I yanked hard in a futile attempt to free myself.
“Three! Four! Five!” the crowd screamed.
“And the match ends in a TIE!” the emcee said. “Looks like we’ll have to split the prize money between the two teams!”
The crowd bayed its approval.
Principal Cruz staggered to her feet as I rolled over onto my hands and knees. She patted my back. “Good effort!”
“Sorry,” I said to Gucci when I’d climbed out.
“Are you kidding? Nobody else would’ve done that for me,” Gucci said.
“You won your fight, and I lost mine, so you should get all the money,” I said, using a finger to scoop tater from my ear. When Gucci started to protest, I raised my palm. “No. I insist. Two hundred dollars will cover the rest of your pole classes.” It would also buy groceries for my kids, but I didn’t say that. I wished so hard I hadn’t taken all that money from my mom. This somehow felt like a tiny (if indirect) amends.
“You sure?” Gucci asked. When I nodded, she thumped her chest. “You are my ride-or-die. Whatever you need, I’m here for you.” She threw both arms around me. My mom used to say, “The Universe gives you what you need when you need it.” And it wasn’t lost on me that the person hugging me right now while declaring she owed me a favor had forensics expertise.
Instead I asked if she’d seen Salma Hayek smashing the “dirtbag that got thrown out of Huckleberry’s” over the head with a beer bottle. But Gucci reported she hadn’t spotted anything noteworthy at the club after I left, except for Layna climbing on-stage to show off her (very amateur) body rolls.
Disappointed, I was heading to the bathroom to change—holdingmy sweatsuit at arm’s length to keep it from getting covered in mashed potatoes—when Agent Nate Duran stepped out in front of me.
“Job Talk Tuesday and now this?” he said. “Please tell me this is not a normal weekday for you.”
I also learned a floorwork move called the Vagina Monster and hid a dead body in my kids’ playhouse. But what I said was: “I wouldn’t saynormal. But the real question is: Why was your sister wrestlingme? Or anyone, for that matter?”
“She lives to get rowdy,” he said. “Also, I dared her. The woman will not pass up a dare. It’s how she ended up an elementary school principal, but that’s a story for another time.”
Layna rocked up and introduced herself to Nate, tossing one of her fake ponytails over her shoulder and holding out a hand for him to kiss. Which was as awkward as it sounds.
“She has no game,” I explained.
She looked at me. “I love you, but you are not riding home in my Porsche like that.”
“I can Uber. I’ll just find a trash bag to sit on.”
“I’m already gonna have one mashed-potato-covered woman in my car,” Nate said. “Why not two?”
“No game, my ass,” Layna said, shooting me a sassy look. “I just got you a ride home from a hottie.”
Nate blushed scarlet and let out an unrestrained laugh. I already loved that sound.
As I sat on an emergency blanket Nate had pulled from his trunk, I tried not to get any potato sludge on his backseat. I’d stripped off my undies, shorts, and jog bra in the bathroom and pulled on my sweatsuit. Now my gloopy underclothes were in a plastic grocery bag.
“You really should have sat shotgun,” Principal Cruz said.
“Shotgun goes to the wrestling victor, not the vanquished,” I replied. “Your brother said you mashed the patriarchy because he dared you to. True or false, Principal Cruz?”
“Call me Lucia!” she said. “Half true. I have a lot of adrenaline to burn off after work. And you should know: If there’s anyone in this world wilder than an elementary school teacher, it’s an elementary school principal.” She wiggled in her seat. “I have to say, it’s gonna be interesting getting mashed potato out of my private bits.”
Commenting on the current sloppy state of my own orifices seemed inappropriate. “Mrs.Glidewell doesn’t seem wild.”
“Mrs.Glidewell has a stripper pole in her bedroom,” Lucia said.
“She doesn’t!” I cried.
“Sure does. But if you quote me on that I will deny,” she said.
“I’ll put it in the vault,” I said. Then to Nate, “You’re quiet.”
