Chapter 8: Blackmail

Lydia

At the starting line of the marathon race, I felt like someone had dumped a handful of ants into my pants. I was so nervous I couldn’t stand still for even five seconds. I was thirty-two, which was getting close to the best age for a marathon runner, but these were my first Olympics. All the girls around me who were my age were competing for the second or third time already. It was my big chance to finally score a big one and it would be hard enough as I was pretty sure some of those ladies I was up against had had a little more than just bread and water for breakfast.

I had hoped that the unexpected Bronze medal over 10K would take the pressure off a bit, but instead it actually increased it. I hadn’t come to the Olympic Games, after missing two of them, to come third. I wanted a gold. I wanted something that would make my darling son burst with pride, and hopefully make him so horny that as soon as I came home, he would throw me on the kitchen table and fuck me rigid. Too bad I couldn’t run naked. That would do the trick even if I finished in thirtieth position.

The gun went off and I immediately knew I was in for torture, as the Africans ran off as if they had stolen something. The Russians had been anonymous all season, but you could never count out Fedorova, the girl who had run topless with me in Utrecht the year before. Apart from that I had to look out for a Japanese girl and of course Katrin Dörre from Germany. Like me she was born in East Germany and went through the same system as I, although I never knew if she was on the ‘medical program’. Since she didn’t have a beard I gave her the benefit of doubt.

It was a good thing I had also trained for the 10K, because the Africans set a murderous pace on the first few kilometers. The pace settled after ten kilometers, but I was quite knackered already. The Africans had overcooked it big time and went backwards, leaving two Japanese girls to pick up the pace, while Fedorova was never more than one or two positions away from me. The Russian watched me like a hawk and so did Katrin. She still knew me from the short time we had competed for East Germany together and she knew I was a safe bet. Staying with me meant being there or thereabouts when the final attack was launched.

The crazy-ass antics of the Kenyans and Ethiopians had dumped a bucket of lactic acid into everyone’s legs and the Japanese set a relatively modest pace over the next twenty kilometers. It was clear that nobody of the front-runners would come close to improving her personal best. Mine was at 2:22:45, over a minute slower than the world record at the time. From the intermediate times we were given I reckoned we wouldn’t even beat the 2:30 mark.

After thirty kilometers I had recovered quite well, but I still felt those brutal first kilometers. It was time to play with our Japanese friends a bit. I ignored my protesting muscles, accelerated to take the lead and floored it. We passed some big screens, allowing me to see that the remaining field was hemorrhaging people out the back and we were down to ten runners by the time we reached kilometer thirty-three. The two Japanese wrestled their way back in front again and once in the lead they slowed things down again.

At kilometer thirty-six the impatience of youth got the better of Fedorova and she sprinted off, quickly creating a gap on the field. I upped my pace a bit, slowly reeling her back in. By the time I had caught up with her, only the stronger one of the Japanese was still with me. Fedorova, having shot all her ammo too early started dropping back at thirty-nine.

Reaching kilometer forty-one it was me against the Japanese girl, who refused to do any work, staying in my shadow all the time; so it would come down to a final sprint, which was normally not my strong suit, but then no marathon runner is good at sprinting.

I was momentarily overwhelmed by the deafening noise as my opponent and I entered the stadium for the final lap. When we went into the last corner with about two hundred meters to go, the Japanese passed me and tried to sprint off, but I remembered Meri’s advice to wait for the hundred-meter mark and that’s what I did. Shadowing my opponent, I gathered my last reserves and put the hammer down over the last one-hundred, my head lolling about as if it didn’t really belong to my body anymore, making me dizzy. I didn’t even realize that I had left the Japanese eating my dust, as exhaustion and dizziness made me collapse in a heap as soon as I had crossed the line.

Mark

I belted out a loud war cry, grabbed Rhonda’s cheeks between the palms of my hands and planted a kiss on her lips. She looked at me in wide-eyed surprise, which made me realize what I had just done. I felt a sudden blush discolor my face before I saw that John and Jonjo were slapping their knees in laughter and even Rhonda joined them after overcoming the momentary shock of my unexpected victory smooch.

Looking back at the screen, we saw mom still lying on the track, desperately gasping for air. Someone had thrown a blanket over her, and when the camera panned closer I saw Meri crouched down next to her, laughing and crying in joy at the same time. One of mom’s legs was perched up on Meri’s shoulder as she stretched mom’s foot to release a cramp.

The telephone rang and on the other end was Frank, completely beside himself with happiness, congratulating me over and over again, knowing that he couldn’t give her those best wishes in person. I thought the gesture was actually quite moving. By the time I had ended the call, mom was back on her feet, doing the slowest victory lap in recorded history, Fedorova, the Russian, at her side. She had come third.

Meri’s presence at the track wasn’t a coincidence though. Two of the runners for the 4 by 100m relay had come down with a stomach bug and as Meri had been the fastest in the 4 by 400, she was selected to stand in. The final was about two hours after mom’s victory and with the two fastest runners thankfully still available, the Russians were the only true opponents. Without that last-minute bad luck, the Gold would have been considered a mere formality for our team.

Meri was selected for the starting slot and as soon as the gun went off, she ran like girl possessed, wiggling those sports-bra-squashed boobs even more enthusiastically as she had done for the camera.

She passed the baton closely behind the Russians. Evelyn Ashford did the rest. She passed her Russian opponent and the following two runners never looked back. For the second time that day I whooped and cheered, but this time I could stop myself in time before I invaded the personal space of John’s wife again.

Meri went absolutely bonkers, having won a gold in a discipline she wasn’t even meant to compete in and I had no doubt that the disappointing long-jump was the furthest from her mind at that point.

John

Being the manager of an Olympic athlete who has just won two medals is the most rewarding thing in this business. Mind you, from a PR point of view Lydia is pure gold anyway. Her background as a former East German would be enough, but then there is the Playboy shoot, the stunts in Vienna and Utrecht and some of the better journalists have even gotten wind of the upcoming FHM shoot of her and Meredith Daxter.

But it is of course not all roses. Saying her reaction to her obvious attraction to her son was a bit headless chicken would be a massive understatement. With Lydia you never knew what would happen next. She was thirty-two, but in her impulsiveness she reminded me of a teenager. Maybe that was because she was never allowed to be one. After all she had had to assume responsibility for a child at the age of fourteen.

It had been almost two weeks since Lydia’s big win and the Olympics were already over, but she was still in Europe. She was to run two exhibition races in Hamburg and Milan. You can compare it to all those Criterium races that cyclists go through right after the Giro d’Italia or the Tour de France. In between she had planned to visit her Grandfather and her sister in Germany. She wouldn’t be back in Pasadena for another week.

Strangely we had not heard from Mark for several days, which was unusual. Normally he would call once in a while when Lydia was away for a prolonged period of time.

Rhonda and I were on our way back from Burbank after spending a few days in our holiday residence on St. Kitts and Nevis. Driving along a country road, I saw some poor drunk bugger lying in the ditch, which is unfortunately not too uncommon in these parts, but Rhonda’s screech nearly made me jump out of my skin.

“Stop! Turn back! That’s Mark!”

I didn’t quite understand what Rhonda was on about, but I stopped, put the car in reverse and when we came back to the motionless figure I realized she was right – the beard, the glasses, his ‘Pasadena Track Club’ shirt - we were looking at the passed out body of Lydia’s son, eight miles from his home, lying in a pool of his own vomit.

Rhonda jumped out and completely ignored the bile, frantically checking if he was still alive and seeing the relief on her face, it seemed like he had ‘only’ passed out drunk.

It didn’t make sense. Yes, we were guilty ourselves of once in a while buying beer for him, as he couldn’t yet do so legally, but Mark was quite responsible in his consumption. I had never seen him more than well-buzzed, but there he was completely and utterly wasted. He was barely responsive and my first instinct was to get him to a hospital.

In the end, we cleaned him up as good as you can at the road-side and put him on the back-seat, driving home slowly, trying not to upset him. As much as I like the boy, I wasn’t fancying him puking into my car.

When we reached their home, we carried him in and Rhonda laid out a few towels on the bathroom floor. We laid him down and I left her to cleaning him up. Meanwhile I went down to the living room, looking for clues what had triggered this and I didn’t have to search for long as a video-cassette case and a letter were lying on the table. I could see that he must have been crying, as the paper showed the typical wrinkles that appear when paper gets wet and dries again.

The letter was a piece of pure vitriol.

I was about to jump out of my skin in pure rage, but I was interrupted by Rhonda calling me from the bathroom for help to get poor Mark into bed.

We put him in a lateral recumbent position, in case he’d vomit again and left him to sleep off his intoxication. Rhonda was silently weeping as she cleaned up the bath and put the soiled clothes in the washing machine. Since we were brother and sister, trying to have kids would be too dangerous for us, considering the chance of genetic defects. But she had definitely developed some protective, perhaps even motherly feelings for Mark and finding him in such a mess was hard for her. Somehow I couldn’t shake the feeling it would get even worse.

Rhonda checked on Mark again, holding her ear near his face so her keen sense of hearing could make sure that he was breathing properly. After that she followed me down and I filled her in on the letter I had found and I wasn’t quite sure what mood she was in, furious fear probably describes it the best.

“Let’s see that tape,” Rhonda demanded. “I bet it’s still in the VCR.”

What we saw shocked the daylights out of us.

It started with a celebration in the American House in the Olympic village and according to the timestamp it was the day after Lydia had won the marathon and Daxter had won her unexpected gold in the 4 by 100-meter relay. I knew bad things were about to come when I saw how much both of the girls drank. We fast-forwarded a couple of times, but you could actually see how they were filled up and it involved quite a lot of talking them into it, with Melinda Kennuck toasting them quite a lot.

Later the scene changed and we saw that the two massively drunk girls had retired to a bedroom and judging by the voice it was Melinda Kennuck who filmed them being engaged in a sixty-nine, eating out each other’s pussies. Rhonda begged me to turn it off, saying we had no business watching that, which is saying a lot as both Rhonda and I have strong voyeuristic tendencies, but this wasn’t a couple willingly letting us watch. We couldn’t even be sure they were aware of what they were doing.

But then Rhonda’s curiosity was peaked as we heard mumbling which sounded like someone was talking to the person who filmed this. It was completely intelligible, but Rhonda’s eyes narrowed to angry slits.

“We need headphones.” She seethed and paused the replay.

Somewhat shocked by her strong reaction, I walked back up and looking into Mark’s room, I found a pair of quite expensive headphones. I took the opportunity to check on him and he was still sleeping in the position we’d left him. I knew he was sleeping as he was snoring at a volume that would have put a logging camp to shame.

I went back down and handed the headphones to Rhonda. She rewound the tape, listened, rewound, listened and then...

“That fucking perfidious bitch! I’ll rip off her tits and feed them to the dog!”

Rhonda never swore and I actually recoiled hearing her unload like a trucker.

“Give me a fucking piece of paper and something to write. I’ll nail that fucking bitch to the wall so hard she’ll beg for a firing squad!”