Coco' Big Day P-3

LIONWORLD By William E Justin

Coco’s Big Day PART THREE

Inside, Buster White didn’t notice the boys peering in at him. His dancing eyes were focused exclusively on auntie Lucile. Her piercing gaze was aimed straight into his. Her three sisters sitting around the table hadn’t seen it in a long time but they knew what that meant. They grew up watching their oldest sister cast her eyes at men like that. That was back in The Oak Land nearly thirty years earlier. Lucile had been the princess in that place and time—The It Girl. She was bright and witty and had the perfect body to go with the perfect face. But not the perfect heart. Everybody agreed there was a craziness in her. A wild energy that family members recognized again when Maxim began to mature into a man. Lucile went from man to man to man like Max went through lions. No regular boy had any chance with her. She didn’t do regular boys. You had to have money, and money to spend on Lucile and the expensive tastes she cultivated. You had to spend that money taking her to new and different places that she hadn’t been before. And in return you had to be willing to take what Lucile wanted to give you when she wanted to give it to you. Those were her rules and she made men play by those rules. And she would take a little piece of every man when she was finished with him. Lucile was like…that. Lynette Le Muffett did not let her daughter Coco have very much to do with her sister Lucile. This was not the kind of influence she wanted for her. She encouraged the relationship with Jean D’Sole partly to counter the kind of draw a personality such as Lucile would exact on an impressionable girl. Jean had a good heart. She was a working women and an educated woman. She would not draw Coco to the wrong side of the road.

With her other two sisters, Lynette came away from the table and into the kitchen to check on preparations. Merle was in there picking snacks off the various trays of food. He listened to the three women talk about their sister and Buster. “I hope she take that old goat down” said middle sister May. Lynette was reflective. “I could never quite make out how such a sweet and wonderful boy like Big-E had come from somethin’ like that. His mother musta been a fine woman.” Merle heard them talking and told them about the bet. He asked them if they wanted in. His Auntie May did. “I’m puttin’ one-hundred on my big sister Lucile!” she announced in a loud voice. The head chef for the catering group was working nearby, with her back away from them. She was trying to suppress a smile. Merle explained the terms and conditions of the bet. He got out his little pad of paper and took money from May; then some more from the other two of Lucile’s sister’s. Buster had barely noticed that the three had left the table. He was moving his eyes back and forth between Lucile’s beautiful face and her perfectly outstretched hand that was placed on the table facing him. His deep gravelly voice sounded in a softer volume. “Lucile, when you were twenty-two or twenty-three. I mean, when you were just so fresh and pure. Was there any man your own age that could really appreciate just how fine you were? I mean really appreciate every part of how you could be?” Buster felt chemical lust from deep within him flow out on his breath through his words. “Now, wasn’t it the man of thirty-five or forty who really understood how fine you were?” “Well, actually he was very near fifty” Lucile remembered with some fondness. That man had been good for a whole year. The old memory of how she’d felt a little bad about his wife and teenage daughter became vivid again. Hmm…..was the tiny rumble of sound going through Buster. He let his eyes move around Lucile’s still wonderful form. Then he spoke very slowly. With a hypnotic rhythm few would’ve been able to notice he said; “You know Lucile…today, right now, in this place…I’m that same man.” He let his hand slide toward hers. It wasn’t quivering like usual. In fact, he suddenly felt thirty years younger. When his fingers had touched hers, Buster let feigned sadness fill his eyes as he added; “I mean, despite what you many be seeing in front of you”. Lucile smiled with a tiny bit of warmth few would’ve even noticed. Buster was cute she thought. He was a boy that had never stopped being a boy. And she liked boys of all kinds when they were even a little good at trying to act like men. She had heard the stories about Buster White. She knew how people talked about him behind his back. And she could see that he wasn’t the type to have ever cared much at all. She straightened her back. “Oh but Buster, I’m a married woman these days”. That rumbling sound began to move through him again. How many times had he heard that? But she had conveyed the age-old truth so easily behind her words—that she liked what she heard and was drawn closer. “You know Lucile, when I was a young man, I used to fight those Lions like my son. I killed a few of them. And every time I got one I would spend that night going from place to place looking for somebody just like you as a reward for having survived. And it’s been a long, long time since I met anyone like you.” “Oh but Buster” she replied meaning to correct him, “I don’t think you ever met anyone quite like me!” At that moment her black eyes swallowed every bit of the reflected light that was present a moment earlier. He knew that “bottomless pit” look. But she was very unique. He pretended to look around the room. “Lucile, where is that husband you spoke off?” “Oh, he back home in Brazil” she said, putting on a little look of concern. “He had a stroke about one year ago tonight”. She said this as her smile briefly came back on and the natural moisture returned to her eyes. Then she brought her lips together to suppress any hint of a smile. “Po ol’ thing….He can’t even talk anymo’….can’t even tell me not to spend his money”. Buster White chuckled deeply for a very long moment. He was romanced.

At the other end of the room, Bill and Ronnie were still with their crewmen. They were all looking down at the table, instructed not to look sideways over at Buster and Lucile. Ronnie gave them the play-by-play. “Oooooh, my oafy HIT-TEEN’ . “She jus’ laying out Busta’s coffin. That’s all.” Bill was shaking his head. They were all trying hard not to burst into laughter again and make another scene. Big-E was with Coco, greeting more guests at the entry. “Nooo….” Ronnie squealed at low volume, “My oafy gonna pre-vail!” Jean d’Sole had just arrived with “sub-commander” Robert Casoni—as Coco had lately been calling her long-time friend and right-hand man. Accompanying the spunky Casoni was his lover—the “honorary” oafy Randi, who entered the room and immediately cast an eye toward the large table where the Le Muffett crew had settled in. Robert and Randi had driven Jean in from the airport. Soon the five were joined by Sydney who came running up to hug the Frenchwoman she had last seen only two months earlier when she was a guest at the Luani home on Maui. She wore a simple outfit that would slightly change color as she moved through different lights. It featured some fine material that Coco hadn’t seen before. As Jean was being introduced for the first time to Randi, Coco was examining the stitching pattern and strange luster of the cloth. She was playing with a portion of the vest bottom in between her thumb and finger. Jean brushed Coco’s hand off her without a glance and opened her arms to invite “her girls” in for a hug. Sydney and Coco, both noticeably taller, fell in against each of her shoulders like oversized babies. “You two can never again fight” Jean said with a brief sniffle and soon the three were nearly in tears and making feminine oohh and mmmnn sounds. Big-E heard this from behind and turned around to Robert Casoni who shot a smile his way. Robert had funny eyes that would dilate in slightly different ways from one another. It made him look very smart and a little crazy. “This is how they have always been together”, he said. His natural speaking voice was a little excited but cast in a matter-of-fact manner. It was cut with strange, subtle blends of different accents. “And you Robert, our adorable little mighty-man” said Sydney, straightening her back from the embrace with Jean and Coco and flashing a loving smile at him. “Everybody called him the ‘woman-walker’” she remembered, adding that a businessman once asked him for his card saying he needed his wife walked, ‘five days a week, rain or shine!’”. Coco said that Robert still walked her three days a week. “It’s supposed to be five days” he exclaimed, “but she sends Little B for two days as a substitute”. Big-E —who always had to force her to exercise—added that if Coco could ever learn to sew and walk at the same time, she would do her road work everyday. Randi took all of this in with deep interest. He was anxious to get little tidbits about how Robert was before they met. He was a full four inches taller then Casoni and liked to keep his hand placed delicately on the curve of Robert’s shoulder as they all spoke. He was waiting for Big-E to make eye contact. They hadn’t seen each other since “the Little B incident” and he wanted to see his expression. He didn’t get the chance. After repeating his welcome, Big-E was off to look for Maxim and Jimmy Luani and talk more about the photograph they were to pose for together once Mary Harris and her assistants arrived. Jimmy was standing along side Max when Big-E walked up. Dr. Ben Akiyama had slipped in behind him as he went by. When Big-E stopped to join the others, The Le Muffett martial arts instructor was directly in back of him hiding in his blind spot. He tapped Big-E’s flank and it made him jump a little. This brought boyish grins to the mouths of Max and Jimmy. “I got all three of you guys together” Akiyama said with obvious delight. “I can’t believe it. Jimmy, Max said it would be O.K. if I sneak in and get a picture with my camera phone when they take the big portrait. Is that O.K. with you?” Jimmy said he didn’t care. “Oh good” Dr. Ben said. “I’m going to sell them in Japan. You’re the favorite there.” “I think, maybe ‘cause I work with the all-Asia team…” “Yeah, but it’s more then that. The people really like you over there. They say you that your ‘fortunate karma’ is very ‘auspicious’ because you are a good boy. They really like your mother a lot as well. She shows up on the TV quite a bit.” Jimmy’s mom was a cholia from the Southern California’s Port City. Many Asian companies had paid her excellent fees to teach the wives of A Class executives how to do Latin American cooking.

Nobody there could exactly understand every word she said, but they loved her spirit and mannerisms. Luani nodded. “Yeah, my Mom loves them too. It’s funny how we sometimes are better thought of among the people we don’t know…who are of a different culture”. “You know what I tell them in Japan about Max?” said Dr. Ben. “I tell the little kids that he isn’t a real man—that he was built in a secret World Security facility in the California desert! Their eyes get as wide as sea disks. I tell them that we spent years programming him to talk and that I have to sometimes ‘operate’ him like a video game character from my cell phone. ‘ooohh, he a robot?’ they ask me. Yeah, I say. But we got the face from a real guy!” The three lion-fighters were laughing big. Dr. Ben loved to make up stories and tell jokes about Maxim. The better the audience, the bigger and crazier the stories would get. In the wide world, he was about the only one who could successfully use him as a foil. Professional comedians—needing an endless supply of jokes to survive—had tried to play off of Maxim’s artificial leg but it had never panned out. You couldn’t squeeze too much humor out of an amputation without looking brutal. Especially if the subject of the joke was as wellregarded as the great Lion-fighter. Big-E got a lot more of it. Akiyama enjoyed poking fun at him as much as he did with Max. He explained that while hosting grandparents for a luncheon at his big martial arts studio in Tokyo, he had told one woman about how promiscuous Big-E White really was; that he was very faithful to his wife but could not resist Asian woman past the age of 70. He mimicked some crazy look on the face of the woman. While watching the reaction to his jokes, Merle slipped up from behind and caught Dr. Ben in a body lock. Big-E, Max and Jimmy were wide-eyed. They knew just how slippery-quick and field-aware this unlikely-looking martial arts master had always been. So now the joker became the target. “Dr. Ben!” exclaimed Max, as his brother continued to grasp him, “I do believe time is catching up with you! Man, you gonna end up like the guy who take so long to raise up the rifle, that the rabbit’s long since hopped away.” Akiyama would have liked to have proved him wrong by dropping out of the hold he was in. But Merle was ever-so-slightly varying his grasp with small, subtle changes in the pressure. He would find no brief window of opportunity to pass through. He’d taught Merle well. Instead, he rocked his chin back and forth sideways and made a voice like a cranky old man. “My rifle come up good! My rifle come up good!” As they laughed at this antic, Merle released Dr. Ben from his grasp while taking a big, full step backwards to avoid getting tagged with any quick, backlash movement from the master. In the early days, Dr. Ben would occasionally catch his attention lagging at a certain point and pull a button off his shirt so fast he often didn’t even notice it until it appeared in the palm of his hand when displayed. Merle wasn’t going to lose any buttons today. Ben Akiyama was reflective and spoke slower then before. “It’s a good thing to be caught and released so quickly” he said. “This, I think, is what happens at the end. We spend all our lives avoiding our demise— dancing around it, striking at it with our disciplines. We make our jokes and laugh at it. I used to think I was that one-in-a-billion guy who could permanently hold it at bay. But today…I don’t know.” He paused and looked for a second like he had frozen-up and retreated deep into the center of his mind. Then suddenly he blinked and poured out a rapid burst of the trademark buoyancy they had been treated to since they were kids. “Today, I only seventy-five percent sure I’m going to live forever!” Not far away, Randi had come up to the table where Bill and Ronnie were sitting with the camera and security men from the crew. Most of them had filled the small reception area of his Poodle Care studio that day following the final match of the previous season when “The Little B Incident” had taken place. The Lion-fighters greeted him like one of their own. An “honorary oafy” for making sure the secret stayed within their circle. Since the event, Randi had read up more on what he regarded as this strangest of sports. He couldn’t quite figure out why men would want to fight lions. He understood why a man would want to groom, clip and style poodle dogs—it made you happy to give the dogs the attention required to be healthy and beautiful. And when the dogs were well cared for they transferred part of this glow to the pet owners. It was win-win-win. But when men fought lions there was always a great deal of blood and loss. There was money to be made—that was for sure. But why would something so naturally repulsive and dangerous actually be an attraction? It was like asking why certain people in this time enjoyed seeing the “real torture” videos passed around by the Fascist youth. That sick form of entertainment wasn’t sport but pure depravity where C Class castoffs— human beings—were used in the productions.