The Tomorrow File (63 page)

My father was away for the day on a business trip. Mrs. McPherson, Miss Catherine, and Charles seemed delighted to have my company. The weather was miserable. Extraordinarily cold. So I stayed indoors all day and the four of us played cartel bridge, the new form of contract that had been devised in 1996. We had an occasional pitcher of hot flip.

“Another small glass, Mrs. McPherson?” I'd ask.

“Oh, sor!” she’d say. “Well. . . just to keep the freeze away. ”

Miss Catherine helped her to bed. Charles snoozed where he was, in a library chair. They were good obsos, all of them, and had absolutely no connection with what was to follow.

I called Millie Jean Grunwald early in the evening. She sounded happy to hear from me. But Millie was always happy. I made arrangements to pick her up at 2030. Despite the weather, Millie wanted to go. I was in a similar mood.

I drove slowly through a thick night. Wet snow. Wipers licking at the windshield. I thought again of Samantha’s talents. Millie was waiting for me in the doorway of her building. The porn shop, at street level, was dark, empty.

After she bounced breathlessly into the car, kissing me, and her door was closed, I gestured toward the deserted store.

“What happened?” I asked. “Out of business?”

“Uh-huh.” She nodded. Then giggled. “One day they were there, the next day they were all cleared out. Nick, you should see the roaches and mice that have been coming upstairs to me since the shop closed.”

Millie had a sleazy plastivet cloak across her shoulders. She pulled it open proudly to display her tooty costume: a blouse of strips of fabric gathered at neck, wrists, and waist. But gaping to reveal her naked torso. Nipples nuzzled through. And purple tights imprinted with a great orchidaceous growth, sprouting from her crotch with stems, leaves, flowers down her legs and around her ass. Boots of silver plastikid.

“Loverly,” I said. “Really, it is. But the snowflake around your neck. Too much, Millie.”

“But you gave it to me, Nick.”

“I know. But it detracts from the overall effect.”

Obediently she took it off. I slid it into my purse.

“Much better,” I assured her. “Millie, you’re beautiful.” 

“Oh, yes,” she sighed. Slumping contentedly. Head falling sideways onto my shoulder. “I feel beautiful when I’m all dressed up.”

She knew exactly where she wanted to go: the Lords Sporting Club. I had never heard of the club, but guessed what it might be.

The Lords Sporting Club was set off Gratiot Avenue in a whitewashed, one-story, cinder-block building. I judged it had been a former garage or supermarket. A single dim neon sign said simply: LORDS. With a red outline of a fighting cock beneath.

Parking space was ample. But lovable. So was the admittance. Behind a dock, just inside the door, a large primate in a crimson mess jacket inspected us coldly.

“Member, are you?” he asked. His voice had the peculiar harsh raspiness I usually associated with laryngeal nodules. “Unfortunately no,” I said. “May I join?”

“Twenty for a card for one,” he said. “Entitles you to bring a guest. Ten each for tonight’s show.”

I looked at Millie. Her eyes were shining.

“All right,” I said. “Credit on my BIN?”

“Love,” he said.

I counted out the forty. He held each bill under ultraviolet light before he accepted it. Then he took a blank membership card from a stack.

“Name?” he asked.

“Smith,” I said. “James Smith.”

He wrote it in swiftly. Shoved the card across to me.

“A lot of your relatives inside,” he said. Not smiling.

“All named John?” I asked.

“How did you guess?” he said.

“Take care of that throat,” I said.

The interior was one large room. A crowded bar at one end. A uninest at the other. The backless bleachers were ranked about a pit of hard-packed earth. A fence of chicken wire separated the pit from the downfront rows. The room was hot, fogged with cannabis smoke, raucous with the cries of vendors and markers. But it was not completely filled; we found aisle seats about halfway up to the ceiling. Stifling.

“Isn’t this exciting?” Millie said delightedly.

It was a five-match exhibition. The first event, a cockfight, was just concluding when we took our seats. One of the birds was staggering, dusty, tom. The other stalked relentlessly. The outcome seemed obvious. I looked about.

A very tooty audience. I saw one em with a metallic codpiece, artfully jointed like the arm of a medieval suit of jousting armor. There were several efs bare to the waist. Poor Millie, with her gaping strips, seemed almost overdressed. One ef, an unzipped cape hanging from her shoulders, appeared to be wearing a skinsuit in a pattern copied after Mondrian. A second look revealed she was naked, the squares and lines painted on her flesh. The em across the aisle from me wore a giant gold-plated phallus on a chain about his neck. It would not have been remarkable except that it was decorated with a small, violet ribbon bow.

There was a sudden roar. I looked back to the pit. The victor had sunk a spike into the eye and brain of the vanquished. There was a rapid flurry of feathers, a spreading stain. Handlers came forward to remove their birds. Attendants sprinkled fresh earth and swept the pit clean.

There was a harsh crackling from the loudspeaker. Then a voice boomed clear: “Second event of the evening coming up. Champion My Own Ripper versus Champion Devil’s Delight.”

If you wish to name your dog Champion this or that, there is no law against it. The scurviest mongrel in Christendom might be called Champion La Belle Dame Sans Merci, and no one would sue. The two dogs led into the pit were “Champions” of that order. I thought there might be a few vagrant bull-terrier genes in both, but the rest was up for grabs. One was a dirty white, the other a dirty buff. But both showed encouraging ferocity. Straining against their choke leashes, snarling, yellowed teeth naked. Eyes wild. Slavering. Doping there.

"Eight for five on the white, ” a frantic voice screamed in my ear. “Three to two on the tan.”

I turned my head.

“Ten on the white,” I said.

“You’ve got it,” he shouted. Marking it down.

More noise now. Almost every seat filled. Objects leaning forward. Tense.

“Gentlemen,” the steward said solemnly. “Pit your dogs.”

It was a good fight. Even before it started, Millie’s fingers were clamped on my knees. Pressure increased as the bout progressed. I was scarcely conscious of it. Staring at the action in the pit. Trying to follow the whirl of straining bodies. Jaws snapping for the killing bite.

Both dogs were quickly blooded. White with his left hindquarters ripped. Buff with a shoulder matted with gore and pit dirt. A feral roar ripped the room. Atavistic. “Kill ’im, kill ’im, kill ’im!”

It ended suddenly. White finally found buff’s throat. He would not let go despite buff’s wild writhings and tumblings. Then the bite of throat ripped free. Buff stood a moment on quivering legs. The heart still pumped. Hot blood sprayed over the first few rows.

“Ahhhh,” everyone breathed.

The marker paid me off without comment or expression.

The third event was ridiculous. Two efs, one white, one black, clad in tiny
cache-sexe
with aluminum cups over their breasts, belabored each other with padded gloves. The audience grew restive during this farce. Then I saw the reason for the chicken-wire fence about the pit. It wasn’t to protect the customers from violence, but to protect the performers. All the missiles fell harmlessly into the first few rows. Occasioning a few private squabbles that were more enjoyable than the languid action in the pit.

But the fourth event restored the crowd’s fever. Two bare-knuckled ems, wearing only aluminum cups over their genitals. Both were heavily muscled, not young, and both showed scarcely healed scars and purpled bruises from similar, fairly recent bouts.

“Twenty on baldy,” I said to the marker.

“You’ve got it,” he shouted. Marking it down.

The encounter was strangely stirring. I could observe it, analyze it, reject it. But I was moved, physically and emotionally, in a way I could not compute. Part of it, I told myself, was empathic: identification with the crowd’s mood. And with Millie’s. She was quaked. Her fingernails dug deeply into the side of my thigh.

The bout lasted for a single fifteen-minute round. There was one judge, but only to warn on fouls. Decision-making was vested in the audience. They made clear from the start that the shaggy-haired gladiator was their favorite. If the fight went the full fifteen minutes, and came to a roared vote, my “twenty on baldy” was down the pipe.

It went down sooner than that. Shaggy opened a barely healed cut over his opponent’s right eye. Blood streaked baldy’s face, mixed with dust from the pit floor to cast a clown’s mask.

Baldy was willing, if inexpert. As long as he could, he kept thudding his huge fists into shaggy’s torso. You could see the reddened marks on chest, ribs, solar plexus. And, when baldy saw a target, on back and kidneys. The only results were clearly audible
whumps,
but they slowed shaggy not a whit. Methodically, precisely, he cut baldy’s face to ribbons. Completely closing one eye. Goring the other. Ripping the lips loose. Breaking teeth.

Baldy’s torn left ear was hanging crazily. Both eyes were blinded. Forehead, cheeks, and chin looked like filleted beef. He swayed on his feet. Arms fell slowly to his sides. He slouched. Clotted eyes peering up at the noise booming down. His knees sagged.

Shaggy had no need for skill then. No fancy footwork or artful dodging. He stood planted, estimated the distance, drew back stone knuckles, crashed them into baldy’s nose. Great gouts of blood spouted. The defeated em toppled face down as if someone had axed him.

They dragged him off, sprinkled fresh earth, swept the pit smooth.

“Enjoying it?” I asked Millie.

“Nick,” she said. Holy tones. “It was the most marvelous thing I’ve ever seen. I came.”

“Good on you,” I said. “Let’s have a drink before the next bout. I’m thirsty.”

We had miniatures of vodka-and-Smack, warm, purchased from a vendor at horrendous cost. Then, since the final attraction seemed delayed, we each had two more.

I shall never know whether the last bout on the evening’s card was genuine, fixed, or—as I suspected—a sophisticated theatrical turn in which the participants were not opponents, but partners in a choreographed athletic ballet.

They entered the pit naked. The raucous audience fell silent, since both were quite beautiful. Catcalls, at the moment, would have been infratooty.

The young ef, introduced as Janet, was tall, slender, with purplish hair down to her waist. Small breasts, but well formed. Elongated nipples, faint aureole. Pubic hair shaven. Protuberant
mons veneris.
Flat abdomen. Excellent musculature. A cold, composed face.

The young em, introduced as Eric, was about the ef’s height. Almost as slender, with a well-defined rib cage. Enlarged gastroc-nemii indicated a dancer or runner. He was circumcised. Length of the penis was not unusual, but the thickness was. Hirsute scrotum. Well-developed pectorals and deltoids. His blond hair would have reached his shoulders, but was pulled back and gathered with what appeared to be a pipe cleaner.

The only things worn, by both fighters, were brown natucal-leather gloves. Skin-tight.

At the gong, they moved cautiously toward each other. Lightly. Delicately. Bodies were turned slightly sideways. Hands and arms were held extended, waist-high. I wondered if, instead of a boxing match, this was to be judo, jujitsu, karate, kung fu, or any of the other Oriental martial arts.

It apparently was to be a combination of all, for the first blow essayed was a lightning-fast kick Janet aimed at Eric’s groin. His reactions were swift: He drew back just enough to slip the flashing heel, then chopped the edge of his right hand across Janet’s breast. I could hear her hiss.

I could hear it because that vociferous mob was, unexpectedly, suddenly silent. Perhaps there was a susurration, a low moan, a whispered, “Ahhhh.” But no shouts, cries, cheers, jeers. Even the vendors and markers were quiet.

If it was a choreographed dance, it was an uncommonly brutal one. She kicked continually, almost turning her back to him as her foot slashed sideways. Aimed always at his testicles. He depended mostly on his hands and elbows, going for her unprotected breasts. Striking with scraping blows, using the edge of his gloved hand.

I could hardly believe it had all been programmed. Both gladiators were shiny with sweat, welted from blows taken, quivering from blows launched and missed. Eric was bleeding from thigh rip. One of Janet’s breasts was suddenly livid.

Then, after about five minutes of careful maneuverings, great leaps, rapid flurries, and just as artful withdrawals, they appeared to be carried away by the primitivity of their conflict. This, too, may have been programmed. But speed increased, movements became wilder. More and more frequently we heard the smack of tightly gloved fists on young flesh, crack of heel or edge of foot against bone and tendon. Gasps and sobs for breath. I fancied I could smell them. Their young sweat. Hot blood. Even their charged fury.

They couldn’t have been pulling those punches and kicks; I swear they could not. Flesh became lumped and rare. Slick with blood, mottled with pit dust. And when the gong sounded, ending the bout, they refused to stop. But now they were grappling close, straining against each other. It appeared he was trying to throw her to a fall, one heel hooked behind her right knee, pinioning her wrists as she strove to smash a gloved fist into his gonads, and she was biting his ear while his head swung wildly, butting her, and their slippery loins were pressed, smacked, again and again, and then, finally, a great roar went up from the crowd and, in cadence, we all shouted, “Draw! Draw! Draw! Draw!” Like the caw of waterbirds over the lake, and it was all so stupid, and Millie was actually weeping, and I had an erection that would never end. Ever. And we, Millie and I, the crowd, stumbled slowly away, and I passed the primate in the crimson mess jacket, still behind his dock, and he stared at me bleakly and rasped, “Enjoy yourself? Mr. Smith?”