Hostile Takeover (14 page)

28

O
ne of my briefest, but most eventful, foster home placements was with a minister and his wife in Kilgore, Arkansas, a grease spot of a town with a main street so short you could spit the length of it. The only excitement we had were the junior high fights that went down at the flagpole after school. Pretty much every day you could count on fisticuffs—dudes duking it out, catfights, girlfriends beating up boyfriends, boyfriends beating up their girlfriend's other boyfriend, boyfriends scrapping with girlfriends' dads . . . It was a regular bare-knuckle cockfight with milk money and all manner of pocket collateral on the line. I'll tell you one thing, with the exception of my time with Griner, Kilgore was the place where I really learned to fight.

Every few months, we'd get treated to a bout between our own local Ali-Frazier combo, Russ and Travis. With their beards and bricklayer builds, these guys looked more like grown men than junior high school boys. They hated each other like poison and they were first cousins. I guess their dads were brothers with a blood feud and Russ and Travis carried on the tradition with dumb animal loyalty. Something would happen on the field or in the locker room or in class, one of them would start talking smack, and next thing you knew, everyone in school was whispering, “Russ and Travis at the flagpole, place your bets.”

Half the school was ringside by three-thirty, making it rain with fistfuls of dollars. And those boys wouldn't disappoint. They'd fight like gladiators—brutal, grisly, and without mercy. With other fights, the principal usually only had to yell from his office window to break it up. Not with Russ and Travis. The sheriff had to be called. Large men working at the local pig slaughterhouse had to pry them apart. And the ground was covered in so much blood and hair you'd think it was the Roman Colosseum. Neither would yield. Their pride and family name were at stake. So, it was always the bloodiest draw you've ever seen and no one ever made a dime.

Until one afternoon in the spring of their final year before moving on to high school. Russ had missed a week of school with the flu. When he got back, he looked like death warmed over—pale, drawn, and weak. Travis smelled blood and wouldn't stop taunting Russ. He was like a stronger wolf pup trying to kill the runt. Russ was understandably reluctant to fight. He was still having trouble holding down his lunch and even passed out during gym class. When Travis heard about all of that, he turned up the asshole dial and pushed Russ as hard as he could to get him to fight. Word had it he even tried to pull Russ's girlfriend in the parking lot of the Tastee Freez. That was the last straw for Russ.

The fight was set for Friday afternoon and you could smell the confidence coming out of Travis like cheap cologne. Russ was looking like he regretted the decision and his girlfriend was trying to get him to just go home. Russ pushed her away and the two goons started circling each other. Travis took the first swing and connected with Russ's nose. Russ went down hard but got back up again, blood streaming into his mouth and onto his Motörhead shirt. Russ was wavering and seemed unsteady on his feet. Travis saw this and moved in for the kill. He started pummeling Russ and Russ just covered up and took the beating. That's when I noticed the look on Russ's face. He was waiting for Travis to tire himself out. Muham
mad Ali called it the rope-a-dope, and that's what Russ was doing. The more Russ made it seem like he couldn't fight back, the harder Travis punched. But his punches were just hitting Russ in the arms and hands. Finally, Travis backed off, huffing and wheezing like an old man, yelling at Russ to stop being such a pussy. Russ called him a faggot and Travis came at him.

But before Travis could land a punch, Russ hauled off and hit him with a right cross to the jaw. You could hear the jawbone snap, and suddenly there was metal raining out of Russ's hand. He had just hit Travis with a roll of quarters—poor man's brass knuckles. Travis hit the pavement hard, smashing the back of his skull. The impact knocked him unconscious and he started going into convulsions. That's when Russ really went to work on him, kicking and snapping every rib and even curbing his ankle until it snapped and hung like a ragged
L
in the gutter. Travis never recovered. He spent his first year of high school in a wheelchair and dropped out later due to decreased mental capacity. Russ was never charged with anything because they were under eighteen, and because of the beating Travis gave him, they said Russ acted in self-defense.

The beauty of it was that Russ never even had the flu. All of that, and even the girlfriend thing, was part of the plan to make Travis vulnerable, and it worked like a charm. Ali had the rope-a-dope and Russ had the Bullshit Express.

The reason I bring this up is because even though it may seem like two people are evenly matched in a conflict, there is always room for an advantage. And that comes from one opponent being willing to do whatever is necessary to get it. There is nothing fair about a fight. A sense of honor and fairness is the invention of someone who never had a fight. A fight is very black and white. Winning is everything and you only win if you are willing to make the kind of sacrifices your opponent is not willing to make. Look at Vietnam. The Vietcong
were willing to do
anything
to win, and they did it while the American war machine stood by, appalled by an enemy that they deemed to have no honor. Honor, my ass. There's nothing honorable about human beings slaughtering one another. It goes back to the animal in us. We are predators and our only objective is to bag our prey. Alice had made me the prey before, due to a sense of honor I had for her, but when I walked into the lobby of CIS, Inc., the tables had turned. And the one thing that was not going to happen was a draw.

The place looked like one of those office buildings in
The Matrix
—­marble, metal, and glass with a high price tag and no soul. And, also like
The Matrix,
the place was crawling with guys in black suits and sunglasses with crew cuts and hardware bulges in their sports jackets. I checked in with the front desk and was escorted to the elevator by a man who never said a word to me, even when I asked him a question. I toyed with the idea of crushing his lower spine with a side kick and watching him crumple to the ground like a wounded gazelle, but it was my first day of work and I wanted to make a good impression. Mr. Nothing took me up the elevator and walked me to a windowless, wood-paneled conference room that reeked of bad takeout and worse coffee. It was empty. I sat down at the conference table and he quickly left the room.

To be honest, I was actually a little nervous. I hadn't had a real job in a while and I was eager to prove to myself that I could still perform at the same level as before.

I just needed some inspiration.

And then I got it—a dumpy, fast-food-poisoned office manager wearing what appeared to be a wool herringbone muumuu entered the room and sat across from me.

“I take it you're John,” the muumuu said without looking up from her notepad.

“Yes. Hello.”

“My name is Marjorie.”

“Nice to meet—”

“Congratulations on being selected for our intern program. I'm sure you're aware of just how difficult it is to sit where you're sitting.”

Marjorie looked at me for a nanosecond, deciding whether or not she should send my sorry ass packing right then and there. I respectfully lowered my gaze to show her she was in control. This seemed to satisfy her for the moment.

“I'll need you to fill out this paperwork.”

She slapped down a thick pile of forms and a cheap ballpoint.

The door opened and another person sat down across from me.

“John, this is Alice.”

I looked up, smiling. Alice looked at me, her face completely white. We shook hands. And the earth stood still. That was a great moment. Alice is a know-it-all and she gets physically ill if she is surprised by something she feels she should have anticipated. And this was the king of all surprises. I hung on to her hand for a bit too long just to annoy her.

“Pleasure.”

“Hi,” she muttered, jerking her hand back.

“Alice has been here a few weeks, so she'll show you the ropes,” muumuu Marjorie chimed in. “If you have questions, please ask her and don't bother any of the salaried employees.”

She slapped more forms down in front of me.

“New York State now requires that all interns are paid,” she said sardonically. “Please fill these out so you may receive your gross weekly stipend of three hundred dollars.”

Paying your dues for a price,
I thought to myself.
The entitled generation is going to run this country into the ground.

“As the only two interns here, I expect you both to conduct yourselves in a professional manner . . .”

While she droned through her intern orientation gibberish, Alice and I clocked each other, assessing, evaluating. Alice was wearing a designer suit. So much for subtlety. She made sore thumbs look anonymous.

“. . . finally, we are in full compliance with the new Manhattan intern laws,” muumuu Marjorie continued. “If you feel like your rights as an intern have been violated in some way, or you'd like to know your rights as an intern, please call the intern hotline. Eight hundred number is on this card.”

Slap.

The intern hotline?
I had to stifle so much laughter that I thought I was going to give myself a brain bleed.

“Any questions?”

“Not at the moment,” I said. “If I do I'll be sure to direct them to . . . I'm sorry, what was your name again?”

“Alice,” she said quietly.

“Right. I'll go ask Alice.”

“Welcome to CIS,” muumuu Marjorie said as she unceremoniously shuffled out of the room.

Alice and I just sat there, barely drawing breath, never taking our eyes off each other. There we were, interns again—professionals disguised as coffee jockeys at Zhen's military industrial complex outpost disguised as a nerd farm. Back in our natural habitat.

“John, how've you been?”

“Not so good, Alice. You?”

“Great.”

“So I see. I like your suit. DKNY?”

“Don't make me laugh.”

“I don't plan to. Not anymore.”

“You look different, John.”

“So do you.”

“How so?”

“In this light your true colors make you look like a corpse rotting from the inside out.”

“I was going to say the same about you, you fucking traitor,” she said with a straight face.

I burst out laughing. I couldn't help myself. I was starting to believe I overestimated her intelligence, or sanity. She felt my mocking rattling her bones and tensed, as if she was going to make a move. This made me laugh harder.

“Shut the fuck up,” she spat.

“Or what?” I said.

“Or maybe I'll kill you right now.”

“If at first you don't succeed. Try, try again . . . and again . . .”

“You're not as clever as you think, John.”

“Really? Did you know I was coming today?”

Silence.

“You still thought I was dead, didn't you?” I laughed.

“You were to me,” she said.

“Oh, that hurts, darling.”

“Not as much as it's
going
to hurt,
” she said.

“That's the spirit,” I said coldly.

“Why are you here, John? I didn't know you were in town, so you had the element of surprise. What's the point of getting back into your tired old character?”

“I've missed him,” I said.

“I'm going to tell Marjorie to fire you today. I have an assignment here, so if you want to settle something with me—”

“I do and we'll settle it here. I can make this assignment go away and you know it. Then you'll be at the mercy of your clients, and what would be the fun in that? You'd have to go to war with them and you'd be blacklisted for . . . ever.”

“Fine. You've made your point.”

“Not quite, Alice. My point is this: you made a mistake. Maybe the biggest of your life.”

“Poor baby. You're just mad that I fucked you, kissed your earlobe and told you I loved you, then slapped you like a bitch.”

Then she doused my crotch with the boiling-hot coffee in her cup. My junk is the one part of my body that is not a numb piece of scar tissue. The pain was shocking and took my breath away. My animal brain sent my hands to the rescue, covering my searing nuts, but my internal fighting brain knew this was no good and that point was proven when Alice rang my bell with a high-heeled side kick. I lost my balance and was on a head-on collision course with the monstrous snack machine. In that moment, we worked together to avoid this. If the Chinese cavalry heard my 190-pound frame shatter a five-foot-tall, one-inch-thick pane of glass covering rows of Bugles, Lorna Doones, and microwave burritos, they'd have been in there in seconds shooting first and asking questions later.

Of course, the moment I regained my balance, we were back in the trenches and Alice attempted to throat kick me. I caught her foot with one hand, ripped off her shoe, and whipped the sharp high heel into her ear canal. The only thing that kept me from bursting her eardrum and driving all six inches into her brain was her sinking her teeth into my hand. She looked at me, surprised at the fact that her bite didn't make me grimace in agony or draw even the slightest drop of blood from my rawhide skin.

“What the fuck?” she asked.

“I just don't have any feelings for you anymore,” I said smugly and whacked her injured ear with an open-palm strike. The blunt impact and air forced into her ear canal instantly pulled the rug out from under her equilibrium. She swung her hands wildly through the air, attempting to throw up any kind of defense while her brain tried to reset itself. She fell to her knees and I was staring down
the barrel of the one split second I had to finish her. This was the diamond emerging from the truckloads of coal that every fiber of my being had been compressing and smashing to make. This was the kill moment.