Turning Weakness Into Strength

Frankford Hall sat on a side street in Northern Liberties, all exposed brick and picnic tables and string lights hung in long rows above the outdoor beer garden. It was loud the way Philadelphia got loud on a warm night, not aggressive, just alive. Scott found Emma and her friend at a table near the back, away from the main crowd, two beers already on the table, and a third chair pulled out and waiting. Emma stood when she saw him. She looked better than she had at the farmhouse. Not healed, that wasn’t the right word, but straighter somehow. Like she’d found a way to carry it that didn’t bend her. Scott hugged her for a long time without saying anything, and when he pulled back, she was smiling at him in that way she had, half-proud and half-checking on him at the same time. “You look good,” she said. “I feel good.” He meant it. “This is Rachel.” Rachel stood and extended her hand. She was Emma’s height, with dark hair, and the kind of easy smile that suggested she found most things genuinely amusing rather than just politely so. Scott shook her hand, and she said it was nice to finally meet him, that Emma had told her a lot about him. The way she said it wasn’t performative. She said it the way someone says something true. “Good things, I hope,” Scott said. “Mostly,” Emma said, sitting back down. Scott laughed, pulled out the chair, and sat. The server came by, and he ordered a beer without looking at the menu. The string lights above the garden threw warm light across the table, and somewhere near the bay, somebody was laughing very loudly at something. The whole place had the feeling of a night that intended to go well. “How’re you feeling about next week?” Emma asked. “Good. Really good.” He picked up a cardboard coaster and turned it in his hands, an old habit. “Clay and I have been sharp. I feel like we’ve got things locked in right now. There’s a trust there, you know? Like we don’t have to think about it.” “I saw the Nate Colton match,” Rachel said. Scott looked at her. “Yeah?” “Emma made me watch it. She said I had to.” “She’s not wrong.” “The armband,” Rachel said. She said it simply, not fishing for anything. Scott looked down at his wrist. The blue fabric, the yellow letters. He’d worn it every night since the funeral. He hadn’t made any big public speech about it, no interview where he pointed at it and explained it to the camera or anything. It was just there, the way his dad had always just been there. “He watched every match,” Scott said. “Every single one. I figured the least I could do was return the favor.” Emma reached across the table and put her hand on his arm, briefly, and then took it back. She’d learned at the farmhouse that he didn’t need the hand to stay there anymore. He just needed to know it had been placed. The beer arrived. Scott picked it up and looked out at the garden, at the people at the other tables, and the lights above them and the warm June air coming in off the street. “Tell me about next week,” Emma said. “The match. Walk me through it.” “Okay.” He set the beer down. “So, the Pop Culture Phenoms. The D and Elise Ares, and I’m sure Klein will be around too. They’re good. They’re genuinely good. They could have cashed in that silver ticket against anyone, and they chose us. That tells you something right there.” “Means they think they can beat you,” Rachel said. “Means they think they can beat us. Which means they’ve thought about us, studied us, and planned for us. So Clay and I have to be sharp. We can’t give them an inch. But here’s the thing.” He leaned forward slightly. “Clay and I built something. Over months. You don’t walk in off the street and take what we’ve built in one night, no matter how good you are. You just don’t.” “That’s confidence,” Emma said. “That’s facts,” Scott said. Emma smiled. Rachel was watching him in the way that people watched someone when they were deciding what they thought of them, and whatever she was deciding seemed to be going reasonably well. They talked for a while. The conversation moved the way good conversation does, without agenda, Emma telling Rachel about the farmhouse and the orange grove, Scott asking Rachel how she knew Emma, college, a shared economics class in which neither of them had paid adequate attention, the three of them settling into an easy rhythm that felt like it had been there longer than one night. Scott ordered another beer. Rachel stole several of his fries, which he didn’t notice until they were gone, and he didn’t mind when he did. At some point, Rachel asked him how long he’d been wrestling. He told her about the high school pep rally. He stopped himself before the badger story, realized he’d already started it, and finished it. Emma covered her face with both hands. Rachel laughed until she had to set down her drink. “The badger was fine,” Scott said, with the practiced calm of a man who had explained this many times. “You elbow dropped a badger,” Rachel said. “The situation called for it.” “What situation calls for that?” “That badger was getting too big for his britches!! Anyway… you’d have to have been there.” There was a pause that had warmth in it rather than silence. The bar noise washed over them. The string lights swayed in a small breeze coming in from the street. Rachel picked up her drink and looked at him with the expression of someone who had decided to push their luck. “Emma also mentioned you have a pet koala.” Scott’s face lit up. “Kerry.” “Kerry Koalayama.” “Well, his full name is Kerry Koalayama. I named him after Kerry Kuroyama. Kerry, my friend, not Kerry the koala, although they’re both my friends, obviously. Kerry, my human friend, and I adopted him last year. He’s been everywhere with us.” “The koala,” Rachel said carefully, “has been everywhere with you.” “He’s got a laminate. He’s a credentialed talent. He was ringside at ReViVal in a little jacket.” Emma, who had heard versions of this before, was staring at the middle distance with the patient expression of a woman conserving energy. “A jacket,” Rachel said. “A really good jacket. Small, obviously. Koala-sized. But well made.” “Where did you get a koala-sized jacket?” Scott paused. “You know, I don’t actually remember. Kerry, my human friend, handled that. He has good taste in everything except tattoos.” “Does Kerry… the koala… does he travel with you? Like, on planes?” “He has his own carrier. He’s very good on flights. Very calm. Occasionally, he finds eucalyptus leaves in the seat pocket, which is a whole thing, but generally speaking, he’s an excellent travel companion.” Scott considered this for a moment. “Better than some people I’ve traveled with, honestly.” “Scott,” Emma said, in a tone that suggested she was trying to manage the narrative before it went further. “What?” “You’re describing the koala like he’s your road manager.” “He’s not my road manager. He’s more of a… consulting partner.” Scott looked at Rachel. “We solved crimes together sometimes. Mysteries, mostly. Wrestling mysteries. We’ve cracked two so far.” Rachel stared at him. Then she looked at Emma. Emma looked at the ceiling. Rachel looked back at Scott. “You solve wrestling mysteries,” Rachel said, “with a koala named Kerry Koalayama, who wears a jacket and has a backstage credential.” “Correct.” “And your human friend is also named Kerry.” “Kerry Kuroyama. Yes. He beat me in a match for the Five Star title in December. It was a great match. We’re still close.” “The man who beat you in a championship match also helped you adopt and name a koala after himself.” Scott seemed to genuinely consider whether this was unusual. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I mean, I came up with the name, but yeah, that’s about right.” Rachel put her drink down and laughed, the real kind, the kind that takes over for a second, and Emma dropped her head into her hands. Scott looked between the two of them with the pleasant expression of a man who saw nothing particularly remarkable about anything he had just said. There was a pause that had warmth in it rather than silence. The bar noise washed over them. The string lights swayed in a small breeze coming from the street. “Can I ask you something?” Rachel said, once she’d recovered. “Sure.” “What’s the goal? Like the big one. Past the tag titles, past next week. What are you actually chasing?” Scott looked at her. It was a direct question, and she asked it directly, without softening it, which he appreciated. “A singles championship,” he said. “The Universal Title. That’s the one. That’s what I want.” “You’ve had a shot at a singles title before,” Emma said, carefully. “The Five Star. December. I lost.” He said it without flinching. “Kerry beat me fair and square. The best man won that night. But I know what I’m capable of now in a way I didn’t know then. Nate Colton helped show me that. Or, I guess I showed myself that. Whatever. The point is, I know what I’m capable of. And I’m not done climbing.” “And the tag titles?” Emma said. “Those come first. That’s next week. Clay and I defend those, we hold those, we honor what we built. That matters to me. Clay matters to me.” Emma nodded, but she was watching him. “And after that?” she said. “After that, I start making moves. Whatever’s necessary.” There it was. He’d said it without thinking, the way you say something you’ve been thinking about for a long time without realizing it had become a plan. Whatever’s necessary. He reached for his beer. Emma set hers down. “What does that mean?” she said. “It means whatever it means. Make the matches, make the case, put myself in position.” “Scott.” “Em.” “What does whatever’s necessary mean?” she said again, and her voice had the particular quality it had at the farmhouse, the one that meant she was asking a real question and not a rhetorical one. Scott looked at her. “It means I’m serious about it. That’s all.” “You’ve always been serious about it.” “More serious. I’m more serious now.” Emma was quiet for a moment. Rachel was quiet too, reading the table correctly, staying out of it. “I don’t want you to lose who you are,” Emma said. “That’s all I’m saying.” “I’m not gonna lose who I am.” “Dad used to say that people don’t lose who they are all at once. They lose it in pieces. Small things they decide don’t matter.” The words sat there on the table between them. Scott looked at his beer. He knew she wasn’t wrong to say it, and he also knew she wasn’t entirely right, and the gap between those two things wasn’t something he was gonna close tonight on a bar patio in Philadelphia. “I hear you,” he said. “I do. And I’m not planning on losing anything. I’m planning on winning.” He said it gently but without apology. “That’s what I do, Em. I show up and win. Dad knew that. He told you he knew that.” Emma looked at him for a long moment. Then she picked her beer back up. “He did,” she said quietly. “I know,” Scott said. They stayed another half hour, the conversation drifting back to easier ground. When it was time to go, Scott hugged Emma at the door and held on for a second. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “I know,” she said. “Win next week.” “That’s the plan.” He shook Rachel’s hand. She held it a beat longer than a handshake required, which he noticed, and then said it was really nice to meet him, and he said the same, and meant it. He watched them walk toward the street to find a cab back to their hotel, Emma already talking with her hands about something, Rachel laughing. He stood there a moment in the warm air, the noise of the bar behind him, the night ahead of him. Then he turned and walked the other way to find Clay Byrd. Emma watched him go from the end of the block. She didn’t say anything about it. She just watched until he rounded the corner, and then she turned away, and the concern she’d been carrying since the farmhouse settled a little heavier on her shoulders, and she didn’t put it down.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Clay Byrd was in the locker room when Scott found him, sitting on a bench with his boots already on, forearms resting on his knees, staring at the middle distance the way Clay stared at things when he was turning something over. He looked up when Scott came in, and there was a half-second where something moved across his face that wasn’t quite an expression but was close to one. Kerry Koalayama was on the equipment shelf in the corner, wedged between two duffel bags, eating what appeared to be a granola bar that belonged to neither of them. “How’s Emma?” Clay said. Scott set his jacket on the bench across from him and sat. “Good. Better. She looks better than she did at the farm.” Clay nodded. He looked back down at the floor for a second, then back up. “Scott.” “Yeah.” “I gave you a hard time. Before I knew. About your dad.” He said it the way Clay said things he didn’t wanna say, flat and direct, like ripping off a bandage. “I shouldn’t have done that.” Scott looked at him. “Clay, you didn’t know.” “Doesn’t matter. I should’ve known better.” “Clay. You didn’t know. And you showed up. You drove four hours to sit with Emma at the hospital. You flew across the country for the funeral. You took the phone out of my hand and told the locker room I wasn’t available.” He paused. “We’re square. We were square before you said that.” Clay held his gaze for a moment. Then he gave one short nod, the Clay Byrd version of a lengthy emotional acknowledgment, and looked back at the floor. “Alright,” he said. “Alright.” Kerry Koalayama finished the granola bar and began investigating the zipper on one of the duffel bags with focused professional interest. “Hey,” Clay said, not looking up. “That’s my bag.” Kerry Koalayama paused. He looked at Clay. He looked back at the zipper. He appeared to weigh his options. “Kerry,” Scott said. Kerry Koalayama stepped back from the zipper with the careful dignity of an animal that had made a strategic decision rather than a concession. He sat down on top of the bag instead. Clay looked at Scott. “He does that,” Scott said. “I know he does that.” “He’s asserting territorial rights.” “I know what he’s doing.” Clay looked back at the koala, who was now surveying the locker room from his elevated position with the quiet authority of a landowner reviewing his property. “Next week,” Clay said, redirecting. “You ready to get into it?” “That’s why I’m here.” Clay leaned back slightly, rolling his neck once. “Pop Culture Phenoms. The D and Elise Ares. Klein floating around somewhere because Klein always floats around somewhere. They’re not comin’ in here to make up the numbers, Scott. They cashed that ticket for a reason.” “I know.” “They chose us specifically. Means they’ve got a plan. Probably more than one. “Probably,” Scott said. “And they’ve earned the right to have one. The D and Klein have been a team since they were kids. Same trainer, same independents, same titles everywhere they go. That’s not a team that was just put together. It’s a team that grew up together. And Elise.” He paused. “Elise has held PRIME gold before. The Five Star. The Tag titles. She knows this company, she knows what these belts mean, and she wants them back. That’s a different kind of motivated than someone who’s never been here.” “Which means we ain’t walkin’ in there thinkin’ we’re facin’ a novelty act.” “Not even close. The D is unpredictable. He knows it and uses it. His whole game is getting you off balance, making you react instead of wrestling. Elise is fast, she’s smart, she’s got seven languages and one bad habit of showing off when she’s got an opening, and Klein…” Scott almost smiled. “Klein is six-two, two hundred and sixty-three pounds, he’s ambidextrous, and his listed weaknesses are kindness and empathy.” Clay looked at him. “What?” “I did my homework.” “His weakness is kindness.” “And empathy.” “It sounds like you looked up their Tinder profiles,” Clay snorted. “The man is a giant.” “A giant who wears a box and hugs people before he suplexes them.” Clay was quiet for a moment, processing this specific piece of intelligence. “So he’s gonna hug me.” “He might hug you first, yeah.” “And then suplex me.” “More than likely.” Clay considered this with the expression of a man who has faced many things in his career and is adding this to the list. “Alright then. We don’t let ‘im hug us.” “That’s the strategy.” Kerry Koalayama made a sound from the duffel bag that seemed to convey something in the general direction of agreement. Both men looked at him briefly and then looked back at each other. “There’s something else,” Scott said. “Klein’s from Philly. Born and raised. This is his hometown. The crowd at Lincoln Financial Stadium is gonna have people pulling for him specifically, not just for the Phenoms generally. We’re not just defending the titles next week, we’re defending them in front of a building that’s got a section rooting against us.” Clay’s jaw shifted slightly. “Good.” “Good?” “I don’t want it easy. Easy don’t mean nothin’. You want this crowd? You go take it from ‘em. You go out there, and you wrestle so damn well that even the people pullin’ for Klein gotta admit it by the time it’s over. That’s the only way you win a crowd that ain’t willin’ to give it to you.” Scott nodded. That was Clay. That was always Clay. “We’re gonna need to be physical early,” Scott said. “Set the tone before they can set theirs. The D wants chaos. Elise wants speed. Klein wants to be the friendly giant who ends up with the belts. We take all three of those things away from them in the first five minutes and make them fight our match instead.” Clay was watching him again, the same way he’d been watching him since Scott walked in. “What?” Scott said. “Nothin’.” “You keep looking at me like that.” “You don’t need a pep talk,” Clay said. It wasn’t an accusation, just an observation, delivered with something that might have been satisfaction. “I was gonna come in here and get you fired up. Remind you what we’ve been through, what’s on the line. But you’re already there.” “I’ve been there,” Scott said. “Since the farmhouse, I’ve been there.” Clay was quiet for a moment. Then, “Your daddy would’ve liked this version of you.” It landed the way Clay probably didn’t intend it to, which was directly and without cushion, the way true things sometimes did. Scott looked at the floor. “Yeah,” he said. “I think so too.” Neither of them said anything for a moment. The locker room was quiet except for the ventilation and the distant, muffled noise of the building around them. Ultraviolence was a week out, and the weight of it was in the room, not heavy exactly, more like pressure, the kind that sharpened things rather than dulled them. Kerry Koalayama climbed carefully down from the duffel bag and walked the length of the bench with the measured gait of a dignitary concluding a formal visit. He stopped next to Scott, sat down, and looked up at him with the ancient, unreadable expression of a koala who had heard the whole conversation and found it satisfactory. Scott looked down at him. “You good?” he said. Kerry Koalayama blinked once. “Yeah,” Scott said. “Me too.” Clay watched this exchange with the expression of a man deciding whether to say something and deciding against it. He reached for his water bottle instead. “Next week,” he said. “Next week,” Scott said.