by Varian Wolf
I instantly stood up. Everyone cheered, thinking the majority had won, but they had never encountered this minority. Their jubilance died in their throats as I wrested my hand from Yoki’s grip and pushed my way out of the room.
In the den off the kitchen I discovered food. There was a tantalizing spread laid out on a long table along the dining room wall. I perused the inventory of edibles with a species of desperation. There were partly-raided piles of deep-fried things in various mysterious shapes, gooey, crumbly brownies, assorted crackers and cheese, cookies, a box of supermarket fried chicken…and what once was a meager vegetable tray, now only a depleted scattering of insignificant orts.
Yoki/Jesus and Jeanne followed me, Jeanne apologizing for Yoki, and Yoki filling a paper plate, and her face, simultaneously. She set Jesus Christ down on the floor, and he instantly popped up on the table in one of the incredible aerial feats that tiny doggies do. As Yoki made her raid, he made his own, beginning with the breaded, deep-fried mushrooms.
“Gollygosh! These fried enchiladas are fantastic,” she said through a mouthful of enchiladas. “Here, eat some.”
“I can’t,” I said, waving the proffered gooey food item away, “I’m in training.”
There was nothing here I should eat if I was sticking to a training diet –and not just training for any fight, but the fight of my life, after which, if it was successful, I would be stuck forever in the body I was in at that moment. But discipline is scarce in the face of catastrophic levels of gherulin. As my stomach and I stood commiserating, we were converged upon by Rathstein and the tall man and woman of venerable age and bearing, who were themselves trailed by a gaggle of students whose mouths were filled with congratulations for Rathstein on his slick moves.
“You know, old chap, if you don’t find a strict wife very soon, you’re going to get into trouble,” said the tall man who sauntered beside Rathstein.
He sounded very British and slightly inebriated. From the drink in his hand, it looked like he was working on upgrading the latter to “very.” The dark-haired woman at his side helped to keep that soaring frame upright.
“With all these young birds flitting around…” his eyes followed the rump of the drunken blonde as she flounced by on the arm of one of the preppy boys. He raised his eyebrows in approval and said some weird British thing, “Yoikes!”
His female companion rolled her eyes and smiled. Her look was longsuffering, but not resentful.
Rathstein shed a young male student who had been asking the professor’s opinion regarding a paper on the politics of certain former Spanish colonial nations and pursued Yoki. The gaggle of educated children, Mozart boy in the lead, followed like helpless satellites in his gravitational pull.
“Yoki! I knew your stomach would win out over me in the end,” Rathstein laughed.
“Well, you put out everything I like,” she replied, dangling an hors de vour sausage in front of my face.
“You English cur,” I snarled under my breath.
“Black Shuck,” Yoki replied with a grin.
“Is that your friend’s name?” Rathstein laughed, wrapping his arm familiarly around Yoki’s little shoulders. Though he was no taller than me, his girth made her seem Lilliputian by comparison, “What’s her party? Who’s she voting for?”
He seemed to inspect me, as though to ascertain whether or not “demon dog” lay somewhere beneath my surface. His hangers-on certainly seemed to think so.
“She’s Annie,” said Yoki through a mouthful. “She fought for my honor and spanked a fellow twice her size. She’s brilliant at the fisticuffs.”
“We made her an honorary Gay Hippie,” Jeanne said proudly, putting her arm on my shoulder to match Rathstein’s move. She was, I decided in that moment, one of the few people I would allow to do that without uncorking the nasty.
“Oh, an honorary Gay Hippie,” Rathstein said, sounding hurt. “You never made me an honorary Gay Hippie.”
“Watch yourself, Barty,” said the Brit in the bolo tie, his accent more elegant than Yoki’s gutter English. “Your eyes will start to turn green.”
“You haven’t run a Grand Prix,” said Jeanne to Rathstein.
“End to end,” said Yoki through a mouthful of bread pudding.
“End to end,” said Rathstein. “Wow, and you didn’t even get arrested.”
“Almost,” said Yoki. “But that was the night they found that woman dead on the statue of Joan of Arc. The bulls had something more significant to do than take us off to the pokey.”
“Oh, please don’t bring that up at my party. You’ll give everyone –except maybe yourself,” Rathstein laughed at his own joke, “indigestion.”
He aimed a fried mushroom at Yoki’s mouth. She gobbled it, obtaining the desired effect.
“So, Annie. Where are you from? You look like you’re old enough to be in a master’s program. What are you majoring in?”
“Law.” I replied.
“Law?” He repeated quizzically.
Jeanne heaved a histrionic sigh.
“Come on,” she said to me, “There’s a Wii in the den. Let’s go play some Mario.”
She directed me toward the den.
“Hoho!” exclaimed the British professor, clapping Rathstein on the shoulder and looming over him. “The youthful generation is bored with you, old Barty. Your worst nightmare has come to pass. Time to retire. Be careful,” he said to the rest of us, “when he gets backed into a corner he tends to go off on a political jihad.”
He took a swig of the wine in his goblet and, thence finding it suddenly, offensively empty, turned about and wandered off in search of replenishment. I wished I was going with him, the smell of food not had (and professor too much had) was killing me.
“Annie has the best major of all, Dr. Rathstein,” Yoki said. “She’s getting her master’s in Cool.”
“Please,” Rathstein detained Jeanne and I, “Annie, call me Bartholomew.”
He offered me his hand, which I had neither elicited nor wanted. I looked at it. So did all of the irritated students who wondered why I, the unknown usurper of the attention that so rightly belonged to them had been invited to bypass the professor’s doctorate and call their beloved idol by his first name.
Their envy drove me to take it.
His grip was stronger than I had expected, and it seemed it was his intention to surprise me. I let my hand go dead in his, and he released it. We shared a look of I’m not sure what. I ingratiated myself with a moment of thinking, my boyfriend could beat the tar out of you.
A crescendo of laughter erupted from the kitchen. The tall professor stood at the bar, attempting to build a pillar of wine goblets, balanced atop one another in an alternating right-side-up, upside-down sequence. A gaggle of students egged him on, including the drunken blonde, who flounced perilously near to his already unsteady shoulder.
“You’re an interesting young woman,” Rathstein said.
“Not that interesting,” I said back.
“Oh, she’s tremendously interesting,” said Yoki conspiratorially. “Would you believe she’s dating a vampire?”
I shot her the filthiest look I could muster in under two milliseconds.
“A vampire!” Rathstein laughed. “I’ll have to be careful not to accidentally offend you, then. Your boyfriend might suck my blood.”
Another peal of laughter from the bar area showed the tall professor adding green olives, one at a time, at the end of a toothpick, to the topmost goblet of his now nine-goblet high pillar. The female professor rushed to the rescue, removing her companion from the situation before he could put some dewy freshman in the emergency room with a piece of glass lodged in her artery.
“Better to suck than to blow,” I said.
“Annie!” said Yoki.
Fainter-hearted members of the Rathstein cult of personality began to vanish into the woodwork like termites.
“Come, Annie,” said Rathstein. “I think we got off on the wrong foot. We’ve g
ot this delightful dynamo in common, don’t we?” He squeezed Yoki’s shoulder. “What do you say we have a drink and forget the whole thing?”
Though I didn’t take my eyes of Rathstein, I didn’t answer his question either.
“Jeanne, how about that Wee, or whatever you called it?”
“Let’s do it,” said Jeanne, “but you should know that I suck.”
I turned away.
“It’s true,” Yoki went on to Rathstein. “He’s tall, dark, and handsome, and he’s picked Annie as his protégé. I’d bet good old British pounds that he watched her from the shadows for months before he showed himself to be sure that she could handle the immortal life.”
“Months, really?” Rathstein encouraged.
“Perhaps years. She’s just too thick between the ears to realize it. Oh! It’s so romantic! I’d bet even now he’s fighting against unholy desire, longing for the moment when he can take her in his arms and –”
“Enough of this vampire talk,” Rathstein interrupted. “I need a drink. Let’s all go have a drink.”
“Ooh, boxing,” I said, picking one of the Wii game cartridges.
“Oh, no.” said Jeanne. “That can’t be fair.”
“Well, I’ve never played a video game before. That can’t be fair.”
“It’s just that I completely suck.”
“What, are you a pussy?”
“No.” said Jeanne indignantly.
“Well, come on, Tomato Queen, man up.”
The others had moved to the furniture behind us. The game area contained a sunken alcove populated by chestnut leather furniture, a gorgeous baby grand piano, and a red-tiled fireplace that probably lay dormant eleven months out of the year. Yoki sat on the carpet in the absolute center of all people, Jesus Christ curled up beside her, licking his own ass. The pleasantly sloshed Brit reclined on the sofa, his woman beside him. She held his drink while he gestured with very long arms and chatted with the students gathered around. Rathstein sat in the adjacent easy chair, recently vacated for him by a student, as though it was the intellectual throne to which all should pay homage. He worked on a glass of wine as though he had needed it all evening…or at least since Yoki’s insubordinate friend had darkened his door.
It wasn’t long before I was standing holding my stupid Wee “gloves” and failing to get the boxing dude on the screen to do anything except flail uselessly.
“You just punch, like this,” Jeanne said.
“Oh, do you?” I laughed at her form.
“Okay, I’m not so graceful at this, but you try riding a twelve-hundred pound, eighteen-hand warmblood in a bad mood.”
She punched at me. My avatar on the TV screen grunted as it got hit.
“What’s a warmblood?”
Someone had done away with Yoki’s techno blabber, and a student of grad-school age had taken up residence on the piano bench and was tapping a merry tune out of the keys. I recognized it as the perky theme from the original Mario Brothers one of the neighbor kids had had where I grew up. Apparently the laughing cluster of students who had gathered around the piano recognized it too.
“It’s a horse.”
“Oh, like Warren, the big, black one.”
I tried to punch her back, but my uppercut magically transformed into a hook on the screen, and I missed. She punched and missed. It seemed to be a theme.
“You’re not going to draw me into an argument, Barty,” came the strains of an inebriated professorial rant from behind us. “You know how Cynthia feels about your party, and I know how you feel about hers--and you know how I feel about all of them. So you keep your damnable politics, for once, out of a perfectly good evening. I, for one, am well on my way toward being devastatingly drunk –and happily so. And you should be too.”
“You’re already there, Henry,” the woman called Cynthia said.
Jeanne punched. I tried to block. Instead, my avatar stood there looking like a tard. Her avatar successfully hit mine, sending spit flying.
“Jesus fuck!” I exclaimed in frustration.
“What I’m saying,” came Rathstein’s voice, “is that it is imperative that we put capable men in our seats of government. Ralph Goodwin is such a man.”
Jeanne and I got into a clinch. The virtual ref pushed us apart. Jeanne hit me with a couple of pitty-pats. Then she laughed.
“Red-headed cousin hussy!” I exclaimed.
“Compassionate men,” Henry said sharply, starting up out of the couch at the periphery of my vision, then falling back, defeated by inebriation, “are equally important, but I’m not arguing about it.”
“That was supposed to be a straight right! Not an uppercut! What the hell?”
“Haha!” laughed Jeanne.
“Goodwin’s compassionate too, Dr. Ferguson,” came a student’s voice at our backs, “He’s raised more money for restoration last year than any other single person in the state.”
“But where does that money come from, young man?” asked the drunken Brit.
“Anonymous donors,” said Rathstein. “There are many people who want to help, but who don’t want to be in the public eye. He’s good at reaching them.”
“And he’s in business,” added Yoki. “Businessmen are always the best at raising money.”
“And Bono,” said a student.
People laughed.
“No! That was good! That was a good hit! Why can’t I hit you?”
“Annie, be careful. You almost did hit me.”
“There ought to be more transparency,” said Ferguson, arguing in spite of his declaration not to. “In an economy and a state in this condition, contributions to the community by way of his foundation start to look very much like contributions to a campaign.”
“Oh, come on, Henry. Are we to judge a man by his actions or his possible intentions? I say a man who accomplishes this much before he even gets elected deserves a shot at a position with real power, where he can do the most good.”
The people around the piano were distracting me from my Wee tournament. A pair of sniggering boys were sitting side by side at the bench, playing a sort of dueling piano piece, suffixing each teacher’s statement with a twiddle of notes, the high end for Ferguson, the low end for Rathstein.
“Would you two quit banging on that thing?” I snarled at them. They tried to pretend they hadn’t heard me.
Jeanne hit me while I wasn’t looking at the screen.
“God damn it!”
Ferguson grew wise to the game of the impromptu pianists, and lurched off the couch. He went over to the piano and shooed them away. His speech was slurred, but he still managed to chastise them in fine English style.
“You saucy rogues, you. When’d you forget to respect your elders? And you can’t play worth a shilling, either of you! Leave off, or I’ll clobber you both.” He teetered over the bench, then plunked down, defeated by gravity. “Maybe I’ll just play a bit –show you lads a thing or…,” Burrrrpp, “perhaps two things.”
He set his wineglass down atop the piano and began to play, slowly, a dignified dirge. Jesus Christ immediately began to howl.
Our little tournament finally came to a close in the third round, with Jeanne delivering a knockout punch fifteen seconds in. My avatar toppled to the mat, Jeanne’s put his arms in the air, and the fake crowd began to howl.
“I won! I won! I finally won!” said Jeanne, throwing up her own arms.
“It’s rigged!” I protested. “That broke-dick bastard threw the fight! Did you see all that corn-shit he pulled? That cunt sucking ass fucker threw the fight! I hit the fuckin’ button, and he’s over there shit-fucking himself in the ass! Fuckety Jesus!”
The entire room fell silent, except for Ferguson, with drunken nobility playing his dirge.
A cell phone went off, breaking the tension. Lots of people checked their phones, but it was Rathstein’s that had rung. He got up and left the room to answer it.
“Annie,” said Yoki from the carpet. “Do you hav
e Turret’s Syndrome?”
“I’m hungry,” I said, looking around at the stung assemblage. I dropped my Wee gloves and headed for the kitchen.
“Pick me up something while you’re there,” Yoki called behind me.
The drunk, pink-topped girl stumbled past me, bumping into me and scowling as she did so, as though I had jumped maliciously into her path.
I ignored her. I went straight to the fried chicken.
A single thigh remained in the box, surrounded by the crumbs of its perished brethren, knowing my need, waiting specifically for me. I plopped it on a paper plate, tore off a hunk, and put it into my mouth. Oh, sweet succulent divinity amongst foods! Golden and crispy, greasy and warm…I instantly forgot the Wee. I could have died happy right there. I chewed and swallowed in ultimate mortal bliss.
The sound of sharp voices disrupted the nirvana of my glorious down-home delicacy. The voices issued from a room removed from the region of gathered guests, and one of the voices was the unmistakably that of Bartholomew Rathstein.
Through the mostly closed door of a room down the hall, I saw a woman standing. She was a tall blonde of thirty-something, and she was in pajamas. She had her purse hanging from her shoulder and was really upset, gesticulating with her arms and speaking hushed tones to Rathstein, who was behind the door and out of view.
“He’s run off again,” she said. “We can’t find him anywhere.”
“Was he on his chain?” Rathstein asked.
“Victor felt sorry for him and let him off for a while.”
“Well, that’s why. That was idiotic.”
“He usually comes to me, but I wasn’t there. He never should have let him off without me there, and he’s so much faster than anyone. There was no way they could catch him.”
“And now he’s going to tear up the neighborhood again. For the cream of the crop, these people are awfully stupid sometimes. Let’s hope he tears up a couple neighborhood cats and goes home.”
“He might come here.”
“Why would he come here?”
“Because I was here. He follows me.”
“He’d better not interrupt my party. I’m not in the mood to be taking any strays home.”