Gun Work

Barney tried to remember how recently he had arrived at Benito Juárez International, Mexico’s largest air hub. Weeks or months? He had no baggage but with the number of gear trollies the luchadors were pulling, that really didn’t matter. He’d had to leave the assassin’s pistol with Mano and felt naked without it, even if he was incapable of bringing it into play. The usual security, cops and soldiers were toting auto machine guns everywhere, but the ’port had remained unrattled in the post-9/11 world. Besides, they were just jumping up to Tijuana, and luchadors have a quiet way of exuding a forcefield of celebrity even when they are traveling as civilians. It is okay to sense they are wrestlers because nobody knows which wrestlers they might or might not be, and strangers defer to the most tempting choice. They got smiles of acknowledgement even from the guards as they passed, and Barney was just another one of them. Hurt in the ring, no doubt.

The hoodie coat Barney was wearing concealed a multitude of sins, but ventilation was not one of its virtues. Mummified in bandages beneath, he was starting to bake. Soon he would smell delicious.

On the plane, Dr. Hate had to help him sip a soft drink through a straw. Barney had never felt more completely helpless. He knew the air trip was partially due to his condition, since the 800-mile drive to Tijuana from Mexico City would have wrecked him. More unknown benefactors to thank.

The Tijuana airport was commonly referred to as “Rodriguez”; it had been named after some military general. The wrestlers helped Barney navigate through a tediously long bathroom stopover, got more medication inside of him, then dragged him forth to meet Valry Ayala, their blonde-headed Trojan Horse-mistress.

Valry was a lean six feet tall in flats, and even dressed down to denim and sweatshirt she looked like a zillion bucks in bullion. Everybody hugged her as they took turns holding Barney up. Her smile was a little horsy — big teeth and a little too much exposed gumline — but her hair and eyes were classic, curly ash-blonde and penetrating green, like a Heineken bottle with a light behind it. Nice back porch and healthy natural breasts, yearning to run free. She switched her hips when she walked. It was no accident.

“So you’re our special guest star,” she said to Barney, jamming out a hand.

Barney held up one of his bandaged mitts. “Sorry.”

“No worries,” she said cheerfully, touching his damaged face with long, lacquered nails. “We’ll fix ya up.”

Tuntun Ayala was a fixture in the low-budget Orange County wrestling circuit, catering to Southern California’s bustling Latino populace. At various times he had wrestled as Jayson xXx, Ice Dragon, Sirial Killer, High Voltage and Deathmaster 2, and had at least twelve other rotating identities on his resume. He and his tribe organized the shows, carting a portable ring setup all over L.A. County, and he worked in Mexico as often as he “unofficially imported” the talent that locals wanted to see. Through several previous wives he had begotten his own generation of future ring workers and then met Valry during a televised match, right before the collapse of Canal Vente-Dos, Los Angeles’ Channel 22, which lost most of its analog-broadcast Hispanic programming to cable. Once Tuntun zeroed his sights on Valry and went blonde-blind, his then-current marriage was swiftly and completely doomed.

Marrying a beautiful white chick had definite sociopolitical advantages, and she was the best den mother Tuntun could have wished for. The trip back across the border went exactly as El Atrocidad had said it would.

Barney was back in the U.S.A.

But the largesse did not stop there. Tuntun, who turned out to be a blustery, dark-skinned giant with cornrowed black hair, insisted on seeing to Barney’s comfort and taking him the extra hour or so north on the 101 to Los Angeles personally.

Typically, Barney had to promise to see everyone again — unwanted connective tissue that was not in his nature. He had no idea how to even begin paying these people back, or what to pay them with. He was stony. Moreover, he got the idea that to fob them off with money would constitute an insult. Mostly, he kept quiet and grateful.

In an astonishingly short period of time, less than a day, he had gone from being marooned in the middle of Mexico to dictating fill-out forms for hospital check-in. Tuntun did all the writing. Bed, board, doctors, nurses, beeping machines, and best of all, brand-name sedatives.

The crew dispensed their hearty goodbyes and begged off — they had work to do and matches to fight.

Barney drifted off to uncomplicated sleep on a real bed, clean linens, the clamor of demons inside his skull gradually receding.

Nobody was more surprised than him when he awoke and found himself staring at his old buddy, Armand, in a bed in the same ward.

Lather, rinse, repeat.