Chapter 1
"Watchin' the launch."
"No, that's not what I meant when I axed you what you was Join' sittin here, Champ.
"I meant why aren't you out there joggin'. "
"I can do that any time, Tony.
"But I wanna see 'em get the shuttle program back in action."
"Yeah, well I don't see what that's got ta do witchoo."
"Hey man, it's got ta do with me, with you, with all of us.
"We lookin' at the future in the makin' here."
"Your future is the fight comin' up next month, pal.
"That or shinin' shoes outside the fuckin' train station."
And Tony realizes that he has once again gone too far.
His racism is showing.
He can't help it and means nothing by it.
But what can you do, growing up in a neighborhood where blacks (negroes, they were called back then) are referred to as "mulignans"-eggplants?
Stereotypes get ingrained, become second nature.
And there is no hatred, no contempt behind it.
And yet, there can be.
When did these fucking mulignans get so fucking sensitive, all of a sudden? Who knows?
And all Tony wants to do is get him out there and train him to a razor edge.
Its what all their futures depend on, really.
What the fuck do they, any of them, care what those clowns do on the taxpayers' money?
All this excitement so a bunch of yoyos in space suits can say clever things and smile and wave.
Besides, Tony reasons, there ain't a guinea in the bunch-again.
And where would any of 'em be, if not for Mrs. Columbo's boy Cristoforo back in 1492?
So number one it ain't fair and number two, who the fuck cares?
But here he sits, the heavyweight champion of the world, at least for the next month, as Tony constantly reminds him, eyes glued to the stupid fuckin' tube like a school kid.
Geez, will you lookit that?
Nappy-headed sumbitch even got his fingers crossed.
Disgusted, Tony strolls out onto the porch. Perfect time, perfect day for runnin', he thinks. Humidity's down and it's not too hot yet. But the champ is wasting it. Wasting the day, the opportunity, himself. Over a matter that concerns him not in the least. Over something in a different world from the one in which he-they-exist. Tony can't stand it.
He's gotta say something, that's all there is to it.
He crashes back into the living room of the deluxe log cabin that is the base of operations at the training camp.
"Champ, will you for crissakes get fuckin' with it already?"
And Teddy Robinson, the current champ, does in fact look at Tony, glaring. "This is important, Tony."
The words are reasonable, but the tone is that of the repressed fury, of power pent up and under heavy restraint that awaits the right occasion for its release. Not that Teddy would ever hit Tony. Not that he is even thinking about it, per se. But Tony has succeeded in arousing the tiger within him, waking it up, bringing it to a pacing mode in its cage.
And, truth to tell, this is a part of Tony's value to Teddy, to the championship process, to getting there and staying there.
Because you do not become a champ with out the anger.
Without the anger, you are not willing, at the crucial moment, to kill.
So that only the padding of the glove will save the opponent from what is actually an assault with deadly intent.
And Teddy knows this and uses it, even though he despises it in himself.
That is a shameful secret, the only real secret he has.
He does not hate his opponents.
Not before, not after, not even during the fight, for the most part.
But for that one second, that crucial moment, he does.
For that one would-be fatal instant, that man standing, bobbing, weaving, jabbing opposite him, becomes everything he hates, everything that stands between him and life itself.
And that is the secret that Tony shares with him, the secret that not even the most insightful of sportscasters or sports journalists have picked up on.
They do not know, do not even suspect that every victory of his is a homicide which, fortunately, has not to date lived up to its intent.
And it is not an easy thing to live with.
How could he ever be honest, open enough to say, when asked the secret of his victory, "I don't set out to win; I set out to kill!"
He depends on his opponents' conditioning, their reflexes, and the softening of the impact, such as it is, provided by the gloves, to prevent tragedy.
Because there is no part of himself, at the crucial point, that holds back anything.
So Tony need not worry that a missed session of jogging is going to in any way impair the process of victory.
His opponent sets out to fight; he himself intends murder.
It is a simple case of overkill.
His opponent seeks victory in a contest and achieves defeat.
Teddy seeks to do legalized murder and achieves victory.
And one morning's jogging is not going to change any of that.
No, this morning Teddy is spending with his people, his fellow citizens, his attention and his will united with theirs.
Go, go, go USA!
And now, Tony finds himself joining in with him, but for an entirely different reason.
Get this fucking thing over with already! he prays, to nobody in particular.
And he looks at his stopwatch, realizes what he has done, and, annoyed with himself, rolls up his sleeve so that he can check the actual time.
Okay, jogging is over.
Jogging time, that is.
He should be toweling the champ off as he shadow boxes in front of the heavy bag, ready to do a number on it.
Another half hour and that too will be shot in the ass.
"When's the launch?"
"See them numbahs onna bottom of de screen? " one of the sparring partners asks. "Oh, yeah!"
And he watches the numbers, the fractional second counter racing satisfyingly, as fast as he would wish.
"T minus twenty and counting," the announcer says, as the minute figure confirms that fact. And Tony reschedules Teddy in his mind. He will have to do the bag work.
No way does he spar from a cold start. He would rather cut the time off the actual sparring session.
"... and you feel, Colonel, that the weather will permit the launch to proceed on schedule."
"That's the way it's looking at the moment, uh, Sam."
Yeah, yeah, yeah, get on with it, already, fuckin' mamones, Tony thinks.
And he grabs Teddy's bulging, thick trapezius muscles under the hooded sweatshirt, kneading them, loosening them.
And thinking, Can you believe this fucking shit? Dumb sumbitch is actually getting tense over this garbage.
Only thing Tony can see good about the situation is that it will not be repeated between now and the title defense.
T minus thirty days and counting, in case anybody around here fucking cares, he thinks.
Cynthia Harrington lies on her chaise on the beach, the heat waves making the sand appear to dance as she glances around herself through the mirrored sunglasses.
The beautiful, blonde wife of international financier Chipper Harrington III, she is almost alone today.
For all the beauty of the day, the beach is practically deserted.
She has heard that some sort of space nonsense is going on today, and this beach, adjacent to their Florida home, is so close to the event that any tourists and most locals are either as close as possible to the launch site or glued to their TV sets.
So that, tired of the static, unchanging view of her pool, she has gone the extra few yards to the open beach, where she can watch the rolling surf.
At first, she hesitated to take off her bikini bottom.
The top, no problem.
This section of beach is an extension of the adjacent properties and therefore public only to the tide mark.
Still, there were occasional strollers who ignored this legal, some would say legalistic, refinement.
But today that would not be very likely; at least, not until after the launch.
So she takes a chance and removes the bottom.
Not that its small triangle would detract that much from her tan, but why should she not be perfect?
So that now she feels a perfect freedom. She is at one with the sky, the surf, the sea, the day.
Elsewhere, there are others, doing whatever they do.
But they are distant, unreal, in any case unimportant.
And Chipper?
He is off somewhere, as usual, doing whatever he does.
Everyone is doing their thing.
Except her.
She is doing nothing.
And she is very good at it, she tells herself. A few aerobics, a little jogging, a lot of tanning. Other than that, nothing. Or so she would have others believe. Actually, she does have, well, a hobby, she supposes one would call it. Sex.
Sex in all its forms, its variations, some would say its perversions.
Not that she is a nymphomaniac or anything like it, for that matter.
No, she is very selective, very discrete.
Only in her mind does she miss no opportunity, does she let nothing that comes to her attention go by without an image, perhaps a whole fantasy.
Just like-
She cannot believe this. Still, it makes sense.
With the exception of herself, the beach is deserted, after all.
So why should this boy or man, which she is not really sure, be any more inhibited than herself?
As he runs along the surf, big, black cock flopping this way and that, flaccid and heavy and, no doubt, very, very potent.
He is superbly muscled, with that rounded, solid beef that seems so typical of the black, athletic type, as she has seen them.
And now, she watches his prominent, rounded buttocks, shiny with sweat or surf or both, as they work and he disappears down the shore.
And she feels her pussy getting hot, juicy.
And the image comes to her.
Him and her, the two of them, just the two of them, their surroundings hazy, vaguely jungle-like, with green, plant-like shapes and suggestions of vines, all out of focus.
While he is not.
No, he is in very sharp focus, the smooth perfection of his muscled body rubbing up and down against her big boobs, even as his huge tool does its work, pistoning smoothly in and out of her hot, drooling cunt, even as her snapper of a pussy sucks and devours it.
Even his face, stereotyped and thereby deprived of all irregularity, all handsomeness, all ugliness, expressionless and silent, she sees hovering, inches from her own.
And it is perfect, the flood of erotic, lascivious sensations that flow through her, that his big, black prick generates.
And she sees herself becoming hotter and hotter, her body writhing on its own or bucking as he plows into her with mighty thrusts, again and again, rocking her each time.
And now, eyes closed, it is not the heat and her lotion that make her glisten in the sun.
Because she has actually broken her sexual sweat.
Her big breasts are hard, engorged with the blood of real, aroused passion, the nipples erect and rubbery.
And now, she slides a finger down, down, down her slippery body.
And in, in, into her cunt.
Finding her clit, itself engorged, rubbery.
And now slippery, as she smears it with her clear, hot, flowing pussy juices.
And, in her mind's eye, the black man speeds up, redoubling his powerful efforts.
And goes faster and faster.
And she is able to see the powerful, smooth, hard boulders of his protruding buttocks flexing and relaxing as he packs his powerful prod into her pussy.
And now, he makes that smooth, rotating motion with his hips, not side to side but toward and away from her, that exquisite technique which some men use, whereby the hips rotate forward and back in a circular motion while the piston of their (invariably) large cocks go in and out.
Warmer and warmer she becomes.
As her finger does its delightful work.
Until-
She gasps, mouth open, only the large, dark goggles of her sunglasses concealing her look of ecstasy.
Again and again she spasms on her finger, her multiple orgasms rocking her this way and that.
Until the series subsides and she removes the finger from its hot, wet housing.
And lays there.
And knows.
Knows that it would not work.
Because what she has seen is a real person.
So that she cannot summon him, conjure him with her mind into reality, use him, and dismiss him back out of existence.
And because of this, it is no good.
Perhaps he is a student on vacation.
Perhaps he works in a warehouse somewhere.
Or in a fast food restaurant.
He was sexy, gorgeous.
But only because he was isolated.
She knows this.
In and of himself, by himself, his image was-is perfect.
But it is the perfection of incompleteness.
She does not want to know about his living conditions, his relatives, his girlfriends, his education or lack thereof, his criminal record.
And yet, in the real world, these are factors.
So that there is no other relationship possible with him than what she has just had.
And this is sad, she thinks.
Because she knows that her fantasy is not the same as having the real, solid, powerful, hot, sweating, aroused body, the great, fantastic but very real cock inside her.
Still, what can she do?
True, Rufe, the black chauffeur, is available, has been available on more than one occasion.
But even so, he is hired help, aiming to please.
And no doubt even pleased to please.
But even so, he carries with him his job, of which even fucking can become a part, thanks to her.
So that there is no perfection there, no spontaneity.
No, the bottom line is one more black servant doing what he is paid for.
And yes, she could probably hire that young man for his services.
And then try to overlook the macho, the pride in his eyes at his momentary triumph that he not only got him some first class white poon but got paid on top of it.
So that his major anxiety is that his friends should actually believe that it happened.
So that the feeling, the communication, the interchange of sensation, the giving and the taking well, there would be, could be none of that.
And for that matter, she has had big, black beef before, on a commercial basis.
Courtesy of Bruce, of Bruce's Travel and Tours, the best escort service in the big city up north.
And they have performed satisfactorily, perhaps even extraordinarily.
Many times, in fact.
That is one of Chipper's favorite homecoming ceremonies Cynthia arranges for him.
In which she gets double-fucked, in cunt and ass hole at the same time, by two hulking black studs as Chipper watches from the closet, emerging after they have both shot their loads into her.
And passing them as they leave the bedroom and he approaches her-
And diving onto her crotch, mouth open, to clean her fore and aft with his tongue before fucking her to his own climax.
So that she still wonders about, and has yet to actually experience, the spontaneous, and in that sense genuine services of a black stud on a free and voluntary, equal footing.
And she doubts that she ever will know what that will do for her, for her body, for her psyche, for her repertoire of memories.
Will the black guy return or not? she wonders. Perhaps he has run by earlier and that was his return to the nowhere from whence he came. Did he notice her?
But she knows that even that does not matter.
At most, if he has, all that can happen is that a fantasy will form in his mind involving a voluptuous, beautiful blonde wearing only sunglasses and himself.
As he beats his meat in the darkness of a dingy room somewhere.
And suddenly, she is sick of the whole situation.
And the Florida scene, or lack thereof.
Why should she stay down here, isolated, frustrated?
When she could be in bed, if not with a boyfriend (she has none of those at the moment), then with one of her female friends.
But no, that has no appeal for her, either.
Because to do that is to merely give in to the frustration, relocating it, trying to compensate for it.
What to do, what to do?
And it seems to her that there is no intelligent, practical solution to the problem.
She wants, she needs a man and not a boy, and one who will not look upon her as a conquest, as some kind of tribute to his own prowess, or manhood, or whatever.
She thinks of her masseur, Steve, a former Mister Galaxy.
And smiles at the thought.
Still, what is he, if not still another hired service.
And well worth the money, she admits.
But what is the point, short of the mechanical satisfaction of getting her ashes hauled?
Simple.
There is none.
Because his mind is elsewhere.
It is on regaining that title.
Which, she supposes, is a very fine, a very important title, in some tacky way she does not really understand.
Or want to.
Because there is a female division to that sport, or art, or neurosis called bodybuilding now.
And she knows that, in his world, she cannot compete with his female counterparts.
That is, not without a lot of working out, a lot of training in order to achieve results she is not entirely certain she would be happy or pleased with.
No, she does not want to become a muscle broad.
She---likes herself just fine, as is.
And she supposes she owes those women a debt of gratitude.
Because they have enabled her to see beyond Steve's admittedly gorgeous, spectacular musculature, into his world.
And thereby come to understand the impracticality of her becoming a part of that world.
So that she has not let herself go, let herself open up to her feelings for Steve.
And love denied has become love impaired has become love destroyed.
Except that it died before it was born, an abortion of the mind.
Still, he has the power, the power to reach her deep inside where she lives.
But then, so does Rufe, the chauffeur.
And so do the studs she arranges through Bruce.
And in fact there is an advantage to all of these arrangements.
No residue.
Nothing left over.
A clean break, each and every time, each and every act.
Because this is understood, and in no way subject to misunderstanding.
And yet, it is this very lack of any remainder, this emptiness that she finds so oppressive.
It weighs on her, even though, by all standards of logic and reason, it should not.
Because there is an image behind the images, a common denominator, perhaps even a fundamental truth that eludes her.
And, in her mind, she begins to form a list of requirements, to systematically identify what she does want.
He must he big, handsome, muscular, built. He must be wealthy, independently wealthy, even as she is.
He must have a whang that won't quit.
He must have no serious attachments.
He must be mature and well spoken.
He must have a ready availability to her, with little or no obligations or duties standing between them.
And he must allow her to remain married to Chipper.
Hey, she reasons, if I'm going to have a dream man, he might as well be able to fulfill the whole dream, right?
But other than that, he need not be anything special, ha ha.
And now, the naked black athlete reappears.
And her eyes follow him.
But her body does not move.
No, she sighs, that one definitely will not fill the bill.
Even to hear him say a single word will detract from his image.
And she condemns him to anonymity for the sake of preserving his image in her mind.
She absorbs another few hours of rays.
Before saying to herself, Enough of this shit.
And she decides to return north.