Topless Agenda

by Lyle Christie

  Our food arrived fifteen minutes later, and not a word was spoken as we gorged ourselves with the zest of ancient Romans. It was so excellent, in fact, that I would have gladly visited the vomitorium and eaten another plate-full had we been dining about a thousand years earlier. Along with the great food was the great wine, which was consumed by my three travel mates in abundance, while I kept it to half a glass, as I was driving and generally avoided drinking during the day. I was just taking my last sip when I noticed that our soccer friends were getting a little rowdier the more they drank, and two guys at the end of their table were speaking very loudly to each other as they gazed rather lecherously at Lux and Bridgette. I was realizing that I might have to reconsider my earlier statement, as the guidos, instead of being comical, were now starting to look a little menacing—all of it giving me a bad feeling. Babineux must have picked up on it as well, because he suggested that we might want to hit the road. Giovanni thankfully swung back by, and Babineux asked for the check.

  As we waited, the two Guidos in question stood up and walked over to our table. They were both a shade under six feet tall, in pretty good shape, and mostly decent looking except for Bridgette’s earlier observation concerning their facial hair. Guido One was sporting a silly looking goatee while his friend had the half assed stubble that every two bit hipster the world over seemed to have these days. They were definitely not any real competition in the looks department, but they made up for it with their attitude and overly confident demeanor.

  “Buon pomeriggio belle ragazza,” Guido One, said to Bridgette, which I believe translated as good afternoon beautiful girl.

  “Um—good afternoon to you as well,” she responded, sounding a tad bit uncomfortable.

  “Ah—Americana—buono. I love American girls. I like how you—uh—keep your figas shaved.”

  “Excuse me—figas?”

  “Uh—Ci. Um—how do you say in English?” he asked his friend.

  “Pussy,” Guido Two, blurted out.

  “Ci! Pussy! I like how you Americans keep your pussies shaved.”

  “I’m sure that you mean that as a compliment, but really it’s just not any of your business,” Bridgette said.

  Guido Two placed his hands on Lux’s shoulders and began rubbing them as he leaned down and whispered something in her ear. She obviously didn’t like what she heard, because she took hold of his thumbs and bent them back, causing him to cry out in pain.

  “Easy, we are just trying to be friendly,” Guido Two, said.

  “Yeah—we’re just trying to get to know you better,” Guido One, added, as he placed his hand on Bridgette’s shoulder.

  She pushed it off, but he came in for another attempt and, this time, slid his hand down over her left breast, where he gave it a firm and purposeful squeeze. Italian men were notorious for their rather forthright appreciation of the opposite sex, often grabbing hold of womens’ asses in public settings, so it stood to reason breasts would also be a target. I could understand the desire to do so, as it was a tantalizing appendage, but personal space was personal space, regardless of the customs of the country you happened to be visiting.

  “Mi scusi,” Babineux said, reaching over and removing Guido One’s hand.

  “Vaffanculo stronzo!” Guido One, said angrily.

  “I’m not sure I understood that last statement,” I said.

  “It means something like, fuck you, asshole,” Babineux responded.

  Just then, Giovanni walked up with the check and looked a little puzzled as he took in the scene and obvious tension.

  “Is everything OK here?” he asked.

  “Sì. It’s fine, but our new Italian friends were just about to go back to their table,” I said.

  “Fuck you, figa,” Guido One, said.

  Giovanni stepped in and tried to nicely coax them away from us, but Guido Two shoved him back and onto one of the nearby tables, sending silverware and a vase full of flowers crashing onto the floor. Apparently, words weren’t going to work on our drunken adversaries, so it was time for more extreme measures. Babineux and I exchanged a nod then stood to confront the Italian menace.

  “I’m sorry, guidos, but it’s time for you to head the fuck back to your table,” I said.

  “Fuck you, Johnny Cash! Maybe it’s time that your women here spent some time with a real man.”

  “Maybe it’s about time you became one.”

  “Fuck you, figa! You know you got a big mother fucking mouth,” he said, the th, sounding like a d and making it sound more like mudder fucking.

  “Fuck you, succhiacazzi,” I said, using some of my limited Italian profanity.

  Who would have thought that calling a virile Italian man a cocksucker would make him so angry, but the next thing I knew, Guido One was hauling back his fist to punch me in face. His first mistake was trying to punch me, while the second was his technique. All humans have a lot of bad innate habits, the most important at the moment being the tendency to chamber a punch. It added a lot of extra time before you actually hit your target, and that could be the difference between walking away unscathed or needing some serious dental work. After years in the martial arts, I’d trained hard to overcome the habit, and, therefore, had both my hands in front of me and a hell of a lot closer to my opponent. Combine that with proper technique, and you had a devastating combination—something Guido One was going to learn the hard way. With his arm still cocked back behind his shoulder, and his fist winding up, I delivered a hard right palm to his face. It sent him flying backward towards the table of a middle aged couple who called out angrily as he landed on their plates of delicious looking ravioli.

  Guido Two, who probably wasn’t quick enough even when he was sober, decided to bum rush me, but Babineux shoved him off course and sent him crashing onto an adjacent empty table. It wasn’t a bad move for a French aristocrat, but then he had been a Naval Commando, and, while he might seem all soft and French at the moment, he had to have been pretty badass in his day. Suddenly, the entire table of drunken guidos stood up and stared at us, obviously not happy that we had just given their friends a humiliating beat down. The guy who had been at the center of their table started walking in our direction. He wasn’t the tallest, but he was easily the broadest with a chest like a bull and arms as thick as tree trunks. The only good news in this scenario, however, was that he too had silly, ugly, facial hair that took some of the menace out of his visage. I was also suspecting that he was their team captain, because the others followed him over and stood at his side. Our adversaries definitely had superior numbers, but we were lucky that they acted like lemmings and failed to spread out and surround us, which meant that we still had an avenue of escape if we needed to make a quick exfiltration.

  Bridgette and Lux stood, and, as both sides faced off, the other people in the restaurant watched nervously, unsure what to do. Some stayed silently seated while others got up and moved quickly towards the door. A family of four stared speechless while their preteen son was enthusiastically filming us with his smart phone—the little fucker. It sure must be a lot harder as a clandestine operative these days when everyone in the world had a fucking camera and a communication device in the palm of their hand. This, of course, made me wonder how many agents got their cover inadvertently blown by having their picture posted by a random asshole on social media.

  My moment of quiet reverie came to an end, however, when the strong scent of body odor drew my attention to the guido leader—a man I officially dubbed Mr. Beefcake. He glared ominously, looking confident and ready for a fight and apparently didn’t care about the fact that we were in a crowded restaurant surrounded by innocent diners. Of course, it was easy to look confident with all of his soccer buddies at his side. Still, I hoped he was just another insecure gym rat and wouldn’t be able to put all that muscle to good use in a fight.

  “Buona sera, Signore Beefcake,” I said.

  He didn’t smile and instead cracked his knuckles in a menacing, though silly,
display of manhood.

  “Now, you’re going to pay for what you did to my friends,” he said, in deep manly, Italian accented English.

  “Easy there, Beefcake. Your friends were the ones who started it,” I responded.

  “Maybe, but I’m still going to finish it,” he said, as he did the typical guy thing and assumed a fighting stance.

  This prompted Lux to move towards my side and whisper in my ear.

  “I think it’s time to go.”

  “I agree, but we still have to pay the check.”

  “Fuck the check.”

  “I’d hate to run out on such a good meal and, honestly, I don’t think we’re going to get out of here that easily.”

  With both hands in a basic boxer’s stance, Mr. Beefcake moved in, and I realized that he just might be a little better at fisticuffs than his friends. He was light on his feet, and danced his way closer, throwing a few quick exploratory jabs that I managed to avoid by staying out of his reach. I could see he was getting impatient, however, and I figured it was about time to end this exchange by taking advantage of his three most obvious weaknesses—namely, his range and his two balls. He went for the gold and lunged forward, throwing a heavy right cross, and, had he been able to land it, would have put me in a world of hurt. Thankfully, I was ready, and responded by leaning my head back out of range while simultaneously throwing a very simple low, hard, front thrust kick to his groin. He buckled over and hit the floor with a dull thud, clutching his privates and calling out angrily in Italian. Mr. Beefcake may or may not have been a decent fighter, but he definitely had balls—something I knew firsthand because I had just kicked both of them.

  Seeing their fearless leader go down so easily became too much for the bravado of team Italia, and the entire group clenched their fists and prepared to attack. Lux, Babs, and I spread out and assumed ready positions while Brigette slinked back and took refuge behind us. A brief moment of inaction ensued where we all just kind of stared at each other, then the guido army began it’s next official attack when two of them came in from Lux’s side. The first one managed to slip by her, but she nailed the second in the head with a right cross that sent him falling onto a nearby table. The guy she missed reached me and dove in and tried to take me to the ground, but I responded by doing the sprawl. That particular defense entailed leaning into his attack and extending out my legs, and it left him in a sort of limbo with his head hovering conveniently just above my waist. I threw a knee up into his face then dropped a hard elbow to the back of his neck that sent him to the floor. Motion brought my attention to the left, where I looked over just in time to barely evade the attempted sucker punch of yet another guido. I stumbled back a bit then recovered in time to properly deal with his next attack. It was a straight right punch, but, this time, I stepped left and redirected his fist with my left hand while using my right to deliver a palm to his face. His head jerked back, and I followed up by swinging my right hand back and around in an arc until slamming it into his groin. The blow made him buckle over and collapse in my arms, but before I could follow up with some kind of finishing technique, I looked up to see yet another guido coming in at me. I decided to use the first one as a human projectile to deal with the second, and that entailed shoving him towards the incoming guido. The human projectile went barreling headfirst into the other man’s stomach, and the resulting impact sent both of them tumbling to the ground in a heap.

  With a tiny break in the action, I took a moment to check on the status of my team, and was surprised to see that even Bridgette had joined the action. She was facing off with two guidos who appeared to be more interested in groping, rather than actually fighting. Bridgette, however, had other plans and grabbed a hold of a large vase and then used it to pummel the first one in the head, sending him onto the table of two nearby women who screamed as he landed atop their plates of pasta carbonara. His friend was a bit sneakier and managed to get hold of her breasts, but she was quick to react, swinging the vase up from the floor, slamming it into his balls and dropping him to the ground in a heap.

  “Nice moves, debutante!” I yelled, to her.

  “You know us debutantes—it’s all about going to the balls.”

  It was a good pun, but her victory was short lived, as yet another guido snuck around from behind and took hold of her breasts. She struggled to break free by stomping his feet, but he was surprisingly agile and avoided most of her attacks. Babineux, seeing his love bear in distress, stepped in and calmly peeled off the guy’s hands by twisting his fingers back until he screamed and let go of her bosoms. Now, with him in the clear, Babineux swung a mean punch at the guido’s jaw, knocking him back a few steps. He was shaken but recovered and came at Babineux with a series of angry flailing punches. The wily Frenchman dodged and parried all but the last one before grabbing hold of the guy’s neck and using it as a leverage point to pull his head down while he drove his knee up into his balls. The guido went slack just long enough for Babineux to shove him headfirst into a nearby wall where he collapsed and dropped to the floor.

  “Viva La France!” I yelled, before my attention was brought back to a new opponent who had just delivered a formidable punch to my stomach.

  I buckled over and was knocked back a step but straightened up, shrugged off the pain, and prepared for the next assault. It turned out to be a flailing right hook, and I responded by throwing my block and punch at the same time, my left hand deflecting his strike while my right caught him square on the jaw. He stammered back looking dazed, and I used that break to slide up and deliver a brutal side kick that sent him flying across the floor and onto his ass. Suddenly, in the chaos, Giovanni appeared, waving our bill in the air. I dropped to the ground, crawled over, and met him beneath a nearby table so that he could hand me the bill. I gave it an obligatory glance then handed him the Agency credit card, and he left, crawling until he was clear before standing up and running to the register.

  From under the table, I had another moment to check on my team and saw that Lux, like Bridgette, had encountered more of a lover than a fighter. He was tall, skinny, and doing his best to get his hands under her shirt while she was doing her best to fight him off. Unfortunately, he was unusually persistent, his long arms slinking around her body like a giant octopus. As she struggled to break free, her gaze inadvertently fell on me, and she didn’t look very pleased.

  “What the hell are you doing hiding under that table you pussy?”

  “Paying the check.”

  “Fuck that. Get over here and help me!”

  I raced over and pulled the guy off her, but sadly, my chivalrous actions were rewarded by the presence of a massive arm coming from behind me and encircling my neck. I glanced over my shoulder and quickly realized that it was Signore Beefcake, and he was back to exact his revenge. Wonderful. I dug my fingers into the webbing between his thumb and forefinger, a spot that usually elicited a great deal of pain, but he merely tightened his grip on my neck. It was time for more drastic measures, but, before I could react, another guido appeared and punched me in the stomach. It wasn’t the smartest thing to do to a guy with a belly full of pasta, and if he kept it up, he’d pay for his actions with a face full of partially digested alfredo gnocchi vomit. I decided, however, to hold onto my lunch, and that took getting rid of my second opponent by throwing a front thrust kick straight into his stomach. He wasn’t expecting it and buckled over and puked up a lovely puddle of beer and what might have once been spaghetti bolognese. Now, I was back to my original problem—Signore Beefcake. He was, as I already surmised, as strong as a bull but, thankfully, unskilled in the ways of headlocks and had left a gap between his face and my head. Big mistake. I tilted my head forward then brought it back quickly, hitting his nose with enough force to make him loosen his grip. That created the opening I needed to move my body sideways and elbow him in the solar plexus before swinging a hammer fist down into his groin. His head dropped, and I brought my right elbow up under his chin, and the blow left hi
m dazed and confused enough to finish him off with an aikido throw called a kaiten nage. It entailed using one hand to lift his arm while using the other to direct his head down, and it sent him flying head over heels, where he landed on his back, finally gone, but not forgotten, from the fight.

  More people were being drawn into the action, and the scene was getting uglier by the moment, which meant it was time to gather the troops and get the fuck out of here. I made eye contact with Lux and Bridgette, but Babineux was busy as he squared off with two new opponents. Neither of them seemed too keen to get too close to the feisty Frenchman, but impatience won out over prudence, when one of the guidos threw a wild punch and was rewarded with Babineux blocking it and responding with a right cross to the jaw. It knocked the guy out of commission, but it inspired his friend to go for the tackle. Babineux was quicker, however, and managed to step left at the last second and swing his right forearm around to close line the guy’s neck. He flopped backwards onto his back and remained on the floor. France two, Italy zero. Giovanni came back just then and handed me the check and a pen. I filled in the amount, signed, and added an extra hundred euros even though there was already a service charge. It wasn’t right to cause this much mayhem and not tip generously. He glanced down at the receipt then back up at me, looking confused.

  “Mi scusi signore, but you can’t possibly have meant to add a hundred euros.”

  “No, I did. The food was great, and the service even better.”

  “But you could take your girl out for an entire night in Milan for half that.”