Mangled Meat (9 page)

Flood’s eyes were peeled now, the drama cutting through the dark. More words flew upward, like tiny bats.

“I-I worked a car show in Tampa luh-luh-last weekend...”

Flood could see Leon standing, arms crossed, his head, too, out of frame.

“Um-hmm. And?”

The girl’s lower lip quivered, one cheek a blushing pink from the slaps. “And—that’s all.”

“Solo? Or were you working for Henry Phipps?”

“Solo!” she nearly jumped up and exclaimed.

“Hmm? Really?”

“Yes! I swear!”

“I’ve lost three girls to Henry. I’m not going to lose anymore. I won’t let you girls embarrass me like that. I take care of you all, and I don’t deserve to be humiliated.”

“I was soloing the car show, I swear to God! I wasn’t working on the side for Phipps!”

“I heard she was,” Oscar said.

“I wasn’t! I swear, I swear!”

Leon: “What do you think, Osc? You believe her?”

“No. Lemme fuck her up. Lemme bottle-job her.”

Jinny put face in hands, sobbing. “I didn’t, I didn’t. I’d never work for someone else...”

“I...,” Leon began. A beat. A gust of breeze. Then: “I believe her.”

Now her sobs were of relief.

“Thank you for being honest, Jinny. I hope we can maintain a wonderful friendship and working relationship.”

“Thank you, thank you. I made about a grand, I’ll give it all to you tomorrow.”

“Not necessary. I know you need it for your child. But you know the rules. If you hadn’t told the truth, it would be...much worse. Right? You know the rules?”

She gulped and nodded.

“Do you deserve what’s coming?”

Another gulp, another nod.

“Good girl. I’ve always liked you. You can make it hard, or you can make it easy.”

The girl stood up, head stooped, her nudity lusterless now.

Oscar seemed to be putting something on his hand. Flood’s mind flashed with the worst possibilities (
Brass knuckles? A blackjack?
) but then he noticed it was a glove, a large black glove. The girl turned to face Oscar, while Leon chicken-winged her from behind.

“Don’t make a sound,” he said into her ear.

By now Flood realized the glove’s uniqueness: it was a sand-mitt, something police and prison guards used as a non-lethal weapon.

Holy shit,
he thought.

In the dark he reached for the phone to call hotel security and report an assault, but—

The room’s darkness around him, and the glaring image from the lit window, made him feel encased in cement.

“Not the face,” Leon said, propping the girl up by her elbows.

Oscar opened and closed the gloved hand, smacked it into his palm several times.

Call security,
Flood thought.

The bald man belly-punched her once with a sound like a sandbag hitting the floor.

WHAP.

She tried to double over but Leon’s hold wouldn’t permit it.

WHAP.
Another jab to the belly. Then another, and another.

The legs she stood on gave way; Leon kept holding her up, like a trainer holding a boxing pad. The fifth blow to the belly sent her head bouncing around, a ball on a spring. She must barely be conscious now.

Call the police!
Flood screamed at himself, hand hovering over the phone.

His mind, somehow, felt vacant, his spirit...gone.

Then his hand drifted off on its own...

A confusion consumed him. Flood’s eyes were riveted to the window. He kept watching the brutality, knowing he should do something to help the girl, but his conscience was nowhere to be found. Oscar afforded her several more blows to the belly, then threw her down on the bed. Both men walked out of view. Jinny shuddered on the mattress in a fetal position, gasping, pain stamped into her face like a twisted mask.

God Almighty,
Flood thought.
What am I doing?

Without even any direct awareness, Flood had pulled his shorts down and was masturbating. His penis felt alien, the erection so hard and so complete, for a moment he didn’t believe it was his own. A final stare, then, at the girl’s brutalized nakedness, the suffering on her face...

Fresh sensations churned, then exploded; Flood nearly cried out when his orgasm broke, gusts from his groin shooting feet-long plumes of sperm through the air. The first spurts actually sailed out the window, and what was left pelted the wall. Flood collapsed.

This was a big deal to him—his first orgasm in three years.

***

Next morning, his confusion turned to shame.
How could that have happened?
he asked his own face in the bathroom mirror.
What kind of person am I?

He contemplated that question for the short walk across Gulf Boulevard to the convention center. And he
knew
.
I’m not a bad person. I don’t exploit people, or lie, or cheat, or steal.
So what had happened last night?

Flood’s job at the electronics show was essentially information support: to explain marketing and sales details to any prospective high-volume buyers, which generally didn’t occur until the last day. His underlings ran the booth while he wandered the showroom, pretending to be checking out the competition’s new products—
pretending
because his mind was surely elsewhere. He wended through the crowd, oblivious and still shaken; he scarcely even noticed the human eye-candy that some booths sported: stunningly beautiful women in bikinis and high-heels, handing out brochures. Additionally, when competitors he knew personally bid him a greeting he could only wave back or nod in the dimmest fog. Flood felt like a single bug in a haystack.

Walking around for several hours didn’t clear his head as he’d hoped.
I should have called the police immediately, or the security desk—something, anything. But what did I do instead? I stood there and jerked off because I haven’t been able to come since Felicity left me. I witnessed a girl getting beaten, and instead of doing anything about it...I JERKED OFF! What the hell is WRONG with me?
It didn’t matter that it was just a few belly-punches; it was brutal and it was sick. It was a criminal assault. The situation had been easy enough to figure, nearly a cliche: “Leon” was obviously the pimp, “Oscar” the lieutenant, and Jinny the prostitute. She’d been holding out on Leon, working on the side behind his back—a supreme no-no in the field. Flood’s id kicked in a plea to rationalize:
Okay, yeah, sure, she got beat up, but that happens to dishonest whores. It’s part of the turf and she knows it. She’s a whore, and prostitution is illegal. Leon and the bald guy are panderers, and pandering is illegal. They’re all a bunch of criminals, so why do I feel guilty? I’M not a criminal. If they saw someone beating ME up, would THEY call the police? Fat chance. So I’m not gonna let myself feel like shit because a girl who had it coming to her got her ass kicked...

Flood felt better for all of five minutes, then slumped again when he admitted the falsehood.

By three, the convention center had become a hive; he thought of the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, the only difference being that the floor of the New York Stock Exchange didn’t have voluptuous women in bikinis prancing about. That voluptuousness, though, only depressed him more. It was for every one else but...

Not for me. Never for me
.

Last night was an anomaly; he knew he was back to square one. His penis felt like a flap of numb skin in his trousers.

I don’t need to be here,
he realized.
Let the young guys have at it. I think I’ll go get drunk.

“How’s business, fellas?” he asked his sales staff back at his company’s booth.

“We’re kicking ass,” said Farris, their Tom Cruise lookalike technical rep, who then held up a clipboard, “and taking names.”

“Good work,” Flood said, impressed by the list of possible buyers. “You guys are hauling them in.”

The sales rep, Nathans, looked more like John Candy than Cruise. He glanced up just as a competitor’s ad girl walked by: hourglass figure bursting out of a vermillion string bikini, the top of which hoisted what must have been 38 double-D’s. A big Colegate grin flashed behind the sign she held, advertizing network-user docking stations for palmtop computers. The sign read DOCK WITH ME!

“We’re hauling them in, all right, boss,” Nathans remarked. “But I wouldn’t mind if we had a couple ad-girls like that.”

“We don’t need tits and ass to sell our peripherals,” Flood said. “Ours work, theirs don’t.”

“Yeah, but still...”

The leering grins of both of the younger men followed the sultry woman. From behind, the tanned rump jiggled, cellulite-free, each perfect buttock totally nude, divided only by a t-back strap.

“How’d you like to plug something into
her
USB, huh, Nathans?” Farris asked under his breath.

Nathans made a ludicrous pelvic gesture. “Yeah, seven and a half gigs of RAM.”

Everything is sex,
came Flood’s dismal concession. At least he was conditioned now—yes, last night was indeed a fluke. The vision of the woman did little for him.

Flood tried to mask his despair. “Fellas, you know what I’m gonna do?”

“Give us a raise?” Nathan guessed.

“One better. I’m gonna leave you guys here to work your asses off while I go walk on the beach. You wanna know
why
I’m gonna do that?”

“Because you
can
?” Farris said.

“Smart boy.”

“No problemo, boss,” Farris assured. “We’ve got it covered. Put your faith in us.”

Nathans piped in, “Aw, that’s his kiss-the-boss’s-ass way of saying we don’t need you.”

“Works for me,” Flood replied. “I’ll be here all day tomorrow to handle those sales interviews. Anything you guys need before I blow this computer-geek pop stand?”

“Maybe just a collar and chain,” Farris said.

Flood looked quizzical. “A collar and chain?”

“Yeah, to keep Nathans off that docking-station bimbo in the t-back.”

“Don’t need it now,” Nathans told them. “I already shot my load in my pants the last time she came around.”

“See ya, boss!”

“Have fun on the beach!”

Flood walked away, shaking his head.
Kids,
he thought.
If they only knew.
He hustled out of the con center, but even crossing the street back to his hotel, his vision was further assailed by more of the same imagery: more young women in bikinis strutting up and down the sidewalk, sashaying across the parking lots, bending over their open car trunks to lift out beach towels and coolers.
Holy Jesus,
Flood’s thoughts groaned.
I can’t turn my head without seeing it...

He all but raced back up to his room, frustrations piling up.
Oh, man,
he thought when he looked in the bathroom mirror after changing.
Gee, I wonder if anyone’ll guess I’m not from Florida.
Parrot-green swim trunks, clunky Seattle sandals, and skin whiter than a Kenmore refrigerator. He slipped on an old Mariners shirt, sighing, and left the room.

More young women in bikinis stood waiting for the elevator, chatting gayly. One girl’s bikini—a bright and nearly luminous fuchsia—clung so tightly to her breasts and rump that it seemed anodized on her. Another had nipples which poked out like thumb-ends. Flood felt a twinge in his chest, turned, and fled for the stairs. Better to walk the five flights than stand waiting in that gaggle of cruel reminders.

He felt calmer once in the cool stairwell. 4
^TH
FLOOR, read the next door down. Flood stalled.

What am I doing?
he asked himself. His hand was turning the knob.

He
knew
what he was doing.

Morbid curiosity, I guess...
What did he expect? To actually
see
the girl? What was her name? Jinny?
What, I think I’m just going to SEE HER walking out of the room?

He pushed his confusion behind. In his mind, he pictured the hotel’s eye-beam configuration, then turned on the next wing.

That must be it,
he realized. Last room on the south wing.

415, the door read.

A plastic tag in the key-card slot let him know: DO NOT DISTURB.