marrow cells are so weak that something will get him. Either he'll contract a life-threatening infection or if he manages to get past that, malignancies will eventually develop. We treat him with hormones. That helps, but it's a temporary treatment, not a cure.'
'And a bone marrow transplant would be a cure?'
'Yes.' Her face brightened with an almost religious fervor. 'If the transplant takes, he can be completely cured. I've seen it happen with other kids.'
Myron nodded, sat back, crossed his legs, uncrossed them. 'Can I meet him?'
She looked down. The sound of the blender, probably making a frappuccino, exploded while the espresso maker shrieked its familiar mating call to the various lattes. Emily waited for the noise to die down. 'I can't stop you. But I'm hoping you'll do the right thing here.'
'That being?'
'It's hard enough being thirteen years old and almost terminally ill. Do you really want to take away his father too?'
Myron said nothing.
'I know you're in shock right now. And I know you have a million more questions. But you have to forget that for now. You have to work through your confusion, your anger, everything. The life of a thirteen-year-old boy — our son — is at stake. Concentrate on that, Myron. Find the donor, okay?'
He looked back toward the soccer moms, still cooing about their children. Listening to them, he felt an overwhelming pang.
'Where can I find Jeremy's doctor?' he asked.
Chapter 4
When the elevator doors opened into the reception area of MB SportsReps, Big Cyndi reached out to Myron with two arms the approximate circumference of the marble columns at the Acropolis. Myron almost leaped out of the way — involuntary survival reflex and all — but he stayed still and closed his eyes. Big Cyndi embraced him, which was like being wrapped in wet attic insulation, and lifted him into the air. 'Oh, Mr. Bolitar!' she cried.
He grimaced and rode it out. Eventually she put him back down as though he were a porcelain doll she was returning to a shelf. Big Cyndi is six-six and on the planetoid side of three hundred pounds, the former intercontinental tag-team wrestling champion with Esperanza, aka Big Chief Mama to Esperanza's Little Pocahontas. Her head was cube shaped and topped with hair spiked to look like the Statue of Liberty on a bad acid trip. She wore more makeup than the cast of Cats, her clothing form-fitted like sausage casing, her scowl the stuff of sumos.
'Uh, everything okay?' Myron ventured.
'Oh, Mr. Bolitar!'
Big Cyndi looked like she was about to hug him again, but something stopped her, perhaps the stark terror in Myron's eyes. She picked up luggage that in her manhole-paw resembled a Close'N Play phonograph from the early seventies. She was that kind of big, the kind of big where the world around her always looked like a bad B-monster movie set and she was walking through a miniature Tokyo, knocking over power lines and swatting at buzzing fighter planes.
Esperanza appeared in her office doorway. She folded her arms and rested against the frame. Even after her recent ordeal, Esperanza still looked immensely beautiful, the shiny black ringlets still falling over her forehead just so, the dark olive skin still radiant — the whole image a sort of gypsy, peasant-blouse fantasy. But he could see some new lines around the eyes and a slight slouch in the perfect posture. He'd wanted her to take time off after her release, but he knew she wouldn't. Esperanza loved MB SportsReps. She wanted to save it.
'What's going on?' Myron asked.
'It's all in the letter, Mr. Bolitar,' Big Cyndi said.
'What letter?'
'Oh, Mr. Bolitar!' she cried again.
'What?'
But she didn't respond, hiding her face in her hands and ducking into the elevator as though entering a tepee. The elevator doors slid closed, and she was gone.
Myron waited a beat and then turned to Esperanza. 'Explanation?'
'She's taking a leave of absence,' Esperanza said.
'Why?'
'Big Cyndi isn't stupid, Myron.'
'I didn't say she was.'
'She sees what's going on here.'
'It's only temporary,' Myron said. 'We'll snap back.'
'And when we do, Big Cyndi will come back. In the meantime she got a good job offer.'
'With Leather-N-Lust?' Big Cyndi worked nights as a bouncer at an S&M bar called Leather-N-Lust. Motto: Hurt the ones you love. Sometimes — or so he had heard — Big Cyndi was part of the stage show. What part she played Myron had no idea nor had he worked up the courage to ask — another taboo abyss his mind did its best to circumvent.
'No,' Esperanza said. 'She's returning to FLOW.'
For the wrestling uninitiated, FLOW is the acronym for the Fabulous Ladies of Wrestling.
'Big Cyndi is going to wrestle again?'
Esperanza nodded. 'On the senior circuit.'
'Excuse me?'
'FLOW wanted to expand its product. They did some research, saw how well the PGA is doing with the senior golf tour and…' She shrugged.
'A senior ladies' wrestling tour?'
'More like retired,' Esperanza said. 'I mean, Big Cyndi is only thirty-eight. They're bringing back a lot of the old favorites: Queen Qaddafi, Cold War Connie, Brezhnev Babe, Cellblock Celia, Black Widow—'
'I don't remember the Black Widow.'
'Before our time. Hell, before our parents' time. She must be in her seventies.'
Myron tried not to make a face. 'And people are going to pay money to see a seventy-year-old woman wrestle?'
'You shouldn't discriminate on the basis of age.'
'Right, sorry.' Myron rubbed his eyes.
'And professional women's wrestling is struggling right now, what with the competition from Jerry Springer and Ricki Lake. They need to do something.'
'And grappling old ladies is the answer?'
'I think they're aiming more for nostalgia.'
'A chance to cheer on the wrestler of your youth?'
'Didn't you go see Steely Dan in concert a couple of years ago?'
'That's different, don't you think?'
She shrugged. 'Both past their prime. Both mining more on what you remember than what you see or hear.'
It made sense. Scary sense maybe. But sense. 'How about you?' Myron asked.
'What about me?'
'Didn't they want Little Pocahontas to return?'
'Yep.'
'Were you tempted?'
'To what? Return to the ring?'
'Yes.'
'Oh, sure,' Esperanza said. 'I busted my shapely ass working full-time while getting my law degree, so I could
