Extinction 2: Electric Boogaloo

“So then he was talking about how he met a girl at random in the park and then started banging her on a bench with the dog watching.”

“Seriously?”

“I know, ridiculous. But then, to make matters worse, he actually was surprised that his girlfriend was upset about it. What fucking world does this guy live in?”

The door to the IWC production truck opens and two techs enter, both carrying new cups of steaming coffee from Starbucks (Look kids, product placement!). One shakes his head in incredulity.

“I mean, seriously, I think the guy is from Mars, or some other kind of planet where apparently they just screw all the time. I don’t know how we ever get the douchebag’s stuff past the censors.”

The other one laughs, setting his coffee down on his desk. “You’re lucky, you don’t have to edit the dialogue.”

“That shit is edited? I thought you just threw it up on the screen!” The first takes a big sip. “I mean, it’s barely recognizable as English.”

“That was after hours of work, dude.” The second tech shakes his head, ruefully. “I swear, if there’s ever a hostage situation here in the building, I’ll just pipe in a few hours of his incoherent rants through the PA. That’ll make anyone want to kill thems-“

“WHAT THE FUCK!”

The second tech spills his coffee down the front of his shirt at his coworker’s exclamation. “Jesus, what’s your problem?”

“Somebody drew all over my monitor!”

The camera pans to the back of the production truck, revealing a scene oddly reminiscent of the Christian Savior promo. Tech number two stands up and walks to join his companion.

“What the..?” he says, looking at the paused image of AWOL with X’s drawn on its eyes. “Jesus, that’s permanent marker!”

“What sort of asshole draws on a TV screen?”

Somewhere, someplace, it is likely that the asshole in question is laughing. Either that, or he’s falling on his ass while he’s ice skating and making us watch, because for some reason he thinks that interests us.

***

“Here you go madam,” the maitre d’ says, pulling the chair out for Maya. The lines of her black dress twist with the curves of her body as she deposits herself in the chair. I wonder idly if she even knows how beautifully graceful her every movement is as she flashes a grateful smile. The reddish gold candlelight of the restaurant flickers playfully amongst the locks of her blonde hair as the maitre d’ slides her seat into place. “The specials tonight are…”

“Oh, don’t worry about the specials,” she interrupts him, placing a perfectly manicured hand over his, “We’re actually just here for dessert. I have to be at work in an hour, and I don’t really like dancing on a full stomach.”

As I settle into a seat across from her, I can see from his eyes that he’s helpless, trapped by her spell just like dozens of other men every night. I unfold my napkin and drop it into my lap, reaching for my glass of water.

“Oh? Are you with the ballet, madam?”

She smiles innocently at him. “No, I’m a stripper. Plus I do a little escort work on the side when business is slow.”

I nearly spit my drink onto the table trying to hold laughter back at the Maitre d’s horrified look.

As he mumbles an apology and hurries away from the table, she turns back to me, an impish smile lighting up her features. “You’re right,” she says, “This is going to be fun.”

“I told you.”

I watch the way her eyes nearly close behind the lenses of her glasses while the musical notes of her laughter echo out from the table. For a moment I’m content, and all of the ridiculous insanity that makes up the rest of my life fade away. I’m in a world of Maya. There’s no IWC, no Five Star Society, and no alimony payments to be made. There’s just this place, this moment in time, and her beautiful laughter. But, alas, such things are by their nature ephemeral, and far too soon, she’s reaching for the menu and looking through it. I follow suit.

“So what’s good here?” she says, looking down at the various confections available for purchase.

“Couldn’t tell you,” I say, equally engrossed. “I’ve never been here before. I just looked for the highest rated place in the city with a French name. I was looking for the atmosphere, not the food.”

“Expensive atmosphere,” she says, looking down at the shocking prices on the menu in front of her. “You sure you want to drop all this cash? Paying all those people for the pay-per-view refunds is going to be expensive.”

“I’m not too worried about it,” I answer, “Sometimes it’s worth splurging on the little things, and like you said we’re just getting some dessert. Speaking of which, this cheesecake doesn’t look half bad.”

“Hmm, no can do. I’m lactose intolerant.” She looks out of the corner of her eye at the people across the aisle from us, waiting for her moment. On cue, the fifty-something blue-hair lifts her wine glass to her mouth and the impish smile returns. “Nothing spoils any chance of a good tip like dropping a wet, smelly milk fart on some guy right in the middle of a lap dance.”

Neither of us bothers to conceal our laughter as she sprays red wine all over the bald man sitting across from her.

***

“Ok, Porno Lad, let’s start with you.”

AWOL is standing at the front of a whiteboard, which he is essentially ignoring and simply staring into the camera, presumably searching its reflective depths for the self-proclaimed Original Prankster’s glassy, dull-eyed face.

“First of all, I want to admit that, yes, you actually have managed to upset me going into this match. You have made me mad. Congratulations. However, I’m afraid that the reason I’m angry is not your little stunt with the taser, it’s the simple fact that as a result of facing you I’m forced to sit through some of your promos. Jesus Christ, man, what the fuck is wrong with you? Are you aware that every time you put one of those god awful insults to the English language out for public consumption, somewhere your junior high writing teacher has to feel a little bit of her soul die, since she obviously failed completely to even convey basic sentence structure to you. Subject and predicate are not suggestions, PL, they’re rules. Unlike what you’re doing in the ring, ignoring these rules don’t make you look dangerous or edgy, they just make you look mentally retarded. Think of Mrs. Johnson, Porno Lad, and spare us any more of your incoherent babbling.”

“Second, I need to get something across to you that appears to have escaped your sieve-like memory. I suppose I’m not entirely surprised your nervous system is somewhat faulty, given the almost one-hundred percent certainty that your sexual promiscuity has caused you to contract syphilis. Still, a brief history lesson seems to be in order. I’m not telling people to avoid buying Extinction as some kind of publicity stunt to drive up the ratings. I’m doing it because it amuses me to watch this place reap what it sews. If the IWC management, specifically Dan Douglas, is stupid enough to put together a group as terrible as your little Society and then somehow, despite your repeated failure to accomplish anything meaningful in the ring, push you into the main event with legitimate competitors, then they deserve to have the show fail. They DESERVE to have the buy-rate plummet. That being said, the simple fact of the matter is that this match has yours truly and Johnny Kingdom in it, two men who, despite your group’s delusions, have in fact been headlining and main-eventing and building this place from nothing for years now. In the parlance of this industry, we are what you call draws. You and your friends, however, are not. Can you honestly, in your heart of hearts, imagine the average IWC aficionado sitting in their house and thinking to themselves ‘You know what, I could use this fifty-nine bucks to buy a big Christmas present for my wife or feed a starving child in Africa, but instead I’m gonna plunk it down and watch an STD ridden nymphomaniac with a ridiculous name, some bitch from the IWC minor leagues, a guy whose wife apparently truly believes that the mall Santa Claus has magical powers to read her mind, and a pregnant chick.’? Even I have more respect for the fans than that, and that’s saying something.”

“And another thing you arrogant little shit,” he continues, building momentum. “I personally find this affirmation of yours that somehow you know more about technical wrestling than me to be insulting. Here’s another quick lesson for you, son, I was one of the first Submissions Champions this company ever had, and I held the belt for six months, defending it continuously, and only losing it when I was roped into a triple threat match and Hurse made Psycho tap out while his crew attacked me on the outside of the ring. You know a ton of counters to the Daisy Cutter? What a fabulous achievement! Of course, my opponents probably all average about 3 counters per match to the pump-handle slam, but seriously, bravo. You are truly the ring general we all imagine you to be. But really, I’m not sure how much time I would waste on bragging about being able to reverse a chokeslam, since even children know how to get out of a maneuver that literally consists of me grabbing someone by the throat, lifting them into the air, and dropping them. This is not impressive.”

“’But AWOL,’ I hear you saying, ‘If you’re so great at technical wrestling, why do you look like you’re just ripping off the Undertaker and Samoa Joe every time you get in the ring?’ Well, ok, I don’t actually hear you saying that. If I heard you say it, it would sound more like ‘But AWOL. You suck at wrestling. And life. Why don’t you DIAF that means die in a fire I’m so awesome and teh seckz. PWN.’ But I digress, the point is a valid one, I have been getting away from any sort of mat wrestling recently as a conscious choice. However, let’s think about this point for a moment. What do I have to deal with every week? Is it just possible that, between Psycho and Riggs, the Motherfuckers, and your crew of rejects from the land of misfit toys, I pretty much have a standing guarantee that there will be at least one run-in during every one of my goddamn matches? I mean, Christ, I conned Psycho and Riggs into fighting Too Mag on the loading dock for me last week and I still had some asshole in the black flipping off the lights in the middle of my match with Savior. And thus, would it not behoove me as a thinking man’s wrestler to take any opportunity I can get to end matches as quickly as possible? So, if you were built like I am and facing opponents where I have a size advantage and, in the interest of self-preservation, it was necessary to end matches quickly and efficiently, would you employ ring psychology and pick an opponent apart with a deliberate and cerebral assault on an enemy’s weakness? No. You would walk into the ring, punch people in the mouth, go for the highest spots and most impacting maneuvers in your arsenal at the first opening you see, and try to get the win before it all goes to hell in a big, flaming, shit covered hand-basket. You see, kid, this’ll shock you, but this isn’t the first faction fight I’ve been in by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve done this before. If you want to see me take you apart one joint at a time, I’ll be glad to run a wrestling clinic on you the next time we find a venue where I can be sure I won’t have Miho Miyazaki, Rick Rohl, three IWC officials, and the offensive line of the ’05 New York Jets crawling out of the woodwork to interfere. Until then, I’m going to go for my chokeslams, Daisy Cutters, and face washes, and when you crack out all of these dazzling counters to my maneuvers that you’ve thought of, I’ll be sure to show you that, in fact, I’ve seen the ‘I push off of your shoulders and land in front of you’ counter before and, in fact, I happen to know three or four response moves to chain into it.”

He pauses, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Then again, maybe I don’t want to get into an extended technical match with you. I don’t know if Gonorrhea is transmissible by perspiration.”

***

“I had a thought,” Maya says, looking over the table at me. She pauses, as if trying to make up her mind to continue, but quickly forges ahead. “I want you to use me in your promos.”

“I do use you in my promos. You’re in one right now.” I point at the camera set up to the side.

“Well, yeah, but all you’ve ever shown is me grinding you in the club or us in bed after we just finished screwing.” I can feel the paint peeling off the walls from the withering glances the other restaurant patrons are shooting our way. I wonder for a moment if generating this kind of uncomfortable outrage from the public is why Porno Lad insists on showing us the legions of women he is supposedly copulating with every week, but immediately dismiss the notion. It would require entirely too much forethought than I’m willing to credit him with.

“What did you have in mind?”

“Well I know you guys like to put together those parody promos. I like to act! You could cast me!”

I tap a finger against the table thoughtfully for a moment before responding. “Actually, most of us have spent the past few months mocking the others’ efforts at doing parodies, so now suddenly all of us seem to be avoiding them like a five-hundred pound furious gorilla with leprosy and an inferiority complex.”

“That was…an overly elaborate description.”

“Sorry, I’ve been spending too much time with Hurse.”

“Fair enough,” she twists her lip thoughtfully, “Well, speaking of him, maybe you could make me the focus of your promos like he did with all of his exes. We could go out to nice restaurants or to the doctor’s office like any other day, and I could act like I’m a total airhead nymphomaniac, and in the middle of our normal conversations you could start dropping into complete non-sequiturs where you bash on your opponents.”

“Well, I suppose that’s sort of what we’re doing now, minus the airhead part.”

“Uh, Hurse is on your team, though.”

“Oh, right,” I shake my head. “It’s easy to forget that sometimes. Besides, mocking him is actually kind of endearing. He does it to himself, after all.” I continue thoughtfully tapping, “Also, it should be noted that I don’t actually like him. Remind me to tell you later about the time he ran me over with a truck. Besides, it doesn’t matter, we appear to be working some kind of ‘double last minute substitution’ thing where Robin Brooks and Hurse get replaced right before the match. Very exciting, I’m sure.”

“Huh,” she sips at the glass of red wine. “I guess I could be a valet. You know, a ring girl? It worked for that Stacy Kiebler chick. I could come out in some kind of short skirt and shake my ass to distract the refs when you’re getting pinned or jiggle my tits at your opponents when they’re setting up for their finishing move. I coul-“

“No.”

“No?”

I shake my head definitively. “Absolutely not. Do you know how many of those chicks I’ve seen get kidnapped? I actually saw one of the guys in the ULW dangle somebody’s significant other over a vat of acid.”

“Hmm, very Adam West Batman,” she sets the glass down, frustrated. “Did they at least punish him?”

“I think they gave him a title shot, actually.”

“Well screw that. I broke out in hives once from taking a single out of the mouth of a guy who just put on too much after-shave.”

“Oh man, on your chest?”

“Um, aheh,” she smiles, bashfully. I’m struck by how out of place the expression is. “Do you really want to know the answer to that?”

“Forget I asked.”

“Well shit, this is harder than I thought it was going to be,” she takes her glasses off, chewing on the ends. “I guess we could start just publicizing anything and everything we do. Maybe we could use the drama to try and humanize you, make you more relatable to the public.”

“That’s what most competitors do. I don’t know, it just seems played out. Do you think anybody really cares to watch us go to the mall? It seems a little counterproductive, really. We spend all this energy in one breath trying to make ourselves out to be this unbeatable, unstoppable force in the ring, but then we just turn around the next second and start countering it with this human interest garbage. Not to mention the hyped up drama.”

“Huh?”

“Oh right, you weren’t around when Cruze was wrestling,” I try not to let my inflection curl too much with disgust. “That guy had the personal life drama strategy copyrighted. Every week was a new catastrophe. I eventually just gave up on keeping track of his girlfriends, to say nothing of the dead children.”

“Plural? That’s awful!”

“Eh, frankly he had played the tragedy card so many times that it became obvious he was just trying to top himself week after week. I was almost numb to it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the kid’s still alive out there somewhere and Cruze is just hiding him to protect the angle.”

“Well, that was one gu-“

“No, he was just the most flagrant violator. They all do it, to one extent or the other. Savior’s apparently got two in the ground. I wonder sometimes if there is some condition that wrestlers contract where they lose the ability to generate offspring that are able to survive past their first couple of birthdays. Hell, I’m even kind of guilty of it for dragging out the divorce stuff, although at least nobody had to die to make my promos possible. No, sorry Maya, but I just can’t do that. I’d have to shoot myself three weeks in, or Johnny would see them and have to go all Lee Harvey Oswald in the book depository on us.”

“Hmm, well son of a bitch. I want to help you. What can I do?” She leans forward, dropping her hands onto mine.

I wrap my hands around the outside of hers, looking deeply into her eyes. “If you want to help me out, just keep being you. Some of these weeks you’re the only thing that keeps me sane and grounded.”

We hold each other’s gaze, our expression loving and warm, for all of about thirty seconds. Then we start laughing and drop back into our seats.

“Oh Christ, that was just awful,” she says, lifting her wine back to her lips, before having to set it back down as another laughing fit takes hold of her.

***

AWOL’s back in front of the whiteboard. He picks up the marker but pauses, turning back to the camera.

“I’m basically ignoring you, Robin, because I have it from a reliable source that you’re not actually competing in this match. Also, in a statement I want to be sure you understand I am in no way relating to my previous sentence, Porno Lad said that you aren’t competing in this match. I’m at a loss as to why you keep putting promos together for it, so I’m choosing to ignore them and concentrate on my actual opponents. By the way, if the bait and switch was supposed to be a secret (which, given that you are promoing like you are going to be participating, it appears to have been) you might want to have a chat with loveable ‘Ethan.’ Loose lips sink ships, and all that.

“Also, Katie Steward is participating in this match…supposedly. In any case, it is evidence that there is at least SOMEONE in the 5SS who can think, since adding the mute Katie Steward at least prevents you from having Katelyn Buehler actively dragging your team down and making you worse. So kudos for that, I suppose.”

As he speaks, he turns to the left and starts writing on the board. He begins with the sentence “What is the purpose of writing or drawing pictures in the background while doing a direct address?”

“Speaking of this name, Ethan, what is the deal with you people throwing out our first names? I thought that Porno Lad was an unintimidating name, but there is literally no one on this planet who is afraid of somebody named ‘Ethan.’ And why do you guys do it anyways? Do you think it makes you sound like you’re in some kind of insider clique? Because, I have unfortunate news for you: this does not work. You know who else uses wrestlers’ real names? Ring rats. You know, those wrestler groupies that follow promotions around from city to city and try to sleep with the talent? They rush home afterwards to their little blogs and post about how “Paul is a gentle and delicate lover” after they let Triple H smash them with his sledgehammer. This is the parallel you’re creating for yourself. Consider yourself warned.

“Yes, Savior, I just compared you to a ring rat. Be thankful. It’s probably the kindest comparison I’m going to make with regards to you.”

Another sentence on the whiteboard: “Does drawing a picture or writing one-liners in some way make the words I’m saying more meaningful?”

“Glad to see I’ve finally earned your notice, by the way. Apparently losing to me twice was enough to finally get the job done, so I’m grateful for that. What I am less grateful, however, is the extreme mischaracterization you have attempted to create from my words. Allow me to clarify a few points for you that seemed to have escaped your comprehension.”

Again, on the board: “It certainly doesn’t seem to be adding any new insights. They’re not even really matching up with what I’m saying.”

“First off, I would like to address this idea of me ‘dominating’ you on the last Riot! Let me be clear about something, I am well aware that the match ended in a shady fashion. Putting aside for a moment the incredible irony of you, of all people, somehow managing to take exception to outside interference in a match, let’s be very clear for a moment what I truly meant by my statement of ‘domination.’ I do not mean that the ending was without controversy. I was certainly set up nicely for whatever finisher move du jour you were prepared to render upon my form, potentially resulting in my being stunned long enough for you to earn a win over me. This I do not deny, though I do strain to point out that I have survived far more devastating finishers than your much-vaunted Blasé of Glory. However, I see two very glaring flaws in your reasoning that I need to address. Number 1: the assertion that Johnny and I cannot defeat you cleanly in a match is patently absurd because it is by your very own DOING that none of us can ever find out its truth. Every match we have with you involves your stooges running in from the outside to interfere. By rule those matches are disqualification victories in our favor from that point onward in any sort of sane and rational world where the rules are carried out by competent officials. Tragically, we don’t live in that world, we live in one ruled by IWC referees. When I say that I dominated you, however, I mean it very literally. Our two talent bases were pitted against each other at the last Riot! My ring abilities, toughness, size, and power were put into that ring to face what you had to offer, namely a run-in before the match from two of your hench-people, and two, count them, TWO shots to my head delivered BY YOU with a steel pipe. By your own admission, any of those things should have earned ME a victory by disqualification, but unlike you, I don’t need to whine like some kind of wet behind the ears rookie BITCH about it. I know that these sorts of shenanigans are just a part of your game plan, that this is where your only actual hopes of achieving a win against anyone in the ring springs from, and I don’t hold it against you. Instead, I took your best shots, I faced the by-the-book Christian Savior gameplan, and I survived. Do you understand that, Savior? I took your best shots, and I persevered. I hung on, and I waited for an opening, and then I took advantage of it. And oh, by the by, while I sympathize with your difficulties in recovering from the oh-so-devastating ‘Somebody put a shirt on me when I wasn’t looking’ attack, I doubt you’re going to get many people to cut you much slack for claiming to lose as a result of it. You didn’t lose by having a referee shirt put on you, you lost because I hit you twice with the Daisy Cutter when you lost focus on the match and then pinned your ass for a three count.”

More whiteboard: “Well if I’m not contributing content, what could I be doing?”

“Which brings me to point number two: the measuring of superiority. I consider myself superior to you Savior because every time we’ve been in the ring together, I’ve ‘WON’ (and I hate to be childish about the spelling thing, but frankly you started it.’ By pretty much every metric ever created in the history of sports, the universal determinant for which competitor is better or worse is victory or defeat. There is no spinning this. No amount of belly-aching about the vicious clothing assault you endured can change reality. In the record book it says ‘2-0’ when it comes to competitions where I’ve faced you. There is no other way to put it, no other way to describe the situation. Anything else is whining, bitching, and pissing into the wind, activities that, admittedly, I can see you are thoroughly adept at.”

More: “Is it possible I just don’t have anything interesting to put in the background? If so, why have I bothered putting in a background in the first place?”

“I was a bit confused on this championship situation, I’ll admit, so I went to the IWC rules committees for a clarification. They were, as is typical, unhelpful. Apparently, despite the fact that Porno Lad is the one who made the actual pinfall to acquire the Cartel Championship, he relinquished the belt to you, and so all of a sudden you are now the reigning Cartel Champ. Ok, this I can accept, especially in light of how pathetic I consider Porno Lad to truly be. However, subsequent to this event, I pinned you at the Overbooked Extravaganza, at a time when you were supposedly the champion, which by the rules of the match should have resulted in my becoming the new champ. Now, frankly, I could give two shits about this mid-card title that you’re holding up in the air and trumpeting like some kind of grand achievement, but you’ve made it an issue so let’s break this down. There were exactly two outcomes that make any sort of rules sense from that match: either A) I beat you, the Cartel Champ, and now I’m actually the champ and you’re holding my stolen property or B) You were never the Cartel Champion and you’re holding Porno Lad’s title belt illegitimately. Either way, your argument that you are in some way champion of anything other than the magical fantasy land that your attempts at logic trickle out from is patently ridiculous, much like your appearance, personality, and name.”

Yet More: “Or is it just that I’m so handcuffed by my lack of creativity and ability that I can’t conceive of a promo with no background, so I insert this hackneyed prop into the promo as a way of giving me something to do other than stand staring at the camera. Clearly since this is a promo I HAVE to be doing something, otherwise I would have to design my dialogue in such a way as to have natural breaks rather than artificial ones I fill by drawing silly pictures on a TV screen. Hey, how’d I write all this so quickly?”

AWOL then turns away from the extremely full whiteboard, putting a cap back on the marker and then plunking it off of the lens of the camera.

“I wondered who would be the first one to throw out the ‘We’re going to make you extinct at Extinction’ cliché and, while I lost five bucks to Hurse over the deal (my money was on Jackson Adams,) you did not disappoint. In your attempt at wit, however, you have failed to grasp the basic concepts of evolution that are at work here. Two opposing forces, two species if you’ll allow me to stretch the metaphor, are at competition at this pay-per-view. Two different ideals, two different methods, two completely, diametrically opposed factions go into combat on the main stage of this show, with nothing less than survival at stake from this point on. After this week, in any subsequent matches, this adds just more weight to every single promo where we can point back and say ‘Look, we won the match at Extinction, check the scoreboard,’ despite the fact that apparently Christian Savior doesn’t believe in such things. But there is a basic principle of evolution you’re conveniently overlooking here, that of survival of the fittest. No right-thinking person can possibly look at this match-up and believe that your team has any sort of advantage in strength, experience, cunning, or even flat out savagery. The only thing the Society has going for it is numbers, and that basically counts for nothing when our strength is located in one place. This is a no-win scenario for your group, and no amount of denial on your part will change that. This is not the musical Chicago. No amount of the old razzle dazzle will keep Mother Nature from catching wise and eliminating you by natural selection. We are simply better than you. This is fact, albeit a fact that you and yours seem completely unable to accept. I am, however, waiting in exquisite anticipation for this Sunday, when I and mine will be given the opportunity to demonstrate this truth to you in inescapable, painful, and very real terms.”

***

“So, I suppose this is the part where something meaningful happens to make all of this character development somehow match-relevant?” Maya smirks, swirling the last dusky-rose remnants of her wine in the bottom of her glass.

“I don’t see that as being necessary,” I answer, wiping my mouth on the restaurant’s monogrammed napkin. “Unless somehow you think Christian Savior falling and hitting his head on some ice or Porno Lad not being able to avoid humping everything with a hole within five blocks of him as being somehow ‘match relevant.’”

She sighs, a look of frustrated confusion on her features. “His name is really Porno Lad?”

“I know, I know.”

“I mean, they hire marketing people at the IWC don’t they?”

“Supposedly.”

“Fuck, I let sweaty fat guys rub their face in my tits five nights a week, and even I think that’s embarrassing.”

We pause for a moment as the seventy-somethings at the table behind us stand up and march towards the door, the old man muttering “Really, the nerve of some people,” under his breath.

“So, if nothing about this date/promo thing is relevant to your match…why are we doing it?” she asks. The question hangs in the air between us for a moment, two, seeming to cling to us like an uncomfortable haze of steam.

“You’re not enjoying yourself?” I answer, stalling.

“I am,” she quickly adds, setting her glass down and grabbing my hand. “I really am. To be honest, I can’t remember the last time I had a night like this. But…I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem like your style.”

Irritation flames in my chest as I stare down at the table top with a sigh. “Maybe I’m tired of my fucking style.” I look up, capturing her eyes with mine. “Maybe I just wanted people to see how lucky I am to have found you.”

She squirms, uncomfortable. “I thought we already did the awkward romantic bit,” she finally answers. She chuckles, half-heartedly, but stops as she sees the deadly serious look on my face. The moment stretches on, seeming to last for minutes rather than the ten seconds it actually occupies, before with a cough she looks down and gathers up her purse.

“I’ve got to get to work,” she says, “The pole waits for no woman.”

We both stand. I awkwardly help her slide her coat back over her shoulders. As she turns to leave, however, she pauses, stepping forward brushing her lips lightly against mine. I can see the words, I can hear them boiling in her mind, and I find myself trying to will them out of her with every cell in my body. Finally, she opens her mouth to speak.

“You’ve already got me in bed, tiger. You can stop trying so hard.”

I blink, once, twice, and with a final squeeze of my hand she turns to leave. I watch her elegant form recede towards the entrance to the restaurant and out through the swinging glass doors. I find myself frozen, unable to move, trapped by her, and wondering to myself how I could have been stupid enough to let this happen again. I only just manage to muster up the energy to scowl at the waiter as he mutters “Finally, good riddance,” at her as he walks past.

I barely notice my hand reach down to pick up the highball glass, the image of it shattering against the back of the wiry man’s skull already congealing in the back of my mind.