I had mud in my eyes. And in my hair and mouth and up my nose. That’s the worst of mud wrestling. When you lose, you lose dirty. I staggered around the building to the hose-down pad. The plumbing at Al’s is old, and he doesn’t want mud clogging up his drains. So the “talent,” as he calls us girls, has to hose off outside before we hit the showers. Shower, I should say, because there was only one, and we had to queue for it. Meantime the crowd was going crazy for Wild Woman Wanda. I could see her as I turned the water on. She was pumping her fists over her head and making biceps, posing left and right.
Jimmy appeared as I was rinsing out my mouth.
“Tough break, Lava.” He shook his head. Jimmy was a little guy, skinny as a wire, twice my age, twice as wise and a good friend.
“She butted me!”
“I saw.”
“I—want—a rematch,” I told him between gargles.
“Give it a rest. This is the second time you’ve lost to Wanda. You’re not ready, kid. You gotta get more fit.”
“Hey, I jog.”
“When you feel like it. And you eat lousy.”
“I want the rematch, Jimbo.” I was in no mood for lectures. “Next week. I’ll swamp that hairpulling hippo.”
Right then Al showed up to bawl at Jimmy that folks were lining up for drinks and was he going to take all night?
“Keep your pants on,” muttered Jimmy. He hurried away.
By now you know my dimensions and my stage name, Lady Lava. What you don’t know is that I’m otherwise Gina Lopez, twenty-six, brown eyes, blond hair that only needs a touch-up now and then. Like Al said, I’m a local girl, born and raised in Franks. A postal worker during the week and a mud wrestler on weekends. Right now I wrestle in Al’s pit for the experience, racking up smalltime wins and, yeah, the occasional loss. I want to build my name and hit the action south of the border. Vegas is my dream. I certainly don’t wrestle for the glory or the money. The purse, as Al calls it, is a lousy fifty bucks a match. He’s never short on takers though. You may not believe it, but there are always chicks who think it looks like fun. Or who do it to please their boyfriends. Or to attract a guy. Al is ever ready to oblige. Any female who’s willing can wrestle.
“Listen, girls,” Al says to us. “I’m a big promoter of the sport, which is why I run the pit. If I was a businessman, I wouldn’t do it. I’m not getting rich here.”
He’s lying, of course. We women pull in the crowd for him. Semi-pros like me and Wanda, and wannabes out to try their luck. He pockets the profit. We get to supply our own shampoo and towels.
There’s something else you need to know about me. I’m also a recent widow. I buried my husband Chico exactly thirty days ago. To be honest, I was more down about my loss to Wanda tonight than I was about Chico.
First, because I hate being beaten. Second, I hate being beaten by a dirty fighter like Wanda. Third, Chico wasn’t worth grieving over. Not after what he did to me. Or tried to do.
I was just entering the Ladies when someone called my name. I turned. It was a woman, fiftyish, faded hair locked in a hard perm, a discontented face. She was small and kind of doughy. Her flesh bagged around her ankles and her expandable watchband cut into her pudgy wrists. She wore a frilly blouse, a print cotton skirt, canvas flats and carried a straw handbag. She didn’t look like one of Al’s regulars. In fact, she’d have been more at home at a church picnic.
“Are you Gina Lopez?” Her voice had a hoity-toity lift to it.
“Lady Lava to you,” I said. “Look, I’m not signing autographs right now. If you don’t mind.” I pushed through and headed to the shower.
She followed me in and shut the door behind her. “I don’t want your autograph. I want to talk to you.”
Oh cripes, I thought. Not another one who wants to tell me mud wrestling is un-Christian or degrading to women. I keyed open the locker where my stuff was stowed. There were two of them—battered metal high school gym rejects—for the wrestlers. The only thing, other than mud and water, Al supplied.
“Can’t it wait?” I peeled off my wrestling suit. She looked away, like seeing me in the raw was improper. I stepped into the stall and turned the water on full bore.
But she wasn’t going to be put off. She went on talking at me while I showered. I could see her mouth working through the gap in the curtain even though I couldn’t hear her. I took my time soaping off and followed with a good long rinse.
“Hand me my towel, will you,” I said when I had finished. I pointed to my stuff in the open locker.
She didn’t oblige. Instead she got pushy. “I said, in case you didn’t hear me, I saw what you did.”
“Well, it wasn’t my best performance,” I had to admit. I brushed past her to get the towel myself. She jumped back, like getting wet would ruin her clothes.
“I’m not talking about your wrestling,” she said. “I’m talking about the tenth of July, Lovers’ Leap.”
It took a minute or two for her words to sink in. She watched me, like a cat eyeballs a bird. I registered the date and place all right. Despite the hot shower, I suddenly felt a chill. I dried off slowly, pulled on my bra and pants. Was she talking about Chico’s death?
“What about it?” I said at last.
“I saw you push him off that cliff.”
I stared at her, my mouth hanging open. “You what? Who the hell are you?”
She held her straw handbag in front of her like a shield.
“My name is Marcia Beekland,” she said, talking real fast. “And I’m here to tell you I was hiking up on Lovers’ Leap that day. I saw you struggling with a man at the edge of the cliff. I saw you push him over!”
“You’re crazy!” I shook my head and backed away from her. That wasn’t how it happened.
She smiled her cat smile.
“I have the proof. I videoed it on my iPhone. I found out who you were from the newspaper. They called it an accident. A Tragic Anniversary Picnic. You’d both been drinking. Your husband—Chico—tripped and fell. It was a hundred-foot drop. I made some inquiries. He had a life insurance policy worth two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, didn’t he? A pretty good motive for getting rid of him.”
“Listen.” I moved so fast she barely had time to flinch. I grabbed her shirtfront, jerking her in close. She batted at me with her hands and dropped her purse. “The life-insurance policy was his idea, and it was the other way around.” I gave her a few shakes just so she’d get my meaning. “Sure, there was a struggle. But what you think you saw was actually Chico trying to get rid of me. And by the way, the coroner’s verdict was accidental death. Plain and simple. Now get out of my face before I wreck you!”
She pulled loose from me and straightened her clothes.
“I doubt that’s how the police will view it,” she said primly. “Or the insurance company when they see what I have to show them. They’ll want their money back.”
In fact, North American Life was dragging its feet on paying out. Of course, I wasn’t going to tell her that. Or the fact that the cops had talked to me. But I had stuck to my story of an accident, and in the end they let it go.
“Get out,” I said.
She bent down, retrieved her purse and pulled out her iPhone.
“Maybe this will convince you,” she said and held it up.
On the screen I saw a tiny Gina and Chico seesawing on a cliff edge. The scene lasted for only ten seconds or so before Gina gave Chico what certainly looked like a push that sent him over. It was enough for me to realize how things would be interpreted.
I snatched the phone from her and slammed it on the counter. I slammed it again and again until it came apart in little pieces.
She laughed. “You’re not stupid enough to think I didn’t download this?”
“Are you threatening me?” I said, realizing she was.
She had regained her confidence now.
“Let’s just say I’m concerned about your welfare. I’d like you to stay out of jail. I’d like you to collect a quarter of a million dollars.”
“And what’s in it for you, all this concern for my welfare?”
She smirked.
“A small favor. In return for my silence. You seem pretty good at getting rid of people. I want you to get rid of someone for me.”
When I got my breath back, I said, “Are you nuts? You’re trying to blackmail me into killing someone for you?”
“Let’s just say I’m making you an offer you can’t refuse. I’ll be in the IGA parking lot at nine tomorrow morning. Look for a white Ford Fiesta. We’ll talk then. And, Gina, I want you to know, if you don’t show, I’ll go public. So this is a meeting you don’t want to miss.” She walked to the door and pulled it open. Over her shoulder she said, “Nine am sharp. I’ll expect you,” and walked out.
I stood there, not believing what I’d just heard. Then I put the toilet seat lid down and sat on it and held my head. I could see what it would look like to the cops. And to the insurance company, who would love a reason not to pay up.
I thought, Chico, you bastard.
He was a womanizer and a gambler. I knew that when I married him. But he was good-looking, with dark curly hair and coffee-colored eyes and a wild sense of humor. I even thought his taking out a joint life-insurance policy was a wacky joke. I never dreamed he’d try to kill me for it.
The sad thing is, for a while there on July 10, our seventh anniversary, I thought I was having one of the happiest days of my married life. Chico had put together a cooler of smoked salmon and potato salad, a shaker of shooters and a couple of bottles of champagne—the high-class stuff—with proper champagne glasses, not plastic. He’d hiked us up to a secluded spot high up above Winona Gorge. The view was great. He’d even thought to bring a blanket to lie on, cushions, a tape deck with romantic music.
“Here’s to you, Gina,” he said and kept refilling my glass.
Then he said, “Hey, babe, come look at this.” And he took me over to the edge of the cliff.
That’s when he tried to give me the push. I thought he was playing around, and I remember saying, “Hey, Chico, stop it, man. It’s dangerous.” It took me a second to realize he wasn’t joking. He should have known better. You don’t shove a mud wrestler. I told myself over and over it was a case of self-defense. And it was. Except for that split second, just as he was toppling backward, when maybe I could have saved him. I could have lunged forward and grabbed him. Maybe. But I didn’t. Let’s say I was in shock and fighting for my life. Or that in that moment I realized what a worthless shit I was married to. And it was Chico who took the quick way down.
Suddenly the Ladies room door swung open and Wild Woman Wanda burst in. She was dripping from her hose-down and her bottle-red hair was plastered to her face. A big gal whose trademark was a leopard-skin off-one-shoulder wrestling suit. It made her look like a chunky Tarzan.
“Bad luck, Lava,” she crowed as she strutted past me to the shower. She liked me about as much as I liked her. “You need to work on your technique, girl.” Wanda coming on top of Marcia Beekland was more than I could handle.
“Try me for a rematch, mud skipper,” I yelled. “I’ll murder you!” Then I realized what I had said.