GOAT

It meant “greatest of all time,” of course; the acronym had been around forever. Champ liked remembering it right before a match. It gave him an extra spring, a kind of kick, you know? It got him ready to win. 

Still, he suspected today it would be unnecessary. He sensed what his manager was going to say when he walked into the locker room.

“The match is off,” Baldy said.

“I figured,” Champ said.

“The other guy said, why bother?”

“Right.”

“He said, you’ll win. You always do.”

“Reasonable.”

“I’ve lost count of how many have said the same by now.”

“Me, too.”

“Here’s the purse.” Baldy used his device to transfer the funds. “God bless.”

“Thanks.”

After Baldy left, Champ lay back and played drums on his gut. He was getting used to his opponents forfeiting, due to his unprecedented dominance—maybe too used, he thought, taking an inch or two of new belly fat between his fingers. Going unchallenged could make a person lazy. Still, who would turn it down?

There wouldn’t be another match for a month, if that one even happened. Champ anticipated winning again without having to lift a finger. It was really the best of all worlds.

Yet the next month was different. 

“Is this a joke?” Champ asked.

“Apparently not,” Baldy answered, over the phone.

“But it’s not even…it’s not even human.”

Baldy had told Champ his next opponent would be, yes, an animal. It was one that had been exiled to outer areas away from the city, to whatever woods were left, a “buffer species” as they called it, preyed upon by every other. Part lamb, part goat, part other things, the animal’s original name had long been forgotten for the jokey moniker, a gloat.

“Well,” Baldy said, gingerly, “they say it’s evolved.”

“Evolved?” Champ spoke as if it were a word unknown to him. He recalled seeing one years ago while having an outdoor assignation with a married female fan. The thing had scared the hell out of them before Champ reassured her with, “Relax. It’s just a gloat.” 

“These days,” Baldy went on, “species evolve faster. Like some salmon that started migrating earlier because the waters got so warm. It was an actual change to their genetic structure that…”

“Okay, okay.” Champ knew Baldy had been a science student before losing his ambitions and his hair. He hated when the guy went on like this, boring him half to death. “I believe you.”

“So,” Baldy said, “it signed up.”

Champ shrugged. Stranger things had happened, right? No, they hadn’t. Champ fighting an animal, a lowly gloat at that? It was ridiculous! The two were separated by a lot more than one letter!

“It’ll be a freak show,” Champ said.

“Maybe.” Baldy approached his next comment with care. “But people like freak shows.”

“I get it.” Champ picked up his point right away. “We could double the purse.”

“We could.”

“Triple it!” Champ laughed, then hung up without so much as a so long.

It’ll be easy pickings, he thought. And the thing will probably drop out first, like everyone else. 

A week before the match, the gloat still hadn’t dropped out. At least it hadn’t removed its name from the sign-up sheet. And it had a name—Gordon! 

“Now it’s not funny,” Champ said. “It’s annoying.”

“I guess,” Baldy said, “it’s looking to show you up.”

This made Champ quiet, thoughtful, and mad. He’d be damned if somebody was going to get the drop on him. Just in case, he ought to get ready for whatever trick was about to be pulled. It would be a good excuse to lose a few. 

“Book me time at Bobo’s,” he told Baldy.

Speaking of animals, Champ used to be a beast at Bobo’s gym: you practically had to pry him out of there. Now he got back on the horse, the bike, to be exact. Also, the squats, lunges, planks, medicine ball, pogo hops, you name it, Champ did them. Over did them: by the end of the day, he was on oxygen and they had to sort of re-start his heart.

“You’ll be all right,” the doctor said, with a long breath, dripping sweat, as if it had been touch and go.

Champ tried to spring up to confirm it but could hardly raise his head.

“How’s the patient?” Baldy asked later, over the phone. 

Champ could hear he was anxious, also, and this annoyed him.

“I’m fine, okay?” he said. “But that’s not important. No joker can just walk in on my turf like this. Or canter or gallop or whatever a gloat does.”

Baldy laughed, but Champ was serious.

“So, let’s triple the entry fee,” Champ said.

“What?”

“And require proof of previous bouts. And a minimum amount of wins. I may play an animal but I’m not playing an amateur.” 

“Look, we don’t run the…”

“Oh, no? Since when?”

Champ was chummy with the regulatory agency that scheduled the matches. If he couldn’t get them to change the rules, who could?

“Just come up with a reason,” he told Baldy, who blubbered and but-ed about ethics and precedents. Cutting him off, Champ said…

“I got to go and rest my heart.”

…and hung up. 

For a few days, Champ heard nothing more about his next opponent. It’s too embarrassed to opt out, he thought. Or too unintelligent—how many words could it even know? Right?

Then Baldy called. 

“Gordon,” Baldy stammered a bit, “I mean, the gloat, provided the, uh, paper work. And also paid the fee we asked.”

“What do you mean?” Champ felt his eyes twitch, which hadn’t happened since his last tax audit.

“It apparently has played a few places—nothing big, mind you, just challenger events. We were sent copies of the contracts. And, the pay is in a check, old school, and signed. The handwriting’s shaky but no worse than, your, you know, autograph.”

Baldy prided himself on his own beautiful handwriting: what did they used to call it? Cursive! Whose side was he on?

Now Baldy emailed him an image from the sign-up center. Champ saw a blurry security still of something on all fours with antlers and a tail, standing in line. 

Champ was silent, seething. It took him a minute to get a new idea. 

“Let’s specify which species can play,” he said. “We’ll bury it in a footnote, in an asterisk.”

“But,” Baldy was diplomatic, “that might make you seem, no pun, Champ, chicken.”

Frustration and rage again silenced Champ for a second. This had gone far enough. Soon he was able to utter…

“Let me handle this.” 

“But…”

“You just start looking for my next loser. Or get yourself another boy.” 

Champ was Baldy’s only client, the jewel in his crown. It was a low blow but sometimes you had to throw one. Winners understood.

“Look, Champ,” Baldy pleaded, “don’t get me wrong, I didn’t mean to…”

Champ pressed to disconnect Baldy and dial somebody else. Stalkle was his former bodyguard now running a security firm on which Champ had provided the down payment. He owed him.

“Stalkle? Champ.”

“Long time no hear.”

“You still like to…hunt, don’t you?”

That night, Champ put himself to sleep imagining how the deed might be done. Cross-bow? Repeating rifle? Or a pesticide that left no figurative fingerprints? He hoped Stalkle would be business-like not sadistic, as he sometimes had been in his employ. Champ should have said there’d be a little something extra for him if he didn’t lose his head.

Champ was awakened at, what, four in the morning? He also should have told Stalkle to hold off on a progress report until at least dawn. 

“I’m calling from the hospital,” Stalkle said, over PA announcements in the background. Had he brought the dead thing there to be discarded? Of all the amateur moves!

“I was…” Stalkle’s voice grew weaker, “…impaled.”

Stalkle described the debacle, a fierce fight he had lost, allowing the gloat to escape unharmed. Champ let the phone descend into his sheets and himself back into unconsciousness, as if it was all a bad dream.

As the day of the match approached, ticket sales exploded. This should have chuffed Champ, since he’d lobbied for the higher price and, as the inevitable winner, would take home a bigger pot. Yet public interest had grown past a preoccupation into an obsession, which was peculiar.

“It’s not just the novelty,” Baldy said, with rattled confusion. “Or what we called the freak show. In the latest poll, it’s got 75% support.”

“The match?”

“The gloat.”

In fact, when he went online, watched TV or even just raised his blinds, Champ saw people lining up by the dozens—hundreds?—holding photos and homemade drawings of the animal which had challenged him. 

“It’s a fad,” Champ said, “that’s all. In the lazy days of summer,” though summer was in a sense all year long now.

Baldy’s new message contained an embedded image of the sign-up center filled with other gloats looking for a match, mostly gloats, out-numbering the humans.

Champ didn’t reply and practiced mindful breathing. He’d have to swallow his pride. Like other celebrities, he could sense a movement growing, tastes changing, a tide turning. As a true star, to stay on top, he’d have to reinvent himself.

The morning of the match, Champ modeled a new costume before the mirror. Gone were his trademark purple bathrobe over a bright yellow onesie, white leather belt, and black neon thigh-high boots. In their place, Champ had pulled on a fur hat and deerskin coat he’d ordered from a costume shop. As a final touch, he turned his antlers to an angle.

After beating Champ, Gordon took time to reflect on the win. The creature hadn’t actually evolved, had always been capable of competing with and besting human beings. There had just never been enough gloats to make it matter. Now their new numbers had changed all that. The name “gloat” would be retired for a less insulting title.

Speaking of titles, there would be no re-match. The gloat would no longer play Champ’s game. That had been his thing, she thought, not mine. 

LAURENCE KLAVAN wrote the story collection, "'The Family Unit' and Other Fantasies," published by Chizine in Canada. His novella, "Albertine," was published by Leamington Books in Scotland. An Edgar Award winner, he received two Drama Desk nominations for the book and lyrics of "Bed and Sofa," the musical produced by the Vineyard Theater in New York and the Finborough Theatre in London. His Web site is www.laurenceklavan.com.