Statue, page 4
One night she dreamed of the devil. He was a tall, thin man wearing glasses, who peered at her through the glass window in the front door of their house. She woke up terrified and made the sign of the cross three times on her pillow. She cursed him, as her Yiayiá had taught her. She would have to be careful now; she must not be praying enough.
She was already at her desk that morning, looking over her assignment, when the substitute teacher arrived. He would be with them for the rest of the year, since Mrs. Moore was expecting a baby. “Hello, guys,” he said. She looked up, closed her eyes, then opened them again. His long, thin face, his tall stature, his wire-rimmed glasses—this was the man she had seen in her dream. She whispered the curse to repel the devil, but he still stood there, looking at her. Had he singled her out? Did he know that she recognized him?
“I’m Mr. Lucas. I will be with you for awhile, so let’s have some fun together. And do some learning, too.”
Anastasia rose abruptly from her desk and ran out the door. She stood in the hallway, wondering where to go, when Mr. Lucas came out and approached her. “What’s wrong, dear? Did I say something that disturbed you? Are you okay?”
“Yes. Sorry. I just feel a little faint. I’ll come back in shortly.”
“Okay. Take your time.” He reached out and rubbed her shoulder gently. Anastasia felt a sudden stab of desire at his touch. Her eyes met his eyes, so deep and black behind his glasses. She put her hand in his and followed him back into the classroom.
SUNSET FLIP
O
COLLEEN O’MALLEY COULD lift a 200-pound man with one arm and raise him above her head. She once lifted a Volkswagen a few feet above the ground. She frequently picked up her two sisters, one in each arm, and twirled them in the air. Everyone said she should join the circus or display her talents on stage. She could make millions.
But Colleen refused. This was just entertainment for her. She loved to surprise people—at parties or even on the street. Once, on her way home from work, she came upon a heavy-set man who was threatening an elderly man with a knife, demanding his money and his watch. She lifted the criminal in the air and threw him ten feet down the street. When the young policeman who responded to her call didn’t believe her story, she picked him up and ran down the block with him. “Hey, you should train as a police officer,” the startled cop told her. But she was happy tending bar in O’Riley’s Irish pub located in a rough section of Toronto. She was a great success at the bar, where she sometimes hoisted customers over her head just for sport, and once carried two drunk men out the door, depositing them on the street. The owner paid her well, and she got good tips—though not from those she threw out of the pub.
She wasn’t big, either. She was slim, about 5'6" and wiry. She usually kept her arms covered to hide her rippling muscles, and wore pants or long skirts to hide her muscular legs. The short blonde curly hair and pretty, girlish features, with warm brown eyes and luxurious long lashes, added to the impression of delicacy. She loved the surprise in the eyes of an ardent man attempting to seduce her when she raised him up above her head and threw him over backwards.
She was going on 29, though, and really wanted to fall in love, get married, have children. Men who knew her feared her. Men who were attracted to her and had not heard of her strength usually disappeared when she told them the truth. Once, on a date, she pretended to be weak and vulnerable, flirting girlishly. She liked this man—he was handsome and had a great career in business. But while they were eating dinner, she saw a customer reach up and grab a waitress’s behind. In no time, she had thrown him into the air and tossed him out the door. The waitress expressed no gratitude, just stared at her wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Colleen’s date went running out of the restaurant.
Somewhere there must be a man for her. Her sisters, Kathleen and Shelagh (who were only moderately strong), recommended joining a dating site on the web, so she decided to try it. They helped her set up her profile, with a photograph in which she looked sweet and rather frail. The replies came flooding in. Her sisters helped her categorize the men into groups based on their profiles: awesome, maybe, boring, scary, and yuck. She e-mailed, then met with, several of the men, but all her dates were disastrous. She had decided not to lie to them about her strength, though she did not disclose the full extent of her power. Most of them feared her, except for one man who saw an opportunity for moneymaking. He suggested that he market her as a performer in Las Vegas.
Colleen gave up then—but she grew bored working in the pub and wanted badly to finish her university education. She’d dropped out after two years because of financial issues. But she needed to make more money. On TV one night, she was watching women’s wrestling. All fake, she thought. What if she really wrestled but with men? She could make loads of money for university—and then hopefully law school.
She put ads in the newspaper and on-line: Wanted: coach to train very strong woman for wrestling. Again, she had many replies, but the interviews soon weeded them down to one. Jack Wood had trained some of the best male fighters. Though he had retired, he was eager to take on one client, if he could find an interesting one. This woman was indeed interesting!
So they trained and they trained. Jack taught Colleen control and skill, as well as poise and charm in the ring. When she told him she wanted to fight men, he said, “Okay, but let’s start with women. We’ll work our way up to men.” Colleen resented the word “up.”
His most important advice was that she control her strength, that she not show it off—not until the time was right. If she scared off other wrestlers, no one would fight with her.
Her first fight with a woman was almost laughable. In a few minutes, she twisted that woman up like a pretzel and knocked her into a corner as if she were a rag doll. It was no contest, none at all.
Were there no women strong enough to fight her? Most female wrestlers tended to grunt and sweat and not much else. So Colleen thought. Then Jack arranged a match with a woman who called herself Lotta Blood. Lotta was enormous. She made Colleen look like a slim pencil. She gave Colleen an enveloping embrace that came close to smothering her. But Colleen just lifted her up and threw her against the ropes. The crowd roared in surprise! Tiny Colleen ducked and spun, twirled and danced, until she made Lotta dizzy and confused. Finally, Colleen caught her opponent with a Shooting Star move, backflipping through the air to knock her down.
Colleen won $10,000 that night, but she was afraid that Lotta would come after her and try to squash her to death. She had looked so angry. Colleen was changing in her dressing room when someone started to pound loudly on her door. She opened it a crack: There was Lotta. “I’m sorry, Lotta. It wasn’t personal.”
“Hell,” Lotta yelled in a booming voice. “It was great. You are the first woman who could beat me. I wanna learn from you. Better yet, I wanna go out drinking with you!” Lotta grabbed her in a big bear hug and spun her around.
“Hey, watch it,” Colleen shouted, “Or I’ll flip you again.” But Colleen was laughing. She had a friend!
The big brute of a woman and the delicate-looking one were a sensation at O’Riley’s. It turned out that Lotta’s real name was Mary O’Shaunessy and she knew almost as many Irish songs as Colleen did. Their rendition of “Danny Boy” brought the house down. The old men at the bar were weeping.
Jack Wood was willing to take on Lotta as a client, too. He envisioned doubles, with the two of them eventually wrestling huge men and tromping them. They would all be billionaires! But he needed to be sure that the fights were not fixed and that the wrestling was not faked. He believed that wrestling took skill and strength but also involved theatrics and artistic manoeuvres. It was a dance, a body sculpture, a work of art. Colleen and Mary learned to move around each other, to give each other subtle clues, to choreograph movements as if they were ballerinas.
When they were ready for their first doubles fight, Jack said that they needed new ring names. He proposed several boring ones—Charismatic Colleen, Marvellous Maria—until Colleen and Mary decided to call themselves the Gaelic Girls, Number One and Number Two.
The two women became experts at the Doomsday Device, with its electric chair position and flying clothesline. Lotta would hold up their opponent on her shoulders in the electric chair position and would roll back with her, allowing Colleen to leap from the top rope using the flying clothesline move, landing directly on the opponent and knocking her onto the mat. Chokeslams, brainbusters, neckbreakers, and many other moves—they were experts at them all.
Then, in October, they fought the Jackhammer Twins. Just when Colleen (Number One) was flying off the ropes to Twin One, held up by Mary, Twin Two grabbed Mary from behind, toppling all of them into a pile. Colleen jumped up, ready to work with Mary to knock these two into a mangled mess, but Mary did not move. When the twins came at her, she held her hand up. “Stop. Mary’s hurt.” Indeed, Mary was seriously injured; her back was broken and she would never wrestle again.
Colleen sat by her bedside for hours, holding her hand, trying to comfort her about her failed career. “It’s okay, Colleen. I’ll be your coach, your supporter,” Mary told her. “I was getting tired of fighting before I met you. Now I’ll help you and go back to university. I always wanted to be a teacher.” But Colleen felt guilty. If she had only used her strength from the beginning, she could have knocked those twins right out of the ring.
Mary slowly learned to walk, first with a walker, then crutches, then without those aids, though she would always have a limp. She enrolled in a nearby university to finish her degree so that she could then apply to teachers’ college. But she came frequently to observe Colleen’s training and cheer her on. Jack was now training Colleen to fight men, teaching her to maintain her strength, refine her techniques, and learn more aggressive moves. She practised various holds, takedowns, throws, and other strategies, using first dummies, then actual fighters whom Jack enlisted to work with her.
Jack then arranged matches against men. First she fought Grizzly George—she picked him up, held him overhead, and spun him around, then dropped him to the floor. The fight was over quickly. Then she fought a wrestler known as the Gentleman. He dressed as if he were attending a dinner party, not participating in a wrestling match. He was clever and graceful, manoeuvring her into tight spots without her even realizing what was happening. His sparkling blue eyes were indeed a distraction, as was his muscular body as it rubbed and slid around her, sometimes in an almost caress. But finally, after he threw her a few times against the ropes, she bounced back, grabbed him in a chokehold, picked him up, turned him upside down, and knocked him onto the mat. Colleen, Mary, and Jack went out for drinks that night, back to O’Rileys, where Colleen was greeted with thunderous cheers and hoots.
The Gentleman asked Colleen to join him for dinner the next week, but she refused. Anyone with such smooth moves in the ring would no doubt be sneaky in his personal life, too. Now the question was—whom to fight next. Mary and Colleen were waiting one day at the gym but Jack was unusually late. When he entered, his eyes were gleaming and his legs almost dancing. “We have a challenge, Colleen. The great Nick Black wants to fight you for a prize of $50,000!”
“Nick Black! Wasn’t he the winner of the provincial championship? Isn’t he the guy who wears a devil costume? Am I ready for him?”
“Yes, you are, girlie. I’ve trained you well. I’ll be there to support you and so will Mary.”
“When is this to take place?”
“Next Friday night!”
“Oh, no, Jack, that is too soon. And isn’t that Halloween? You’ve got to be kidding. Fight the devil on Halloween?”
“It will be great fun. You’ll get a crowd. Even if you lose, you will become famous overnight!”
Colleen trained hard all week and was as ready as she could be on Friday night. She walked briskly to the ring, showing her muscles to the crowd. Everyone yelled in excitement. When Nick entered in his devil costume, there was a mixture of hoorays and boos. The devil, indeed! Colleen thought he looked silly with that red tail and those little red horns. She’d vanquish him!
At first Colleen and Nick circled around each other, with false feints and interrupted leaps. Nick tried to get behind Colleen and grab her by the neck, but she turned quickly, foiling his attempt. She tried to throw him over her head, but he turned so quickly that she saw only a blur as he spun. His body slithered against her, almost seductively, as he grabbed her in a bear hug, clutching her so that she could hardly breathe. She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed. He lifted her so high for a moment she thought that they were flying. He was so light, and she felt no ground beneath her feet. She extricated herself from his grasp, and they both fell onto the mat.
They jumped up, and she grabbed him in a chokehold. Nick freed himself quickly, though, and got her in a Damascus head/leg lock. She was pinned down and twisted around. She could not breathe for a few seconds but then rolled away from him. She was frightened for a moment and looked out at the crowd. Mary smiled at her and gestured, her fingers forming a V. Her hair shone against the darkness; she looked almost angelic.
Colleen knew that she had to use her full strength in order to defeat this opponent. She lifted him in the air with one hand and then finally got him in a sunset flip. Nick began to crawl along the mat like a serpent. She watched him carefully, expecting another move, but he lay down, face first, and didn’t move.
She thought at first that he was dead but, after her victory was declared, he stood up, his face red with anger. “You used trickery. I am unbeatable. I will come back. I will defeat you.” He leapt over the rope and ran off, disappearing into the crowd. She thought she heard wings rustling and smelled smoke.
Jack jumped into the ring and hugged her. Mary waved from the front row, smiling, tears in her eyes. “You beat him. I knew you could!”
That night at O’Riley’s, they raised their glasses and sang every Irish song they could think of. Even the Gentleman joined them. He smiled at Colleen so charmingly. Maybe she would go to dinner with him after all.
The news headlines proclaimed that Colleen had beaten the devil. She did not believe it at all, feared that somewhere he lurked, watching her.
She dressed glamorously for her first date with the Gentleman—a bright red, low-cut dress that flared out slightly but still clung to her muscular hips. She smiled as she stepped into her red shoes with stiletto heels. She was ready when he rang her doorbell. She didn’t even know his real name—she would ask him tonight.
He looked so handsome. His eyes—dark and beautiful—stared into hers. He took her hand and caressed her palm with his finger. He held her arm as they walked toward his car, a shiny silver Porsche that reflected the setting sun. She shivered as a sudden breeze made the trees around her house sway and her skin tingle.
THE PLEASER
O
THEY LABELLED HER a high-end call girl but she had moved up and now called herself a “pleaser.” She could be hired for a number of things—but she had standards and wouldn’t do just anything. She was an accomplished actress and was excellent at roleplaying and participating in various kinds of games—sexual and otherwise. She would not do “golden showers” or violent sadomasochistic activities. A little bondage was okay as long as it was playful and didn’t take one to almost the point of death. She was kind to older men and patient with anyone having difficulty performing. She would not have interactions with more than one person at a time.
However, Ceci (short for Cecilia) had become almost entirely at the service and sometimes unusual whims of a wealthy businessman named Adrian Sylvester. He liked fairly normal types of sex, but he also enjoyed risky activities—parachute jumps together while copulating in the air, bungee jumping while singing “Born to be Wild,” and other fairly innocent adventures. He also hired her to seduce his clients into investing in his company and had her accompany him to events where she would get close to his enemies and eavesdrop on their plans, sometimes planting bugs in their briefcases, clothing, or beds. It was an exciting life—but she had taken time off a few years ago, five years ago to be exact. She told Adrian that she needed a vacation but in fact she had given birth to a beautiful boy she named Adam. He was probably Adrian’s son but she did not tell him. She kept the boy hidden from her clients, gave him the last name of a fictitious father, and hired a live-in nanny (actually her best friend Barbara, a former call girl who now worked for her as she trained part-time to be a legal assistant).
Ceci played the role of mom to perfection—attending school functions, bonding with the other kindergarten mothers, baking cupcakes for school events, taking Adam to the playground whenever she could. She made sure to be home to bathe him and put him to bed every night, reading him stories before turning off the light. If Adrian learned about Adam, he would be angry, since it was important to him that Ceci be free of all attachments and family bonds. He wanted her available to take risks without anyone worrying about her or noticing any long absences. But she was very careful and knew how to take all precautions.
Ceci had studied accounting but had dropped out of school after her father died suddenly and her mother became addicted to prescription drugs. She was left depressed herself and with no financial help. A college friend had introduced her to an escort service and she eventually set up her own business as a call girl.
That night, after Adam was asleep, Adrian summoned her to a building unfamiliar to her. Ceci left the address with Barbara and instructed her to call her cell phone if there were any problems. She took a cab and found herself at what seemed to be an empty warehouse on a dark street at the edge of the city. She cautiously went to the door and considered going back home, but Adrian opened the door and motioned her in. He looked very excited. “We have an amazing opportunity,” he said. They walked through a large empty room to another door, one with a numbered lock on it. Adrian pushed in the numbers, and they entered. Ceci was amazed to see a room filled with computers and technicians and, in the centre, a glass case on a pedestal.
