Topless Agenda

by Lyle Christie

  “Cheers, Tag, we’ll see you later,” Stephanie’s mother said, as they continued on their way.

  We entered our cabin and at last had some real downtime to sit, chill, and relax until dinner. I grabbed my book and lay down on my bunk reading only a few pages before my full stomach and the lulling movements of the train brought on a well needed nap.

  I awoke to the sound of running water, opened my eyes, and looked out the window to see the countryside racing past beneath a darkening sky. The excitement of the morning had managed to allow me to sleep right into the early evening, and it took a minute to get my bearings. I sat up, threw my legs over the edge of the bed, and saw that Lux was sitting at the nearby vanity touching up her makeup, and she was, of course, looking like her usual beautiful self.

  “Ready for cocktails and dinner?” she asked.

  “Honestly, you had me at cocktails.”

  Bridgette and Babs came out of the bathroom dressed and ready for dinner, so I grabbed my toiletry bag and headed in for a quick shower and possibly a dump—assuming the door had an adequate lock. I set my things on the small counter and turned my attention back to the door. I was relieved to see that it had a little sliding bolt that should work against any casual intrusions, but be ineffective if someone decided to kick it down—which I couldn’t rule out considering the lack of privacy I seemed to attract in the bathroom as of late. With a little click, I had the bolt in place and soon heard Lux call out from the other side of the door.

  “Relax, Tag, I’m not going to come in,” she said.

  “I’m relieved to hear that. Now, please, step away from the door.”

  I heard her footsteps as she walked to the other side of the room and apparently sat down, which meant that I had at least a few minutes to myself. The low hum of the ventilator fan filled the air, calming my nerves and relaxing my muscles—the experience almost meditative, like being in an ancient temple, except for the fact that my little prayer room was only three feet by four feet and had a toilet, shower, and an exceptional view of the Italian countryside. Soon, the wheels of life turned ever so gently, and my bowels gave their bounty back to the earth—or, more likely, a stainless steel holding tank beneath the train. I finished my business, flushed, and stepped into the small shower and prayed it wouldn’t run out of hot water. I managed to have a decent, though quick, shower then toweled dry and got dressed in my usual Johnny Cash black attire and walked outside to find Lux. She had waited for me while Bridgette and Babs had gone ahead to get us a table.

  We locked our cabin door and headed to the bar car, where all great evenings usually began. It was fairly crowded, but Babs and Bridgette had managed to get a table next to the Hu family. We joined them, taking the two empty seats in the middle, and, true to her word, Stephanie bought me the drink she had offered earlier. Conversation ensued and I, soon, learned that the Hus were on a family holiday to get out of London’s crappy cold weather and were headed to a resort, coincidentally, on the island of Sicily. It also turned out that my original assessment had been correct, and she and her family were originally from Hong Kong, but now lived in London. Stephanie had gone to Cambridge and stayed there after college, while her parents eventually joined her after Hong Kong reverted to Chinese control in 1997. Her father, to my surprise, was a film director and had several crossover hits in the west, which enabled him to work in both Asia and Europe. He had even worked with one of my favorite actors Chow Yun Fat, who I had always thought of as the Chinese Cary Grant.

  The dinner hour eventually rolled around, and our waiter said that we could order a limited menu from the bar if we didn’t feel like moving to the dining car. If we chose that option, our empty tables could then be given to people in the second class seating. We decided to be nice to some less lucky travelers and stayed put, which meant we had a choice of pasta, risotto, or a chicken dish. Lux, Babs, and Bridgette went with the chicken while the Hus and I chose the pasta, and I had to admit that it was pretty decent for train food and leaps and bounds beyond any commercial airplane meal I’d ever eaten.

  After dinner, the waiter came back, and we ordered dessert and another round of drinks, the experience feeling more as though we were having a quaint Italian holiday rather than living life on the run. The talking and drinking continued on well into the night, but finally came to an end when everyone decided it was late and therefore time to head back to their respective compartments. We all stood and made the journey to our car and said good night to the Hus, Stephanie holding my attention and my hand for an uncomfortably long moment before we parted and went into our own suites. Once inside, Babs broke out a bottle of his exclusive rum and poured us all a glass.

  “To a dream family vacation,” he said.

  “Indeed.”

  “I would have never imagined that I’d be sitting here drinking rum with you a week ago,” he said.

  “Tell me about it. My life couldn’t be more different if I had flown to the moon.”

  “I hate to say it, but, in spite of our current circumstances, I’m actually having a lot of fun,” Bridgette said.

  “I am too,” Lux added.

  “Maybe we actually will do Christmas together this year,” Babs joked.

  Unlike the moment in the restaurant when I recounted Babs’s now famous words from Martinique, everyone laughed. His comment had originally been snotty when he spoke it, but, now, was kind of ironic considering we were traveling together like a bunch of old friends on holiday. It was funny how things could change. I took a sip of rum and looked at Lux. She appeared to be lost in thought as she stared out the window, and I figured she was probably thinking about the situation with Corn. Part of me wanted to feel happy about their marital woes, but the more mature and empathetic part of me couldn’t, as I liked them both too much to really be that much of a dick. I wrapped my arm around Lux’s shoulder and gave her a reassuring squeeze.

  “Just give yourself time to be angry, but don’t do anything rash that you might end up regretting.”

  “You mean like slipping into a time bubble for fifteen minutes of heaven on a beach—because I don’t regret that at all,” she said.

  We both smiled at the recollection of our little romantic interlude.

  “Well, I was thinking more along the lines of you not snapping Corn’s neck like a twig.”

  “I think I can avoid doing that.”

  “Good, then, hopefully, you two will be able to work it all out.”

  Her smile disappeared and she gazed sadly into my eyes.

  “Maybe, but I’m not even sure I want to.”

  Shit, I hadn’t expected to hear that, but, either way, their situation would still reach some kind of resolution. I went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and finished up with a satisfying pee before coming back out and climbing up onto my bunk, where I lay down on top of the covers to take a moment to relax and reflect on the day. Bridgette and Babs, meanwhile, climbed into their bed and turned off the reading lamp, plunging our suite into darkness, the only illumination coming from the towns and streets of the Italian countryside that passed by our window. A moment later I heard the distinctive sounds of Babs and Bridgette making out and realized that it was starting to feel like the summers I used to spend as a teenager with my friends in Lake Tahoe. Days were spent riding off-road motorcycles, sailing, and swimming, while nights were spent canoodling with members of the opposite sex.

  “You two horny bears aren’t actually going to start humping are you?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry your pretty little head, Asshole. I’m far too tired for that,” Babs said.

  “Seriously?” Bridgette protested, sadly.

  “Seriously,” Babs responded.

  Quiet descended upon the compartment, and I lay there listening to the sound of the train rolling down the tracks as its gentle movements lulled me off to sleep.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Throw Momma from the Train

  A SOUND IN the hallway brought me awake, and I opene
d my eyes and realized that I was still fully dressed and lying on top of the covers of my bunk. I looked at my watch and saw that it was a little before two-thirty in the morning, and everyone was sound asleep, their gentle snores filling the otherwise quiet compartment. The evening’s cocktails were pushing hard against the walls of my bladder, and I decided that I should pee in hopes that I’d be able to sleep until morning. I threw my legs over the edge of the bed and looked around the space to get my bearings then quietly dropped down and tiptoed into the bathroom to unleash a mighty torrent of urine.

  Finished, and feeling a good five pounds lighter, I came out and could now hear some low muffled voices in the hallway, and it made me wonder if we might have some serious partiers in the first class car. I slipped on my shoes and went to the door and opened it a crack, hopeful I might catch a glimpse of what was happening outside. There, to my surprise, were the acid washed assclowns, and, stranger still, they were taping a hose to the vent above Stephanie Hu’s cabin. At the other end of that hose was a tank full of what I suspected was some kind of sleeping gas. I’d read that there had been an epidemic of these kinds of attacks all across Europe, though they were generally directed at people in camper vans. Apparently, gangs of assholes would sneak up, fill the intended vehicle full of sleeping gas, and then rob its inhabitant’s blind, leaving them to wake up with a mild headache and no idea of what happened to all their shit. It would appear that our acid washed assclowns were adapting this practice to train compartments, but, what the hell made them target Stephanie Hu? Suddenly, I had a terrible realization as I remembered that one of the assclowns had seen me coming out of her room, which meant that they thought it was our cabin, and we were the ones snoozing away inside. Fucking Europe was a fucked up place at the moment, and now I had inadvertently brought innocents into the path of danger. I was, therefore, going to have to put a stop to these assclowns once and for all and, hopefully, teach them a lesson about life, consequences, and perhaps even fashion.

  It was four against one, however, so my first instinct was to go out there with a pistol and threaten to blow off their ugly heads. As there were innocent people all around and only thin train walls to protect them from any stray bullets, I decided that I was going to have to do this with my fists, and that meant I needed to form some kind of game plan. Before I could do that, fate intervened when Stephanie suddenly opened her door and screamed, causing Mr. Cowboy Boots to place his hand over her mouth and push her back into her room. One of the assclowns followed him inside while two remained in the hallway, where they would obviously serve as sentries. Shit. The situation had just taken a drastic turn for the worse, and, based on what I’d seen of these asshole’s behavior thus far, there was a very real possibility that Stephanie would be facing some kind of assault—likely sexual. It was, therefore, time to act quickly and with extreme prejudice.

  The two assclowns in the hallway would be my first problem with the objective being to take them down as quietly as possible in order to keep their other two friends from joining the fight. I quickly sized them up and, because of their differing body types, nicknamed them Meat and Potatoes. Meat was more lean and muscular while Potatoes was a bit on the softer, larger side and had almost translucently white skin. God only knew if either was any kind of fighter, but anyway you sliced it—having two opponents was a hell of a lot easier than four.

  As I watched and waited for my opening, I realized they were both wearing earbuds and staring dumbly at their smartphones, completely enraptured by the digital glow of their screens. Fuck it—the only opening I needed was right there in the palm of their sweaty little hands. I slipped out the door and walked quietly up behind the closest guy—the one I called Meat. He was about my height, though a bit stockier, and his body was thick with bulky muscle, and he had a dour unpleasant face topped by short, dark, closely cropped hair. He looked like an asshole, and the closer I got, the more I realized he also smelled like one—his scent a combination of unsightly body odor and copious amounts of cheap cologne—the latter probably an attempt to cover up the former. Typical twentysomething Eurotrash.

  I tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned around and looked mildly stupefied until recognition set in. Before he could react or call out to his friend, I punched him in the throat, the goal being to make sure he stayed quiet while I delivered the next blow. It was a vertical palm to his face, and I followed it up with an inverted palm to his groin that brought his head down, allowing me to deliver simultaneous heel palms to his neck then transition into an inverted blood choke. He tried to break free by slamming me into the wall, and it finally created enough noise to draw Potatoes’s attention away from his phone. Potatoes looked confused, his dull eyes unblinking beneath his mop of dark unkempt hair until he finally realized his friend was in trouble. He pocketed his phone and stepped closer, an ugly sneer forming on his thin lips as he prepared to strike. Meat, meanwhile, was close to passing out and pliable enough that I maneuvered him between me and Potatoes, turning him into my human shield. Potatoes tried to hit me, throwing several flailing punches, but, with his friend’s body in the way, none of the strikes could get close to landing. Meat soon went limp in my arms, which meant that I was done with the entree, and it was time to deal with the side dish—Potatoes!

  I tossed Meat onto Potatoes, and it sent the two of them tumbling onto the floor. Potatoes turned out to be surprisingly quick for a big guy, and he shimmied out from under his friend and stood up looking ready to fight. But, fighting was all about range, speed, and initiative and, fortunately for me, he didn’t appear to have any of those in his favor. What he did have, however, was bulk. Potatoes was big boy, a particularly big out of shape boy, so his first attack, as expected, was to use his bulk by attempting a tackle. He came in like a charging bull elephant, and I decided to use my environment as a weapon and, to that end, simply waited until the last second then stepped sideways and directed him headfirst into the wall behind me. The collision created enough trauma to his brain to knock him into peaceful unconsciousness, and he collapsed and joined his friend on the floor.

  Now, it was time for the more difficult task, which was to enter Stephanie’s compartment and deal with Assclown Number Three and Mr. Cowboy Boots. The main problem, however, was that I had no idea what might be happening inside, so I would be going in blind and making tactical decisions on the fly. I took a second to listen at the door and heard the same Slavic hit hop music they had been listening to back at the Como train station, and I suspected it was probably purposeful to help cover any of Stephanie’s attempts to yell for help. With no other choice, I opened the door a crack and saw that Mr. Cowboy Boots had Stephanie on her bed, and he was writhing around on top of her, one hand over her mouth to muffle her screams, the other below her waist, where he was desperately trying to slide off her underwear. By adding opportunistic rape to petty theft, he was officially the two-time loser I suspected, and, now, fully enraged, I moved into the room only to suddenly feel an arm come from behind me and wrap around my neck. Goddammit! In my angry haste, I had forgotten to look for the other guy who was, obviously, hanging back to watch the door. It was probably the only smart thing he had ever done in his life, though it would be little consolation in the next few seconds.

  He was strong and had applied a decent chokehold, but I was guessing he was more of a bar brawler and used to taking advantage of drunk unskilled opponents, most likely with the help of his fellow gang members. That wouldn’t be the case tonight, for it was officially time for a tough life lesson, one he may, or may not, survive. The first goal was to loosen his grip on my throat, and that entailed going to one of two potential targets—eyes or balls. I decided to go with the latter, and shifted my hips to the left then swung a right hammer fist into his groin. He let out a pained groan and released my neck, allowing me to twist around and land a spinning elbow to the side of his head. He still managed to throw a punch, but, as it came in towards my face, I stepped out of its path and slapped it aside.
He chambered back his arm to throw another punch, but I was quicker and landed a right palm to his nose that knocked him back a step. I immediately closed the distance and took hold of his head and pulled him down and delivered knee strikes to his face until he went unconscious and collapsed to the floor. I had three assclowns down, which just left Mr. Cowboy Boots, and, luckily for me, the same obnoxious music that was covering up the noise of his attempted sexual assault was also covering up the noise of me taking out his friend. Of course, it also didn’t hurt that he was too busy trying to get into Stephanie Hu’s underwear to even notice my presence. I decided the first thing to do was turn off the fucking music that was blaring from their boom box. I reached down and clicked the off-button then turned to Mr. Cowboy boots, hopeful it would be enough to get his attention. Strangely, it had no effect, so I walked over and tapped him on the shoulder. Stephanie’s eyes went wide in relief, but Mr. Cowboy Boots just shrugged me off, obviously thinking I was one of his gang wanting to get in on the action.

  “Podozhdite vash grebanyy povorot!” he barked.

  I’m pretty sure he was speaking Russian, and, while I had no idea what he actually said, I had a feeling he was telling me to wait my turn. I ignored him, however, and tapped him again, but, this time, he turned around and looked annoyed until recognition dawned on his ugly face.

  “Privet, mudak,” I said, which translated as hello asshole.

  He glanced over and noticed his bloodied friend lying on the floor in the corner, then turned back to me, his face now overtaken by rage.

  “You! I’m going to fucking kill you, motherfucker!” he said, as he climbed off Stephanie, obviously livid that I had taken down his friend and, worse still, interrupted what was very likely one of his few sexual encounters.