Darius was jogging side-to-side in the shadows of the backstage area, and I was peeking through a gap in the curtains, watching the crowd. There were more men than women, and they all looked the same to me, guys with dark beards and tattoos and black t-shirts that showed off their muscles. They held bottles of beer loosely with just two fingers, swinging the bottles up to their lips, drinking, doing all this with a kind of ease and grace that to me looked very masculine. There were also families with young kids, and an older woman in checked pants pulling along a tall spindly man, her son, I’m guessing. His arms were clenched against his torso and he walked with a sideways, halting limp that looked painful, and I wondered if this was the best thing for him, this chaotic environment. But as he turned to spot his chair, I could see he was smiling, and the woman was, too. Her face looked like a kid’s, all lit up with anticipation.
“Sam, you got to move your body or you gonna get injured.” Darius was rolling his neck, making it pop. I did a few twists and backbends to satisfy him, but then I went back to watching the audience. I felt awkward and cold in my costume, which was a white spandex outfit that resembled the wrestling uniforms guys wore at our school, only the neckline scooped lower on this one, leaving my pecs and nipples exposed. The legs were covered with red and white discs, meant to evoke ninja weaponry I think, but to me they looked more like little pizzas floating on my quads.
The lights dimmed and heavy metal thundered out into the arena. People stood up so that everyone was on their feet. A booming voice announced Darius as “Da Menace.” Darius bumped my fist, said, “Let’s give hell,” and then he bounded through the curtains, the gold Da Menace flashing on the ass of his black trunks. He bounded up the aisle, skipping sideways, flapping his arms up and down like a bird, taunting the audience. They played their part, booing and throwing their arms at him. Then the MC announced me as “Sam SamurAI,” and the audience cheered as if I were the savior, which was weird considering they’d never even laid eyes on me, but that’s the way it was in the world of wrestling. It was all about hating on the bad guys and cheering for the good guys, and the actual person behind the facade wasn’t that important, it turned out.
I pushed through the curtains and started up the aisle, breaking into a jog. The spotlight was so blinding I could only see fragments of the people surrounding me—arms, hats, gold chains, hands held up for high-fives. I slapped as many hands as I could, and then I ran at the stage, dove under the lowest rope, and sprang to my feet. I circled the ring, whipping up the crowd the way Darius had shown me, which was so so lame—I was just holding up a finger and shouting, “Number one! Number one!” And then I bounced into a half squat and pretended to hold a samurai sword, lifting it high above my head and swiveling it around me in a huge circle. The air sword, we called it. Darius’s brainchild. It was so silly, but it worked. The audience went crazy for it, and Pill did too. She was in the front row next to April, and she was jumping up and down, a lollipop twirling in her mouth. She pulled the lollipop out and screamed, “Sam Samurai!!” Screaming so hard I could hear it over the crowd and the music.
The bell rang, I met Darius in the middle of the ring, and we fell into a headlock. I swiveled out of it, ran at the ropes, and then slingshotted out of them, going at Darius full speed. He lifted his arm and clotheslined me and I went down hard, whap, the slap-sting all up and down my back. I rolled to my belly and pushed myself up to hands and knees and stayed in that position, shaking my head, pretending to be dazed. Darius yanked my head up by my hair and fake–punched my face. People in the crowd were screaming at me to get him, to fucking let him have it. I grabbed Darius’s ankles and pulled, sending him crashing to the mat, and I stood up and did my air sword circle and the crowd went nuts. Darius was right—the crowd was amping me up, giving me energy and something else, not just excitement but a kind of ecstasy.
But things changed near the end. I was charging Darius, jumping and vaulting into the air, torpedoing toward his shoulder. I came in too low and his elbow caught me in the nose, and it felt like a sledgehammer hitting my face. We fell and at first I couldn’t get up. I was splayed on my back, swimmy and nauseous. The stage lights glowed above me like hovering spacecraft, and the crowd noise went in and out, carousel-like, and the ref started his count, though his voice sounded far away. I pulled myself up to standing and staggered, almost going down again. Darius was on the other side of the ring. He was pointing at it his ass and shouting at the audience. Then he whipped around to face me, and this somehow happened in slow motion, the drops of sweat arcing and spinning off his beard, spinning so slowly I could see the revolution of each shining drop. For a moment I was no longer in the crowded arena at the top of an old ballroom deep in Chicago, but on the shores of a Mediterranean island, my feet warm in the sand, green water spreading before me, vast and shimmering. I thought I had hit my head too hard, a fatal injury, and I was leaving this world for good. Sam Samurai, out. But I wasn’t dying, it turned out, it was just more of the same otherworldliness or whatever it was I had felt that afternoon under the swing set when I saw the first sign, the knights turning their plastic heads and looking at me through the rain. I didn’t know what the sign meant or why it happened at that moment—years later I still haven’t figured it out. Maybe someday I will understand, when I am an old man. But at that moment I was lost in a kind of reverie until Darius came close and said, “What’s the fuck, Sam? Wake up!!” And that broke the spell—I was back in real-time, my whole body aching, my head throbbing, and the crowd noise way too loud. I forced myself to get through it and we finished the match, and when it was over, when the ref was lifting my arm and pronouncing me the winner, the audience going nuts, I felt relieved to be done.
Vern and Darius were excited about my performance, and they wanted to go out and celebrate, but my head was still pounding, and I needed to get away from the noise. I wanted to find Pill and get some junk food and go back to our apartment and buy a castle for her.
I changed into my regular clothes and stopped at the merchandise table and bought a t-shirt for her, one featuring the scowling faces of A-list wrestlers. She would want to sleep in it. She would want to wear it today and every day. I bunched the shirt up in my hand and went out into the arena to find her, wading through the mass of bodies. But when I got to the corner of the stage where Pill and April had been sitting, all I found were two empty chairs. My heart bolted and my head pounded harder. Calm down, I told myself. She’s fine. She’s here, you just haven’t found her yet. I threaded my way up and down the aisles, scanning the rows, looking everywhere. Then I realized she might be in the bathroom, and I went to a lower-ceilinged bar area in the back that was crowded with people buying cocktails in plastic cups and bottles of beer. I stopped a woman going into the restroom and asked her to check for a little girl about this tall, and my hand trembled as I held it up. She went in and came out a minute later, shaking her head no, and that’s when the panic hit. I flew down the stairs and out the front, but all I could see were a few guys standing on the sidewalk smoking.
“I can’t find Pill,” I said to Vern and Darius.
“She’s got to be here somewhere,” Vern said.
“Don’t worry, Sam,” Darius said. “Is big crazy place, you guys just miss each other.”
We split up and searched, but without success. Vern went to the guys running tech, and they pulled up the house lights and stopped the music and made an announcement about a missing child. A hush fell and people started looking around, one lady bending down and checking under her chair. Then a guy came up to us and told us he’d seen them. The little girl was about this big, he said, and he held his hand up to Pill’s height. And the woman wasn’t much taller. Skinny, with long black hair. He was out on the sidewalk smoking a cigarette when they walked by holding hands. He had wondered why they were leaving early.
The rest is patchy. I remember riding between Darius and Christoph in the front seat of their truck. We were rolling slowly down dark streets, looking for Pill and April. And I remember sitting at the desk in the police department, trying to keep my voice steady as I described what Pill looked like, what she was wearing. And lying to them, saying yes, I was her legal guardian, that our parents were dead. Which worked, surprisingly. They bought it. They wanted pictures of Pill, and hair from her brush for DNA. They sent out an alert and told us they’d look for her. Look for her? I thought. Find her. Find her now. You are the police.
We did some more searching, Christoph holding a cup of coffee, the steam fogging a spot on the windshield. At one point Vern called. He’d talked to April’s mom, but she hadn’t seen April in weeks.
Pill was gone—or taken. And what was happening to her?
That was when I lost it. I started crying and couldn’t stop. Darius threw his arm around me and patted my face. “Sam, my brother. Don’t worry,” he said. “The Angel Gabriel will protect her. He is never disappoint.” But I kept crying, and at some point they decided to end the search, though they didn’t announce this. We were just driving onto a freeway, the orange lights clicking by faster and faster. Then I was at their house. They pushed me down into the sofa. Christoph gave me a pill and a glass with whiskey or something, and he commanded me to take both, so I did, and it felt like hot lava running down my throat, unfurling in my chest. My body became heavy, and that’s the last thing I remember, the sensation of molten lead filling my limbs, pulling me down. And then everything faded to black.
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