Envelope

“Just because you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not after you.”

Having a brain as fried, both with diagnosed mental issues and exacerbated with concussions, as Tom’s leaves someone with lingering paranoia. Yes, the victory over Jason Snow at Tropical Turmoil objectively was the biggest in his career, bigger than both World Title wins in prior feds. But there was always another shoe ready to drop the dull throb beating in his brain always causing him to look over his shoulder.

Not like recent events could train him otherwise. His blood family threw bomb after bomb at him, most of them from the guerrilla position. He felt enough peace knowing his wife and kids were ride-or-die, but all that taught him was that nothing is 100 percent in either direction. A win against the undisputed King of the ReVolution Era, and perhaps gaining his respect in the process, would be a good rest spot, sure.

But then as the family awaited their uber to Humberto Delgado Airport for the flight home, his phone rang.

It was the booking office.

Rust never sleeps.

“Hello,” he answered.

“Great news, Tom, your tag league application was approved.”

“What?”

“I said your application was app…”

“Hold on, hold on. I didn’t submit a tag league application.”

“Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year, brother.”

Tom turned to find the man calling himself the Spanglo Luchador standing behind him.  The doppelganger was oozing an obnoxious smugness that sickened him.

“I figured you an’ me,” the Spanglo Luchador started as he strutted towards him. “Brothers, the Luchador Twins, separated at birth, connectin’ in the most perpendiculous of ways, competin’ together to capture some gold. It's what Pop woulda wanted.”

The Spanglo Luchador slapped his “brother” on the back, smirking crookedly at his “twin”. Tom shot him a look filled with enough venom to down a triceratops. Spanglo threw up his hands as if he’d had a gun pulled on him and slowly backed away.

“Hey, Tommy-Boy, don't get all bitchy piss pants with me.  If anyone should be in-fuckin’-furiated, it's me! I'm the one that was left in the fuckin’ toilet!”

Each step Tom took towards his alleged lost sibling caused him to backtrack instinctively, almost automatically. Spanglo knew that allowing this interaction to escalate towards violence would not be beneficial for him. At least not before presenting him with one more gift.

The doppelganger reached into his magenta pinstripe suit and pulled out a manila envelope, handing it to his alleged twin. Tom stared at him stone-faced, refusing to make a move towards anything this pain in his ass handed to him. With a gulp, Spanglo removed the mask revealing his identity.

Zapp Scatino.

Tom face-palmed. Tam instinctively grabbed the kids, both of whom were too engulfed in their electronics to see what was going on around them, and shuttled them down the block.

“Surprise!” Zapp exclaimed to daggers from the man he’d tormented the last month. “Tommy, look, you got questions. This right here has some of the answers. Irrefusable proof of our shared genital makeup. DNA results.”

Zapp cocked his head and waved the envelope in front of TAL’s face.  TAL aggressively snatched the envelope from his hand.

“I'll be in touch.” Scatino said, twirling his Anglo Luchador replica mask in his hand before backing away.

-

Transatlantic flights were never Tom’s thing, but bombshell accusations gave his jitters and nausea enough exacerbation that it radiated to his wife, his kids, random passengers in his vicinity. His face lost its naturally Mediterranean complexion, trading in for pale. He sat up straight, clutching the manila with knuckles whiter than Augusta National on Masters Sunday.

Finally, Tam spoke up.

“You know you don’t need to open that to know it’s bullshit, right babe?”

Tom was silent, mainly because he didn’t want to argue with his wife but also couldn’t believe it a total fabrication.

“If your mom had a secret twin…”

“My mom and dad have had a lot of really fucked up secrets, Tam. A lot.”

She didn’t have an answer to that because, well, she knew.

“I mean, you’re right. But do you really trust this guy? I mean, he’s clearly a two-bit grifter at best.”

“I don’t trust anything involving my parents anymore, babe. Not since the video will reading.”

Tam sighed and put her arm around her husband’s shoulder. He stowed the manila envelope in the magazine pouch in the seat in front of him and rested his head on her shoulder.

-

When Zapp Scatino plucked the hair from Vinny Spandex’s dying, ghoulish head six months ago, he had a clear plan in place: To prove that slimy fuckstick was his biological father and burn everything he had to the motherfucking ground.  He sent the follicles (both Vinny’s and his own) to four different facilities specializing in DNA.  Three weeks later he received his first response.  He opened that letter with the anticipation of a young child tearing open a birthday present, when he read it, he was gutted.  The results indicated that his DNA did not match that of Vinny Spandex.

Zapp could hear Maury Povich in his head running in a continuous loop: “Vinny Spandex you are…. NOT the father!” Everything he had been told by his mother was a lie. He could feel the room spinning, he felt his breathing becoming increasingly labored.  He blacked out, cracking his head on the kitchen counter in the process.

When he came to, Zapp sought answers.  He immediately tracked down and handsomely paid a certain associate of his Uncle Frank’s to dig into his (and, by extension, his mother’s) past.  The associate, one Donatello D’Empressario, when hired for this undertaking, did warn him that he might not like what he may uncover but Zapp didn’t give two shits, much less one.  He needed to know.

It took two and a half weeks but the results of that investigation led him to the Battaglias, namely Lorenzo Battaglia.  And, by association, to the Anglo Luchador.

And this, with this new information, the tragic life of Zapp Scatino began to unfurl. Memories long repressed began to bubble to the surface. And the seedy, vile past of Lorenzo Battaglia and wife was about to be fully exposed like a flasher on New York City subway at two in the morning.

Not that Tommy would believe one fucking word that came out of Zapp’s mouth, what with his perfect little family and his perfect wife with the perfect ass, with his perfect kids, Zapp felt nauseous thinking about how sickeningly happy he must feel each and every day, that fucker needed to be dropped a peg or two, which is why he needed to present him with cold, hard facts.  Science to back up his truth.  Would Tommy accept that Zapp was, in fact, his family?  Or would he continue to deny it when faced with scientific evidence to the contrary?

And if Tommy did accept it, what next?

Zapp had some ideas.

—

Back to South Philly, a place where he didn’t want to be. A hasty park job on the corner, harried gait to the part of the block where his mother lived, and heavy footfalls on a concrete stoop. He opened the storm door and pounded on the thick wooden slab behind it. The door creaked open.

“Oh, it’s you. Come to give me an apology?”

Tom’s face turned red.

“I’m not the one who needs to apologize. But that’s not why I’m here anyway.”

“Why would you be then? Either to disown your own mother or to say you’re sorry and that I’m right.”

“Let’s not do…”

“Why not? I assume you failed again in Portugal.”

He snorted and shook his head.

“No, even if I lost I wouldn’t have failed because I know who I am and what I was meant to do in this world.”

Joelle rolled her eyes.

“But that’s. Not. Why. I’m. Here,” Tom continued, waving the manila envelope that he still had not opened in front of his face.

“What is that?”

“You should tell me. Do I have a secret twin?”

Her face contorted unnaturally, a fair reflection of the absurdity that her son was brandishing asking such a question.

“Did you get another concussion?”

“Maybe I did. I don’t know. But someone is claiming that, and normally, I would say to them, no, they’re lunatics, my parents would never do something as cockamamie as have a secret child they abandoned at a rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike.”

He snorted and bit his fist before continuing.

“But in the last six or seven months, I heard Dad speak from beyond the grave that he tried to be a real life heel for shits and giggles, and you apparently harbored all kinds of resentment that you kept hidden too for who knows how long. My parents are liars, so all of a sudden, the rest of the world doesn’t sound so fucking crazy.”

Her face returned to a normal expression, stone-faced and emotionless, but still more normal than the Tim Burton-inspired contortion she had initially.

“I’m guessing what’s in that envelope has some kind of DNA test? Did you check it fi…”

“No, I didn’t even open it, Mom. I didn’t want to see some stupid paperwork. I wanted to hear it from you first. I wanted to give you the chance.”

She huffed slightly herself and retreated back into the house to sit on her vinyl-covered sofa and sip the tea she’d made. Tom followed her in, naturally.

“This is yet another reason why I don’t want to see you in this business. It’s full of charlatans.”

“Yeah, and apparently Dad was one of them.”

“Don’t speak ill of the dead, Thomas.”

“Oh, but you can?”

“I speak the truth about your father. You call him a charlatan, and that’s hurtful slander.”

She took a hasty sip of her tea. Tom merely shook his head in exasperation.

“Your father was a lot of things. A ladies man was not one of them. He was shy and reserved around women, and I had no reason not to trust him on the road, even if he had other problems.”

She placed her teacup on the saucer on her endtable and stood up.

“And the fact that you’d accuse me of giving birth at a rest stop? I don’t even know you…”

“No, no, you’re not allowed to play that card after calling the FUCKING COPS on me for bullshit noise complaints because you didn’t want me to be a wrestler anymore.”

He dropped his arm hard to his side, the manila envelope smacking on his thigh, making a noise that sounded much worse than it actually felt.

“I don’t even know what’s in this envelope,” he continued. “It could be a Denny’s placemat with a lewd drawing on it or something. I don’t know what to believe anymore at all. But I want you to tell me the truth.”

Her gaze turned steely.

“Okay, you want the truth, boy? You’re much too old to be going through this, ugh, teenage rebellion phase. Your wife is an enabler, and you in turn are enabling your children. You’re damaging your body, you don’t respect authority, and you owe your brother an apology for bothering him at work.”

She turned around and sat back on her sofa, sipping her tea with haste and, somehow, malice, before finishing her diatribe.

“And no, your father and I did not have twins when we had you, and if we did, we would not abandon one at a rest stop on a highway in, ugh, New Jersey of all places. How’s that for truth?”

Tom sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Okay, I believe you. Anyway, I gotta get home.”

“Good, you weren’t invited to stay here anyway, at least not until you apologize to your brother.”

“You have a better chance of seeing God than that happening, Mom.”

-

“She fuckin' denied everything, didn't she?”

Zapp Scatino was parked in front of Casa de Mama Battaglias, waiting for the Anglo Luchador.  He leaned against his rented Lexus, arms crossed on his chest, sporting a magenta and teal plaid suit.

The Anglo Luchador stopped and glared at the man claming to be his brother.

“I guess, you gotta ask yourself, Tommy. Do you believe her? I mean, what's she gonna say? ‘I dumped your twin in a pishadoo full of piss?’ How’d that go over, huh? But then again…”

Zapp uncrossed his arms and took a couple of casual steps towards Tommy, allowing those words to linger in the air a moment before Tom threw up his fists almost immediately.

“The FUCK are you doing here?”

“Call me Curious George. You don't think I thought you'd confront Ma about what she did to me? I wanted to see how it turned out. About as expected, I’d say.  Either she'd deny everything, because that's better than admittin’ to what she did to me or she repressed it, one of them psychopathic devices to block out trauma. The mind is very Fra-Gee-Lay.”

Zapp took a step backwards, keeping his distance from Tommy. Zapp's lips curled into a Grinch like grin as he noticed what was in his “twin’s” hand. The envelope.

“Did you, uhhhh, even open it?” Zapp inquired with hint of amusement.

“Of course I haven’t. You disappear from this fucking fed for months. You come back shooting off at the mouth about me and then you try to get Jason Snow to kill me. How do I know there isn’t ricin in this fucking envelope?”

Tom gripped the envelope even harder.

“You know what? It doesn’t even matter,” he continued with defeated exasperation in his voice. “You keep rope-a-doping me into getting what you want. But you know what, I got something I wanted out of it too. And you know what the fucked up part about all of it is?”

He threw his hands to his side.

“I beat King Shit of Fuck Mountain at one of the biggest shows of ReVival history, and I have you to thank for it. So you know what, Zapp, Mort, whatever the fuck you’re calling yourself today? Let’s do it.”

Zapp looked upon Tom, half-confused, half-intrigued.

“Let’s ride this wave to shore. The Anglo Luchador. Zapp Scatino. The new PRIME Tag Team Champions. We already had lovebirds holding down those titles forever and a day. Let’s bring some fucking DISCORD into the chat. I don’t know why. I don’t even wanna know how. But you know what, let’s fuckin’ go.”

Zapp narrowed his eyes, sized up Tommy.  Clearly, this was an unexpected turn of events for Zapp. He wanted a reluctant Anglo Luchador, not an accepting one. He slowly nodded and flashed the biggest, broadest smile that he could.

“Alright, Tommy Teabags,” Zapp said. “The Luchador Twins!”

“You fuckin’ call me that one more time, and I will drag your corpse to the tag titles like I’m Jared Sykes and you’re El Hijo del Super Cool Guy.”

“I don't know what the fuck that means, but alright. How's Tommy Two-Shits sound?”

“Dreadful. Here’s what you’ll call me. Tom. The Anglo Luchador. The Spear of Huitzilopochtli. Or maybe I just don’t want to have you address me at all unless we’re tagging in and out.”

Tom sighed mightily.

“Who we got at 51 anyway?”

“Well, The Spear of Hot-Pots-Of-Chili, we got something called Hawaiian Barbeque. Pineapple and the Pig.

“Ah fuck,” Tom sighed as he realized he’d be going up against one of his WarGames partners.

“Well, they’re on the same page. They might as well have put out an engagement announcement on Facebook with their entry at Tropical Turmoil. We’re in Boise for 51 on Friday. How about you meet me at The Asylum gym in Vegas on Monday and we’ll get on the same page?”

“Monday's bad for me. I got a Brazilian wax scheduled. Lucy’s workin’. She's got the magic touch, can't just fuckin’ cancel on her. How's…”

Tom forcefully interrupted.

“You’ll be there Monday or I will shove this envelope so far up your ass you’ll have a papercut in your stomach lining.”

“Fuck it. Maybe Lucy won't hold it against me. Asylum. Monday. The Thirsty Cheetah Burlesque show after.”

“I don’t give a shit what you do afterwards, Zapp. Just show up ready to work so we win these fucking tag belts. Capiche?”

“We're gonna have a great time, Tommy Twinny!”

Tom threw his hands up in the air and walked back to his car, hoping that his park-job didn’t entice a terrible South Philly driver to leave him a present in the form of a dent or a broken taillight.

“Fuckin’ prick.” Zapp muttered under his breath before entering his rental and drove off listening to and singing along to Sheryl Crow’s “A Change Would Do You Good”.

-

Tom sat at his kitchen table, mulling over the envelope. His mind wandered to the last six months of his life, the lies and deceit, from his parents, his brother, Ivan and the Red Army, Zapp. And now it all led him to looking at an envelope he didn’t want to open but felt compelled to. It felt like Pandora’s Box. Opening it would send a flood of shit cascading out into the world, shit he wasn’t ready to deal with.

The lies and deceit put him in an untenable situation, teaming with a sociopath against two men he admired. Ellis, a teammate at WarGames, hardscrabble, rough and tumble. A good man in a business with few of them, his outbursts in France be damned. Dawkins, hard-luck but good-natured. In another life, maybe they’d be stablemates, tag partners, friends. Why did fate put them on a collision course?

He thought of everything cascading against him, but the swell of optimism began surging against his inner walls. His wife and kids adored him. He sniped Jason Snow when the entire world expected the Ace of the ReVolution to treat him like the secondhand trash he felt like in the ramp up to the match. And most of all, he found purpose.

The envelope wasn’t Pandora’s Box anymore.

It was just an envelope.

He undid the metal clasp and lifted the flap, instinctively holding his nose in case there was a chemical agent laced within. He found no anthrax or ricin. What he did find, however, furrowed his brow. The first was a receipt from the Marriott Hotel and Suites. It had written in black ink, sloppily, “This DNA test conclusions that the crusty spooooooge stain known as the Anglo Luchador and the supremely handsome Spanglo Luchador are in fact, unprovocatively, twins, not identically speaking, but of the fraternizing variety.”

Tom crumpled up the paper and slammed his palm on the table.

“What a fuckin’ scumbag.”

He looked in the envelope again and saw one other item laying within, a glossy photograph. He carefully removed it, examining it as he pulled it out of its sheath into the dim light of the overhead lamp over the sparse table in his kitchen.

Four people standing out front of a brick storefront underneath a canopy. Peter Luger’s Steakhouse in Brooklyn. He recognized two of them right away. Mom and Dad, much younger than he most recently remembered them. The other two figures he didn’t recognize, although the woman looked a little familiar, like a face he’d just seen in disgust outside his mother’s house. The photograph was signed in black permanent marker.

“To Vinny and Priscilla, from your favorite wrestler, The Italian Stallion.”

The names meant nothing to Tom, but the picture spoke a thousand words. A thousand horribly obsessive words.

He’d gotten in bed with a stalker. That never turns out good.