Mad Women, Ch 6
This is a work of fantasy and the human imagination.
It was nearly the middle of April, and New York City was finally starting to warm up. To celebrate the end of coat season and the beginning of her chance to show off what she had, Anna was wearing a short skirt and a white button-up blouse that were both just the right amount of undersized. She had been a ballerina when she was younger and she had kept up dancing recreationally after she’d graduated from college, and she had never lost her magnificent figure: lean, strong legs, well-formed hips, tight, flat abs, and arms that matched her legs. Her bosom, while not overpowering, was well developed, especially considering how many calories she burned dancing, and she’d taken a few long seconds to admire its swell while double-checking everything in the mirror that morning. Her hair and makeup were equally impressive, she thought, making the most of her shoulder-length brown hair and her pretty good looks. Very pretty, she reminded herself as she caught men and women both checking her out—for different reasons, obviously—as she made her way from her apartment to the office. Everyone was always telling her how excited and energetic she seemed, how full of zest for life, with her wide smile, thin nose, and large brown eyes. She was attractive, and she very much enjoyed being attractive. She enjoyed the way men looked at her and she enjoyed knowing how she made other women feel.
No doe-eyed fool, though, looking to snag the first idiot middle manager who hit on her, Anna had taken every math class she could in high school in Los Angeles and then majored in accounting at Smith College. And then, she’d gotten a job in Accounts at Abraham and Weiner, an advertising firm on Madison Avenue. Although she had to start at the bottom, she’d found the men there to be reasonably receptive to a woman working in a math-first department. The women, though, not so much. In Anna’s experience, women, especially young women, were always looking to pull each other down and always at each other’s throats. They were a bunch of bitches, as her advisor at Smith had put it after Anna ended up in the Dean’s office after fighting a girl in the hallway after an Intro to Psych review session. After a semester of being a stuck-up bitch to Anna and, as Anna had heard from some friends, telling everyone Anna wasn’t as pretty as she thought she was, this girl had demanded to use Anna’s notes to study for the exam after she had missed a bunch of classes. Anna had told her to get lost, which led to a shove, which led to a harder shove, which led to slapping and pulling hair, which led to the Dean’s office. And that, in turn, had led to Anna’s advisor giving her some life advice: Other women will be bitches to you so long as you’re taking attention away from them, so you might as well get your shots in. That was advice Anna had begun living by and advice that she’d come to enjoy. It had also been advice she’d put into practice when she went to that Psych girl’s dorm room after exams were over and settled their little disagreement. In the end, the other girl decided to stop asking to borrow Anna’s notes.
From day one, most of the women at the A&W office had been hostile to her. She’d tried to smile and say hello as she went by their desks when she’d arrived her first morning, but the replies she got in return were neutral at best. Twice in the first two weeks, her lunch disappeared from the refrigerator sometime between her arrival and noon. Anna had one brand of lip balm that she particularly liked, and, just like her lunches, it had disappeared from her desk. Then, a few days after that, the flowers on her desk went from healthy to dead overnight, and Anna had started scrutinizing her female coworkers more closely. It was common for women to give each other the cold shoulder or the endless fake smiles and flatteries, which was even worse in her view. But going after her personal belongings right away was a different level of antagonism, one that would have to be answered. So, while she was tabulating costs for TV spots and calculating the projections for next year’s expenses, she was also watching the women around her. That was one of the prices of being an attractive woman, she had found, having to watch other women as they probed for weakness. If Anna overreacted and decked a random girl because her lunch got misplaced, that would be a mistake for her career. Yes, New York had become a more enlightened place here in the late 1960s regarding the competitive nature of women’s relationships, but there were lines, and fighting a female coworker who wanted to fight was on one side of it, and punching a random coworker over a missing lunch was on the other side of it. But on the other hand, if a woman was out to get her, and the other women knew that Anna was being deliberately targeted by a rival and did nothing to answer it, they would smell weakness and she would slide down the pecking order. It could be very stimulating to scout these things out, make your plans, and then act on them, Anna thought, but it was also exhausting.
And then, in late March, after she’d been at A&W for less than a month, Anna’s winter coat had been ruined. She went to put it on at the end of the day and discovered that someone had snipped a bunch of the stitching out of the inner lining, so that it just disintegrated in her hands when she examined it. It had gotten warm enough that everyone from the city and ‘up North’ in general had switched to jackets, but she was from LA, and late March in New York still felt like Anchorage to her. She’d been working late on the new cereal account, so most of the office, including all of the young women, were gone when she’d discovered it. She stood there, holding the ruined coat, and then she just packed it away and sat down at her desk and continued working. When the last of the people from her area of the office had gone home, she thoroughly searched the desk of every woman. Most of them had a pair of scissors, but there were only two that had the scissors ready at hand, like they’d been hastily put away that day, and in one of those, she’d found loose strings of the right color and texture. That desk belonged to Stephanie, a strawberry blonde who always had a dirty look to shoot Anna’s way. Stephanie was very attractive, with curly hair and freckles, a good body and a face to match, and had been in the Accounts room for two years, but she was still doing entry-level work because she was an idiot. And she was an idiot of the level that could not be overcome by any kind of good looks or flirting with management. Anna knew that Stephanie was jealous of her, of her looks, her superior degree, and the fact that she’d started two levels higher than Stephanie had been able to achieve in two years, and ruining her coat had been her way to tell Anna that she needed to know her place.
There was only one reasonable way to respond to such a provocation. Anna slipped into the personnel office, using the spare key everyone knew was in the back of the secretary’s desk, and checked Stephanie’s address. Then she stopped by her own apartment and changed into a t-shirt and sweatpants, which was more appropriate clothing for a late night girls’ talk, and headed to Stephanie’s. The whole walk there, she was thinking about how much she hated Stephanie, and all the terrible things Stephanie must have said about her behind her back before this, and how tired she was of all of this mean girl stuff, and how good it was going to feel to fight her. And when Anna got to her apartment, and knocked, and Stephanie answered the door, she didn’t even seem surprised to see Anna standing there, didn’t even bother to pretend she didn’t know what it was about. She just smirked at her and asked, “What do you want?” And Anna threw herself forward and tackled her backward all the way into the apartment. The two young women struggled on the floor, pulling hair and slapping each other and ripping and tearing at each other’s clothes. Stephanie got some good shots in, but Anna quickly was able to get control of her. She got on top, sitting on her stomach, and slapped her face back and forth, and then she pulled her up to her feet and got her up against the counter and punched her in the face and the torso over and over again until she’d had enough and she slid down to the floor. Part of Anna was glad that she’d beaten her so easily, and part of her was sorry that it hadn’t gone on longer. Without saying, without ever having said a word to her the whole encounter, Anna found Stephanie’s purse and took all of the cash out of it, making sure that Stephanie watched her, daring her to get up and keep fighting to keep her from taking the money, but she remained slumped and inert on the floor. Anna shook her head and covered herself up as best she could under her jacket and went home.
That had been about six weeks ago, and between then and now, the women in the office were treating Anna with more respect. No one took her lunch or killed her flowers, no one suddenly stopped talking when she went by the coffeemaker, and, definitely, no one destroyed her clothes while she was away from her desk. They weren’t nice to her, but she had never had any hope that the majority of the women in the office would ever be nice to a girl like her. She would settle for their fear. There was one girl in the A&W offices who was nice to her, though, also a young woman who had had to prove herself to the other women. Her name was Daniella, although everyone called her Dani, and Anna had met her just a few days after she had beaten up Stephanie. Dani worked on the creative side, and the agency had been growing, so Anna had only seen her in passing a few times until they were put in the same group during a teambuilding exercise. They had shared a few eyerolls and giggles over how stupid the training was, knowing as both did that you couldn’t scold people into changing who they were, and they’d agreed to eat lunch together that day. Dani was gorgeous, with a beautiful face, dynamic hair, and a killer body that seemed as capable as it was enticing. At lunch that day, they had shared stories over the treatment they had gotten from the other women in the office and how they had responded in kind (“tit for tat,” as Dani put it), and agreed to go out for drinks that weekend. Anna had felt a line of tension as well as sympathy that connected them, as she felt they were the two most attractive women in the office, and part of her was sure that Dani felt the same and also that the mixture of competition and camaraderie was what gave the relationship the electricity it had.
And then, this morning in mid-May, Anna had come to work and discovered that she had a new assistant. A part-time assistant, in fact a very part-time assistant, as this woman was still a college student, as Anna was informed by one of the secretaries as she entered the accounting area. And the daughter of a “friend of the agency,” as the secretary put it, which meant that this girl’s daddy drank, played golf, tomcatted, and made money with Anna’s boss’s bosses. Sitting at Anna’s desk that morning, in fact sitting in her seat, was a spectacular beauty who could not be older than her first year of college. A mixture of white and South Asian ancestry, it seemed, she had striking blue eyes, which were set off by her light brown skin, and absolutely perfect cheekbones, chin, and lips. She had black hair, which she wore long and straight and which acted almost like a spotlight for her face, drawing you in. Even Anna, who considered herself very attractive and who had, as a very talented ballerina, been around other very attractive women, caught herself staring. And then as Anna came around her desk—her own desk—and got a look at this girl’s body, she continued staring even though this girl had taken notice of her and the staring. A chest that was much more developed than Anna’s despite her younger age, fit and firm arms, legs, and stomach, she had it all, and that body was barely covered up by a summer dress that had obviously come from someplace on Fifth Avenue. At this point, with Anna now standing only a few feet away and feeling very conspicuous in her own skirt and blouse of more modest origin, the girl picked up her coffee mug—actually Anna’s mug, she realized—and took a drink with a movement that somehow conveyed more than a hint of grace and athletic ability. This girl was the whole package and she was lapping all the other girls in the room even though she seemed to only be running in first gear. Anna hated her immediately.
Despite that, Anna introduced herself as she put her purse and jacket on her desk, hoping that would be enough to give this girl the hint.
“I know,” the girl replied, taking another sip of coffee from Anna’s mug.
“This would be the part where you give me your name,” Anna suggested.
“They told me that I’m your new assistant,” she answered, finally adding “I’m Kaira Watt” after a long pause.
“I don’t suppose they told you what you’re supposed to assist me with?”
“I don’t think so. I wasn’t really listening since I won’t be here a lot anyway.”
“Oh?” Anna asked, hopeful.
“I have classes. Plus I don’t really like all these offices anyway.”
“So, why are you here?”
“My dad said that I need to get more experience in the real world. But my mom said that I don’t have to do these office things you all do. So I’m, like, here but not here.”
“Your mom said you don’t have to?” Anna asked, incredulously, but then she saw that two male coworkers were slow-walking past her desk. It had happened when she had started here, and these two in particular weren’t on their way up the social ladder so she hadn’t given them much thought. But, she didn’t think they had walked this slowly when she started here. For a second, Anna thought about Stephanie and wondered how she had felt when Anna started working there. Then, she returned her attention to Kaira. The girl was making a big show of not noticing the men who were checking her out, and Anna had to repeat the question.
“Yeah, I guess,” Kaira answered. “You can ask her about it if you want. Oh wait, you probably don’t know her. Anyway, yeah, I have to go soon. I have class later, and I need to buy a new pen.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Anna said, making no effort at this point to hide her disdain. She doubted this girl could pick up on her tone anyway.
“This will go a lot easier for you if you’re not a bitch about everything.”
“Excuse me?” Anna exclaimed.
At this point, Anna’s boss arrived. Mr. Pryce was in his mid-50s, and it seemed like he had been head of accounting at the agency since he’d left grade school. He was lazy enough that he had everyone under him doing all of the work and smart enough that he could tell when they weren’t pulling his load for him. He had spent Anna’s first week at A&W sitting on her desk, explaining how great of a boss he was, and when he escalated from that she’d calmly slid him a card with his wife’s first name and phone number on it, and that had shut down the pick-up attempts. It was a technique she’d developed in college to ward off overly enthusiastic male professors, and it usually worked. When she saw how enthusiastic he was being toward Kaira now, she almost felt bad for her. At any rate, after he’d outlined Kaira’s role, which was to say, he said what Kaira herself had said in more opaque words, he’d gone into his office to start day drinking, and Anna had settled into her own chair while Kaira sat next to her desk, adjusting her dress and flipping her hair while sighing loudly. After nearly an hour of that, during which Anna felt like there were ants crawling all up and down her spine and every flick of that black hair made her want to snatch up her scissors and solve the twin problems of the hair itself and Kaira’s ego, Kaira loudly announced she had to go to class and disappeared for the rest of the day. Much to her dismay, Anna learned that there was one more humiliation awaiting her when Mr. Pryce brought her a time sheet to sign for Kaira. For a full 8 hour day, “in case her dad checks,” he said.
“I’m going to rip her hair out!” Anna exclaimed. It was the end of that week, and she was having lunch with Dani at a bar down the street from the agency. After having to sign off on 5 full days when Kaira had only shown up for a few hours, total, for the week, Anna had informed Dani that she needed to blow off some steam and move up their monthly cheat meal of beer and cheeseburgers. No one at A&W really worked on Friday afternoons anyway.
“Do you know who her mom is?” Dani asked her.
“Some bitch who’s a lot richer than I am.”
Dani laughed. “She is, for sure. But she’s an extra-mean one. Watch out for that family. They have rules, and you have to play by them.”
“We’ll see how many rules they have when I send her home bald on Monday.”
“Okay, seriously, you can’t just fight her in the middle of the office.”
“Why not? You beat up that blonde girl on your side of the building. Kathy?”
“Kathy’s dad doesn’t play golf with the mayor, and her mom isn’t a mean bitch. At least, not a mean bitch with connections all over the city. Kathy is a bitch, so her mom probably is too.”
“You should fight Kathy again,” Anna suggested, half-kidding. At that moment, a tall guy in a new suit passed their table, slowing down and giving both girls the once-over. Anna giggled and touched her hair, and Dani did the same, then they both noticed the other’s noticing and went back to their conversation.
“There’s this girl I fought back in college. I guess she’s heard about me and wants a rematch.”
“Heard about you? You’re getting famous. Gonna become the Queen of the City!” Anna said, too loudly, and both of them laughed. “Who is she? What happened?”
“Sydney. She’s this stuck-up bitch from down South. We worked together one summer in college. I got into it pretty good with our supervisor, and they were best friends, so it was a ‘you mess with her you mess with me’ situation.”
“And did you mess with her, or did she mess with you? Is she pretty?”
“Oh, she’s really pretty. Girl knows some hair and makeup. I think she did pageants?” Dani added. “And yeah, I definitely messed with her more than she messed with me.”
“Okay, tell me about this bitch’s mom.”
“I told you about my boxing match outside the city? Against that German woman, with the boobs? Kaira was at that, with her mom. Debleena. And she was the Weiners’ Christmas party too.”
“Does her daughter look like her? Did she get her ridiculous melons from her mom?”
“Well, Debleena has a good rack, but not like the daughter’s. I don’t know where those things came from.”
“Outer space?”
Dani laughed, a deep, surprisingly coarse sound. “Probably, yeah. But Debleena is beautiful. In a little different way, but she’s stunning even now. She has darker skin, and brown eyes. The dad is white, so I’m sure Kaira gets some of her features from him. Mom’s more of a traditional Indian looker, enough that she married this super rich guy from another country. And from what I’ve seen, she has kept herself really fit too.”
“And mean?”
“Like I said, she was at that boxing match. I guess she’s introducing her daughter to the ways of adult women. Anyway, during the fight, I could hear Debleena yelling things. ‘Smash her face,’ ‘knock her out,’ that kind of thing.”
“She’s one of those women who hates hot women.”
“So, she’s a woman.”
Both of them laughed. “Sounds like she has it in for you,” Anna prodded.
“She does, for sure. I wouldn’t expect her to take it any easier on my friends.”
“Oh, are we besties now?” Anna asked, in a way that was simultaneously kidding and not.
“For sure!” Dani answered, and they clicked glasses and finished their beers.
At that point, Dani’s friend Susan joined them. Susan was older than the two girls, and she had never been one for fighting, nor had she ever really been competitive with other women in this society in the way that Dani and Anna were. But, she had a preternatural gift for sniffing out gossip, and she could become easy friends with a lot of women in ways that Dani and Anna never could. She was more plain, but she was smart, and inquisitive, and she had a keen ability to shift the gold from the wash. The Watts had a weekend house on Long Island, and Susan had learned that they were having several dozen of their closest friends out there for Memorial Day Weekend, which was in a few weeks. And Susan had also learned that Debleena would not be disappointed if Dani were to make an appearance, since her old college friend Sydney would be there, adding that she should feel free to bring a friend if she wanted. Anna wondered how she was getting all of this information. Anna suspected that Susan had been the one who’d told Dani that Sydney had heard about her fighting and was looking for a rematch.
“That sounds a lot like an invitation,” Dani replied to Susan’s information.
“I was talking to a friend of Debleena’s,” Susan said, as if reading the minds of both women. “And I got the distinct impression that Debleena wants to have some entertainment for her guests. As a way to kick off the summer.”
“And we’re part of the entertainment?” Anna asked.
“Think of it as a place where you can let your hair down,” Susan said. “As it were.”
“She still wants to see me get my ass kicked,” Dani said. “What exactly does this woman have against me?”
“I think we all know the answer to that,” Susan said.
“I’ve never even really interacted with her.”
“No, you just beat up two of her friends,” Susan explained. “Remember, I told you that she’s friends with Ashley. At least that’s what I was hearing when I was asking around about her back then. And it seems like she and Amalia are old tennis partners.”
“Well, we’ll have to give the people what they want, then,” Dani concluded.
And so it was set. Dani and Anna agreed to attend the Memorial Day Weekend party at the Watt family’s summer house on the island. Said house, it turned out, was on the beach in East Hampton, three stories, with six bedrooms and privacy fencing that gave the family their own little bit of heaven. Neither Anna nor Dani had a car, so they wrangled a ride with Dani’s boss, Mr. Richard, the head of Creative, or at least good enough friends to get a ride with him and his wife, who had also been invited. Anna and Dani had both brought their most revealing two-piece swimsuits, and they sat in the back of Mr. Richard’s new Cadillac for the long slog through the city traffic on Saturday afternoon. Everybody seemed to be headed someplace else to celebrate the start of summer. It seemed that the party was a yearly event, and from the stories the Richards told, it seemed like everyone really lived it up. Anna had never really been to something like this before, certainly not with her thing with Kaira hanging over her, and it was like her stomach was turning upside down. It was one thing to fight another girl at a college party after she accidentally-but-not-accidentally spilled her beer on you. It was quite another to travel out of the city to fight her at her family compound in front of a bunch of rich strangers.
They had gotten away from the city late, and the traffic had been worse than they were expecting, and it seemed like they were the last people to arrive. Still, it seemed more like a regular summer social for the rich and not a crowd going to find seats around a temporary boxing ring. Maybe she had misinterpreted the description, she told herself as they approached the house, and it shouldn’t matter anyway. It did matter, though. She and Dani both looked damn good, and Anna at least expected to show off to everyone who was there. They were both wearing short-shorts, sandals, and small tops that put their young, trim bodies out there for men and women both to admire. And both of them had bikinis in their bags, for the anticipated action later that night, although up to this point Anna still had some doubts on that end. All of this, the idea of the weekend and what Susan had told them, all seemed a bit much to her. As they approached the house, she glanced at Dani, and the other girl did not seem fazed or rattled by any of it. Anna could not help but wonder if Dani had some more exciting history than she did, more things like that boxing match that had prepared her for nights like this. And Anna could not help but wonder if there was something missing in her, something about her looks or her attitude, or how she dressed or carried herself, that had made her miss out on whatever it was that Dani had done, or knew.
It only took a few minutes for Anna to get answers to at least some of her questions. She and Dani passed through the house and, as soon as they stepped out the back into the pool area, she spotted Debleena. The hostess was difficult to miss. She was sitting at a table between the pool and the pool house, and she was staring right at the two young women. There were two other women with her, but Debleena shooed them away and gestured to Anna and Dani to join her. She watched them icily as they approached, and Anna tried to return the favor but found it quite difficult. Debleena might have been forty, or close enough, but she looked more like thirty, and it was easy to see how she’d landed a husband who owned one of the nicest houses in the Hamptons. At least, Anna amended mentally, one of the nicest that wasn’t some old estate and that the owner had purchased himself. Regardless, she clearly could turn heads as well as any woman at the party. She wore a robe that hung open to reveal just enough of her body to demonstrate that she was well-endowed where she was supposed to be and fit and firm everywhere else, and Anna had no doubt that she was as physically capable as a woman her age and size possibly could be. Her face had aged just as well, and it resembled a work of art by the same master from antiquity who had crafted her daughter’s. Anna was suddenly very glad that she was not this woman’s primary target tonight, if indeed that was what was happening.
“Sit,” Debleena commanded, and Anna and Dani both did as told. Dani looked more cavalier than Anna felt, and again, she wondered if it was bluster or if she were drawing on some personal experience in such matters.
“So nice of you to invite us,” Dani said. “We’ve both been looking forward to this all week.”
“I hope so. You two are going to be the centerpiece.”
“Did you have something special in mind?” Dani asked.
“I met an old friend of yours,” Debleena answered. “Someone who’s very eager to see you again.”
“I guess that wouldn’t be Sydney, then, from Barnard. Because I doubt she’s eager to see me again after how the last time went for her.”
Now, Debleena smiled. It made Anna feel unnerved. “She’s very eager, trust me. And she’s here tonight.”
“Good,” Dani said. “Why don’t you bring her out here.”
At this point, the tension around the table was so high that Anna could feel her heartbeat in her fingers. “Patience, little girl. You’ll get the chance to see her later, if you want.”
“I do want that,” Dani said. “But I want to know what this whole deal is, too. We didn’t come all the way out here to play footsie with an old lady and her flat-chested new friend.”
No smile from Debleena this time. “Very well, little girl. We throw this party every year. And at the end of the night, the regular guests all leave, and we have something special for our closest friends. After what you did to my friend Amalia, I thought that you would like to get the chance to make an impression. There are some very important people here, and if you do well, who knows where you might end up. You might even get to come the mistress of an important man,” she added, and now that smile crept back into the corners of her beautiful and wicked face.
“And what about me?” Anna cut in. She’d grown tired of playing second fiddle.
“I’ve heard about your attitude at work and your rude behavior toward my daughter,” Debleena said. “But no. She will not be paraded in front of everyone like a circus creature.”
“You mean like us?” Dani asked in a sharp tone.
“Of course I do,” Debleena answered, then focused her gaze on Anna. “My daughter was right, though. You are pretty, and you’ve got spirit. I have an opponent you might like. Or you might not, I don’t know. But if each of you fight, we will give you two thousand dollars, each, cash. And another thousand if you win.”
Two thousand dollars was about two months’ salary for Anna, and all of it tax free, in cash. She was leaning forward and about to say yes when Dani put her hand on her wrist.
“I have a counterproposal.”
“I doubt that.”
“We can give your rich friends a show they’ll never forget, or we can go home right now.”
“I know how much you both make in a year. You won’t do that.”
“Maybe our pride is more important to us than money.”
Debleena stared at her for a long time. Then she nodded and said, “I’m listening.”
“Anna and I fight your two girls. Two on two, topless catfight. No rules, we go until one team is finished.”
“And the cost?”
“Nothing,” Dani said, and Anna and Debleena both stared at her. “At least, no money.”
“Explain, quickly. Your attitude was amusing at first. Now it is not.”
“If we win, Anna here gets a shot at your daughter. And you and I go at it. Both fights at a later date. Anything goes, of course.”
Debleena hesitated and then asked, “And if my girls win?”
“You get us, for the weekend. For you and your husband to do with as you please.”
Anna wanted to shout, but she bit her tongue, literally, and kept her mouth shut. It was a question of whether she was more angry at Kaira or Dani. It was close, but Kaira was winning.
“Deal,” Debleena said. “Midnight tonight, a topless catfight in front of twenty of our guests. You two against Sydney and Ashley.”
Dani sat silently for a second, then she stood up and said, “We’re going to brutalize your two girls tonight, and then I’m going to mop the floor with you, and your husband is going to be checking me out the whole time.”
Debleena smirked and then turned to Anna and said, “This girl has dragged you into a fight you can’t win, and you’re going to be humiliated in front of all these people who could have helped you, brought you into their world, found you a rich husband. She is not your friend.”
A servant of some kind came up by Debleena, as if summoned telepathically, and the two young women were escorted to a guest bedroom they would rest until midnight. As they left, Anna saw Mr. Watt with his daughter coming out of another part of the giant house, and he was giving Dani a very specific kind of look while his daughter gave Anna an equally specific but very different kind of look. Then they were shown the bedroom and the servant disappeared and then reappeared a few minutes later with a plate of food for them and then left them for good. The two of them sat on the opposing twin beds and ate, each of them very pointedly not making eye contact with the other.
“What the hell did you get us into?” Anna blurted out at last.
“Calm down. This is what we came here for.”
“No, it wasn’t. I came here to fight this girl who’s been acting like a bitch to me.”
“And you’re going to get your chance at her,” Dani reassured her. “Just, maybe, not the way we thought.”
“No, now I’m fighting two women I don’t even know as part of some gladiator contest for her dad to watch.”
“Her dad? What?”
“I saw how he was looking at you. You saw it too. Don’t lie.”
“That’s how all men are.”
“No, that’s how normal men are to me. Super rich weirdos with crazy wives and bitchy daughters are only like that to you.”
“Don’t you see that this is what she wants?” Dani said, loudly. “She wants us to get us to hate each other so that we get our asses kicked by those two.”
“And who are those two, exactly?”
“I’ve told you about them. Sydney is this girl I beat up when we worked together when I was in college. Ashley is this girl with gigantic hoo-hahs I got into it with while we were skiing over Christmas break this year. Later, back in the city, I tracked her down at work and kicked her ass.”
“So, she kicked your ass the first time.”
“Look, the important thing is that if we don’t stay focused, we’re going to get our asses kicked tonight in front of some very important people. And if we win, not only do we look good in front of the important people, we get our hands on the two bitches we came here for.”
“I’m not even sure what I came here for.”
“You’ve been in fights before, right?”
“Of course,” Anna replied in a voice that suggested that she did not appreciate the question or the tone of voice.
“It’s no different. These are both tough women, but so are we, and we’ll find a way to win. We just have to watch out for each other. And they’re going to fight dirty, so we do the same. No matter how much it hurts, no matter how hard they hit, you just have to keep getting back up. Don’t let a bitch keep you down.”
With that, the conversation ended, and they spent the rest of the evening resting. Before midnight, they both changed into their bikinis. As they did, Anna couldn’t help admiring Dani’s body, with its more pronounced curves, and wondering how her own would compare when they were out there. Around the same time, a maid brought an enormous supply of beauty products and, before she left, made a strong suggestion that both girls apply liberal amounts of body lotion before their fight, “as Mr. Watt has requested.” They both did their makeup and hair in the bathroom in their hallway and then sat facing each other, waiting, glancing nervously at each other, each of them perfect in their swimwear and their perfectly done makeup, sometimes one and sometimes the other making a small cough or clearing her throat. Anna noticed that Dani had both hands on her knees and was tapping her fingers rhythmically. And, there was something about her petite nose, which turned up a bit at the tip, that kept attracting Anna’s gaze. The rich brown of her eyes, too. Then, finally, the servant returned and brought them outside. The other two girls were already out there, and they were also wearing bikinis and had also done their hair and makeup, and they too had received specific instruction about the lotion, it seemed. When Ashley saw Dani, she said, loudly, “I’m going to get you tonight, bitch,” to which Dani replied much the same. The audience was much smaller than the crowd from the regular party, Anna noticed, and they were sitting around the edge of a large clearing of grass. The young women were brought into the center and told to be quiet as Mr. Watt thanked his “special guests” and introduced the ladies.
Anna and Dani were standing on one side of the grass clearing and Sydney and Ashley were on the other. They were all barefoot, and Anna dug her toes into the grass and relaxed them, rhythmically, which she found odd relaxing. The lotion on all four girls’ bodies glistened under the party lights strung overhead. Anna was standing to Dani’s left, with Sydney in front of her and Ashley in front of Dani. All four girls were wearing bikinis, and Mr. Watt came around and untied their tops, one after another, and slid them off and tossed them into the audience. He started with Anna, then Dani, then Sydney, the brunette from Alabama, then Ashley, the buxom redhead. Ashley was the largest of the four girls, and she gave her enormous breasts a swing as they came free of the top. Sydney was very small, not quite flat-chested, but she had large nipples that had turned rock hard in the cool air. It was in the mid-60s and there was a light breeze, and all four girls had developed goose bumps. Anna’s breasts were considerably larger than Sydney’s but smaller than Dani’s and much smaller than Ashley’s, and Anna felt herself keenly aware of the size discrepancy. With the most noticeable set of abs, and the most development to the muscles of her backside and legs, Anna felt that, aside from her chest, she had perhaps the best physical development of the four girls, although she thought that Sydney was some measure of competition for her in that area. But the facial beauty of Dani and Ashley was something else entirely. Since she had become concerned with such things, Anna had always known herself to be a very attractive woman, but standing there, exposed as she was, as vulnerable as she was about to become regardless of the result of their fight, she felt herself out of her depth for the first time. Or, if not out of her depth, at least elevated to a new league, one that she’d hardly imagined even existed a few years ago, when she first became interested in the competition among women.
All four of them were glaring at each other, breathing hard, clenching and extending their fingers, and then Mr. Watt called out “Begin!” Anna and Sydney stepped forward cautiously, hands at the ready, but out of her peripheral vision Anna saw Dani and Ashley slam into each other and fall the ground in a churning melee. The smack of their bodies’ hitting the ground and their grunting and hitting distracted Anna and she half-turned toward them, torn between helping Dani and attacking Sydney. Caught in between like that, she was an easy target for Sydney’s opening. The Southern beauty surged forward and got hold of Anna’s hair with both hands and then, twisting her hips, she spun Anna around in a circle. Anna squealed in pain and then when Sydney let go of her, she spun down into the grass. She landed hard, and somehow she felt every blade pricking at the skin of her legs and her side. The other girl came at her but Anna wasn’t hurt too badly, and she got back up to her feet before Sydney could capitalize on her weakness. As Anna came up, Sydney threw right and left punches at her head, but she was backing up and the other girl was too far away and they came up short. Anna kept backing up and circling while she recovered herself, and then she and the other girl set their feet and squared off. Out of the corner of her eye, Anna noticed Dani and Ashley fighting on the ground, Dani on top with Ashley’s legs locked around her waist, and they seemed to be slapping each other’s breasts and faces and pulling hair. Bringing her attention back to her own fight, Anna got off first, landing a left fist into Sydney’s face, but the brunette came right back and returned the favor. The bony knuckles struck Anna right on the eye and she suddenly couldn’t see for the tears and uncontrollable blinking. Instinctively, she held her hand to her face and turned halfway around, and Sydney poured it on. Fists slammed into Anna’s side and back and then Sydney had her by the hair with one hand and was driving uppercuts into her face with the other as she pulled her forward. Finally, the two of them crashed to the ground together.
Hitting the ground broke the hold Sydney had on her hair and it reawakened the cat in Anna. She got on top of Sydney and repaid the blows to her, hitting her back and forth across the face and then slamming her head on the ground over and over by the hair. Sydney at first was pushing up on Anna’s chin but then she grabbed hold of Anna’s breasts and squeezed. At first, Anna tried to ignore the pain and began pulling up on Sydney’s hair as hard as she could, wrenching her head up and toward her, but then she had to let go of her hair and pull at the hands on her breasts. She had her fingers deep into Anna’s breasts though and it was like she pulling down on them. Finally, Anna went back to slapping her face and then she began throwing punches straight down into the center of Sydney’s chest, and that did it. The hands slipped off of her breasts and Sydney sort of went loose under her. At that point, Anna looked up, thinking to find Dani and Ashley, thinking to see how her partner was doing, just as a fist slammed into her face. The blow knocked Anna off her perch and onto her side. She felt herself being rolled onto her back and looking up, she saw the busty redhead standing over and the lean brunette coming up to her knees. Anna tried to make herself move, but before she could, Ashley stamped her foot down into her stomach. Immediately, she curled up, the air knocked out of her, and she felt like her body was short-circuiting. Still, she made herself open her eyes and look around her. She was expecting to see both women coming at her. Instead, she saw Dani crash into both of them from behind and they all came right at her.
All four of them became entangled for one instant and then someone’s leg smacked Anna across the face and knocked her clear. She landed on her stomach, watching the other three from just a few feet away, watching as Sydney and Ashley double-teamed Dani, Sydney wrapping her up from behind and Ashley smashing and punching her breasts and then moving up to her face. Dani got hold of Ashley’s hair and pulled her in close, but Anna saw that it would all be over in a few seconds and she willed herself up to her hands and knees and then into action. She came to her feet and with a quick stride punted a kick into Ashley’s shoulder, knocking her off of Dani, but instead of following up her attack, she bent down and tried pulling at Sydney’s legs to unlock her hold on Dani. Dani was trying to say something but she was winded and Anna started firing punches down at Sydney’s shoulder and the side of her head. Then she realized her situation and came up and around to face Ashley, who was just getting to her hands and knees and was fixing her with a death’s glare. Anna disengaged from Dani and Sydney, who continued fighting with each other on the ground, and stepped clear and circled around on Ashley as she came to her feet.
Both girls raised their fists into something like a proper guard and they came together. Anna fired first and nailed her in the face with a right and then got a left and a right to her body and then ducked back out of range before the bigger girl could react, but it seemed to hardly faze Ashley. The beautiful face peeked out from behind the hard fists and the look there was just as hard. The lines of her buxom body as she matched each step with Anna, her breasts swaying with each motion, so much larger than Anna’s. Ashley threw a right fist but Anna was too quick for it, and she got to the side and smashed her fists into Ashley’s body. This time the blows elicited a hard grunt, and Anna thought she was making progress. But then Ashley clocked her on the side of the head with a punch she didn’t see coming, and then its mate pasted her mouth, and then both hands were slamming into her chest and then back to her face. Anna toppled to the ground and lay splayed out. To her right, Dani and Sydney were fistfighting. Dani was getting the better of her, working her face and her body, and it looked like Sydney was ready to go down. Ashley turned away from Anna and went to grab Dani from behind. Somehow, from something deep inside herself, Anna got back to her feet and grabbed Ashley by the hair from behind just as she threw her arms around Dani’s torso. Ashely shrieked, more in anger than pain, probably, but she let go of Dani and began thrashing around. She spun around and threw herself into Anna and bore her hard to the ground.
Anna felt like she had some impossible force on top of her, dominating her, so she did the only thing she could do, she fought back with everything she had left. She threw her legs around the redhead’s waist, pulled at the rich locks of hair and slapped and hit her strong body and she even bit her on the shoulder. The busty redhead snarled and slammed her fist into Anna’s side over and over until she let go of the bite. “Bitch,” Ashely growled, and she slammed her knee up into Anna’s crotch. The knee didn’t strike true but even still pain exploded through her body. Her legs went limp and she lost control of the other woman’s body, which allowed her to rear up and slap her face repeatedly. Anna reached up and pulled at her hair and then she grabbed her enormous bosom. Her fingers sank deep into the female flesh and she crushed them with all the strength she had. Ashley yelled in pain and punched her across the face. The punch hurt Anna badly and she lost her grip on the huge breasts and went loose under the larger woman. Ashley shifted herself and sat astride her waist, pinning Anna’s arms under her legs, and as Anna realized what was happening it was too late. Ashley teed off on her, punching her across the face with a right and a left. Anna lay still, only aware of this powerful woman on top of her, and she was staring up at her, at the enormous bosom rising and falling with her deep breaths and the beautiful face twisted with rage, and some part of Anna’s brain wondered how badly this beating was going to hurt.
And then, there was a crash and a whirring mess of female combat and Ashley was gone. She and Dani were rolling across the lawn, scratching and clawing at each other like they were possessed. Two enraged demons, one was on top, then the other, and they pulled hair and slapped at each other. Dani got on top and slammed Ashley’s head on the ground but the bigger redhead bucked her hips up and got her off, and then she was sitting on top of Dani, and a distant part of Anna’s brain knew that she was looking to slug Dani across the face like she’d done to her. But Dani grabbed her hair early in the move and pulled her to the side and got free of her. Now, both of them were on their feet and looking to throw punches. They traded blows to the face, one punch after another, one woman getting spun halfway around, then the other, light brown and red hair flying about their heads, each beauty grunting in the pain and force of the blows. Then something snapped in them and they just stood toe to toe, hitting each other endlessly everyplace they could, and Anna registered that Dani was somehow holding her own with the larger, stronger redhead. And then Dani suddenly ducked a wild punch and nailed Ashley in the gut, doubling her over, then uppercut her in the face. Dani was measuring her for a knockout blow when Sydney clamped onto her from behind. She had Dani’s arms pinned down by her side and her hands locked around her. Dani was thrashing, trying to get loose, but Sydney held on with everything she had. Anna was forcing herself up to her feet, cursing herself for staying down for so long and for getting beaten on to the point she had been laid out like that. She got to one knee and was pushing herself up to her feet when Ashely recovered her senses. And with a smile, she ripped punches into Dani’s stomach, and then she went to work on her large breasts, which were pushed up and pinned in place by the grip Sydney had around her midsection, and then she hit her face.
Not knowing what else to do, Anna just threw herself into the middle of the fray. She hit Ashley, who had not seen her coming, and knocked her aside, and then she yanked Sydney’s hands free and squared off with the brunette. Dani sank down to her hands and knees as the ballerina and Southern belle squared off. Both with their tight haunches flexing under the thin material of their bikini bottoms, the small breasts of the one and the larger chest of the other, both with their fists up. Anna caught a twitch in Sydney’s stance, like she was readying herself to throw, and she flicked out her left fist and caught her on the nose. The hit distracted her, and Anna took advantage with a storm of punches aimed at her head. Some missed, but enough hit that she knew she’d hurt her. Sydney was staggering about the clearing, and Anna tracked her down and, gripping her by the shoulder with her left hand, nailed her across the jaw with her right and sent her sailing backward into the audience. And then, at that moment, it suddenly came back into Anna’s mind that she had another opponent and a partner and that any moment she could get grabbed from behind. She spun around, expecting the redheaded powerhouse to come charging into her as she did.
But no. Instead, she saw Dani and Ashley boxing. They were exhausted but still going. Dani would hit Ashley across the face and then Ashley would hit her back. The punches were wet and dull sounds in the night and the sudden silence of the crowd. Like Anna, they were transfixed by what they were seeing. Ashley hit Dani across the face and Dani came back and hit her in her huge chest with a right and a left, and then when she covered up Dani hit her across the face. Limping, wishing desperately she had something to balance or lean on, Anna moved toward them. She was behind Ashley and could have gotten her from like Sydney had Dani, but Dani waved her off. “No,” she gasped. “I’m taking care of her.” And while she was talking, Ashley took advantage. She hit her with an uppercut to the face that sent Dani right down to the ground. Dani wasn’t out, and even as she landed she was trying to roll clear, but Ashley kept pace with her and just fell across her. Both girls lay like that, Dani on her back, Ashley on top of her, almost perpendicular, chest to chest. Dani squirmed under her and grabbed her by the hair on the back of her head, and Ashley returned the favor and drove elbows into her side. Dani grunted as each blow landed. In return, still holding her by the hair with her left hand, she used her right to punch Ashley in the side of her face, over and over and over, until the elbows stopped. Then, Dani rolled the redhead off of her and slowly got to her feet. Her hair was plastered her to head and neck with sweat, her entire body glistened, her spectacular breasts rose and fell with each breath. Her face, her chest, her back, her stomach, all showed the bruising and abrasions of the wild brawl. Grass and dirt stains had mixed with the lotions Mr. Watt had demanded and it was like their feminine conflict, all they had been through that night, was recorded on her gorgeous body. And every bit of her, from her hair down to her bare feet, was beautiful and glorious as she hauled Ashley to her feet for her final beating. The redhead brought her hands up but Dani knocked them down and then she went at the bitch. She hit her in the face, threw uppercuts into her breasts, and worked on her stomach until she was out on her feet. Then she grabbed her by the hair on the side of her head, sized her up, and nailed her in the face with a right hand that laid her out flat on her back. And as the redhead lay on her back, Dani staggered to her and planted one foot on her enormous bosom and, facing Debleena, raised her fists in triumph.
