"Here you go."
He slides a measure of bourbon over to her; sets his own down on the scarred and sticky table. She smiles and raises her glass to his.
Cheers, neither of them says.
"I think it was good tonight," she ventures, wincing at the burn of the cheap liquor. "I'll admit, I wasn't sold on the whole riding in on a white horse thing when you first described it…"
"Told ya." He drains the whiskey in a practiced gulp, looking back over at the bar rather than her. Onto the next fix. He remembers himself enough to raise a quizzical eyebrow at least: another?
She shakes her head. "I'll let this one… settle first."
Damned if she's going to watch him at the bar like she has nothing better to do. Instead, her eye roves the rest of the dive-bar they've found. Somewhere—elsewhere—the rest of the GLOW crew are celebrating another successful week. She imagines it is more cheerful than this, with bottles of Budweiser and a jukebox playing synth-pop rather than fuzzing death-metal. She isn't quite sure why they're here instead. Debbie, maybe. There's still an unspoken rule of avoidance in play there; maybe there always will be.
She suspects it's more than that. Debbie has probably already gone home to Randy. Maybe it's about staying in character. Zoya doesn't have friends, only allies she hasn't betrayed yet. Can't be too close; can't know all the stories and share all the jokes or she'll lose her grip on that.
She finishes the bourbon; fire in her belly.
Maybe it's not about Zoya at all – there's another character in the ring here, after all. Plain old Ruth. She's here because Sam is the only other person she knows who fucked up every good thing in his life without thinking too.
She frowns, spinning the glass in her hands. That's not right either. They think. Think too much, perhaps, about the wrong things. The job, the story. Both of them so busy chasing a dream, a narrative, that they miss out on the flow of their own lives—
"Hey, I know you."
"Hmm?" She glances up, half-smiling out of genial habit, at the slurring voice.
"Yeah. You're her aren't you? The Commie bitch from that wrestling show."
Ruth cringes inwardly, shrinking away from the drunk. He's tall and well-built, running to fat, sweating and bald. He's every unwanted hand on her body in a club, every cat-call she's ever shrugged off in the street. Ruth cringes away, but on the other side of a see-saw, Zoya rises up.
And Zoya has never cringed in her life.
"Da," she affirms, as Ruth looks out from behind her icy eyes. "Commie bitch Zoya, that me. Who's bitch are you?"
It takes a second for him to process. "The fuck you say to me?" he spits, and the horrible sticky table is flying before she even has time to flinch.
Time warps, glacier-slow. The table wasn't for show; he was clearing a path. His fist swings back, unstoppable as a planet, and she's frozen. Detached, almost. Watching dispassionately from somewhere else as her head is about to get punched clean off her shoulders. And like a magic lantern show flickering up to speed the scene unfolds, but not as she expects.
Something, someone, launches at her assailant with a yell. Half his size, but with a bantam-weight fury that takes the bully off guard; knocking him back a step.
"What the fuck man?!"
Sam. The world's most unlikely knight in scuffed leather jacket, standing between her and three hundred pounds of rock-ape, with his fists balled.
She can feel her attacker's confusion. The math doesn't make sense. Sam is so much smaller, older, and somehow so much angrier. Hell, the whole room can feel it. Pin-drop silence; thirty pairs of eyes locked on their tableaux. The only movement in the room is the bartender surreptitiously removing a large baseball bat from under his counter.
Some kind of animal logic turns cogs behind those piggy little eyes; the certainty of the equation unfolding. A ham-like fist draws back again. It's a wild haymaker and slow enough for Sam to duck. She expects him to drop, roll, run. Not to come up under the man's guard and scrape together every bit of strength he has into a fierce uppercut. Rock-ape's head is flung back and he staggers once again. One, two, three seconds of muzzy incomprehension. In her mind's ear Keith counts down to victory.
Then he lands a return blow like the meteor-strike that killed the dinosaurs, and Sam goes flying. The rest of the room seems to fly with him; descending into a maelstrom of punching, kicking, testosterone fury.
She ignores the chaos, the stray kicks and knocks, scrambling to find him on the floor. He is curled around his stomach, unmoving. She drags him by the lapels of his leather jacket through the door. He can barely stand; she can barely carry him. They are limping away by inches in the neon-lit mizzling rain, a cut-scene ripped straight from Blade Runner. At least until the body goes crashing through the bar window, crunching onto the sidewalk in an explosion of shattered glass and blood, and the fresh shot of adrenaline sends them both running.
She manages to pilot him to collapse on his couch, still clutching at his ribs like he's been stabbed.
"We should get you to a hospital—" she tries.
"No," he rasps. "I'll be fine."
"Harry Houdini died—"
"From a blow to the stomach," he finishes. "I know."
Of course he does. She puts her head on one side, trying to puzzle this out. "You're ashamed?"
"What? He had a hundred pounds on me—"
"Yeah, I saw. And about two decades less," she shoots back.
He almost laughs at this, but thinks better of it. "Nice to see you extending your talent for making friends outside of the ring."
"Well, what can I say? I've got a great mentor."
He raises his hand in mock surrender, wincing at the pain. "You gonna stand there insulting me all night or—?"
"Or?"
He swallows, on the back foot now. "Fuck, I don't know. Comfort me? I just took a pretty big punch for you."
"Why?"
He blinks, like the question doesn't make sense. "What do you mean, why?" Realising she's serious, he pinches the bridge of his nose. "Christ, Ruth. You're more fucked up than I am. You make me laugh, and life feels less shitty when we hang around together. You need more than that?"
The conversation has pivoted once again back on her. She sighs dissent through her nose and goes to find ice in his kitchen, returning with a bag of sorry frozen peas and a wet flannel instead. "Here." She folds his bruised hand around the freezer veg, tucks it back against his ribs. The wet flannel she uses to dab away blood in his eyebrow, cool an already purpling cheek.
It's fine until she catches his eyes. Then the intimacy of the moment suddenly strikes her, stomach contracting sharply.
"You make me feel less… shitty too," she admits, because she has to say something.
He nods. "Good. Um." He makes a face. "You've got dirt on your…"
"Oh, um…"
There is an awkward moment of gesticulation, until he solves the problem by reaching up, brushing his thumb across her cheek.
"Thanks," she creaks. As if this is all completely normal. As if his fingers haven't stalled in the stray hair by her ear; as if her flannel hasn't stilled in its busy work.
He breaks the spell. "This is… this is a bad idea." It half sounds like a question.
"Yeah," she agrees, nodding like a fucking car ornament.
His moustache twitches with the wry grin underneath. "I mean, I'd only fuck this up. And people would talk…"
"It'd be a shame to ruin a friendship," she adds.
"Yeah, yeah. I wouldn't want people to think… you know… it wasn't all earned through talent."
"And after Rhonda—"
He flinches. "What?! Why the fuck would you bring her up?"
"I'm sorry! I thought we were doing reason why we shouldn't—?"
"Well, yeah, but you know… nicely."
She bites her lip in effort not to laugh in his face. "Nicely?"
"Yeah. Yeah. Nice reasons not to." He catches her giggle, and immediately regrets it, wincing hard at the stab of pain from his ribs. "Fuck."
Her smile twists in sympathy. "Can I see?"
"I thought we were agreeing not to take any clothes off?" he grumbles, but lets her pull his shirt up.
"Fuck," she echoes, at the blooming flower of black and blue. She reapplies the sad bag of peas. "Thank you?" she tries.
"Yeah." He lays back into the sofa. "I think you're welcome."