Field of Schemes (22 page)

As it turned out, the live entertainment began long before we arrived at the tournament site. That evening, as we headed out for dinner, the hotel lobby transformed into a movie set—the kind of movie you don’t take your fifth grader to see. Strutting past us was a frightful-looking geezer in black leather, from his Village People cap to his open-toe sandals. (And he
did
have yellow helmet toenails!) From each arm dangled a shop-worn woman who looked older than her age. I finally understood what my mother meant when she said that it wasn’t the years, but the miles that took their greatest toll on a woman’s looks. These over-processed blondes were frequent fliers who likely retired as Reno casino waitresses – in 1982. My eyes were immediately drawn to Lefty’s tummy folds, which were clearly visible through her sheer burgundy dress. Righty flashed “muffin top” between her too-short leopard-print top and too-low matching leggings. Trailer Park Hefner in the center looked like the happiest old bird in the world, strutting with a bounce in his step that would make one think he had springs on his feet.

Following close behind was a full team that looked like it was also playing in the tournament of the skanks. Four men with bad teeth and stringy hair led in an assortment of bimbos, one more frightening than the next. The youngest one had choppy black hair reminiscent of Joan Jett, with facial piercings and a spiked dog collar around her neck. Two were going for the ethereal Wella Balsam girl look with long flowing hair and peasant skirts topping braless Grateful Dead t-shirts. One had no shoes and the dirtiest feet I’d ever seen. The last girl was definitely in character as a tight-laced librarian with watermelon-sized breasts brimming out of navy blue sweater set. A pearl chain held her reading glasses. Our actual librarian in Santa Bella had a
Friends
blowout, so this tramp’s look was in dire need of a little updating. (As did our librarian’s hair.)

Like waves in a storm, groups of sexed-up-looking characters kept coming into the hotel lobby, greeting each other with extremely friendly kisses. One guy who looked like Crocodile Dundee walked in shouting greetings to his “mates,” went straight over to a silicone-enhanced playmate, grabbed her by the waist and nuzzled his head in her cleavage, while groaning with delight.

“Okay, let’s get dinner!” I said to the girls.

“Oh my God, that lady’s not wearing underwear!” Kelly whispered.

“Kelly,” I said in my maternal scolding voice, “Don’t be ridiculous!”
That’s no lady!

“No, Mom, she’s right!” said Rachel.

“Hee haw!” a man shouted as a redhead entered with a boa constrictor around her neck.

“Don’t be jealous, boys!” she shouted.
Do these people have any volume control?

“Rachel, I’m sure the woman is wearing underwear in public!” I reassured them.

“Mom, look!”

I followed Rachel’s eyes, which were bulging out of her head. Her neck showed every vein. Sure enough, I saw a woman whose baguette breasts and ass-tattoo showed plain as day through her dress. Honestly, I’d seen pantyhose that gave better coverage than that hideous nylon tube.

“Oh ma’ goodness, won’t you jest look what the cat dragged in?!” screeched a woman in a Naughty Dorothy costume, complete with a basket for Toto. Her shoulders were permanently shrugged, which made her look as though she had no neck.

“Man, you look good enough t’eat, sister!” a guy with a turquoise bolero told her.

This snapped me out of my state of agape paralysis. “Okay, girls, we need to get moving.”

The congregation was now at about thirty with no sign of moving from the lobby. Dundee, the boob nuzzler, had “greeted” a half-dozen women, many of whom rubbed his limited hair around while he growled with delight.

“These people are gross!” Kelly said.

“Yeah, people in Santa Barbara are way ugly,” Rachel added.

“Guys, they’re not
from
Santa Barbara,” I explained. “They’re just visiting, like us.”

This solicited a collective groan of protest. “Okay, not like us, but this is not a Santa Barbara thing. They’re from all over, I’m sure.”

As we walked through the doors, I saw a woman with a brown Dutch boy haircut and passel of seven-year-old girls in soccer team jackets. Before I could think of what to say, I held out my hand to stop her entrance. “No, no, no,” I said. “You can’t go in there.”

She placed her hand on her hip and gave me an annoyed look.
Cute bracelet! No, Claire, focus.

She huffed. “Let the bullying begin, I guess.”

I laughed nervously. “Sorry, that didn’t come out the way I meant it.” I extended my hand to shake hers, and gestured her to lean in closer. “There’s a swingers’ convention in there,” I whispered.

She raised her eyebrow. I nodded to confirm. “And they’re staying at
this
hotel? I can’t believe it. Does the hotel know?”

I looked at her sheepishly. “I think the guy just figured it out while checking us in.”

“Are they going to do anything about it?” she said, a bit snappier than I thought necessary.

As if on cue, a glow-in-the-dark electric-pink school bus with the words “Hello, Kitty!” painted in metallic red pulled up to the entrance of the hotel. We all stood silently as the bus sighed and opened its doors. One by one, women who could have only been prostitutes flowed out of the bus to club music playing on a boom box. They all had different costumes with an ultra-slutty accent, like the cheerleader whose skirt was so short that her butt cheeks peeked out from the bottom, the naughty nurse whose red lacy bra was quite visible under her low-cut white uniform, and the dominatrix with a Cleopatra bob cut in black vinyl fishnets. There were kinky Girl Scouts with banners across their green uniforms that offered “Cookies?” There were cops with black leather shorts and boots, military hotties with ammo packs (of condoms) and a train conductor who held a suspiciously phallic whistle with “All Aboard” printed in neon pink. There were a dozen vacant-looking blondes who simply stared straight ahead, grinning placidly as they made their way down the steps. Following the zombie line, three burly men wearing dark sunglasses and headsets got off the bus and stood by the door with their arms folded over their Bluto chests. This was the porn version of the Secret Service. Last off was a platinum blonde twentysomething wearing red patent leather thigh-high boots and a pink marabou bikini.

“I have a Barbie like that,” I heard a young soccer player whisper to her teammate.

“Yeah, she’s pretty.”

Porn Barbie raised her red-gloved hands in the air and screeched, “Special fucking delivery!”

“Okay, girls, we’re going to check in at the Ramada,” the woman said, hurrying her girls back to their van.

Rachel, Kelly and I followed. When we got to my minivan, Mimi pulled in to the spot next to us. “Hey Claire, you managed to find the place,” she said. Directing her comments to the girls, she said, “Ready to whip some butt tomorrow?”

Gee, Mimi, if you’re really in the mood for butt whipping, you needn’t wait till tomorrow.

The girls said they were. Mimi asked, “Did you bring your swimsuits? I find a good swim so relaxing right before bed. Helps me get my best rest.”

“Um, I think they may be having a, um, party at the pool tonight,” I said, imagining the Plato’s Retreat these people would turn the place into.

“Nonsense!” Mimi snapped. “When I made the reservations, I specifically told them that I need a facility with a heated swimming pool for my nightly laps, and they said it would be no problem. I don’t care about some party, as long as they set off a lane for me.”

My face cringed as I imagined the layer of oil that would sit on top of the water. I wondered if Chlamydia could travel through a swimming pool. I know the chlorine would kill a normal STD, but these folks probably have the super-resistant strains. “Have it your way,” I said to Mimi.

Smiling brightly and winking at the girls, Mimi said, “I always do.”

It’s amazing how thirty minutes and a change of scenery can transport you into an entirely different universe. We had returned to a place of innocence as we sat in Dairy Queen’s orange vinyl chairs eating our Blizzards. Kelly looked at our match lineup in the tournament program that the check-in guy gave us at the hotel and shrugged. “Hmm, we’ve never played any of these teams before,” she said. “I have zero info on them. Hmm, I wonder why we’re playing Manchester’s green team.”

“Their green team?” Rachel asked. “Is that their B-team?”

“More like their C-team,” Kelly said, scrunching her face. “At least that’s how their colors have been in the past. Maybe they changed it or something.” She shrugged again.

“So, can we ask you a sort of weird question?” Rachel asked me.

Oh no, don’t ask about our fellow hotel mates.
I had already dialed every hotel in town in a fruitless attempt to find another room. “Sure,” I answered tentatively.

“What are swingers?” Rachel asked.

“Where did you hear that term?”

“You whispered it to that other team mom.”

“It’s, um, well, swingers are people, who, um. Well, when people get married they make a promise that they’ll only dance with their husband or wife, but swingers make a different arrangement. They agree that it’s okay to change dance partners throughout the evening.”

“Oh, like square dancing?!” Kelly said.

“Sort of,” I said, gulping.
But naked.

Kelly Greer was right. The Manchester United Memorial Day Classic rivaled any county fair. Still, I had no idea one soccer tournament could be such a production. I stood at the entrance, awestruck by what was before me. As Kelly promised, there was a four-person bungee jump atop a trampoline, but there were also endless rows of games, food and merchandise. I could even have my blood pressure taken at a tent set up by a local hospital.

“Mimi said to meet her at the registration table,” Darcy said, adjusting her visor to better shield the blinding sun as we walked. A seasoned soccer mom, she packed a rolling cooler with snacks and ice-cold washcloths for the girls to use during halftime. Ron kept trying to strike up a conversation in his usual chummy style, and I kept trying to demonstrate my casual indifference. Of course, devising a strategy to show how little I care proved the opposite, but only I had to know that.

We passed more families than we might see during peak season at Disney World. Well, maybe not quite that many, but it was packed. “How many teams are playing in this thing?” I asked Ron.
See, zero self-consciousness!

“I dunno, a couple hundred, wouldn’t you say, hon?”

I just said that I didn’t know. That’s why I’m asking. Oh, right, hon meaning Darcy. Okay, no problem.

“I’d say two hundred, maybe two-fifty,” Darcy replied, staring absently onto a game field. “Come on, Ronnie, no dawdling.” I thought the seven-year-old was remarkably well-behaved considering we’d just passed a booth where three guys with their shaved heads painted like soccer balls were juggling happy-face hacky sacks. Moments before, we had passed by cotton candy, hand-dipped ice cream, and a vitamin salesman. Granted, no self-respecting kid gives a hoot about dried wheatgrass tablets, but the guy held a green flower pinwheel and sang a cute little song about body parts working at “optimal performance.” It was a bit hard even for me to stay focused walking past all of the displays.

When we finally reached the registration booth, Mimi purposefully looked at her watch, but thankfully directed her scolding at Ron and Darcy. She smiled broadly and wagged her finger, teasing. “I expect more from you old veterans,” she said, winking at Ron. “Is our new mom a bad influence on you?” It was one of those things I dared not comment on, lest I be accused of lacking a sense of humor. “I need my players here an hour before kickoff, not forty-five minutes, not forty minutes.”

Her players?
I looked around for Gunther, but he was nowhere to be seen. As I scanned the group, I saw new faces I hadn’t seen at practice. I’d almost forgotten that Tandy and Mariah had parents of their own. Two Katies had fathers; the other one had two moms, and Crazy Raymond found someone crazy enough to marry him. Crunchy Nancy brought a surprisingly corporate-looking husband and grandparents so stiff they looked like they belonged on coins. Paulo was in head-to-toe biking regalia, which made me wonder if he’d been out riding already so early on this sticky morning. His mother wore a full-length black skirt with a long-sleeved top that was slightly more oppressive than the rosary beads that hung from her neck. She reminded me of the old woman on the black-and-white personality tests—the one that could look like a big-nosed old woman with a babushka on her head or a young maiden wearing a feather cap.