Rudo
MJ and Mr. Arellano were talking about their favorite wrestlers as he drove her to Victory Academy. He was telling her all about legends like Blue Demon and El Santo, who were the most famous luchadores in Mexico when he was a boy.
“They weren’t just wrestlers,” he told her. “They were like movie stars and superheroes all mixed up together.”
“Like if Spider-Man was a wrestler?”
“I suppose so.”
“I read online that Stevie Lord is going to be in a movie.”
“I’m sure that will be a masterpiece,” Papi said sarcastically.
“You don’t like Stevie Lord?”
“He’s not bad for a gabacho.”
“He’s one of the biggest stars on Lucha Dominion!”
“Like I said, he’s not bad for a gabacho.”
“What was your gimmick name?”
Mr. Arellano smiled with pride. “I was El Hacha Rojo.”
MJ squinted in thought, trying to place one of the unfamiliar Spanish words.
“The red . . . what?” she asked.
He laughed. “Axe, mija. The Red Axe.”
“Oh. Were you famous when you still wrestled?”
“I wasn’t Santo or Blue Demon, that’s for sure.”
“But you were a big star in Mexico?”
“My son was bigger,” he said, and somehow he sounded proud and sad at the same time. “He was better than me, too.”
“Where is he? Does he still wrestle?”
“He passed away, mija.”
“I’m really sorry, Papi,” she said, and for some reason, after hearing about what happened to his son, it was easier for her to call him that.
“It’s okay. It was years ago.”
“How did it happen? Is that okay to ask?”
“What happened to him happened to a lot of workers from his generation. On the road too much and for too long, wrestling too many shows. He started taking medicine for the pain from his injuries. And he took other things because he missed being away from home, and because he was spending so much time in strange cities and in hotel rooms. One night he took too much of both those things, and when he went to sleep he didn’t wake up.”
“That’s so awful.”
“I took care of his son after because his mother wasn’t able to. My grandson had the same fire and the same talent. He would’ve been as great as his papi. He was taking a school trip with his class when a big truck on the other side of the road lost control and hit his bus.”
“You lost a lot,” MJ said, because she knew it was true and she didn’t know what else to say about such terrible things.
“Sí,” Papi agreed. “But they lost more. I’m still here.”
“I guess . . . it’s good you have so many other kids, right? At the school?”
Papi nodded. “It helps. It was the only thing that helped, really.”
“I like Corrina a lot more than Stevie Lord,” MJ said when she couldn’t think of anything else to add to their current topic. “She’s my favorite.”
“I’m proud of her. Her mama wasn’t always sure she’d turn out so well. I could tell you stories about her before she started training.”
MJ’s eyes lit up. “Oh yeah?”
They arrived at Victory Academy and as they climbed out of his truck, Papi began telling MJ about Corrina taking her mother’s car without permission before she even had a driver’s license. The darkness of the past few minutes started to leave him, and as they walked across the parking lot he was laughing about how mad Corrina’s mother had been.
Almost as soon as they entered the school, MJ felt Papi’s mood change again. He suddenly stopped walking with her, and when she looked up at him, he had an expression on his face almost as sour as the one he’d worn when they first met after he’d come back from his grandson’s funeral.
He was staring hard across the warehouse and MJ looked to see what had gotten his attention. There was a man she hadn’t seen at the school before. He was holding a leather notepad and a pen. It looked like he was inspecting all the Academy’s equipment.
No one was training, MJ noticed. The students in attendance at Victory Academy that day were all gathered around the rings, just watching the man walk around the school and scribble in his pad.
“Wait here,” Papi told her.
Papi stepped forward and smiled as he shouted across the warehouse at the man, “You took last week off!”
MJ could tell Papi was being fake nice.
“I was on vacation,” the man said, sounding even more fake and wearing an equally phony smile that made MJ want to squirm.
“Where’d you jet off to?” Papi asked.
“Took the wife down to Cabo for our anniversary.”
Papi walked over to him. They didn’t shake hands. They just stared at each other, wearing their insincere smiles.
MJ studied the man Papi was talking to. He was shorter than Papi, and younger, with heavily greased black hair threaded with gray and a thin mustache and beard just around his chin. He was wearing a suit and tie, but it somehow looked wrong on him. MJ thought the man looked like a little kid wearing his father’s suit to the school dance. His shoes were bright and shiny, but in an annoying way that made them distracting.
“So what’s the damage going to be today?” Papi asked.
The man tore a page out of his notepad. “I guess me being away made you sloppy, Álvaro. The safety mats around your practice rings are worn thin and insufficient. You have some mold in the public restrooms. The power strips those vending machines are hooked up to are completely overloaded and a fire hazard—”
“So you’re the fire chief now, too, Corto?” Papi interrupted him.
The man frowned, but it quickly turned into a sweet smile.
“Oh, and I noticed about a hundred holes poked in your air-conditioning unit.”
Mr. Arellano’s eyes went wide. “A hundred what? How does that happen?”
He looked around in shock and anger as if he expected one of the students or staff to answer him.
Everyone looked just as confused as he was, though.
Corto shrugged. “Maybe you have very precise rats. Either way, it’s a violation and you’ll have to replace it.”
“Do you have any idea how much a new unit will cost?”
“Yes,” Corto said as he stuffed the page he’d torn from his pad into Papi’s hand.
Papi closed his fist around it angrily.
“I’ll see you next week,” he said, and even though his voice didn’t get louder, it sounded like he wanted to scream. “Welcome back.”
The man bowed his head, but like the rest of their exchange MJ could tell there was no respect in the gesture.
MJ, along with the rest of the students, watched silently as he left their school. As he passed her, his shiny shoes clacked loudly on the cement floor.
MJ waited until he was gone, and then she jogged over to Papi, who was staring with a deep frown at the paper he’d been handed.
“Who was that?” she asked.
“His name is Neal Corto, and he works for the State Athletic Commission.”
“What’s that?”
“If you want to put on a boxing or a wrestling show in California, they have to say it’s okay and give you a license. The same goes for running a school like Victory Academy.”
“He doesn’t seem to like you very much,” MJ observed.
Papi laughed bitterly. “He hates wrestling. Hates it. If it were up to him there wouldn’t be any wrestling in California at all. We’re just the biggest and best school around, that’s all.”
“What did he want?”
Papi held up the slip of paper Corto had shoved into his hand before he left.
“This is a fine I have to pay for breaking their rules. Almost every week that . . .”
Papi made that face adults made when they were about to say a curse word then realized MJ was standing there.
She wasn’t a big fan of that face and wished they would all just say what they meant.
“He comes in here and finds any little thing he can make into a violation. Then he fines me for them. If he can’t find a violation, he’s good at making them up.”
MJ was outraged. “That’s not right!”
Papi shrugged. “He’s got the badge. I mean, it’s more like a laminated ID card, but it lets him do what he wants, just the same.”
“Doesn’t that cost you a lot of money?”
Papi sighed heavily. “A lot of money. I think that’s why he does it. He’s hoping he can bankrupt me out of here. And now I have to replace the air conditioner on top of it. Where did those holes come from?”
The first part of what he said scared MJ. “He won’t, will he? Close down the school, I mean?”
He looked down at her, and seeing her concern seemed to melt away his anger. He smiled warmly.
“No, mija. They would have to burn this place down to get me out.”
MJ nodded, trying to smile back. The thought of something, anything happening to the school still disturbed her.
“It’ll take more than Mr. Neal Corto and his pad of tickets.”
“So he’s a rudo,” MJ said.
Papi grinned bitterly. “That’s right. He’s definitely our bad guy.”