Amber Waves
“I remember,” he says, in lazy, blue tones, “that you once
had wild hair.”
The brush crackles more dramatically through her heavy strands, but doesn’t stop. “Wild hair?”
“Glorious hair.” He props himself up, wincing at each pain in his body. With his ever-present sense of self-worship, he buries two fingers into his own thick curls. “Like mine.”
She pauses at this declaration in mid-stroke, his words influencing her to find his reflection. He occupies completely her bed sprawled boldly across her once-clean sheets. An impassive expression and the loose arrangement of his limbs give her no indication of his emotional state –in this moment he is a baron of leisure, nothing more.
She can’t blame him for his lack of sentiment, but quakes with unsaid emotion. What he’s trying to insinuate is already understood - she cannot bring herself to utter the words just now – to bear mental arms against her lover.
***
They had met when she was twenty and he almost thirty-five,
at a backwoods
He looked in the eye and asked tiredly, “So when are you getting implants?”
“What kind of stories are they telling you about me?” she worried.
He laughed at her. “If you want to get work, you get implants. And there aren’t any stories about you yet – but I’m sure you’ve heard a few about me.”
Traveling the Goodheart circuit
through
Those early days were a formative education that her father would have blushed at – the women were all old pros, and had experienced their fair shares of dalliances. When she casually mentioned his name, her fellow employees were more than ready to share aloud what they had heard – or what they had experienced.
The terms she remembered most strongly associated with him were ‘hung’ and ‘long-lasting.’
As she gained experience and curry favor with the region’s bookers, she promised herself she would never be like those women – never change herself into someone else for a better position in the business. Simultaneously she felt herself both attracted to and repulsed by her new atmosphere; the good girl in her found all of this talk repulsive – a repulsion made ineffective by intrigue and arousal. Though she was incapable of knowing it at the time, professional wrestling had already changed her.
By the time Paul Heyman made contact, requesting she come in to work with Lance Storm, her mind and body had already been around the block a few times – she was jaded enough by this life that she could listen to Missy Hyatt’s late-night stories without a demure giggle to interrupt the flow of knowledge. Lance was like her brother – so was PJ, and somehow she felt protected by them, safe enough to do anything she wanted to in the ring. When she met and fell in love with Simon he received Lance’s wholehearted approval – that he was a good boy, worthy of Dawn’s attention, meant something to her.
He had specifically warned her about Scott Levy.
Simon came to mean everything to her: a lover, a companion, a best friend. They shared a house and a car joyfully, waiting for a chance at something major, and neither of them doubted for a moment that they would get their chances, being so talented and young. When Vince selected her from the wreckage of ECW, but had not picked up Simon, they vowed to battle this new curve, promised to stay together, no matter how hard the game got.
And the game was harder in the WWE, where she decided to do exactly what she had told herself she would never do. Receive her first push after getting a breast job.
She saw herself in the mirror after surgery through a curtain of painkillers, old vows lilting within. But what kind of fool would resist all of that money? After a few photo shoots, she had enough money to pay off all of the debts she had incurred on her way to becoming the future Mrs. Simon Diamond.
He showed her off to the boys a few weeks later – those breasts, he said, were the least important part of her body, but that didn’t stop him from gloating in the presence of his friends. Around this time, she met Scott Levy again, and when Simon made introductions – explaining that Scott was his good friend, his road buddy – he openly admired her chest and said that, finally, she was, in his eyes, hot.
He was joking –he insisted that he was joking. It was impossible to tell that from his voice but she laughed.
On the day before her surgery she explained to Simon that she had never really liked her nose. It was one more imperfection out of the way – and if only her body was perfect, she could make as much money as Trish, have as much attention as Christy Hemme. He swallowed each rationalization with calm affection. Later she understood that he didn’t care if she had two noses, or even a damn hump.
Too late.
A year later, their engagement was aborted – they were apart too often, he explained, holding her hand like a crumbling leaf. They never saw each other, and that was no way to have a stable relationship.
And she was changing.
Couldn’t they just be friends?
The abruption of her path, where it crossed from Simon to Scott, was a short switch – a line in the dirt. Someone had to remove Simon’s possessions from the house (which would soon be nothing but barren communal property), and Scott was deemed a neutral force they both liked. He came on like a smoke from a fresh fire – innocent and transparent. While handling Simon’s clothing with detached humor, Scott slipped her his cell number on the way out - maybe they could get together for a cup of coffee on the road?
Their companies crossed paths in
They ended up tangled beneath anonymous orange sheets, sweating in a room with no air conditioning, fucking to the rhythm of her roommate banging on the door at two in the morning after an all-nighter at the bar.
He didn’t live up to the reviews - the sex wasn’t anything extraordinary - competent, messy and satisfying, but not special. Not the all-time greatest lay of her life. At six, they left the sheets for the maid and carried Amy in off of the doorstep, dumped her in the untouched twin, and went out separately to face the morning.
Even if the sex wasn’t entirely perfect, it was fun enough –
Scott was witty, despite his overbearing ego, and his technique improved as
they came to know one another’s fetishes and quirks. She looked him up when the companies crossed
paths in
Why couldn’t she just relax?
***
Sitting before a vanity in another hotel room, drawing another invisible line between what she had just done and how she felt about it by brushing her chemically-straightened hair with forty long, even strokes. From scalp to tip. As her mother had taught her to do.
“You had beautiful hair,” Scott says while rolling onto his back, masking a yawn with rough palms.
Her scalp burns under the horsehair bristles - she tosses the brush on the dresser with a solid thump, like a car turning over in an empty road. Turning to him, her face a plaster mask of perfection, she smiles like a snowman. His brow arches in response, right hand drifting weakly over his hip and to the bed, defensive. He hasn’t let go of his own hair yet.
“Wild hair,” she responds, her voice thick with a bloom from
the
With catlike elegance, she fluidly moves to her aching feet, allowing her robe to slip from her shoulders and fall to the floor.
His expression registers appreciation and lust – no surprise, no love. But she doesn’t expect them now – she pursues the temporary gift of his skill, a trip to oblivion by way of touch.
“I’ve got a flight at four,” he says.
“Then leave at three.”
She slinks into bed and opens herself to the religion of his
expertise.