by Paul Blades
“$200 Euros,” the old lady said laughing. “Sex demon bring good loving for pretty girls.”
“€200 Euros!” Inge exclaimed. “That’s ridiculous. These are probably knocked off by some 12 year old kid in the back room.” She started to put the statuette back. The old lady was eyeing the girls carefully. She laughed.
“Pretty lady is right,” she cackled. “Real statutes, made many years ago, at my shop. Good price for pretty ladies.”
“Where’s your shop?” Inge asked.
“Very close, very close. Taxi take you,” she said grinning. “Statues very cheap.”
“Like how cheap?” Inge asked. Ilse looked up to listen. She had been toying with the idea of buying the musicians, but she didn’t want to spend anything like €200 Euros.
“For pretty ladies, €75 Euros,” the old lady said, rocking her chair back and forth, grinning wildly.
Inge looked at Ilse. “I’ve got to have it,” she said.
“But they said not to leave the airport,” Ilse replied.
“Come on, Ilse, I don’t want to go alone. You heard the lady, it’s real close.” Inge looked down at the musicians that Ilse had been inspecting. She turned to the old lady. “How much for these at your place?”
“€75 Euros,” the gnarled woman replied. “For pretty ladies,” she added.
“Come on, Ilse,” Inge said. “I tell you what. I’ll buy yours too. Think of it as my gift for coming on this trip. Okay?”
Ilse looked at the delicately fashioned clay musicians. She had so few nice things. “Okay,” she said. “But just there and back. No detours. Okay?”
“No problem,” Inge answered.
The old lady rang a bell. A small boy came running out. The lady spoke to him in rapid fire native speech. The boy nodded and ran out of the store.
“Boy get taxi,” the old lady said. “Go to main gate, he waiting there.”
The two pretty Swedish twins, clothed in delicate, almost sheer, summer dresses, walked to the main gate. They were a strange vision for this obscure African country. Both had long, blond hair drawn back behind them in pony tails. Their skirts were modest, but the curves of their hips bespoke their sensuality. They were wearing dark sunglasses as protection from the glaring sun. To their surprise, there was no one at the airport entrance even to take a look at their passports. They looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders and walked out. There was an American style taxi waiting for them. It was covered with red, yellow, green and blue swirls.
“Missies, here!” the driver called. He was a thin, young man, maybe 25 years old. He had a dark black face and a scraggly black beard. He wore long, white pants and sandals and a Boston Red Sox t-shirt. The girls hopped into the cab and after a fifteen minute ride along the crowded city streets, they stopped in a small alley off the main drag. The girls got out. There was a small shop there with a dilapidated sign hanging above it. It was in the country’s native language, but had a drawing of a small statuette on it.
Inge looked at her sister. “This must be it,” she said a little uncertainly.
“I don’t know, Inge…,” Ilse started to say.
“Don’t be a scaredy cat, Ilse. Come on. Let’s at least go in.”
Ilse reluctantly consented and the girls entered the shop. It was dimly lit, dirty and cramped and overstuffed with shelves and boxes. A little man sat behind the counter. He gave them a scowl. The little boy from the airport shop came running in. He had driven over in the taxi in the front seat. He said something to the man who then smiled.
“Welcome, welcome,” he said, bowing his head. He held up his finger in a signal to wait. He went into the back room and a minute later came out with a tray with the clay figurines that the girls had been looking for on it.
“Are these real?” Inge asked him as she picked up the fertility god.
The man just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Welcome, welcome. Seventy five Euros, please.”
Ilse was examining the clay figures of the musicians. “They’re so cute,” she said.
Inge reached into her fanny pack and pulled out 150 Euros. She gave them to the man behind the counter. “Please wrap them up” she instructed the man, doubtful that he would understand her. Just then a big black man came out of the back room. He was apparently in his thirties and had a smooth face, broad shoulders. He was wearing a multicolored horizontally striped polo shirt and dark black pants.
“You’re being robbed,” he said in deeply accented English.
The old man started to hurl an invective at the man. The man cut him short with a staccato burst of words. The man behind the counter reached into the cash drawer and withdrew Inge’s €100 Euro bill. He slammed it down on the counter. The Swedish girls looked at it and then back at the handsome black man. “You were being robbed,” the man said.
“Oh, thank you,” Inge said. “I…..”
The black man waved her off. “Never mind. We are not a country of thieves.” He spoke to the old man again and then he turned back to the young women. “He will wrap them for you. Then get out and go back to the airport. You have no business here.” There was a tone of hostility in his voice.
Ilse was frightened by him, but Inge thought that he was an asshole, even though he had saved her €100 Euros. “I want to know if they’re real or some tourist knock off,” she told the younger man.
“Oh, they’re real all right. The demon of sexual promiscuity and three musicians to call his tune. Good luck with them,” he said, his lip curled in a snarl.
When their packages had been wrapped into two nice cartons, Inge and Ilse left the grungy little shop quickly, feeling the eyes of the tall black man glaring into their backs. They hopped into the taxi and were returned to the airport.
When they were back in the so called guest lounge, Inge said to Ilse, “See, no problem. And now you have a souvenir and a funny story to tell.”
“I didn’t think it was so funny,” she said to Inge. “That guy scared me. I wonder why he wished us good luck. What did he mean?”
Inge shrugged. “I have no idea. Just jealous of foreigners, I guess.”
The girls waited the two hours that remained for their flight. After about an hour and a half, a stewardess came to the loading gate and announced that the passengers should line up for the plane. As Inge and Ilse joined the queue, they noticed that three uniformed men had joined the stewardess at the front of the line. When it was their turn to show their boarding passes to the pretty, black lady, the tallest of the three men stepped forward.
“What is in the boxes, please?” he asked them in a deep, stern voice.
“Just some souvenirs,” Inge said, without hesitation.
“I must ask you to come with me” the man said. Inge looked at him indignantly.
“I’ll miss my flight,” she said impatiently. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The man made a comment to the two men behind him and they stepped forwards. They were carrying billyclubs and pistols on their belts. And handcuffs. The tall man flashed a badge. “Customs control. I must insist.”
“But what about my sister?” Inge said, starting to get scared.
“She is to come as well,” the man said.
Twenty minutes later, Inge and Ilse sat in a large room with a bench along one wall. Their suitcases had been brought off of the airplane and the contents of them were strewn about a large table. Inge and Ilse had been forced to strip and were sitting in their underwear with their right hands cuffed to rings on the bench. Inge regretted that she had not worn a bra that day.
The tall uniformed man came in. The girls cringed. They had been searched by huge, fat, black matrons. “What the fuck is going on here?” Inge spat out at the man. The boxes containing the statuettes were sitting on the table, unopened. “You can’t treat us like this!” she said angrily.
Inge’s left arm was across her chest, trying to hide her naked breasts. The man looked at her disdainfully. He walked over to the boxes and began
to open them. When he had all of the figurines out of the box, he turned to the young women.
“Have you a permit to export these antiquities?” he asked.
“Antiquities?” Inge asked. “You must be out of your mind. We paid 50 Euros for them at a little shop near the airport. They’re not even real,” she answered the man. As she was saying it she remembered what the younger man had told them at the shop. The word ‘real’ came out very slowly as she realized what she was saying.
“I repeat my question,” the uniformed said, disregarding Inge’s outburst. “Do either of you have a permit?
Ilse was so frightened that she started to cry. “We didn’t mean anything,” she said to the man tearfully. “We didn’t know we needed a permit. Honest.”
“You are both under arrest,” the man told them coldly.
CHAPTER THREE
THE BOUT
So I had escaped the frying pan. The girl Delia had let me off the hook. But now I had to face the fire: getting the crap beaten out of me by Thorndike the slaver. Both Anthony and Rukimo had warned me to be careful and I didn’t need to be told thrice.
I had been escorted from the training rooms by one of the guards. When I reached the outside, I took a deep breath. It felt good not to be a condemned man. What I really wanted was a drink, but I figured that I should keep my wits about me as much as possible for my afternoon date with Thorndike. I also figured that I could use some limbering up and so I went in search of the gym instead.
The resort complex was an archipelago of low lying, white, masonry buildings. Like some fantastic amusement park, every so often, usually at the crux of two of the winding, red brick walkways, there were little kiosks. Prominent on them was a map of the public facilities. I found a kiosk about 200 feet from the security area. It was the first time I had looked at one of the maps. I was impressed by the scale of the place. There were four guests’ dormitories, one supervisor’s dormitory, three different restaurants and lounges, a movie theatre, a ‘sports bar’, a casino, a ‘customer service’ building, an outdoor theatre and three buildings dubbed ‘nightclubs”.
The resort had a nine hole golf course and so there was a pro shop and a nineteenth hole, which was, in this case, more appropriately a tenth hole. The plateau on the top of the island was rather large, and there was space for a rather complex system of bridal paths, and so there was a stable and a paddock as well as a ‘tac’ room. And there was a gym. It was located across the resort from where I stood and so I began to make my way through the central pathways to my goal.
It was about 12:30 in the afternoon and the pathways were, if not crowded, at least well-traveled. Brown and blue robed men, many of them with naked women in tow, crossed my path, all of them with the aura of satisfied men at play. The guests tended to the older side, with rotund, grey haired men common among them. Some were the high powered executive type, with well-preserved bodies and steel grey eyes. Occasionally, I passed a couple of wide eyed patrons, stumbling along, not really believing what they were seeing. I didn’t blame them, I could hardly believe it myself.
The supervisors were a dark lot, mostly scar faced and tough looking. Many of them were young, hot shots who had found quick success within the Klitzman organization. But there were old timers too, running from the sophisticated Don type to gnarly, bewhiskered men, refugees from a spaghetti western.
The guests and supervisors were of all races and colors. There seemed to be no room for discrimination in the Klitzman empire. Just like the girls themselves, they were from all over, the U.S., Europe, Asia, even Africa. Although there was some cross fertilization between ethnic groups, like in the real world, the groups mostly hung with themselves. And so you would see a bevy of Japanese businessmen, a gaggle of Germans, a brace of Brits, huddled around a dinner table or strung out along a bar.
There were unaccompanied women scurrying along the pathways as well. They all had a worried look on their face lest they not make it to their assigned destination within the time allotted. I watched as they passed me, their bare breasts swaying and jiggling as they managed a double time pace in their bright red high heels. No woman was permitted to travel without a gag and her arms bound behind her back or without a valid written pass. The passes were hung around their necks and came in various colors denoting the girl’s destination by zone. So if a girl wearing a red tag was on the opposite side of the resort from her destination, it would be readily discernable to anyone. Punishments at the Kliztman resort were usually swift and certain and applied under the premise that it was better that a hundred innocent girls be punished than a guilty one go free.
There was a slight rise in the middle of the public area, and as I crested it I espied my destination. The gym was a low lying white building like all the rest. There was a locker room, a weight room, a basketball court, which doubled as a volleyball court, an Olympic sized pool and a rather large sized room with a plethora of weight and exercise machines. There were four handball courts. All the goodies for the wealthy man at play. There was a servant at the entranceway who explained how I could get some gym clothes in the locker room. I entered and saw several long rows of doorless lockers. There was no need for locked ones if all everybody wore was a robe and some sandals. All watches and jewelry were checked on entry to the resort and money was strictly verboten. Gamblers played with chips issued against credits and all chips were turned in when the games were over.
An attendant issued me a pair of white gym shorts, a white t-shirt, socks, sneakers and a jock, all bleached white clean and neatly folded. I draped my robe over a hook and dressed myself. I figured that I would work out on some machines just to break a sweat and loosen up.
It took me a few minutes, but I eventually noticed that there were no women in the gym. I learned later that they were forbidden and, but for the small lounge attached to it, the gym was an exclusively male preserve. It was just as well. I couldn’t see trying to shoot a basket with some naked female standing under the hoop.
I worked the machines for about forty minutes. When I was done, I passed through the basketball court. The ballplayers had been chased away and the attendants were assembling stanchions connected with ropes around a padded rubber mat. Chairs were being set up around it on risers. I realized that this was to be the boxing ring. And I also realized that my bout with Thorndike was to be a public one. I was going to get thrashed in front of a crowd of yelling and stomping guys. “Shit!” I thought. I showered and went back outside to walk off my prefight tension.
An hour and a half later, I found myself walking back into the gym. I reported to the main desk and was assigned a staff member to help suit me up. He taped my hands tied on my gloves. He gave me a rudimentary mouth guard and a cup to protect the family jewels. When I entered the basketball court, Thorndike was there waiting for me. There were about forty or fifty guests and supervisors seated around the ring and they all gave me a cheer as I stepped in. The staff member, a gnarly old black guy named Jake, was to be my corner man. He gave me to drink from a water bottle and had one piece of advice for me. “Stay away from him, man.”
A bell sounded for round one. Both Thorndike and I were dressed in grey gym trunks, our chests bare. Anthony was reffing, dressed in a black and white striped shirt and black pants. Thorndike was smiling intently as he approached me, gliding, more than walking, from his corner to the center of the ring. We touched gloves and then all hell broke loose. I had my hands up to protect myself, but I felt that I was being attacked by a dozen guys all at once. I couldn’t believe anybody’s hands could be that fast. I felt blows to my arms and my face, to my sides and my stomach. Every time I moved my gloves to block a blow, I got hit in the place I just left unprotected. And they weren’t love taps either. My head was getting foggy, and my arms were already sore. I backed up into a corner and put my gloves up over my face.
I had expected Thorndike to follow me, but he was just standing in the middle of the ring. The crowd was getting noisy and I heard a few ca
tcalls. It was clear that Thorndike was challenging me to bring the fight to him. I had a choice of standing in my corner unmolested for the balance of the three minute round or to place my good looks again in jeopardy. If I did the first, I would be pegged as a loser, a wimp. If I did the second, I could end the day looking pretty ugly.
I decided that I really had no choice. I was already pretty ugly anyway. Slowly, I edged my way back to the center of the ring. Every time I started to get close to my opponent, he would rain a flurry of punches on me, backing me up. On my fifth attempt to get close enough to land even one blow on Thorndike, the bell rang, mercifully ending the round.
I went to my corner and sat on the stool that my corner man placed there for me. I washed my bloody mouth out and spit in the bucket, just like a real prizefighter. Jake had more words of comfort for me.
“Man, he’s kicking the shit out of you. Aren’t you going to hit him?”
I gave Jake one of my death looks and he responded, “Okay, okay, I’ll shut up.”
Looking across the ring, I could see that Thorndike was not even sitting down. He was laughing and joking with his friend Cholo. The crowd was getting rowdy. I took a deep breath and the bell rang for round two.
The fight was scheduled for three rounds. If I could last through this round, I was sure I could make another. But could I last?
During the second round, Thorndike was just playing with me. To the amusement of the crowd, he danced around me striking me at will. I swung several times wildly at him, missing him by a mile. Each time the crowd gave out a mock cheer.
In spite of the fact that Thorndike was not launching any sustained attacks on me, I could feel my eyes swelling and blood dripping from my lip. My arms were getting heavy as Thorndike pounded away at them. I kept just foolishly following him around the ring, hoping for a miracle. All of a sudden, Thorndike moved in close to me. He started hitting me in earnest, pounding me high and low, right and left. I felt a blow to the side of my jaw and I went down. For a few moments, I couldn’t figure out what had happened. Then I realized that somebody was leaning over me, counting, “Six, seven.…”