WTC6: Snow Leopards

It was another summer weekend at Neil McCracken’s mansion in Pine Grove, and this time Theo was there as early as Saturday brunch. He came with Marvin, who had also been there with him last weekend, when they came to a late night party and then got into a drunken argument that caused Marvin to abruptly leave.

Over the last few days Theo had tried to contact Marvin to figure out what happened between them that night, but Marvin wouldn’t respond. He was clearly upset. Then on Thursday it was, probably, that he finally responded. He explained that he thought Theo was overdosing on something because he was acting real erratic. When he tried to take him home, Theo lashed out and called him a cock blocker. Marvin was enraged by the insult and left. Theo said that he didn’t remember saying that, and that he knows Marvin is not that kind of a friend. Marvin for his part expressed that, knowing now that Theo had so much fun and made friends that night, he looked back at it and thought he may have overreacted.

Theo didn’t tell Marvin about his drug deal with Lisa. He invited him to join him again at the mansion – he “needed backup” – and Marvin agreed.

The food was laid out on a large table on the patio by the poolside bar. The two friends were greeted by Tammy, Lisa, and Abhay, the hustler.

- The bad boys are back again. How are you honey? Hello, Marvin - Lisa gave the two boys a hug, and then Tammy did the same. A smile and a wave sufficed with Abhay. 

- We’re good. I see you guys at it again, eh? The party never stops, - said Marvin.

- That’s right! And party needs fuel, which I trust you have brought for us, right? – Lisa asked Theo.

- Of course. Don’t I look reliable - said Theo.

- Serious, - said Tammy - guess also reliable.

- Did you just come from school? What’s with the rucksack? – asked Abhay.

- Brought my swimming gear - said Theo.

They ate and talked about vacations in Florida and California. Lisa then asked Theo to talk in private, and they went into the mansion. On their way they walked by a glass-paned fitness room and saw Maya, the cold young blonde, giving a yoga class to about twenty people. Neil was among them in the front row, together with a mix of younger and older people that must have corresponded to Maya’s and Neil’s friends, respectively.

- She’s a yoga instructor, a fitness and dance instructor, a painter, plays the piano, and designs fashion. She even plays chess! - said Lisa. – What a genius of a woman, don’t you think Theo?

- She’s also hot.

They went to a bedroom upstairs and Lisa rummaged through a purse on a lazy chair by the bed. Theo reclined into another armchair, on the opposite end of the room. Sun rays pierced through cracked venetian blinds and filled the spacious room with warmth and sweet secrecy. The air was fresh, and the furniture smelt rich. Lisa turned around with a manila envelope:

- Here, I counted it, but you can double check.

She stood in front of Theo and raised her hair while she waited. She looked especially tall from the viewpoint of the wheelchair, and her sharp features gave her a look of authority and confidence. Theo was nervous about this exchange, but Lisa’s nonchalant airs put him at ease and filled him with confidence too. He pulled a paper bag out of his rucksack and handed it over. Lisa took a peek then put it on the bed. She then sat in Theo’s lap and smiled into his eyes.

- You really are a bad boy.

They returned to the poolside a half an hour later and saw that the yoga team has joined the outdoor party. You could tell them apart as they were dressed in athleisure - legs and asses everywhere. The group was sitting around a large circle of couches laid out by the pool, drinking out of fluted glasses. Most of the younger guests were on their smartphones, joining in the conversation every once in a while. The young women touched and swiped the phone screens with bejewelled, manicured fingers, their faces looking down on the screens with sublime self-absorption, their long eyelashes blinking serenely. 

From the dawn of time young women must have struck up the attitude of self-sufficiency at parties, inviting onlookers to imitate their obsession with their lofty persons. Pretty young women always pretended not to notice you in order for you to think of them as above you, and so that, if you perchance gathered the courage to talk to them, they would have the upper hand, at least in the initial stages of courtship, up until point at least when they would negotiate a relationship and take up, generally speaking, a more subservient attitude.

It has always been like that, but since 2007 and the advent of the iPhone, thanks to this miraculous implement of narcissism, pretty young women have been able to take the art of disinterested posturing to previously unattainable heights. 

Lisa and Tammy looked aloof on their phones too, but they didn’t spend all that much time absorbed in them, and when they did, they were nothing compared to Maya, who did the phone narcissism so well that she reminded one of some exotic beast, perhaps a snow leopard, sitting on a high boulder in the Himalayas, existing on a mystical plane far above the smoggy struggle of desperate mortals. 

- Man, I wish she would handle my bits like she handles her iPhone, - observed Marvin to Theo.

Marvin was entertaining the crowd with self-deprecating jokes about his horrible boss and horrible dating experiences, his usual material. It was generally a merry crowd, except for Maya and a couple of her friends who also claimed to be models and who, whenever they’d lift their heads from their phones to get an updated reading on their immediate physical surroundings, would smile at Marvin uncomfortably, as if to say, “Well, I don’t know if you should be revealing that about yourself in public.”

Theo and Lisa joined in drinking champagne too. Once again, Neil generously distributed cigars, and Theo and Abhay accepted. Conversation turned to business and Abhay introduced yet another one of his entrepreneurial ventures. He had equity in a local MMA gym and tournament, Animal Fitness. They were in talks with the UFC to sign some of the fighters. The most promising among them was a kid named Anselmo Perez, “a wrecking ball of a fighter”.

- I know Anselmo, we call him Ants - said Theo – I used to box with him. We sparred often.

- What? No way - said Abhay - you are a boxer? 

- Theo used to be the shit, man - said Marvin – Then he got injured. Don’t mess with this guy still, though.

- Another score for Theo - said Tammy – you keep getting badder and badder. The next thing you are going to tell us is that you are some kind of a mob lynchpin! 

- Hehe, not at all. I have nothing to do with any mobs. What mobs?

The conversation rolled on about fight sports. Abhay and Theo got deep into it with each other, debating historical fights and comparing fighters, world-famous and local. Lisa and Tammy and Marvin sat around them but led some separate conversation. Theo talked about his former sparring partner Perez:

-     Ants quit Bad Left Hook because he thought he was getting some horrible decisions from judges in those fight nights that used to be organised by, what’s their name, Beast Mode Promotions or whatever, and he thought his coaches were getting bribed and not standing up for him. 

-     We love Perez at Animal - said Abhay – but that’s just delusional. You know who ran Beast Mode? I did, with a bunch of friends. We organised all those great nights! And we gave Perez the exposure he needed, but he didn’t appreciate it at the time. He can say all he wants, but those loses were legit, and they forced him to improve to where he is now. And now he’s with us, isn’t he? We are all good now!

-     You, it was you, you mother… , - said Theo – you … crook, haha. It all makes sense. 

-     Hey, watch it, tough guy, you may be an ex-boxer, but I am right now a blue belt in jiu-jitsu.

In mid-afternoon the clouds cleared, and the sky became a traceless blue. Temperature was now in mid-thirties Celsius, and the bushes were buzzing with cicadas, a sure proof of peak summer. The crowd changed into swimming gear and went into and around the pool.

Abhay and Theo got drunk in the pool. Abhay begun challenging Theo to a wresting session on the grass. Theo refused out of hand, looking at the faces around him and thinking how embarrassing it would be to get into what’s essentially a drunken bar brawl in front of all the ladies. However, Abhay persisted, calling him “bashful”, and when Theo looked at Lisa and Tammy and Marvin, they too encouraged him. They were sincerely excited to see the fight.

The two fighters then pulled out of the water and sure enough gripped each other and went for it right on the lawn. The wrestling was surprisingly snappy, almost violent. Abhay tried to be technical, while Theo was more brute-force.

The spectacle created a circle of onlookers, including Neil and his finance friends and Maya and her model friends. The bankers grinned knowingly, while the models looked almost disgusted, but couldn’t look away.

After a good five minutes of struggle, Theo won with a simple rear naked choke. Abhay tapped out, and the two shook hands and smiled and hugged with mutual respect.

- You are not used to plain no-gi wrestling - said Theo, by way of making Abhay feel better - but you are still a tough nut to crack.

 -     Yay, the champion! – both Lisa and Tammy hopped around Theo and hugged down on his neck and kissed his cheek. They led him by the two arms onto the sofa and gave him a massage, because he told them he may have pulled a back muscle.  

-     Where is my massage? – joked Abhay.

Neil joined the table with Maya in tow. 

-     That was pretty impressive, guys. You know, back in my day, we all trained karate and taekwondo.  

Theo and Abhay looked at each other knowingly.

-     Taekwondo is great for kicks, - said Theo after an awkward silence.

-     What, you think karate is bullshit? – said Neil.

-     Well, look. I wouldn’t want to mess with a guy with ten years of karate experience, not at all. But, what about a kickboxer with ten years of experience? Definitely not. And if I had to bet, I would bet easily, every time, on the kickboxer against the karate dude. Right Abhay?

Abhay just twisted his head. Theo suggested it was time for a swim, to cool off, and Abhay joined him. Energised from the fight, the two of them started jumping off the diving board. Tammy and Lisa joined with their drinks and joked with them. Lisa and Theo then play-wrestled, and Theo picked her up and threw her in the pool. He then chased down Tammy and threw her in the pool, too. The ladies both emitted a joyous type of scream as they flew into the water. Abhay then picked up Theo and threw him in the pool.

Marvin, who the whole time had been desperately working on one of Maya’s friends, made an attempt to throw her in the pool, but after merely touching her forearm his would-be victim gave him a violent look that froze him in his tracks.

* * *

At night, more guests arrived, and a DJ set up his booth. The night turned into a dance party, just like it was the weekend before. Theo and Lisa and Tammy stuck together, and Lisa shared generously the drugs Theo had sold her. Lisa was also handing them out to other friends, referencing Theo whenever they asked where she got such good stuff. As a result, Theo built up several new leads, and he was excited about it.

Later in the night Theo was dancing sandwiched between Lisa and Tammy. Marvin was having a great time too, as he was now dancing with some of Maya’s young friends. He had earned some partial access, clearly. Suddenly, the music switched to salsa. But they didn’t really know how to dance salsa.

It was Neil who took over the spotlight, spinning Maya around. He made her look good, but Maya was clearly uncomfortable, doing excessive pirouettes that didn’t quite fit the rhythm. After a couple of songs, he disposed of Maya and took up his wife Tammy to dance. They lit up the floor. Tammy turned out to be just as good as Neil. They put up a show, with the rest of the crowd surrounding them in a circle and clapping and hollering whenever they would make an impressive move.

After Tammy, it was Lisa’s turn. She too was a great salsa dancer; it seemed like Neil and she had rehearsed a hundred times, they were that smooth. As they went on, Tammy yelled in Theo’s ear that Lisa and she had learned to dance together, going around Latin music club for several years.

At the bar, Theo joined Marvin and Abhay, talking to Maya and her model girlfriends. Abhay and Marvin were both desperately hitting on the girls, their desire suppressed by strained coquetry, but nevertheless bursting forth in occasional flashes of pained, desperate expression on their faces. The girls, meanwhile, were having a very easy time, talking innocently and purely about innocuous subjects like art or exercise or food. They had the bearing of a posse of skinny prep school teenage boys, caring about nothing and knowing nothing about caring itself.

“Why are all the model chicks so asexual?”, thought Theo to himself, “Their bodies are asexual, and they don’t show a single drop of passion.”

Maya finally started talking about something. She was excusing her performance by explaining that she had studied ballet for years, and she is not used to the fast rhythm of salsa. As Abhay and Marvin were busy working on her friends, she turned to tell her story to Theo.

- Sounds like you worked so hard on your ballet. Must of been tough - Theo told her.

- It was! With the National Ballet I had two hundred performances per year, sixty hours of practice per week!

- Wow, that must have sucked - said Theo. He then left and found Lisa and Tammy and Neil seated together and drinking a cognac.

-     Come here, have a seat, I want to talk to you - Neil waved Theo to sit next to him.

-     I like you, - he continued – you have balls, but you are also smart. I want you to come with us on a trip next week. We are going up to to the cottage country for the Labour. Day weekend, from that Wednesday to Tuesday. I have a big place there and we can provide a couple of rooms for you and your friends. I’ll have many people over, probably about a hundred, including a lot of people you have met here. We will have fun at the cottage, then maybe go fishing on the lake or even hunting, or hit up a casino nearby. You can make a lot of connections there.

-     Well, I can’t come until Friday, that’s when the long weekend starts. Maybe Thursday night.

-     That will be fine. You can get a ride up there, right?

-     Sure. 

Towards the end of the party, Abhay found out that Theo was invited to the cottage trip. He wasn’t.

-     Man, what’s your secret? I want to go chill out in Massiqua, too.

-     Well, it looks like they want to do business with me. 

-     That’s right. You know what, I was going to tell you. I know people who can move you stuff too. Can you hook me up too with a couple of g’s of the pills?

-     Five grand is the lowest I do, man.

-     Man… Fine, I’ll buy that much, but I come to with you to the cottage as your guest.

-     You buy ten grand, and of course do not sell it there on anywhere on my territory, which is here and pretty much anywhere in Pine Grove. 

-     Seven-five.

-     All right, deal. What car do you drive?

-     I’ve got a Lexus sedan.

-     Hm, okay. You can get there by yourself then.