Gun Work

To Barney’s right was Medico Odio, Dr. Hate, who without his máscara resembled a burly nightclub comic — acres of grin, big square head tattooed with scar tissue from all the times he had bladed in the ring, abundant mustachio, like Central Casting’s idea of Pancho Villa, fifty percent bigger and louder. All of the OC-bound crew were traveling incognito, maskless. To let Barney see them and know who they were in civilian life was in itself a trust not to be breached, and its name was kayfabe — not a Mexican word, pronounced K-fayb.

You never outed a luchador; either by exposing his true identity or yakking about the rehearsed drama and cooperative elements of the sport. Breaking kayfabe was the worst kind of gaffe, and grounds for total ostracization and pariah status. The term itself was never uttered outside of the wrestling or carny industries until the 1990s, when it was hijacked by hip know-nothings to connote insider status, and grossly flaunted by Americans tone-deaf to mythic power.

The gold standard of Mexican wrestlers, the world famous Hijo del Santo, scion of the legendary Enmáscarada de Plata, was so devoted to maintaining kayfabe that he was known to travel separately from his crew and peers, especially inside of Mexico, in order to avoid the chance that anyone might glimpse his real face when he had to do things like clear passport scrutiny.

To Barney’s left was Flecha de Jalisco, a tapatío from Guadalajara, capital city of the state for which many wrestlers had named themselves, the most famous being Rayo de Jalisco and all his sub-named hijos and juniors, a whole multigenerational wrestling dynasty. His real name was Cristobal Campos Soriano; the flecha meant “arrow.” He was the oldest fighter in the car at fifty-five and, barring a crippling accident, would be doing suicide moonsaults for another ten years. Repeated hits in the throat and a lifetime smoking habit had given him a resonant radio announcer’s voice. He could speak almost sub-audibly and still be heard over the din of a crowd, without a microphone.

Up front on the right, working his way through the third of many cans of Tecate stashed in a ice cooler, was Mega Poseidon, who had gotten his gimmick, trident and all, from watching Jason & the Argonauts as a child, but usually worked in a fish-man monster mask of green and gold, with costume to match. He had dyed blond hair black at the roots and shorn to a military-style brush cut. His almost Brazilian eyes were that mesmerizing aqua color, very calm but somehow alien in his swarthy face.

Poseidon handed Barney’s newest passport back to him. It was a first-rate job of speed forgery and would pass muster in any American scanner.

“Wow,” said Barney. He was learning the clumsy dance using his remaining fingers and thumb as a kind of grasping tool, an unsubtle crab-claw, and was able to dunk the passport into his coat pocket on the first try. “Who do we owe for tickets?”

“We all got e-tickets,” said Flecha. “Taken care of by Tuntun, our homeboy in Orange County. The passport gets you through the computer, no problemo.”

Dr. Hate made a joke about Barney’s stealth status being the grandest kayfabe of them all.

“Yeah, you need a luchador identity,” said El Atrocidad with a half-smirk. “In case somebody asks us who the hell you are.”

Thus ensued a long exploration into Barney’s attributes — if any could be said to apply to lucha libre — resulting in handles mostly cut from whole cloth anyway: first the dirty one (Chupacabrón), then the ridiculous one (Cangrejo Tres Mil, due to the crab-claw joke), then one that perversely fit: El Destructor Blanco, the White Destroyer.

Insofar as he could grip anything, Barney gripped the pill vials in his pockets and tried not to sweat the rest of his life out through his pores. These hale and belligerent men were doing their best to keep his spirits up, to infuse him with their infectious energy. He hoped he would not have to hang between two of them and pretend to walk, like a marionette on downers. When they debarked at the airport, he saw how farcical this would be: El Atrocidad and Flecha towered over him, while Dr. Hate and Mega-Poseidon were each a foot shorter.