In the morning when I woke she was gone. I stood and walked out of the bedroom to find her in the kitchen, an apron tied on over her pajamas. She was wearing those big slippers that they make of cartoon character's faces. She had Eeyore. I laughed, not being able to help it, as I saw her. She rolled her eyes and giggled.
"You like pancakes, right?" she asked. I nodded but didn't look at her. I was too busy staring at her slippers and finding them terribly amusing.
Eeyore had always reminded me of myself, negative, grumpy, depressive. Mark was the same way. He can be the most serious person in the world, and the most intelligent one, and the darkest one, but when he was in the mood he was such a goof. Almost all the two of us ever did on the road was joke around; play wrestling was one of our favorite activities, as well as practical jokes and having races to the airport.
She stepped forward and kicked me. Well really it was like Eeyore hitting me in the knee with his nose. "Would you stop staring at me and go set the table?" I laughed at her again so that she was forced to smack me with a potholder. But then I set the table as she guided me through her kitchen, as I had no idea where anything was.
We spent that whole day out. We went to a park and fed ducks in a pond. And we went to a playground where she asked me to show her how to wrestle in the sandbox. For dinner we went to a French restaurant. Then I bought her ice cream and we went back to the park. It was night then and no one else was there. We went down past the duck pond, which was as far as we'd gone to that day until we reached what she wanted me to see, a garden. We lay there on the grass for hours, looking up at the stars, saying barely anything. There was nothing to say; we could feel coming off of each other what we were feeling.
Later on she got cold, shivering and I pulled her up like a child so that she sat in my lap, arms pulled up around my neck. But then I was cold too and we went back to her apartment. There was a fireplace in the living room, in which I started a fire, and we sat on the couch again, this time warmed by the fire as we talked. Like any other time, I couldn't pry my eyes away from the flames.
"You okay?" Amber asked me. I sighed and played with her purple tinted hair.
"Yeah, I'm fine," I flexed a few muscles and stretched. She stared in awe at my arms; I could tell that the size of my arms and muscles fascinated her.
"Well what's wrong? You just got totally calm…like sad. Please tell me."
There was a bit of desperation in her last sentence and I felt bad. So I answered her. "It's the flames…fire just always…calms me. It's the memories, they bury me, but the fire is just so calm. It can be so beautiful but it also took everything away from me. And now all I can think of when I see it is warmth, like a blanket that covers me. It's almost like…" I paused, realizing that I'd had this thought for all my life and had never told anyone. Amber touched my arm, gently and silently asking that I go on. "It's as if everything that I lost in that fire, my mother, my…face, my world, are in the flames. Like a ghost risen by the fire. And when I see it, it gives me this security, as if the fire could give it all back to me somehow. But I know it can't, and then it becomes my weapon. You know…at first when it happened, Mark was really nice about it, and he'd come sneak into the basement with me only to be beaten unmercifully by Paul, but after a while he couldn't take it anymore and so ignored me. And I hated him for it. And for a long time all I wanted to do and all I thought about was setting him on fire, just like he'd done to me. But later, after he'd left Paul, and after I was strong enough to leave him also, we met again, and he apologized. And for some reason, I believed him. Maybe because he was telling me the truth. But I didn't hate him any longer. And I wanted to be his friend and his brother just as we'd been before what happened. And then Paul followed us and went to the Federation to say that he wanted a job…it wasn't Mark's fault. But it was ultimately Paul that ruined us again and again. But we try. It's just that fire…like a summery of all evil that's been done unto me. I just wish that I could take it all back. And I know I can't."
She didn't reply and I didn't expect her to. I was used to people not knowing how to be empathetic about me. And the rest of the time I was with her passed all too quickly, and before either of us knew it she was driving me back to the airport in tears because she didn't want me to leave. Over and over she asked if I could get a few days off again but I couldn't for a couple of weeks. And that was why she cried. And when we stood in the terminal until the last second she clung to me, and while I was on the plane, in the night, I could see her through the lit windows of the airport, watching until she could see me no longer.
Without her, the volume in my life was turned down. On the plane her image wouldn't leave my head; her perfume clung to my clothes and I savored it. When I arrived in the airport in Las Vegas Mark waited for me with a big smile on his face.
"You got laid, didn't you?" he asked me. He laughed. Big surprise there.
"Several times, actually."
He stopped laughing and looked at me with a crooked, incredulous grin. "What that…humor? You? Kane? My little brother? Humor? Jesus Kane so tell me what you've been up to. What are you smoking?"
I told him of our adventures in the car on the way to our hotel. He said that he was very proud of me. When we got to the hotel I took a shower and then we went to go work out. Mark said that a bunch of wrestlers were gong to be in casinos all night but I didn't want to go, and neither did he. Mark was brilliant when it came to gambling but he didn't want to go. He said it was a waste of time and that he didn't need money and he didn't need all the guys on him for taking their money. We were working out in a practically empty gym for a few hours until about midnight, when we went out to just get a something light to eat and returned to the hotel.
The next morning was boring. Mark went out to go "tend to some things" while I stayed in. It's strange…I of all people would call Las Vegas boring. But it was. And I missed Amber. And because of the time zones it wouldn't have been right of me to call her. So I stayed in the hotel all day, first just exploring in boredom, then watching PPV movies for a while. Later in the day Mark came back and we went to go work out for a while, our pre-show ritual. We got pumped up, as we call it, but like always not enough to get exhausted. After that we went to the arena and blah blah blah all the usual stuff. It was then that I called Amber, to say hello and remind her that Raw would be on a little later because of the time zone. No one answered the phone, though. I didn't make much of this, simply figured that she was working or shopping or hanging out with friends. I went back to our room and started getting ready, and warming up. Mark kept looking at me. Strange. And when I asked him what was up he's say: "I'm just really happy for you."
I knew he was lying.
"Whatever, Mark. I'm not up to playing games right now."
That night Mark and I fought again. I was a bit more focused because I remembered the week before, but I was still a little slow. Most of our brawling was fine, but I missed our signal, since we usually worked together so well, for his chairshot and it caught me totally off-guard. And he hit me very hard. I fell down to the mat. All I could see was the rafters, blurring in my dizziness. Mark got out of the ring but I couldn't move. I just needed a second to breathe.
I felt hands on my chest, and thinking it was a medic I was about to shove the person away, but when I saw a flash or purple hair in the corner of me eye I stopped.
"Amber!"
"Kane are you okay?"
I was confused. "Amber, what are you doing? You know this is fake, don't you?"
She put her head down so that no one would see when she said: "Of course I know, just play along." She looked back up with a worried expression, hands on the sides of my face. The crowd was freaking out.
Mark was walking back down the ramp. He took the discarded chair and walked over to Amber. I pretended to be incoherent and unnoticing. He grabbed her by the hair and started pulling her off the mat. She screamed, and tried to slap his hands to make him let go but he wouldn't. I quickly sat up. He shoved her across the ring as I stood to face him. He brought the chair up and had the look in his eyes that told me what I needed to do, and I didn't fuck it up this time as I met it with a big boot. He stumbled backwards and I took the chair to smack him in the head with. He didn't fall, only staggered, and so I did the Tombstone. I turned back to Amber after this was accomplished to see her curled up in the corner, holding her head and selling it wonderfully. I walked over and slid out of the ring, scooping her up in my arms from the outside. I carrying her away as she held onto my neck and burned her face in my chest. My music hit as I walked up the ramp and I listened to the pop I got with a grin.
When I got backstage I put her down and before I could say anything she grabbed my hand and pulled me to a locker room. It reminded me of the way she'd pulled me onto the floor on Valentine's Day. A cameraman followed us and when he got there she told me quickly to act worried and then angry. It was easy. I sat on my knees next to her as she rubbed her head and then I did something which I was more accustomed to. I threw a fit and screamed, throwing things around and then storming out of the room and down the corridor, as the cameraman pointed for me to do, and I saw Mark. We beat up on each other until I had him on the ground and then walked away. When they turned the cameras off I turned one way to see Mark coming toward me and the other way to see Amber. I raised my arms, telling them to stop. "Okay. What the hell?"
Amber frowned. "I thought you'd be happy to see me."
I nodded. "I am!" I went over to her and gave her a hug that she squirmed out of, giggling and telling me that I was all sweaty, which I was. We both laughed. Mark came from behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. I turned around to face him. He was smiling, but it was one of his serious smiles.
"I called her this morning," he said. "She's been here all day, with me and then going over things with Vince." She squeezed my hand. Mark went on. "And she came up with this whole script for tonight. Good job improving, Kane."
I tried to be angry with the both but I couldn't. And I laughed before I pushed through them and went back to the room so that I could shower. I was just rinsing when she came in with me, which didn't necessarily bother me. And so we showered…among other things…before getting out to see a monitor turned on, most likely by Mark, to show a "during the break" depiction of my mask lying in a heap of clothes outside the bathroom door and Amber walking in with nothing on. Of course they only showed behind her, above the waist. JR was going on and on about 'Kane's Mystery Woman' while Jerry Lawler screamed about how 'who would want to see that burned freak?' Ah…Jerry. Funny guy. Amber and I both laughed at that.
As we left the arena in a rental car and started driving back, she marveled at all the casinos and lights and whatnot. "Wow…I've never been here before," she kept saying, but she didn't want to gamble. And on the way to the hotel there was only one place where she wanted to stop, and I didn't disagree.
A drive-in wedding place.
I decided to buy her a ring first, though, so we drove around trying to find a decent jeweler that was open…unsuccessfully.
"Ooh Kane! Let's got one from a pawnshop! All of my life I've had such a proper life when it comes to these things because of money, but not anymore!" And so I brought her to a shop where people pawned jewelry for gambling money. And we found a few decent rings, just plain gold bands with someone else's initials on the inside, but we thought they were amusing and didn't care. We drove back to a wedding chapel.
"Are you sure about this?" I asked her. She nodded frantically and kissed me.
"Of course! Why not?"
"Well…" I spoke my mind. "I know that all of your relationships turn out to be shit, and I don't want this on too also. If we do this, we'll be cemented where we are with each other."
She looked sad, then disappointed. "Yeah…you're right,"-she looked out the window-"I guess we can wait. Besides, I want like a really nice, pretty wedding. What about you?"
"Yeah I guess. I never really thought about it, but that would be nice."
"Don't get me wrong, I don't think we're making a mistake. I really would be honored to be your wife."
"And I would love to be your husband."
"Because Kane," she turned to me and looked straight into my eyes when she said: "I love you."
And my reply was a simple nod and a hug given to her and I said: "I love you, too."