"I have to leave," I told her that day. She looked so sad.
"But why, Kane?" she asked.
"It's my job," I told her. She walked over to where I was standing, wrapping her arms around my waist and leaning her head against my chest. When I felt a wetness on my shirt I knew that she was crying. I took her again right there. When we were finished we lay there in bed, gazing at each other, and I realized that she and Mark were the only people that I felt comfortable around without a mask.
"When are you going to come back?" she asked me. I sighed.
"I don't know. Right now I'm going to Orlando, then to New Orleans, then across the country to do some shows on the west coast…I think we're doing LA…then I have a few days off, then I go back out to Vegas." She looked sad again.
"And that would take up all this week?"
"I'm sorry…that's what my job is light," I smiled. "But I could come here on my days off."
Her face brightened. "Would you?"
"Yeah."
She threw her arms around me. "Kane, I've never felt this way about-"
I heard the door open. So did she. We both froze and I remembered angrily that Mark had a key to my room. I rolled out of the bed, covering myself with my mask, conveniently located on the floor where I'd dropped it the night prior. It must've looked funny…seven feet of nothing but skin and muscle with a mask covering my organs from my brother. And this was obviously funny when Mark saw me and burst into hysterics. I'd never seen him laughing so damn hard. It was like when you laugh so hard that you can't even voice it, and it comes out in strange gasps. He doubled over, holding his stomach, leaning against the wall and then falling to his knees. When he looked up at me I saw the tears streaming down his face. He began to howl. I looked at Amber, who'd pulled the blankets up to her chin, eyes wide.
"Amber…this is Mark…" I grunted. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and walked over to the bed, his laughter calming. He reached to her for a handshake.
In a sweet, innocent voice, she said: "Pardon me, Mark, but I don't think it would be appropriate for me to reach my hand out right now."
Mark started up again. That was him, all right, going into those ridiculous fits. He's so easily amused…it's a good thing that he can act. He knows how to keep a straight face when he needs to, like when he's doing promos or wrestling. We loved to wrestle each other, loved to feuds. I was always laughing under my mask, but he could always keep his composure in such situations.
"Do you mind, Mark?" I asked him.
He struggled to catch him breath. "Sorry…sorry…" he stopped laughing and composed himself. "Sorry…I just came up to tell Loverboy over here that we gotta leave in like twenty minutes." He looked from me to Amber and then back to me once before shaking his head to himself and laughing and walking out of the room. Amber climbed out of the bed, tears in her eyes and began to collect our clothes off of the floor, tossing some of them at me while slipping into the others. I put my cloths on as well, and packed quickly before we shared our final kiss and I left. When I looked up from the street I saw that she was still in the room, standing in the window watching me.
On the plane to Orlando I couldn't stop thinking about her. Mark could tell.
"So tell me about her," he said to me.
"What do you want to know?"
"Well first off, how the hell old is she?"
I couldn't answer. I realized I'd never asked her and she never told me. Mark started to laugh again, not too hard though because we were on a plane.
"Damn, boy. She wasn't a hooker, was she?" he looked straight into my eyes as he said this.
"No!" I said defensively. "No. Not at all."
"So how'd you two get hooked up? C'mon, answer me. Stop avoiding the question, you can't pull that on me. We have three hours on this plane together, Bro."
I sighed. "Whatever. She was at the party-"
"How'd she get in?" he interrupted.
"Jesus would you shut the fuck up and let me finish?" I watched him for a moment before I continued. "Her dad owns the hotel and her boyfriend is a big fan and he's known about the party for a few months now and so he got close to her to use her to get in but then he ran of with someone else."
Mark frowned. "With who? Can't be one of our bitches, could it?"
I shrugged. "I dunno. I'm gonna go back there on Friday…I'll ask to meet the fucker and I'll make him sorry."
Again his laughed. "Now Kane…you can't be going around assaulting people. It's illegal, you know."
"Well I'm not gonna hurt him…I'll just…like yell at him or something. That'll work, won't it?"
"Yeah…" Mark's face brightened. "Hey! I had an idea for this feud thing that we could do, but I forgot to tell you."
He was so excited. Life I said, he loved his job. So for the next three hours we spoke of angles. And when the plane landed we went straight to the hotel and then to Vince. We told him of our plans and he approved, and then we went to go lift weights and workout and whatnot for a little bit, not enough to wear us out, before we finally went to the arena for Raw. Everyone was arriving at about five, getting situated about the same time as we were, planning out matched and signing autographs and practicing lines and being interviewed. Some of us were filming promos and stuff…the "earlier today" stuff, but most of us were just chilling out in the cafeteria like we usually did, going of lines and eating peanuts. Of course I didn't eat anything, I never did in pubic due to my mask.
About a half hour before the show I remembered Amber and pulled her phone number out of the pocket of my jeans. I called her from a payphone. When she answered she was crying.
"Hey…it's Kane…" I said to her.
"Kane! Omigod I miss you!" she laughed at her choice of words for a moment before thanking me for calling her.
"What's wrong?" I asked her. She let out a sad sigh.
"It's…John…" I groaned.
"Tell me," I said to her. She started to cry. It sounded so terrible over the phone. So weak.
"He came back to me. He said he was with someone named Sable all night. He told me that it meant nothing and tried to apologize and I told him that I didn't need him and that I had you and he didn't believe me and he yelled at me and called me a liar and then ran out on me and now I'm all alone!" she was sobbing. "Kane I miss you!" she cried. My heart went out with her. I looked down at my watch, realizing that I had to get off the phone. I felt terrible.
"Shit…Amber I have to go get ready for the show…if you turn on USA tonight at nine, in a half hour, you can see it. I'll call you after, okay?"
"Really?" she sounded so much better. "You're gonna be on TV?"
"Every week."
"Yay. Okay. I'll let you go then."
"Bye. I'll call you later."
"I'll see you on TV."
We both hung up and I turned to see a cameraman and about ten people standing behind him, smiled on their faces. I rolled my eyes and mumbled that I had to change into my gear as I pushed through them. Mark was there and he walked alongside to our dressing room. "You do know that they're gonna air that, right?"
I didn't answer him and went into our dressing room, the one we shared. He waited outside while I changed into my costume. He walked in while I was putting on my boots, knowing me all too well and knowing how long it would take.
"You look sexy," he said. I threw a water bottle at him. He caught it and threw it back at me, hitting me in the face. I groaned.
"Knock it off. I'll kill you."
"Ooh. Scary."
Before I could make some response to him he flew at me and his me across the chest with a clothesline. I was sitting on a metal folding chair, so exactly how he hit me with his height I'm not sure. It happened very fast. I tipped over and the chair would up on the other side of the room. I hit my head on one of the little wooden cubby things. "Jesus, Mark." I heard myself say. I sat up, rubbing my head. Mark was sitting on the floor a few feet away. Guess what? He was laughing.
"Sorry," he said, and pushed his hair back. "I didn't mean for you to hit your head. Seriously. You okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine…" I rubbed the back of my head, seeing the in the corner of my eye a rosin bag which I picked up and threw so that it hit him between the eyes…which totally stings if it actually gets into your eyes…
He stopped laughing and screamed, running into the bathroom. I heard the water running over his strings of curses.
"Dammit Kane…" I could hear him saying. "Now I have to redo my eyeliner."
"You woman…" I grunted. I stood, shaking off the initial hurt from my fall. I walked over to the doorway to see him rubbing furiously at his eyes. When he took his hands away I could see that his face was read around the area.
"Ass," he muttered. He turned off the sink and toweled off his face, being patient and gentle so that it resumed its natural color. I decided to be nice and got his makeup pencil out of his bag and handed it to him. He took it and put it on skillfully. Like a woman…how amusing.
Someone knocked at the door and stuck their head in. "Taker, you gotta go out there…Kane you too." The person left. This was for the things we'd come up with on the plane. Mark went out first; inviting me for some challenge…then in the middle of his little spiel I came out and attacked him. It was fun. Ha…when is fighting my brother not fun? We beat up on each other for a while until I smacked him in the head with a chair. Then I did my pyro.
What I noticed, which hadn't been so bluntly obvious before, was that everything seemed to be dull. When Mark punched me in the face I didn't feel it, and then when he hit me with the steps I forgot to put my hand up so he ended up really smacking me in the forehead with them. And later afterwards as I sat backstage talking to Amber I realized that it was because I had been thinking about her. About her laugh, her eyes, everything about her. We had talked for almost an hour after my squabble with Mark and then the match I had later on. When I called her back she was practically hysterical, trying to make sure that I was okay and that my bleeding was under control and all those things. Once I assured her that my being busted open was supposed to happen and that I was fine she calmed and just asked me questions. She asked about Mark and about who everyone was, would she like them or should she like them, were they nice, what were they like in real life, things like that. Then she asked about the hardcore stuff and if it was really safe, and was my head okay for the fifth time. We went back and forth with questions and answers for a while before her tone softened and she said: "I saw Sable."
I rolled my eyes, knowing she couldn't see this but not being able to help it. "Don't worry about her. It isn't your fault that John is an asshole. Sable is a bitch. She's a whore and she's a bitch. Don't fret over it."
She was silent for a long time until she let out a sigh. "I know that it's know…like my fault…but I just feel so terrible. I mean, Kane you just don't know what it feels like to really adore someone and pour your heart out to somebody to have them use you to get to a tramp like that."
I felt very sad all of a sudden. "Actually I do…" except I felt it in a different context. When she was saying that it made me think of the way Mark could be at times.
"Do you?" I couldn't tell by her voice whether she was being angry and sarcastic or not. But there was a bit of relief in her tone.
"Yeah…" I paused. "But I really don't want to talk about it on the phone."
"Okay," she sighed. "I understand that, I suppose."
Mark broke in through the door. He tossed something at me. I caught it and saw that it was a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. "Kane we gotta go, c'mon. We can eat on the plane."
"Amber I have to go. I have to be in New Orleans tomorrow for a house show okay?" I felt happier already that I was going to New Orleans…one of my favorite places to be because of me love of Anne Rice.
"Fine. Call me when you get there."
"Sure." We said our goodbyes and hung up. Mark was shoving things in his duffle back. I laughed at him.
"What are you in such a rush for?"
He tossed a shirt of mine at me. "C'mon, hurry! Steve and Mick and I are having a race to the airport. Loser has to sing the theme to Mighty Mouse tomorrow night." Again I laughed, and for his sake I started to shove my things into my gym bag as rapidly as I could. All the while I laughed, thinking of how funny it was that Mark had such a serious character when in life he was a big goof. And how funny it was that fans thought that he and Steve and I hated each other when in fact we were really great friends. It's funny…when you rival somebody in this company you become better friends than enemies like most would think. And sometimes when you teamed with someone for too long you got tired of each other…but what can you expect but strange when you work here?
Mark practically grabbed and pulled me out of the room, and running through the arena to our rental car. He sped away. At one point I said to him: "You know, Mark, I don't want to die," as he swerved in and out of lanes. And then I realized that for the first time in a long while I had said that and meant it. It made me happy.
In the terminal when we saw Steve, we turned around to see Mick coming to us, taking his time, the loser…and we weren't surprised to see that he'd gone slow on purpose, and wasn't surprised that he looked proud of himself.