Blood Games (13 page)

“Look at that!” Sofia said once the numbers had been reduced to
four girls and four boys. Scrapper was still among them. “I predict a long and successful career as a children’s manager for your wife.”

It was
wonderful to hang out with someone who loathed Nadia as much as he did. Unable to be as disloyal as he wanted to be, he said, “Well, she’s had her fun, I suppose.” As security retreated, the manager returned to argue. Judging stopped entirely and people booed in the stands.

Be
grudgingly, Sofia said, “The appeal must be that the kid can’t talk back. No sassing, no whining, you can dress them up however you please and you don’t have to endure their opinions about it. Who wants the opinion of a four-year-old? Do you?”

“No.”

“No! Of course not. No one does, but a four-year-old finds himself or herself to be the most fascinating thing in the universe. When my oldest daughter was little, she had a ruddy
fit
every Sunday when I dressed her pretty for church. No, Mommy! You’re mean! She wanted to go in her sandbox shorts and dinosaur T-shirts. To church!”

“I thought dinosaurs were more of a boy’s thing,” Ink said.

“Usually it is. But she was just as bad as a boy.
Obsessed
with dinosaurs since preschool and my late husband indulged her because he thought they were wonderful, too. He took her to that stupid dinosaur museum every month, to
ooh
and
aah
over the same damn piles of bones while I drove the others to ballet and tap. She wanted to be a paleontologist and muck around in the dirt after fossils. He’d march her right over to the boys’ department and buy her as many dinosaur socks and shirts as her little heart desired. And that was all she wore to school and to parties and church, year after year after year . . . We fought like cats and dogs over it. I told her: you can’t go through life in sandbox shorts and dinosaur T-shirts! Yes, I can! Yes, I can, Mommy! And wouldn’t you know it, she grew up and got a job for this silly Internet company where she
could
wear whatever she wanted, and that was just to spite me. Shorts, jeans, T-shirts, sweatpants, makeup or no makeup, hair combed or sticking up all over the place, they don’t care as long as the work gets done. Ever heard of Skonx? That’s where she works, sharing a cubicle with a fellow who shows up in a bathrobe and yellow duck slippers. Does he wear anything underneath that robe? I’m afraid to ask.”

“Never heard of it,” Ink said.
Now everyone was arguing in the ring below, the manager and the judges and security, and other managers were shouting at the obstreperous one to shut up and let everyone get on with it.

“
You . . .
lost
. Cope with it,” Sofia advised the manager, and continued her story. “She only stopped wearing those dinosaur shirts when she grew out of them. Good riddance, I thought. And
then
my husband found some website that makes dinosaur T-shirts for adults. Can you imagine? Our last Christmas together before he passed on, he bought himself three and her three and she was over the moon when she unwrapped the gift. She’s got a dozen of them in her closet now, each with a different dinosaur on the front. Triceratops! Brontosaurus! Pterodactyl! I can’t pronounce half of them. But a grown woman, Ink! That’s what she wears to
work
. That’s what she wears at home. That’s what she wears when she comes over for dinner, or when we go out to a restaurant. Even a nice one! That’s what she wears everywhere, and if it’s too cold for a dinosaur T-shirt, then it’s just sweatpants and a sweatshirt. I asked her to wear something else, anything else last Thanksgiving, a skirt, trousers if she must, and
dammit
if she didn’t show up in a dress with little T-rexes and velociraptors chasing packs of screaming cavemen all over it. Mom can’t tell
her
what to wear! She wore a big smug smile in the family pictures and I just wanted to slap her.”

Due to the beer, Ink giggled.
Sofia said in umbrage, “
She
thinks it’s hysterical too, but I can’t stand to be seen in public with her. The younger two girls never gave me such hell about their clothes. They’re both married with children now and Terri wonders why she can’t even get to the second date. Why? Why? Why? I finally lost my temper that holiday and told her. I said, well, what do you show up in for the first one? Your brontosaurus T-shirt? Your sweatpants and sneakers? What man would want you on his arm? He’s showered and shaved and put on his nice pants, maybe a tie; you look like you just rolled out of bed and smeared on a coat of clear lip gloss. You don’t make the slightest effort whatsoever to look attractive. You aren’t so pretty that you can get away with it and your personality isn’t so shimmering that men will look past the frumpy style to see it. So don’t cry
why
to your long-suffering mother about those nasty old men who never call you back. She didn’t talk to me for a whole month. I should have cared, I guess, but I didn’t. Are you and the children’s manager planning on kids? Real ones?”

“Undecided,” Ink said
, although he was perfectly decided. There were too many claims on his money without tacking on yet another one. “Do you recommend it?”

Sofia sank
into her seat. “Yes and no. Parenthood is like roses growing out of a shit pie. Depending on the kid you get, and that part is completely out of your control, you either smell the roses more than the shit, or the shit more than the roses. I got two bouquets and one cow flop.”

Security
guards dragged the angry manager out of the ring. Stranded, his insulted zombie princess took no notice of his departure. The audience cheered to see him go. The judges tapped one more boy and girl to the reject line and then presented the three princes and princesses to the stadium. The announcer called out the names of the princesses and that the winner would be determined by the amount of applause. The fairy princess Little Bit received wild enthusiasm as her manager hiked up her crown again; Sweetie Pie got a little less since her dress was lovely but she was such a homely girl. Lastly was Honey Bunch, who received more than Sweetie Pie but not quite as much as Little Bit. So Little Bit was the Princess of the Games, and her manager waved her hand to the clapping crowds. The announcer shouted that she’d get the prize of five hundred dollars.

“Wow,” Ink said.
“Don’t spend that all in one place.”

“Her outfit
alone cost five hundred dollars,” Sofia said, tallying it up on her fingers. “Her hair cost another hundred. Her place cost three hundred, and he’s spent another hundred on food, possibly a motel room . . .”

The announcer
moved on to the boys. First was the dashing vampire prince, who received hearty applause, and second was a boy decked out in so much finery that he was nearly lost in the fabric and jewels. The clapping was more lackluster on him. Then the announcer presented Scrapper, and the stadium fell apart. Sofia said, “I think you just won five hundred dollars.”

“Not me,” Ink said.
“I’m not his manager.” They snickered as Scrapper was made Prince of the Games, the barbarian queen losing her defiant expression to smile radiantly. Nadia’s head was going to swell even bigger now, and she would make an absolute
ass
out of herself at the post-party. Never mind the winning fighter; her dressed-up zombie kid had taken the halftime costume contest! Five hundred dollars was what she dropped on a pair of shoes.

As everyone clapped and cheered, the removal of the jewelry became less surreptitious.
The announcer was ordering all of the managers out of the ring for the melee when Little Bit’s crown fell over her eyes and shielded them entirely. Her manager didn’t see it happen, engaged in prying a ring from her finger, and the girl attacked him. Nails to eyes, mouth swinging in for a bite, the man screamed and dropped her. The managers for the other winning girls quit their efforts to take the jewels and fled as Little Bit spun around blindly with blood dripping from two of her fingers. The man she had attacked bolted for the gate with one hand over his face.

“Get the chasers!” someone screamed, and the audience burst into laughter as adults ran for their lives from a solitary two-year-old zombie who couldn’t even see them.
Her arms out before her, she ran into Sweetie Pie and started smacking.

“Let’s see about turning off th
ose lights! Count down from twenty!” the announcer shouted. This was not how a melee usually started, and everyone in the stands cried out the numbers with enthusiasm. Nadia snatched at Scrapper to get the key. As she started to unlock the cuffs, chain trailing back to his costume, the dwindling numbers made her change her mind. She ditched the key, hiked up her skirt with her cuffed hands, and fled for the one open gate clear across the ring.

Managers dropped necklaces and bracelets and ran into one another in their
panic to escape. It was undignified and funny as hell, and every number was spoken in a roar of laughter. An organizer beckoned frantically from the gate to get them inside. Only one manager was remaining behind with the children, stripping his princess of her jewels and stuffing everything into his pockets. A cry went up in tandem to the numbers. “Go! Go! Go!”

But he wanted those jewels!
So he stayed, sweeping aside her hair to undo the necklaces, struggling to get off the rings, and then he hiked up the hem of the dress to remove an anklet. Ink and Sofia were rapt on the scene. The man’s inability to place his own safety above the loss or destruction of the jewelry was a better entertainment than they had ever seen in a children’s competition. The anklet came off and now he surely had to stand and run . . . but one of the rings had refused to come over the knuckle and again he dug at her finger.

He was going to die.
He was going to get caught in the ring as the lights were turned off, and the children would rip him to pieces! He had to be new to the Games, new to the show circuit in general, or he would know the announcer meant business. Sofia said, “If he makes it out of there in time, I’m buying us beers.” Little Bit shrieked and sank her teeth into Sweetie Pie, who never reacted.

Nadia sprinted past the
stadium organizer and vanished into the funnel. The jumbo screens captured her last steps and everyone howled for the barbarian queen’s escape. A woman dropped rings just as she got to the gate and chased after them, two men darting past and a ring flying away from one of their shoes. As it rocketed off, the woman looked after it in despair and then hustled through the gate.

The last manager prized
free the stubborn ring and stood, slipping it into his pocket. Incredibly, he waved to the stands. He didn’t believe they were going to turn off the lights! People screamed, “Get out of there! Get
out
of there!” Ink couldn’t hear the numbers now over the commotion, but they were counting down on the screens.

The gate began to close.

The man started for it at a jog that could only be described as casual. There were only five seconds left, and he wouldn’t make it even if he had been sprinting. Ink gripped the armrests of his seat, too excited to even chant the numbers on the countdown. What a
fool
this man was! Everyone else was long gone into the funnel and the employee had backed away from the gate to let it roll on its track. The tiny fairy princess stopped assaulting Sweetie Pie and stormed away for another victim. Her bloody fingers opened and closed greedily. With the crown in her eyes, she was headed for the wall.

“Oh my God, she is so
cute
,” someone said in the row behind Ink’s.

The manager waved and smiled as he jogged along.
It was all a joke to him, a great joke and he was basking in the attention. Every pair of eyes was fastened to the idiot as the screen counted down to two. The gap to the funnel was shrinking as the gate chugged along. Two turned to one, and the gate closed with a crash on zero.

The lights went out.

The manager’s face was blown up to enormous size on the screens. The smile dropped away and his jaw fell open. Then he whirled around to look up to the announcer’s box and waved his hands frantically over his head. But the announcer was just laughing into his microphone as the legion of zombie children came to life.

They leaped at one another, but they were the sideshow.
Everyone was watching the manager, who jumped up and down and screamed for the announcer’s attention. Then he turned to the gate and wrapped his fingers around the bars, trying to pull it open and go through. It was an act of desperation. Nothing opened those gates from within the ring, not all the brute force in the world. They had to keep the zombies in. Even when unlocked, a grown man struggled to move them. Ink had tried one out for himself as a strapping younger fellow, and he’d hardly been able to drag it an inch.

The children savaged each other.
Costumes and jewels flew up into the air as the princes and princesses went wild. The boy with the horse stood up on the saddle and jumped onto a fellow prince. Both went down in a tangle of fists and teeth. Since they weren’t going on to matches, the children’s melee only ever lasted three minutes. But that was plenty of time for a considerable amount of destruction to be done, and for several of them to die. The prince and princess who had had their hands tied together were attacking each other since they couldn’t break free. A girl knocked over the horse, which flattened the two boys fighting on the ground.