VI

CHOKEHOLD

I come as a blade
A sacred guardian
So you keep me sharp and test my worth in blood
— Sleep Token, Chokehold

JACKSON HAS A BASTARD isn’t exactly headline news. Wait, is the kid a bastard if it’s a woman? That’s sexist. Women are just as capable of being bastards as men. Imagine that historic WE CAN DO IT poster, except in the background Rosey the Riveter’s father is running out the door to “get some cigarettes.”

Where was I? Oh, that’s right. Marisol Vilaró, my new business bestie! It was only last week when I directed my father’s foundation to offer a Series A in the low seven figures. She signed the dotted line while dreaming about a chain of Vilaró System gyms stretching across the bloated waistline of this disgusting country.

Yes, I admit, sticking it to Jackson was initially the primary impetus for saddling up with Mari, but there’s more to it than that. Dare I say that I actually respect her? Oh, say it ain’t so. No, no, let’s look at it objectively. This woman has manufactured her own business from the ground up. She has a dozen wrestlers under her thumb, following her every direction like a less menacing Gwen Shamblin. That entire locker room already thinks she’s the bad guy but she could be so much more. She could be someone they actually FEAR.

What if she realizes everything she knows about her life is based on a lie? What if she discovers Jackson is not only her father, but that he tested her DNA in secret? That the only reason he caters to her every whim and gives her every opportunity to promote her brand and clients on air is out of some pathetic attempt to make it up to her even though he’s too much of a coward to tell her the truth?

All that concrete certainty about her life and who she is will crumble into dust, sifting through her fingers as she desperately tries to hold on to some kind of familiar identity. The tighter she squeezes, the more of herself will slip away, leaving her vulnerable to the worst parts of her subconsciousness to terrorize her waking thoughts. Under all that stress her ego will fracture and collapse on itself, turning into a blackhole—a swirling singularity that will feed on the millions of nerve endings screaming out in anger over Jackson’s betrayal; but all that emotion can’t last forever. Sooner or later her rage will burn out and the sadness will give way to numbness but that hunger cannot be sated, so the spiraling darkness will turn itself to the only thing left to devour—her sanity.

All it’ll take is a little push and she’ll go-a-tumblin’ like Alice down the rabbit hole, but it won’t be an adventure in wonderland. The gloom will be waiting to swallow her whole, where the voices of every person who has ever doubted or betrayed her will whisper their poisonous words, echoing back to her all the discouragement and hopelessness she’s ever felt in her lowest moments and thrown back in her face at her weakest but she won’t be alone. I’ll be waiting at rock bottom to catch her. Her only friend in the dark and the one who will lead her back into the light.

As it happens, I know just the thing to send her falling off that cliff.

It’s Saturday. Tonight is the first live broadcast of UPRISING’s Revolution post Equinox II. I arrive a little early to the Eldorado Casino. Most of the talent doesn’t usually begin to funnel into the complex until a few hours before opening bell. I scan my credentials at the service elevator in the parking lot. Steel groans and cries as it hisses to the bottom. When the doors open I step inside with my duffle bag slung over my shoulder.

As the cabin slowly climbs upward I take out my phone and tap on the notification at the top. iMessage opens to a chat thread between Ash Devereaux and myself. Ash is, of course, the head EMT of UPRISING. He’s at every taping and maintains an office inside the casino. He’s the one who draws the blood and monitors our heart and oxygen rates while we jog on a treadmill as part of UPRISING’s standard physical that all incoming athletes must complete. In our conversation, I requested to swing by to get a copy of my chart and medical history. He was kind of enough to set some time aside this afternoon. His message confirms he’s here.

I text back, Heading up now from the garage.

He responds, Okay. See you soon.

The elevator doors split horizontally followed by a second vertical cage which separates on rusted hinges. From there it’s a quick walk down one of a hundred identical, generic hallways, splashed with the same cheap, grayish brown color, like glossy vomit, reflecting the harsh light of the humming fluorescent beams inset in the overhead drop ceiling.

Normally I would have already taken care of this bad business but casino security being what it is, my little keycard only gives me access to the bowels of the building on event nights. Getting to Ash’s office any other time is impossible without security clearance and I wasn’t interested in scoring a temp job as a blackjack dealer just to break into his office. Besides, this’ll be more fun.

The only faces I pass are unfamiliar casino employees who don’t even bother to make contact with me as I navigate the labyrinthian layout of corridors and unmarked doors. Eventually I round a corner, following a plaque directing me toward the Silver State Ballroom. One long hallway stretches fifty meters before ending at a large concourse. To the left, a dozen workers in white jackets from craft services are huddled over three long tables, busy putting together the catering for the night. Ahead, by the concrete wall, the union workers are putting the final touches on the interview set while the production team runs camera tests.

The offices are off to the right, down another hallway. Unlike every other door in the building, these are marked. BRAD JACKSON: ASSHOLE is stamped on one of the solid metal doors. Sorry, CEO. It says CEO. I mean, let’s face it. What’s the difference? There’s no light slipping out from under the door. Surprise surprise, he’s not in. There are so many flowers to pollinate and so little time. I mean, Ricky Ravenswood is circling the company like a rabid wolf and our illustrious leader is out getting his eyebrows touched up.

Ash’s office is across the hall and the door is propped open. His face is buried in his computer screen while his mouse hand quickly scrolls down whatever he’s looking at me. I knock on the door, drawing his attention away. He stands with a friendly face and comes around the desk to welcome me.

“Come in, come in. Here, take a seat.” He motions to one of the two chairs in front of his workstation. It’s a tidy little room but small, already feeling cramped even with just the two of us inside. Most of the space is taken up by his desk and four tall filing cabinets, all of which have locks on them.

“Thank you for seeing me,” I say after dropping my bag on the floor. He closes the door behind me as I settle into the chair. It’s stiff and thinly padded. Where’d he get this, the thrift store? I’m guessing he doesn’t have many meetings here. The exam room is his usual haunt. When I look around, I see his various certifications and some photos of what I can only assume are his family, except the picture in the 5×7 frame behind him on top of one of the cabinets. In it is a group of men, all wearing tan camo and surrounded by desert. It’s well known that Ash was a combat medic because people make it a point to bring it up every time he’s mentioned in a conversation. He probably hears “thank you for your service” every time he jabs a needle into someone’s arm or threads a stitch through a cut.

Oh, not from me. I don’t say it. First, I’m not American, so why would I thank him for serving this country, and two, what a stupid thing to say to someone. Actually, you know what? Let’s start this conversation off right.

“Thank you for your service,” I say as he is lowering himself down into his swivel chair. It actually stops him in midair, half-crouched above the seat with a few inches to go before his hind end can settle on the cushion. His eyes flutter a bit as all the synapses in his brain go about frantically trying to remove the wrench I threw into the gears. A few awkward seconds pass until the thought machine is fired back up and a basic sentence formulates in his vocal chords.

“Thank you, ah, Yelena,” he says in a sputter while the chair creaks underneath him. He sits forward, his back straight and posture neutral, and places his forearms on the blotter with his thin fingers interlocked. He’s a small man, with thick, dark hair, a patchy but trimmed beard and mustache, and a bit of a russet tinge to his skin. He clears his throat, almost like he’s resetting the conversation, before saying, “So you need your records. Mind if I ask why?”

“I wouldn’t,” I say while shifting to the side so my left hand can reach into the pocket of my BLANKNYC moto jacket for my cigarette case and lighter. “That is to say, I wouldn’t mind you asking if I actually needed my records. I only told you that to get a meeting with you. Sorry not sorry.”

Ash is one of those types people constantly praise for being such a good person when he’s not around, but the cold stare he’s giving me right now isn’t so very nice. He looks like he’s about to scream at me. Now that would have been something. Instead all I hear is a tiny compressed voice whining out of his lips, like a strangled balloon.

“I’m sorry, you can’t smoke in here. Casino policy.”

“And yet,” I say, pausing briefly to blow a stream of smoke, “here I am. C’mon. It’s not even tobacco. Loosen up, Ashy.”

His jaw clenches and his eyes dip to his hands, which are turning white around the knuckles. After a few heavy breaths, his eyes raise to find mine and with his big boy voice, he lays down the law.

“Put it out or leave.”

My lips seal around the filter of the herbal cigarette and my diaphragm expands, creating the negative pressure necessary to drag a haze of smoke into my lungs and fill all the fissures with its dusky hemp flavor.

In a huff, he slams his hands on the desk before rocketing to his feet. With a purpose, he walks around the desk, nearly knocking his hip into the edge because he’s so bent out of shape. His hand grabs the doorknob, twists and pulls it open. He then looks down at me with fire in his eyes.

I don’t move. In fact, I lean further back into this piece of shit chair.

He says to me, “Do I need to call casino security?”

“Go ahead,” I say while waving my hand about. “And as soon as they toss me out, I’ll call the Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners and report you for what I assume would be several ethical violations.”

He bends his head down toward me to make sure I can see him out of the corner of my eye and says, “Good luck with that. I haven’t done anything wrong so go ahead and—”

“Marisol Vilaró,” I say. Slowly I turn and look up at him. His eyes are pindrops and the color has drained from his face. “Judging by your sudden silence I assume you know what I’m talking about.” I point at the door with the cigarette between my fingers. “You might want to shut that.”

His head starts to swivel back and forth and his entire body goes stiff and shakes. Are his lips moving? It’s almost imperceptible but they are, miming whatever argument he’s having with himself inside his own head. I’m certain he just mouthed the words goddamn it, Jax. I give him time to wrap up whatever scuffle is going on in there. Eventually the smart inner voice wins out and he closes the door before trudging back to his chair.

He looks at me with a flat glare while sitting and says with no emotion in his voice, “I cannot discuss other patients with you.”

I burst out laughing right in his fake fake fake face. Full blown guffaw, like a drunk hyena at a comedy club. I’m smacking my knee and throwing my head back with little threads of saliva desperately trying to string together my lips. The air clicks in my throat, like it’s trying to fall over itself, and in between each hefty bellow my chest sucks in another lungful of air to start all over.

He closes his eyes and chews on his next words before finally spitting them out at me. “Please, can we get this over with? What do you want?”

Tears are running down my cheeks. This is why I don’t wear makeup, not that I need to. I’m a goddess. Beautiful. Perfect in every way. Men beg to enter my bed and women melt in my fingers. I’m Venus de Milo and a black widow all in one.

“A moment, please,” I say while the final line of ha-ha-has and har-har-hars rush out of me while wiping my cheeks. “Whew, boy. That was a good one. I haven’t laughed that hard since my brother got hit by that bus.”

“Jesus,” he says under his breath.

“Ahem. What I want, Mr. Devereaux, is simple: information.”

“As I said, I cannot discuss other patients with you.”

“Please, don’t make me laugh again! We’ll be here all night!” I take another pull off the cigarette then say, “This is what I already know. Under the direction of Jaxy Waxy, you did a paternity test on Marisol without her knowledge or permission, and then you concealed the result from her while divulging it to him. Now, I’m no lawyer, but there are at least a few HIPAA violations in there, and possibly a felony…this is where you deny everything and tell me to go fuck myself.”

He sits back with his hands over his face and rubs his palms into his eyes while taking these thin little breaths, like he’s about to start crying. Oh, poor little guy. I’m being such a meany to him. Shucks. Is that a sympathy I feel for him? Nah, couldn’t be. That would mean I have some semblance of a heart. Empathy has never made sense for me. It’s like calculus. Some people can look at a problem and solve it. For others it’s nothing but a jumble of numbers and letters. A foreign language that can never be cracked. That’s what compassion is for me. A hollow word to describe a feeling I will never experience.

When I see a horrific car crash, I keep on driving. Good people stop and slow down, and for a brief moment they pray everyone’s okay because that’s what a human is supposed to do, until of course they realize they’re late for work and their boss is an asshole who will write them up for not being on time. Before the jaws of life are out of the truck it becomes all about them again and they start laying on the horn.

“Focus, Mr. Devereaux, I have things to do. Tell me I’m right.”

With a sigh his hands drop down his waist and he looks at me with wet eyes. “How did you find out?”

Good enough. “Does it matter?”

“I suppose not. What do you want?”

“I want a copy of the test.”

“For what,” he says. It takes a beat, but his naiveness gives way to what can only be the obvious answer. “No, you can’t. You can’t show her. Jackson is going to tell her. He swore to me. He’s just waiting for the right moment.”

“The right moment? He’s known all this time and all he’s done is pretend like she’s his favorite employee, giving her everything she asks for, and at no point has he ever come close to telling her the truth. Face it, kiddo, you got fucked by the boss, just like Mari’s mother, only in your case you could lose your license and maybe go to prison for it. So let me make this crystal clear for you, Mr. Devereaux. It’s going to come out, one way or another. This is your chance to get ahead of it. Let me take the file to Marisol. She won’t hold you responsible. All the blame will go on Jackson. All you have to do is reach down there to that cabinet marked U to Z, open it up, take out her folder, and slide it over to yours truly. Then we can be friends, Mr. Devereaux. Friends for real.”

And here comes the obvious retort.

“What if I refuse to play this game,” he says to me.

“Then we won’t be friends, Mr. Devereaux. We’ll be enemies, and do you know what I do to my enemies? I burn their houses to the ground with them inside. I throw them into a pit and bury them alive. I make sure they suffer long enough to question themselves why, why did I cross Yelena, why didn’t I just do what she asked, because knowing that they could have avoided whatever tragic ending I’ve delivered them to is worse than the ending itself. You’ll have all the time in the world to ask yourself why didn’t I just give her the file when you’re sitting in a prison cell with nothing but regret to keep you company. Well, maybe not only  regret. I’m sure you’ll have a roommate. He might even take a shine to you.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” he says with a tremor in his voice.

I look over his shoulder at his EMT certification. The shine of the glass catches the light and faintly reflects my face back at me. The reflection gives me a very-Gorgo like smile, like a knife slash cut across my cheeks.

You have him, love, it says to me, with a voice full of gravel and fire. You only have to push the knife a little deeper.

I say to Ash, “You’re not even a doctor, Mr. Unauthorized Treatment. I wonder if that will make it better for you or worse when they drag you into court.”

“Fine,” he says with a broken voice while grabbing the keys from his pocket. They jingle-jangle while he flips through them, until he finds the correct one, and then he drops down to unlock the bottom drawer of the nearest cabinet. The metal grates at my ears as it slides open. His hands move quickly, thumbing through the manilla folders until he finds the one I want. It lands with a flop on the desk as he shoves the drawer closed with his foot.

My spidery fingers open it up and begin to flip through, page to page, until I find the one with DNA TEST REPORT in bold on the header. There are two columns. On the left Marisol Vilaró is written with CHILD over her name. On the right, Brad Jackson is labeled ALLEGED FATHER. Below both are strings of alleles which are separated into locusts. The money shot is at the bottom, where it lists a combined paternity index and next to it, a Probability of Paternity, which in this case is 99.9998%. Someone drag Maury Povich out of the retirement home for this.

My cigarette goes into his coffee mug with a sizzle. I fold the paternity test and stuff it into my pocket while standing. “This is all I need. Feel free to hang on to the rest. Pleasure doing business with you. If I might offer a word of advice, though. Next time Jackson asks you to do something illegal, don’t do it. He’s bad news, that one. Only cares about himself. You know what they call that?”

Ash raises his head. Is he crying? Man, oh man. I feel like I kicked a puppy but for some reason it’s not as funny. This is just pathetic. He says quietly, “No, I don’t.”

“A narcissist,” I say emphatically before bending down to pick up my bag. I take a step to the door but before leaving I turn back. He’s all sad and feeble, like a man at the end of his rope. I clear my throat, pulling his attention back to me from the empty space he was staring into.

“You’re not gonna, you know…” I motion at my neck like a noose and make a strangling sound.

He blinks rapidly and says with a shocked voice, “What? No. I would never—”

“Good, good,” I say, interrupting him because I don’t really care. “But if you do, I’m just saying, have the decency to do it at home. We have a show to do. Ta-ta.”

The door shuts behind me and I start walking back to the concourse and over to the film crew doing their camera tests at the interview set. Grethen is there going over notes with what I assume is one of the producers of the show.

“Mrs. Devereaux,” I say as I walk into the middle of their conversation. She turns to look up at me with the prettiest blue eyes this side of catering. Her smile is thin but wide, with porcelain white teeth peaking out through the rose-tinted curtains. I wonder what she tastes like.

“Hi, Yelena,” she says all bubbly. “What’s up?”

“I just came from seeing your husband. I think he’s looking for you. He said something about having texted you but not heard back.”

In an example of perfect timing, a loud crash is heard coming from the direction of Ash’s office, like something being thrown against the wall, followed by a strained voice screaming “Goddamn it!”

Gretchen flinches at the outburst as her eyes move past me, over my shoulder, toward the direction of her husband’s office. “Oh,” she says real big. “I left my phone in my purse…I should probably go see what’s going on.” She hurries away, heels clicking, offering a thank you to me for delivering the message as she passes my left arm.

I turn to the producer and check his name tag. S. Dunn. He’s a fifty-something black man with a shaved head and goatee. He’s glaring at me with a hard look and his chest is all puffed out in some strange display of aggression. Where’s David Attenborough to narrate this?

“Listen,” I say to him, “I need a spot in the ring tonight between me and Marisol. I have what you may call a nuclear bomb to drop and it’s important that the entire world sees it. Is that going to be a problem?”

“A problem,” he shouts loudly. “You know what a problem is? A problem is you stealing a goddamn million dollar production truck that I was responsible for! I nearly got fired over that shit!”

People all around the concourse have stopped their duties to watch. The caterers, the riggers and crew, all are looking at us a little under their brows or with side eyes. Everyone except for the camera operator, who has subtly turned his lens toward us. Just in case.

I stare at him purposefully dumbfounded. “I think you have the wrong person. I’ve definitely not stolen any trucks. I’m absolutely sure I would remember doing that and quite frankly, I’m a little upset that you would lob a baseless accusation like that at me.”

I think he might have a coronary. His chest is heaving up and down and he’s starting to pace back and forth. He throws a fat finger in my face and says through his clenched teeth, “You better stay the FUCK away from me lady. Find someone else to harass!”

“As you wish,” I say before jamming my own finger into his pudgy left breast. “But you make sure I have that cameraman for that segment tonight. Got it, S. Dunn?”

“Fine,” he says, all sweaty and emotional.

I give him an atta-boy and leave, marching through the concourse like a warrior covered in the blood of her enemies. I’ve spent so many months now trying to bring order to this place because that’s what Ricky Ravenswood asked for but the truth is, structure and procedure are against my grain.

People like Ricky, Ashy and Jaxy Waxy wrap themselves in predictability like a blanket on a cold night. Anything else makes them uncomfortable. It makes them vulnerable. They look at me and nothing makes sense because there is no meaning in what I do. Why am I working so hard to gain Marisol’s favor? Maybe it’s to hurt Jackson. Maybe it just sounds like a whole lot of fun. I’m a series of events leading from one to another. There isn’t a reason because I am random. I am chaos.