He turned around to show off the back of his robe. It said ITALIAN STALLION in gold block letters. It even had a white patch sewn on the top that said SHAMROCK MEATS INC., just like in the first Rocky movie.
He turned back around and lifted his robe coquettishly to give us a peek of his stars-and-stripes boxing trunks.
“Wrong movie,” Trevor shouted from his table over to one side. “That’s Rocky III!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Gordy said, beaming.
“I thought you’re Irish!” shouted Forsythe, getting into it.
“Honorary Italian,” he said. “My wife’s Italian. Where’s my drink?” He found his bottle of Talisker 18 on a little table next to the ring, glugged some into a glass, and took a swig before stepping into the ring. He made a hand gesture, and the rose-petal woman hit the ring gong with a striking hammer. He bowed, and there was applause.
“Booya!” he shouted.
“Booya,” some of the guys replied.
“Booya!” he yelled, louder.
“Booya!” everyone shouted back.
He pulled down the hood but left the robe on-probably a wise decision, given his physique. “We at Entronics are going to go the distance for you,” he shouted. There was a high-pitched squeal of feedback.
“Yeah!” Trevor shouted back, and he was joined by a bunch of the other guys. I clapped and tried not to roll my eyes.
“We’re going all fifteen rounds!” Gordy shouted.
The rose-petal woman was standing at a long table next to the ring, cracking eggs into glasses. There was a pile of egg cartons on the table. I knew what was coming up. There were probably twenty-eight glasses lined up, and she was cracking three eggs into each glass.
Gordy took another gulp of his Scotch. “When your back is to the wall and it’s do or die, you look within yourself to find the spirit of a hero,” he said. “Like Rocky Balboa, we think of ourselves as the under-dog. Rocky had Apollo Creed. Well, we have NEC and Mitsubishi. Rocky had Mr. T-we have Hitachi. Rocky had Tommy Gunn-we have Panasonic. Rocky had Ivan Drago-we have Sony!”
Raucous cheers from the Band of Brothers, and from some of the channel partners and distributors now too.
“We say, ‘Be a thinker, not a stinker!’” Gordy said. “We’re here to make your dreams a reality! Now, I’m not going to get down and do one-arm pushups for you.”
“Aww, come on!” Taminek shouted. “Do it!”
“Come on, Gordy!” Trevor shouted.
“I’ll spare you,” he said. “Because this is not about Gordy. It’s about the team.” His words seemed to be a little slurred. “The G Team! We’re all team players. And we’re gonna show you now what we mean. Jason, where are you?”
“Right here,” I said, my stomach sinking.
“Get up here, sparring partner!”
I stood up. Was he going to ask me to box him in the ring? Good God. Get me the hell out of here. “Hey, Gordy,” I said.
“Come on,” he said, waving me toward him with his left glove.
I approached the ring, and the rose-petal girl came up to me with a glass of raw eggs.
“Drink it down, Jason,” Gordy said.
I could hear cheering and laughter.
I held the glass of eggs, looked at it, smiled like a good sport. I held it up for everyone to see, and I shook my head. “I’ve got high cholesterol,” I said.
“Aww,” said Trevor, and he was joined by Forsythe and Taminek and then the others.
“Come on, Tigger,” said Festino.
“You’re all fired,” I said.
“Drink up,” Gordy commanded.
I lifted the glass to my mouth and poured it down my throat and began swallowing. The eggs slid down in a gooey, viscous string. I felt sick, but I kept going. When I handed the empty glass to the rose-petal girl, a cheer arose.
“All right!” Gordy said. He tapped my head with a glove. “Who’s next? Where’s Forsythe? Where’s Festino?”
“I don’t want to get salmonella,” Festino said.
I returned to my table, looking around for the nearest restroom in case I had to hurl.
“Pussy,” Gordy slurred. “Trevor, show ’em a real man.”
“I want to see Jason chug another glass.” Trevor laughed.
Gordy began weaving around the canvas like a real punch-drunk fighter, and I could tell he wasn’t faking it. He was drunk. “See, thing is, wanna know why we invited you all?” he said. “All you customers? Think we invited you because we like spending time with you? Hell, no.”
There was laughter. Trevor sat down, relieved that the moment had passed.
“We want every frickin’ last one of you to standardize on Entronics,” Gordy said. “Know why?” He held up his gloves, punched the air. “Because I want the whole G Team to be as rich as me.”
Some of the Band of Brothers guffawed loudly. So did a few of the customers, only not quite as loudly. Some, however, were not smiling.
“You know what kind of car Gordy drives?” he said. “A Hummer. Not a Geo Metro. Not a goddamned Toyota. Not a Japmobile. A Hummer. Know what kind of watch Gordy wears? A Rolex. Not a stinking Seiko. It ain’t made in Japan. Where’s Yoshi Tanaka?”
“Not here,” someone said.
“Yoshi-san,” Gordy said with a sarcastic twist. “Not here. Good. Fact, I b’lieve none of our Japanese expatriates are here. Prob’ly too busy filing their secret informant reports on us. Sending microdots back to Tokyo. Goddamned spies.”
There was laughter, but now it was the nervous kind.
“Japs don’t trust us,” Gordy went on, “but we show them, don’ we? Don’ we, guys?”
There was rustling, the clinking of forks as the guests quietly ate their salads.
“They’re slow-kill, those Japs,” he said. “Passive-aggressive. Let the dust pile up in the corner. Never tell you what the hell they’re thinking, those Japs. Inscrutable assholes.”
“Gordy,” Trevor called out. “Take a seat.”
Gordy was leaning on the ropes now. “Think it’s easy working for a bunch of slant eyes who want you to fail just because you’re a white guy?” he said. His words were more and more slurred, getting indistinct. “The G Team,” he said.
Trevor got up, and I did too. “Come on, Gordy,” he called out. “Jesus,” Trevor muttered, “he’s plastered.” We walked over to the ring, and so did Kurt and Forsythe. Gordy was leaning against the ropes, canting all the way over. He looked up and saw us approaching. His eyes were bleary and bloodshot. “The hell away from me,” he said.
We grabbed him, and he struggled for a few seconds, but not very hard. I heard him mumble, “Wha’ happens in Miami stays in…Miami…” before he passed out.
As we carried Gordy out of the banquet room, I saw Dick Hardy standing against a wall, his arms folded, his face a dark mask of fury.
PART THREE
37
The first thing I did was to get rid of the Caribbean. I had them remove all the PictureScreens from my new office. I wanted to be able to see out of the windows, even if all I could see was the parking lot.
Everything Gordy used to do I wanted to do the opposite. After all, I was the anti-Gordy. That’s why Dick Hardy had named me the new VP of Sales.
That and the fact that Entronics was desperate to fill the slot as fast as possible. They wanted to put the Gordy debacle behind them.
Gordy’s drunken rampage was all over the Internet the next day. The message boards on Yahoo were filled with stories of the Rocky show, the glasses of raw eggs, the Rolex and the Hummer, and especially the anti-Japanese slurs. Gordy, who was well-known in the small world of high-tech sales, had become a celebrity.