The Cook

I first noticed her at a hospital staff meeting in Escondido. The administrator asked department heads to report on how things were going. When the cook rose to speak she acted very nervous and shy. Her chubby face turned red, her voice quivered and stuttered, and she seemed unable to look at anyone. I decided to try to get to know her.

I met her alone at her coffee break, and she began talking about herself. "I'm not very good as a public speaker as you may have noticed. I don't know why, but I get all tied up and rigid for some reason. I've always been that way as long as I can remember. But I'm not really that shy. See, I can talk to you or anyone else as long as it is informal like this, sitting down for a cup of coffee or whatever. But my sister and I used to be professional wrestlers. You wouldn't know it to look at us now. We were both young and pretty in those days. And we were in darn good physical condition. You have to be when you wrestle for a living. We used to knock and throw each other all over the ring. But it was just a show. We never hurt each other or got mad, but we made the audience think we were trying to kill each other. The audiences loved us, and we made a lot of money."

The middle aged cook sipped her coffee and thought more about her wrestling days. Then she continued, "My sister and I had some tricks to keep the people watching. We used to start our match with one of our arm or leg joints wrapped with an ace bandage. We wrapped a wrist, knee or ankle as if it had been sprained. That way we could hide something in the bandage. During the fight, one of us would wear a white bathing suit and play the good guy. The other dressed in black would pull a weapon of some sort out of the bandage and use it. I used to like to use a razor blade. I would wrap the blade with tape to make it safe to handle. Then I cut a tiny piece of tape off to expose a corner of the blade. I would secretly take the razor blade out of my bandage during the wrestling match. I would get the razor after I had already got the audience mad at me for pulling some fake dirty tricks on my sister. Then I would use the blade to make a small scratch in my sisters hairline above her eyes. It wasn't enough of a cut to hurt her, but it made blood run down her face to mix with her sweat. As we tumbled and rolled on the floor the bloody sweat from my sister's face would get on my arms and legs. Then I would smear and smear and smear my sister and her white bathing suit. The audience went wild when they saw all that blood. Sometimes my sister played the bad guy and cut me, and I would be wearing white, and she would smear me with my own bloody sweat. We used to take turns. And the audience never caught on. I'm telling you this because I don't want you to think I'm really so terribly shy. But it still kills me to have to talk to a group formally."