Capiche?

What time was it?

How long had he been there?

One hour?  Two?

How many cups of wine had he consumed?

He lost count after three.  All he knew was, he cleared out one bottle and he had just started a second.

Tommy really needed to do a better job hiding the wine.  He had kids, for fuck’s sake!

Zapp sat at the dinner table staring at the Battaglia Family photo, a glass of wine in his hand. Thoughts scurried through his mind like cockroaches: Where was this picture taken? When was it taken? Were the Battaglias the type of family to capture those oh-so-precious Kodak moments for posterity? Are they really as happy as they appear to be in the photo?  Or was this a fraud?  A clever device used to deceive others (and perhaps even themselves) that they are one happy family when, in fact, they were just as fucked up as Zapp and his family.

The longer he looked at the photo, the more wine he consumed, the more wine he consumed, the more inebriated he had gotten, the more inebriated he was, the more he resented the Battaglias.  The bitch wife. The ugly kid. The kid that looked like he could be a massive dick. Tommy, the Anglo Luchador himself.

What was the expression?  “Family means no one gets left behind or forgotten?”  What a crock of shit.  Tell that to the babies left in New Jersey Turnpike restrooms or left in front of firehouses.  Some fucked up person decided to leave them behind.

In the end, Zapp knew, you could not depend on anyone but yourself. It was the story of his life.  The moment he felt connected to someone, the moment he felt something for someone, they turned their back on him.  Sometimes justified.

And sometimes not.  It was the “nots” that still gave him anxiety when he thought of them.

It was the “nots” that hurt him. During those sleepless nights, those unwarranted betrayals were like little stinging papercuts slicing into the heart, each cut being doused with scorpion pepper hot sauce and lemon juice. Eventually, those papercuts left a festering, infected wound pumping pus and bile throughout his body.

In the end, though, the results were always the same….Zapp Scatino alone.  He could live with it. Again, the only person he could rely on, was himself.

There was no one to blame but her.

And yet, there was still that part of him…..

A pair of headlights shone past the window into the driveway.  Zapp rose from his chair, perhaps a bit too quickly, the room started to spin as if he were on the Cyclone at Coney Island, he lunged forward and killed the light with a flick of the switch.  He managed to fall back into the chair without tipping over.

He held the photo up, just barely able to make out Tommy’s exhausted expression through the dim light coming through the window.

He could hardly contain himself.

There was nothing like a dramatic reveal.

**********

Thank the gods Tam and the kids decided they were doing a movie day. Tom didn’t like the first Twister movie. He sure as fuck wasn’t going to stomach the inferior-looking cash-grab sequel.

When he saw the lock on his front door had been busted, he’d wished he had the stomach to watch tornado chasers.

“The fuck…”

He went to slam the button on his home security system until he saw the outline of the figure sitting at his kitchen table.

“Hope you don’t mind, but I let myself in.” Zapp said pouring himself another glass of wine. “I'm not one them wine enthusiastics. I don't know the fuckin' difference between a chardonnay and a cabaret.  But I couldn't find the bourbon.”

“You son of a…”

Tom stopped himself short. Partner’s a partner, even if he’s a shiftless cheater, or to use a term one of his many mortal enemies, Alexei Ruslan, would use, a wrecker.

“Well, for not being a wine connoisseur, you sure picked the bottle I was saving for when Marcus Westcott died.”

“Sorry for your loss.” Zapp was only half listening. He had no idea who Marcus Westcott was, but condolences were clearly needed.

“You know what, it’s nothing. I gotta let go of my past anyway. The present isn’t much better but at least I have all the cards on the table.”

Tom pulled up a seat, brow furrowed, mouth expressionless.

“That bottle,” he continued, “is a 1975 Margaux Cháteau Labégorce-Zédé. I spent $568 for that at auction. Did you at least save me a glass?”

Zapp belched as he emptied the bottle in his glass of choice, not a wine glass, but a coffee mug with a sassy corgi shot from the back and the phrase “Corgi Butts Drive Me Nuts” next to them.

“Better goin’ down than it is goin’ up, am I right? Blech. Tastes like batteries and feet.”

“Why would I expect anything else?”

“Ya know, I coulda had this.” Zapp began waving his finger around the room. “The wife. The family. The house. The whole sha-bang…..”

Zapp stared off for a moment as memories came flooding into his mind. His expression seemed blank, the silence was beginning to crescendo into total awkwardness, but Zapp seemed to snap out of it.

“It didn't work out.” There was regret, sadness, and disdain in his tone.  Rather than expose one of his deeply rooted emotional wounds, he quickly cleared his throat and changed the subject.  “Ya know, a thank you woulda been nice, for you know, cementin’ our victory.”

“Yeah, about that…”

Tom got up and scooted over to his liquor cabinet. The wine wasn’t locked up, but the spirits, he took no chances. Rocks glass, mezcal from that distillery in Oaxaca that only produces 300 bottles a year, and an air of annoyance. The pour was generous. His attitude, less so.

“What the fuck were you thinking? Brass knuckles? Low blows? We could’ve beaten them clean as a sheet, and now, all I hear are the same whispers when you broke the seal wide open and made Jason Snow accept my challenge, only louder.”

“Well ain't you Mister Narcilepticus? This shit here, ain't about just you, you arrogant prick.”

Tom gulped the contents of his glass and slammed it down on the counter, hard enough to produce sounds only dogs could hear but not too forceful that he’d have to clean up glass shards.

“YES, YES IT IS BECAUSE I DIDN’T FUCKING ASK FOR ANY OF THIS.”

He threw his head back, pinching the bridge of his nose. Excedrin Headache No. 34,025 of the year oncoming.

“I had no say in this matter. I was going to see if Winters wanted to run it back, or, or if I could maybe stake an even bolder claim and try to collect my neck back from the Lizard King. Something that means something.”

Zapp slurped the last of the wine out of the coffee mug and laughed.

“‘Lizard King?’ What is this,’Game of the Thrones’? You think bein’ Tag Champs ain’t nothin’? As if! You damn well know as I do belts is the only things that matter in this thing of ours.”

“Then why did Nate and FLAMBO main event night one of Turmoil, Zapp? Huh? Other things matter in this world, things you can’t hold.”

“Yeah, like family, Twinsy?”

Tom clasped his eyes shut, clenching them for a moment, a beat, while he inhaled deep and slow. He turned around and grabbed the other photo in the room, behind the sugar and flour.

“Yeah, about that. Who are these two with my father and mother, and why did you have this picture?”

“Why I have it ain't none of your concern. Not like you've been all that accommodatin’ with your twin brother. The woman’s my ma. The cumbucket next to her is beknowned deadbeat piece of shit, Vinny Fuckin’ Spandex. You ever do any of that self-introreflection shit?”

Tom pinched the bridge of his nose again, shaking his head.

“For a minute, and then I realize you’re a con artist. But what’s the con?”

He sighed, knowing full well he wasn’t going to get the answer straight up.

“You know what? Nevermind. How about we broker a deal here, Zapp?”

Scatino’s ears perked up, eyebrows raised.

“I will go along with this tag team, not just to get things over with, or to use you to put another ten pounds of gold on my legacy. I still fucking hate that you did what you did to Bryan and Ellis. Beyond the pale, but…”

Zapp rolled his eyes at Tom talking down to him from his high horse before turning his head inquisitively as he was intrigued at where the Anglo Luchadore was going with this “deal” he was proposing.

“I feel like most of why I hated it was because they didn’t deserve it. Anna Daniels is Anna Daniels, and in fact, I need to set a reminder on my phone to send Youngblood some cigars as a thank you for his plans to rough her up in the parking lot. But Rob Williams?”

A long pause. Tom’s eyes glazed over as he remembered Ivan Stanislav busting through the drywall and all the members of the Red Army WarGames team surrounding him, especially Rob Williams. That son of a bitch, Rob Williams, fresh off his crucifixion of Don Winters.

“Yeah, I think maybe he deserves a little Yambag Yahtzee.”

A smile started to form on Zapp’s lips until he realized nothing in this world ever came for free.

“So, what’s the hiccup then?”

“Afterwards? Not after this week, but after this whole thing is over, either with us on the sideline at Ultraviolence or us in the title match? You spill. And not the rest of the wine in my mug there either. I want every last lurid detail as to why you think you’re my brother. What this picture means. Every. Single. Last. Fucking. Morsel.”

Tom’s eyes narrow and burn with the nuclear fusion of the Sun.

“Capiche?”

Zapp turned his gaze from Tommy to the mug. Staring at it. Gazing deep into the soul of the Corgi on the mug. Maybe it was the copious amount of wine that clouded his judgment, but he started talking, ignoring his natural filter.

“Tommy, I asked you a question. ‘Do. You. Reflect?’ Like think on shit. I mean, what is life but a bunch of uh-uh-uh moments that define who we are. Make the right choice, you're happy, you make the wrong choice, you're fucked. You can try to make a right decision, settle down, focus on your actin’, avoid your cousin, but because you're associated with him, the Feds and Johnny Law always come knockin’, the pricks bring you in for questionin’ when you didn't do nothin’. And because fuckin’ Barney Fife wanted be a hardass, you end up bein’ detained…”

Zapp trailed off as if realizing he had been rambling.  He stopped himself from going any further. Regardless of any offers he had made, Tommy made no effort to embrace their familial bond, he did not deserve the Zapp Scatino origin story. Unfortunately, much like a gambler facing a slot machine in a Vegas casino, he could not stop himself.

“Look, point is, every choice you made led you here, the good, the bad, the fucked up. My story coulda ended with a happy ending, plenty of times, actually. Fuckin’ RIA and that fuckin’ motherfuckin’ ‘Time Warp’ fuckin' bullshit!”

Zapp knocked the mug off the table. Luckily for the carpet, it was empty. Zapp took a breath and looked up at Tommy from across the table.

“I taught that little girl the whole fuckin’ routine. Took weeks. Never got to see it. She had one of them smiles, ya know? Lit up a room. And her mother? I loved her. Almost had enough to buy the ring when she pulled the plug. I was fuckin’ devastated. And then I think, the fuckin’ selfishness of some people, people who can go back and change those moments. Anna Fuckin’ Daniels. She coulda wiped my slate clean. That fuckin’ bitch coulda fuckin’ ‘Quantim Leaped’ me to a better life.and she didn't!”

Zapp paused, he felt his throat starting to close, his lip starting to quiver, his eyes welling up with tears Zapp needed a moment to collect himself (of course, the wine made it difficult).

“I reflect, Tommy. A lot of nights reflectin’. Shit I've done. Shit that’s been done to me. Take a note, you wouldn't be here, askin’ me what you're askin’ me, accusin’ me of bein’ a fuckin’ con artist, if it wasn't for Anna Daniels not doin’ what she coulda done. This whole thing? It's her fuckin’ fault!”

Zapp Scatino rose up from the chair, weebled, wobbled, and nearly fell flat on his face had he not grabbed the table in time.

“Fuckin’ wine.” Zapp mustered as he slowly got up and steadied himself against the nearest wall before continuing with: “Anna Daniels ruined our fuckin’ lives, brother. That malfeasant bitch is goin’ down!”

Tom bent over to pick the mug up. Thankfully, it hadn’t shattered. He took it as a sign.

“Zapp. Look.”

He sat down on the chair adjacent to his tag partner.

“I’m still really fuckin’ pissed at the way this all came about. Like, that’s real scumbag shit.”

Zapp rolled his eyes but kept his mouth shut. He knew there was a “but” coming.

“But I see how you are here. You’re not rotten. You just never learned how to act when you get hurt. I get it. I pulled some shit with RIA in year one of the reboot that I’m not proud of. But it’s never too late to learn.”

Tom got up from the table.

“What’re you suggestin’?”

“I’m saying, maybe you just need a chance. Maybe we can let the Zapp Scatino I saw with Kohime Mori live out of that hardscrabble shell you have all the time. Maybe you and me can be wrestlers.”

Zapp shook his head.

“The fuck you think we been doin’, the Macarena? We’re already wrestlers.”

Tom turned around with a stone cold look on his face.

“You asked what I reflect upon. It’s this. My purpose.”

He unlocked the liquor cabinet again and pulled out another rocks glass, this time with a bottle of bourbon, Pappy Van Winkle 15-Year Reserve. He rinse his glass, puts a big ice cube in both, and pours generously again.

“What have I been put on this earth to do? What will I be remembered for?”

He pushed the glass to his tag partner.

“I know I’m a good husband, a great father.”

Zapp tilted his hand in a so-so measure which Tom either ignored or did not see, as he continued to make his point.

“But those are parts of a whole. And without something else, something else for me and me alone, I’m incomplete. And I reflect on my status as a wrestler. Do I just want to be some gimmick that people remember for their ludicrous behavior? A contemptible meme like the Applebee’s guy?”

He sipped the aged bourbon, swallowing hard.

“Or, do I want to be remembered alongside titans like Youngblood. Like Hessian. Hornet. Ryan. Troy.”

Zapp looked on with confusion.

“That’s what I reflect on. That’s why I wanted to kill you for perverting what I wanted from Snow. I want, no, I need things to be perfect to make up for a past of hooliganism and mockery.”

“Who you callin’ a pervert?”

“No, you're missing the—-”

“Well, I got news for you, Mister Fuckin’ Kink Shamer…. Sometimes you gotta do shit you don't wanna do. Life ain't pretty ”

“Yeah, I’m well aware of that now. Which is why we’re going to make this work, Zapp. You have your purpose. Anna Daniels is kind of an asshole anyway. I wouldn’t mind it if Brandon waited until after our match to turn her into Time Lord Salad in the parking lot. And Rob has it coming and then some. But I need you to understand.”

He slugged the rest of the bourbon in his glass, wincing at its bitterness. The smoothest whiskeys still burn if you drink them too much, too fast.

“You gotta stop with this unilateral bullshit, okay? If we’re a team, we split things the way a team does. No more secret envelopes and family bombshells and breaking into my house, capiche?”

“OH! I was testin’ the security of your home! You should really lock your windows. You don't want any of them unsavory types impedin’ onto your property. But, rest assured, if they do, and God forbid, harm comes to your family, just say the word, I know a guy. You're fuckin’ family now, bro! Bring it in Tommy Twinsy!”

Zapp, with the wall being the only thing that kept him balanced, extended his arms towards Tommy, looking for what appeared to be a hug.

All Tom had to do to stop the slightly inebriated Zapp was push his arm out.

“I’m serious. Drop the conman shtick. I’m only gonna say this one more time. Capiche?”

Zapp sighed with resignation as he slumped his shoulders.

“...capiche.”

“Good. Now you didn’t totally fuck my lock up when you broke in, right? It can be fixed easy?”

“I am insulted at the inclination. The window was unlatched. You might need a new screen window whatchamacallit, but I ain't gonna damage your shit.  I ain't a monster. Now, c’mon, bring it in for some brotherly love.”

Once again, Zapp motions for a hug. Tommy stares daggers at his tag team partner.

“CUT THE SHIT, SCATINO!”

It took Zapp a few seconds to process that he was not going to get a hug from his alleged twin. His arms flopped down to his side.

“Fine. Fuck you.”

A clearly dejected Zapp patted himself down and retrieved his keys. The former Morty Knightingale staggered to the left and to the right, pushing past Tommy towards the front door. Zapp placed his hand on the door as if he were going to drop a devastating zinger on his partner before making an exit. Instead, he opened the door and stumbled forward, out of the house.

As the door closed behind the so-called Spanglo Luchador, for the first time since Zapp intruded into his life, Tom felt like he was the one who was wrong.