Double

How did we get here, Vanya? Greed, steel, ingenuity, blood, and cattle. Barbwire has its own history, as do you and I. Our stories are entwined just like—well, you know. A hundred and seventy-five years ago, a few hotshots decided they wanted more than they had. These guys wanted land that was theirs to be decidedly theirs. They saw everything else as their future land that they hadn’t gotten around to claiming yet. But it’s backbreaking work to build a fence, and hedgerows take a long time to grow. As long as you could take it at the barrel of a gun, land all over the globe was free to get, but hard to keep. Enter zinc-coated steel wire. Two strands, contorted around each other like lovers, leading to an adder’s kiss of a barb. Barbwire is magic beans, it’s the genie’s wish. All of a sudden, a man can walk up to a tract of land say: howdy, wild and untamed world, I’m gonna need you to behave like an economy. Put cows or wheat or slaves on it, and now the man is doing respectable business. Their claims to land are undeniable now, wrapped in wire as it is. And all the other land? What they’re able to fence in is theirs. The barbwire is the ownership. Inside the wire is civilization, outside is bloodthirsty and savage. I assume you got your own Manifest Destiny over there in the land of ice and vodka, Vanya. You know it ends bad for those outside the wire. We got our own dose of this where my people are from. Don’t skip ahead. That’s for later. Vanya, I know your mind. You think: “Enough blathering. I do not need lecture on sins of capitalism! You are going to face down your nightmare in Toronto, and you prattle on about history?” I came back to PRIME and I told you what would happen. You won gold and bought yourself a little time. I waited.  But the piper needs payment. At Culture Shock, I put us through a—yep, there it is—barbwire table, because I was done waiting.  That’s gonna feel like a fucking daisy daydream compared to what I do to you at UltraViolence. Remember what you’ve done to earn the bloodletting. It’s our history. /~/~/~/~/ May 11 Squinting through dim light, Chandler realizes he has dozed off. He’s too alert to fall asleep and too tired to stay awake. The ceiling is down, the floor is up. His teeth are scummed with thin film. It’s been more than thirty-six hours since ReV 68 ended. Chandler hasn’t felt fresh air since, has slept in amounts better suited for commercial breaks. He tracks the passage of time by the amount of light or dark coming in the window of Jasmine Jeong’s room at Hamilton General Hospital. If you’re not about to die, hospitals offer the chance to experience a slowness of time that tricks the mind. Jasmine is not about to die. But only on the binary scale of alive-or-dead is Jasmine in good shape. Chandler looks over at his young ward, asleep through a combination of exhaustion and meds. When the body endures what Jasmine has at the hands of Ivan Stanislav, sleep is necessary medicine. Broken ribs, torn rotator cuff, concussion, high ankle sprain, internal bleed. These are injuries most often seen in car crashes, the natural outcome of her trying to fight off a man three times her size. The wages of a war she should never have been part of in the first place. “Hear anything?” In this dusky, blurred state of mind, Chandler hasn’t even clocked Jaime Aguilar walking in. The lanky teenager leans against the doorframe and looks at Jasmine. He has his own issues with Chandler, but they have made temporary peace in support of Jasmine. “No.” Chandler’s voice is soft, as he tries not to wake her. “A doctor came in, and said they were concerned with one of the scans, so they’ll probably need to do a closer look when she’s awake.” “Is that bad?” Jaime’s big moony eyes remind Chandler of how young the boy is. He should be practicing moonsaults on a trampoline, not here. More wages of war. “Not sure.” “They’re just trying to understand medically how I came to have this much dog in me.” It’s the croak of Jasmine’s voice, and the two sets of eyes hard pivot to look at her now that she’s awake. “Yo, Jaz! What’s up, bruh?” Jaime has her wrapped up in his slim arms before she can answer him. She grits her teeth and exhales painfully. “Dude. Dude,” she says, short of breath. “My ribs.” “My fault,” he apologizes, and takes a step back. “It’s ok.” Chandler stays in his chair at the foot of the bed. “Morning,” he says. “Or afternoon? Jaime, what time is it?” “It’s real early.” “How’d you sleep?” Chandler asks Jasmine. They can make the most basic of small talk, but every interaction since the Colton-assisted reunion of Chandler and mentees has been loaded with things unsaid. “It’s hard to get any rest with all the beeping and the lights.” “I can ask again if they can do anything about the— “No, I’m fine.” Chandler, who always pushes and nudges, relents. The peace is eggshell fragile, and he knows better than to test it. “You get some rest, Jaime?” Chandler asks. “Yeah.” The Model Citizen should feel grateful that things aren’t worse, that Jasmine will walk again, that Jaime is unscathed. He brought these kids right into the maw of a Red Army ambush. More than one of them should be in a hospital bed, or worse. Chandler feels like he’s being scraped clean from the inside. “You want us to let you keep sleeping?” He keeps asking mundane questions. What else is there to do but apologize? If he begins, will he ever stop? “Deadass, I’d rather do anything than sleep. That’s all I been doing for a day and a half.” “Where’s it hurt the most?” “Jaime!” “Naw,” Jasmine says with a hand wave, “it’s cool. Every time I exhale, it feels like somebody’s got an iron to my ribs. And I get this weird shooting feeling in my left hand.” “You’re due for more meds in a couple hours, but if you want, we can ask— “I’m fine,” she assures everyone. Jasmine is made of harder stuff. Chandler’s cold calculation is that this is why Alexei targeted her. The unbreakable girl who was orphaned at eight and fought through a wastewater plant’s worth of shit to get to the cusp of her dream, if she can shatter, what hope is there for anyone else who resists the Red Army? And—it feels cosmically stupid to still think about this at all —what hope for Chandler to win a wrestling match against a man twice his size? “Besides— Jasmine says something to Jaime. Chandler cannot wait a second longer and interrupts her. “You shouldn’t be here. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Apologies spill out, a burst dam of regrets. “I let you down. I can’t stop thinking about how badly I let you down.” Chandler barely recognizes his own voice.. His mother certainly never spoke to him like this. He’s laser-focused on the floor in front of him. “I don’t know how to make you understand. The fear when I realized that Ruslan could hurt you, it was overwhelming. It was like…being stuck in an elevator that’s plummeting to the ground but it never stops and the feeling of being stuck never stops either. I swear, between twenty-foot suicide dives, and facing down killers in the ring, and even when I lost my mom, I thought I had mastered fear. But the thought of you being hurt, I haven’t been that scared since I was a little boy. That fear made me crazy and it made me weak. So I did something stupid and selfish.” He can’t look up. He doesn’t want to see their eyes on him. He stares at that same square of tile on the floor. “Bringing you close to me was the only way I knew how to protect you, but more than that, I needed to get off the elevator. I needed to feel like I had some control. And I walked you both into a trap that was designed to hurt you because you’re part of my life. The best part of my life.” Something has released in Chandler. The lightness of unburdening ripples through his arms and legs. He now feels just how tired he has become. He might, at any moment, collapse out of this speech and sleep for hours and hours. “I lost. We’re sitting here, stuck in Canada, waiting on testing for who-fucking-knows-what, worried half to death about Jaz, because I lost. Not because you did anything. It’s all fucked beacuse of me, and I know what I have to do. No matter what happens, now or in any wrestling ring that you or I ever step into, I at least see that clearly.” Through the window, a hint of sun hits that small square of tile on the floor. Early morning, just as Jaime said. “I’ll never have my own kids. You’re it. You’re what will last for me. Not as wrestlers, as people. There is nothing that millions of dollars or U-Haul loads of trophies ever brought me that felt better than being your friend. Please don’t feel burdened by it. I am staggeringly, impossibly lucky. And I am terribly afraid. Both at the same time. That’s just what family is.” Like a shark, he keeps going because to stop moving could mean the end. “The truth is that I can’t protect you. I couldn’t then, and I won’t be able to now. If you want to make the smart decision, you should both leave and go far away from me. I won’t try to find you this time. If you can forgive me for letting you down, that would be a blessing I haven’t earned. You don’t have to forgive or understand before you go. All you have to do is know that I love you.” Chandler is right: he does see clearly. His vision, though, is ever-so-clouded with tears. “Thank you.” He is ready to bear whatever he finds on Jasmine and Jaime’s faces. Enough with that square of tile on the floor. Chander looks up. /~/~/~/~/ What I’m saying is we can’t escape history, Vanya. Two scab-scarred dogs as old as you and me know that. History hovers over the shoulder like a poltergeist. What is history but a lengthy, bloody reminder of things we can’t change that laid the track to get us exactly here, to this damned place we share?  Our history is tied and tangled in the barbwire. The start of this and the end of this. Two strands. You see it, right?  I offered you the shot. Just us, two of the best wrestlers to ever tap a toe onto canvas. No Red fuckery. A celebration of our sport, and a combined half-century of excellence. A legendary showdown of colossal proportions: let the best wrestler win. Nyet to that, you said. I hope Alexei Ruslan drops dead. He was right, though, to fear that, in a wrestling ring, the final verdict might be simply: Tsonda better.  So Ruslan did his dirt and laid his traps. Because a clean fight, a good fight, isn’t the business that either of you are in anymore. Then: Jasmine. You don’t know the extent of what you took from her. That’s my story, not yours. But you should know that I’m taking it all back from you, and then some. Vanya, this is the history of how you ended up with a barbed wire bat wrapped around your spine. And soon, worse. Much worse. Neither of us is in this anymore for “victory,” we’re just here to ensure the other loses and suffers. It’s inevitable; we will go over the cliff together. Two strands.  We have no hope of a wrestling match anymore. We’re animals in a kennel, told that one of us, and only one, is allowed to emerge. Troy is right to lock us up, toss in a sharp stick, and then walk away with the key. That’s the end of this. We’re in the muck now. Congrats, it’s what you wanted. Thoughts and prayers on what happens next. /~/~/~/~/ June 1 The hospital chapel is the only place to avoid the incessant beeps, sighs, and burbles of Hamilton General. It’s been over two weeks and Jasmine hasn’t left this place and its cacophony. A nicer room, a different wing, less frantic, but still not the Ritz. She’s progressing, though, day by day and scan by scan. The chapel exudes calm. Stained glass window panels show a bevy of wildlife native to Ottawa: a falcon swoops at a muskrat, a loon floats past a beaver, a deer gives a wide berth to a porcupine. Small relics of various faiths sit on the altar at the front. It’s all very palliative. Chandler sits in a back pew. “I have to ask you for something.” He speaks low and slow, aware vaguely of other people who need to make their own bargains with higher powers. “I’ve gotten so much. I don’t really think about you being part of that, or whatever. No disrespect, but I feel like we’ve got a cordial, mutual non-aggression pact.” The self-consciousness hits. “So stupid…” And he almost gets up to leave. Instead, he thinks of Jasmine, who is now afraid but never shows fear, and is thousands of miles from home. For her, anything. Chandler closes his eyes, thinking maybe that will quiet his doubts. “If you know my heart, and you see me in full, then you know that I’ve never put anyone ahead of myself. That version of me that you’ve seen, he would have asked you to make sure that those kids forgive me. Because it was about me, my needs. And, fuck when I say that out loud, if that doesn’t sound like my old man. Sorry for cursing.” He takes a deep breath and leans forward. He steeples his hands against his chest, and lowers his head. “That’s not me. I’m still capable of all the wrong things. I’m greedy, narcissistic, and inadequate. What I’m asking above all is for that kid in room 13C over there to be back whole. Show her that the world has mercy in it. Take it from me if you have to. Please.” Taking his time, Chandler then makes his way back to 13C, Jasmine’s fourth different room at the hospital. Other than travel to and from ReV 69 and his hotel, he has been nowhere else for most of three weeks. Jasmine’s eyes are open when he steps into her room. She’s sitting up with pillows behind her. “Hey.” “Hey.” “I was in the chapel. It’s nice. You should check it out next time you’re up.” “Making peace with God before UltraViolence?” Chandler points up. “I didn’t mention that I nearly beat a guy to death with a bat last week. I figure it’s already a known thing up there.” Quiet settles in. “The doctor was here.” “I was only gone half an hour. What’d she say?” Jasmine looks out the window. “Jaz, what happened?” The quiet is longer this time. Chandler wants desperately to rush to her side. He feels sick, standing there in the doorway. “The shooting pain in my left hand,” she says, slowly and with effort. “It’s from congenital cervical spinal stenosis.” “They found this on the new scans?” Jasmine ignores the question. “I looked it up. It’s, like, a birth defect. Something wrong with my spine. Nothing to do with the attack. That just had them looking in the right place to find it.” “Stenosis, what does that…?” He trails off. “I can’t wrestle.” Chops to the chest don’t hit this hard. Breath leaves Chandler like it will never come back. This is the immediate and clear reply of a loving god? He puts his hand on the doorway to brace himself. She keeps talking, and brings her gaze back from the window. “When Ivan ragdolled me against the wall, I was lucky it didn’t put me in a wheelchair. The doctor said she couldn't predict the future, but she was just being nice. I saw it on her face. I can’t wrestle. I’m done.” He scrambles for something to say. “We’ll find a way.” He projects a stiff upper lip, not knowing whether it’s for her or himself. She shakes her head, and swallows. No tears. Jasmine is made of harder stuff. “We’ll get you to the best spinal docs in the States. Someone will be able to figure this out with us.” “I was so close,” she says. “You’re still— “I’m not anything. I should have never come here.” It’s not clear whether she means Canada, or ReV 68, or into Chandler’s gym in SoCal. He dares not ask. “If you hadn’t landed in the hospital, who knows if they would’ve found this? This can be a good thing. A lifesaving thing. We will get you well, and this will just be another speed bump— “Stop,” she says. “You have to trust me. I’ve seen a lotta shit in my years. Comebacks from every injury under the sun.” “You’re not listening to what I want.” “You’re upset. It’s unfair and you’re right to be upset. Please, Jaz, don’t give up on this. Don’t let those motherfuckers win. We’ll figure something out. We will.” He believes that. Or, he believes that he believes it. “STOP. I don’t NEED another test of my FUCKING determination. How am I gonna get insured now? What company would hire a ticking time bomb? Are you gonna vouch for me with Lindsay Troy when she sees that I’m one bump away from getting paralyzed? Are you gonna fix the world being a fucking sick joke on me, Chandler?” His hands are shaking. Is that fear or rage? He curses a god who can’t or won’t listen, who would do this to a kid. Who would let her be hurt in the first place. He will destroy Ivan. But the Bear isn’t responsible for this. Without the vicious assault, Jasmine might have crippled herself, might have died, in a ring. It’s too much. Something white and hot nearly blinds him. The tiny voice that comes out of Jasmine is nothing like the fearsome girl he knows. It snaps him back to what’s real. “I thought you would be there.” “What?” “When I was trapped. I looked back and I saw Alexei and Ivan. I knew that, alone, I was cooked. Right up until the end, I was sure you would be there, that you would come for me, and together we could fight them off.” “Jaz.” “Where were you? Why weren’t you there?” The quiet is much longer this time. The quiet is longer and more terrible than either of them could ever imagine. /~/~/~/~/ You know what they ended up using barbwire for, Vanya? Hell on earth. Lining trenches at Verdun. Tracing camp perimeters at Dien Bien Phu. I told you my people came into the story. And what else could mark the borders of the ghetto at Krakow or the outer fences at Dachau? Two centuries of humanity's bloodiest history wrapped in steel and zinc. Wherever you find the worst human suffering, you can walk along and feel under your fingertips the devil’s double-threaded filament.  In your history, and in mine, Vanya, we’re everything. Heroes, sufferers, poets, protagonists. I loathe you, but I know, somewhere in the brutalist architecture of your heart is a rich and complex story. Family, violence, hopes, pains, dreams, fears. They’re in you like they’re in me. Our two strands. But there can only be one true history of Tsonda v. Stanislav. And in that shared history, you are the foul blackhearted beast. I have no hopes for a glory in victory, but I won’t live in a world without consequences. You are bloodthirsty and savage, and between four posts of barbwire, you will be made civilized or made an invalid. Only two choices. I don’t like the person who’s going in that chamber with you, Vanya. I’m afraid of what he’ll do, now that I know the full toll of what you’ve done, now that I’m reminded we have no gods to keep watch. No gods, only justice. Will Jasmine ever wrestle again? No? Then you must know then that you owe a pound of flesh and more. I take it now. I fear what happens when the doors close and the wire is wrapped around us like the wickedest willow branches. History tells us the wire makes demons of men. The start of this and the end of this. Two strands.  We are at the edge of the cliff now. Goodbye.