DARKEST FEAR Read Online Free PDF Page B

again.
    “What?”
    But she didn’t respond, hiding her face in her hands and ducking into the elevator as though entering a tepee. The elevator doors slid closed, and she was gone.
    Myron waited a beat and then turned to Esperanza. “Explanation?”
    “She’s taking a leave of absence,” Esperanza said.
    “Why?”
    “Big Cyndi isn’t stupid, Myron.”
    “I didn’t say she was.”
    “She sees what’s going on here.”
    “It’s only temporary,” Myron said. “We’ll snap back.”
    “And when we do, Big Cyndi will come back. In the meantime she got a good job offer.”
    “With Leather-N-Lust?” Big Cyndi worked nights as a bouncer at an S&M bar called Leather-N-Lust. Motto: Hurt the ones you love. Sometimes—or so he had heard—Big Cyndi was part of the stage show. What part she played Myron had no idea nor had he worked up the courage to ask—another taboo abyss his mind did its best to circumvent.
    “No,” Esperanza said. “She’s returning to FLOW.”
    For the wrestling uninitiated, FLOW is the acronym for the Fabulous Ladies of Wrestling.
    “Big Cyndi is going to wrestle again?”
    Esperanza nodded. “On the senior circuit.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “FLOW wanted to expand its product. They did some research, saw how well the PGA is doing with the senior golf tour and …” She shrugged.
    “A senior ladies’ wrestling tour?”
    “More like retired,” Esperanza said. “I mean, Big Cyndi is only thirty-eight. They’re bringing back a lot of the old favorites: Queen Qaddafi, Cold War Connie, Brezhnev Babe, Cellblock Celia, Black Widow—”
    “I don’t remember the Black Widow.”
    “Before our time. Hell, before our parents’ time. She must be in her seventies.”
    Myron tried not to make a face. “And people are going to pay money to see a seventy-year-old woman wrestle?”
    “You shouldn’t discriminate on the basis of age.”
    “Right, sorry.” Myron rubbed his eyes.
    “And professional women’s wrestling is struggling right now, what with the competition from Jerry Springer and Ricki Lake. They need to do something.”
    “And grappling old ladies is the answer?”
    “I think they’re aiming more for nostalgia.”
    “A chance to cheer on the wrestler of your youth?”
    “Didn’t you go see Steely Dan in concert a couple of years ago?”
    “That’s different, don’t you think?”
    She shrugged. “Both past their prime. Both mining more on what you remember than what you see or hear.”
    It made sense. Scary sense maybe. But sense. “How about you?” Myron asked.
    “What about me?”
    “Didn’t they want Little Pocahontas to return?”
    “Yep.”
    “Were you tempted?”
    “To what? Return to the ring?”
    “Yes.”
    “Oh, sure,” Esperanza said. “I busted my shapely ass working full-time while getting my law degree, so I could once again don a suede bikini and grope aging nymphs in front of drooling trailer trash.” She paused. “Still, it is a step above being a sports agent.”
    “Ha-ha.” Myron walked over to Big Cyndi’s desk. There was an envelope with his name scrawled across the top in glow-in-the-dark orange.
    “She wrote it in crayon?” Myron said.
    “Eye shadow.”
    “I see.”
    “So are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” she asked.
    “Nothing,” Myron said.
    “Bullshit,” she said. “You look like you just heard Wham split up.”
    “Don’t bring that up,” Myron said. “Sometimes, late at night, I still suffer flashbacks.”
    Esperanza studied his face a few more seconds. “This have something to do with your college sweetheart?”
    “Sort of.”
    “Oh Christ.”
    “What?”
    “How do I say this nicely, Myron? You are beyond moronic in the ways of women. Exhibits A and B are Jessica and Emily.”
    “You don’t even know Emily.”
    “I know enough,” she said. “I thought you didn’t want to talk to her.”
    “I didn’t. She found me at my parents’ place.”
    “She just showed up there?”
    “Yep.”
    “What