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.