wally were genuine, but I also realized that school had been part of what kept us together. Until this past weekend, I hadn’t seen her since my graduation party. And after our last fight, I didn’t know if I’d ever see her again. If our relationship had reached its end, this was probably the least painful way to go about it, by letting it wither away, with neither of us making an effort to mend it.
After the break, my father rang the time keeper’s bell, calling everyone to the ring to begin our first lesson of the evening.