Suddenly his arms are around me from behind. How does a man his size move so quietly? He kisses the back of my neck but says nothing. Then he’s carrying me back upstairs to the shower. I had thought that things could not possibly get hotter than last night. Shows what I know.
After, we go downstairs to find breakfast on the table. “I feel like we’re out in the middle of nowhere,” I say. “Where do these elves keep coming from that are making all of these deliveries?”
Conrad smiles, but he seems preoccupied. “I think I’m ready to tell you about what I’m doing out here,” he says.
“Okay.” I sip the coffee, which is so good that I feel like I’ve never had coffee before. A whole new world opens up when you’re on his arm. But now I’m nervous. He looks so serious. I know that this is all temporary, but I’m not ready for whatever it is to end yet. I don’t want him to say anything that will change it. And if I’m being honest, I don’t want him to say anything that’s going to make me less horny. I can’t believe it, but I’m ready to go again.
“I wanted to see if I could fall in love,” he said. “That was originally going to be an idea for the book. Something like ‘Two weeks to fall in love. Is that super cheesy?”
“No.” But I’m not sure if it’s cheesy or not. I’m not sure what it is. “Does that mean we’re going to be here for two weeks?”
“Well, that’s what I’m trying to decide. I wanted to see if it felt cheesy once I tried.”
“Conrad, there’s one important question here. What do you think love is, and how are you going to recognize it once it shows up?”
“I was hoping you could help me with that. But another answer is that, given all the research that I’ve done, we should fall in love. This should be enough time. Given our personality types, and all of our sub-modes, and the obvious physical attraction, and our ages and so on, this should work. Whether it does or doesn’t, that’s what I want to write about.”
Jargon aside, transactional conversation aside, I’m well aware that this might be the most vulnerable that anyone has seen him. Maybe it’s just the oxytocin flooding through me, but it feels like a privilege. No one who follows his exploits in the tabloids would believe this for a second.
“I had this idea of turning this cabin into a laboratory,” he said. “I came out here and decided to fill it with everything a woman would want. Something that would make it, and me, irresistible in the long term. But I immediately realized I was in over my head. Every time I thought about putting the experiment in motion with someone I liked…it never even got far enough to come out here. It was all too easy. Every woman acted like I was perfect, her dream man, within five minutes of meeting me. They didn’t have any interest in knowing me, so I’d get bored right away.”
I can’t decide if I’m annoyed or charmed by all of this. It’s a lot to take in. When you perform an experiment, you start with a hypothesis and then try to prove it wrong. “I’m not some lab rat,” I say. Was his hypothesis, “I can make her fall in love with me?” Or was he telling the truth and it was something closer to “It is possible to fall in love during two weeks of isolation, given that you’re with the right person and you have just fucked each other nearly to death?”
I can’t focus. My God last night was good.
“No,” He says. “You’re no lab rat. Although if you were, you’d be the sexiest lab rat in history.”
“So what now?” I say.
“Now we just spend time together,” he says. “I want to talk through the ideas I had. I want you to help me think about them. Then we see if there’s any overlap. We decide if we think it’s real. Assuming that you’re interested in following the method to its conclusion, of course.”
“I think I could be persuaded,” I say. How can anyone look this good in a robe? Conrad makes flannel look like a black tie. “Walk me through the method, professor. Exactly how do you see this going?”
He nods. “It’s simple. You form a hypothesis. Your claim. If this was a third-grade science fair project it could be something like Water Boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit.” Then you’d heat up a pan of water to 212 degrees. If it boils, you conclude that your hypothesis was right.”
My current hypothesis would be something like, “Hints of an orgasm appear within 20 feet of Conrad Storm.”
“And then?” I say.
“Then, if you’re wrong, you tweak something. You make a new hypothesis. You test it again. And you repeat until you can reproduce the same result over and over.”
“So what’s your hypothesis here?”
He pours himself another coffee. His hair falls over his forehead and he brushes it away. “That we can fall in love before you leave.”
“And what would the conclusion be, if you had to guess?”
“We experiment so we don’t have to guess. But I know the conclusion I would want.”
“And?”
“You wouldn’t leave. And that’s what all the signs point to unless I’m wrong about everything.”
I take a deep breath. “So where do we start? Do I need a lab coat?”
“I like you best with the fewest clothes. But there might be a lab coat around here somewhere.”
Chapter Fifteen - Conrad
Well, here we go. After cleaning up breakfast and getting dressed, we go for a walk in the woods. There’s something I want to show her. As we step onto the trail I take her hand. When she looks at me, I say, “We have to know what we’re working with. People hold hands, right?”
“Yes.” There’s a lightness in her tone that I love. “So let’s examine the sensation, professor. How does it make you feel?”
It feels like she’s delicate. Her hand is so small. The bones are fragile. “It reminds me of how small you are. I like the feeling of your skin on mine. It makes me feel protective. I don’t know how you feel about the white knights that want to swoop in and save every woman, but I mean it. I’m bigger than you and holding your hand makes me feel like I’ve taken responsibility for you.”
“But,” she says, stepping ahead of me and pulling me along, “It looks like I’m leading you. That means I’m in charge, right?”
I catch up. “Maybe. I’ll make a note of it.” The leaves are changing. The forest is a riot of vivid color.
“Where are we going?”
“I know a spot.” I haven’t been out here in a long time, and there’s a reason for that. But there’s a peace that you can’t feel anywhere else. “I’ve always loved stepping into the trees,” I say. “Doesn’t it just make you feel like you should whisper? It’s kind of like going to church.”
“Are you a church going lad?”
“Oh no, not me. My parents took me when I was a kid. Catholic. I don’t have an ax to grind, but it wasn’t for me. Hey, look.” I point up the trail, which is opening into a clearing. It’s been so long, but the giddiness comes back like I stepped into a time machine.
“Whoa!” says Maya, stepping into the clearing. She looks up, and up, and around.
The clearing is ringed with totem poles. They’re each at least 50 feet high, but some are upwards of 100. My favorite is painted blue, yellow, and red. “You’re not going to believe this,” I say, “But my dad carved these.”
“No way!” She’s practically hypnotized and I know the feeling. “What got him into that?”
“This all used to be a Boy Scout camp,” I say. “He bought the land and developed it as a surprise for a friend. He just loved the scout organization. Family tradition.”
“That’s quite a surprise.”
“He was quite a friend,” I say. “But even for all the money we had, my dad liked to work with his hands. He was always making things. He didn’t like to just ‘do deals,’ as he put it. Didn’t really fit into the knowledge economy. So we’d come out here, chop down a tree, and he’d get to work. It’s incredible.”
She runs her hand along the beak of a fierce-looking head. Then she looks at me. “How exactly does this fit into our ex
periment?”
“They say that one’s parents are the windows to the soul, right?”
“No, I think that’s eyes.”
“I like mine better. So, I’ll go first. My relationship with my parents was pretty near perfect. It might have been helpful if they had made me struggle a little more. I work because I like to work, but I think they would have been happy to let me sit around and read or play all the time if I had been the kind of kid who just wants to be idle.”
“I’m sure they were wonderful,” she says. “This is good data.”
“What about you?”
Maya frowns. “There’s not much to say. I had a good, short relationship with them. They died when I was ten years old.”
“Maya. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Of all things, it was a boating accident. I was staying with my grandmother while they were deep-sea fishing. That was my dad’s real passion. I didn’t go because I get motion sick on the water. If I had, then…anyway, my grandmother raised me. I had a happy childhood, I just didn’t get to have it with my parents for as long as I would have wanted.” She looks up at the poles again. “My dad would have loved this. He said that people who can’t work with their hands don’t know what they’re worth.”
“What did he do?”
Maya doubles over laughing. “Actually, he was a journalist. He typed, but it wasn’t what I would call working with his hands. His soul wasn’t shaped in a workshop or anything.” She’s quiet for a moment. Then she smiles and walks towards me. “If I want to jump your bones right now, does that mean we’re falling in love? Or am I just feeling crazy because you make me feel crazy?”
I pull her close and squeeze her ass. “It could be a little of both. I have to say, I feel similarly. We should probably wait and see if it fades.” I let her go, take her hand, and keep walking. “I’ve got something else to show you.”
“Aw. Can’t you show me out here? I think I’m ready to see it again.”
Maya is turning out to be far better than I could have guessed, even though I’ve been working off of the most sophisticated models known to mankind. Brilliant, gorgeous, and freaky. But I’m being serious when I say, “Not here. I don’t think I could live with myself if I did anything dirty in this place. But that doesn’t mean I’m forgetting.” I pull her into the trees and we keep walking. The silence is comfortable. Most people don’t know how to be quiet. Maya seems as if she’s totally happy with her own thoughts. Must be nice.
“So what’s the deal with Zima?” she says finally.
I start laughing. “Zima makes me laugh. She does her job okay, but I keep her around because I like her, and also because she reminds me of something.”
“What’s that?”
“That I don’t want to be used. Zima’s a user. Just trust me on this one. And I’ll tell you something else. People who are willing to live their lives with someone else’s money don’t know what they could aspire to. It cuts off their ambitions. And I want to see people reach for things they want.”
The way I reach for her now. Now that we’re out of the clearing, I have no guilt and wrapping my arms around her and kissing her.
Chapter Sixteen - Maya
So, it looks like we’re camping. One of his phantom forest elves has set up a tent in yet another clearing ahead. But calling it a tent is like calling the pyramids mere triangles. The tent is the size of a house.
“Ever been in a yurt?” says Conrad. Of course, he knows the answer, which is no.
It’s even more impressive inside than out. Except for the round shape, you’d have no idea that it wasn’t a house. The walls are paneled, hiding the poles that support the structure. There’s a firepit in the floor, functional no doubt, and a stove in the corner. No, yurts don’t have corners, but it’s over there against a wall. There’s even a cooler full of drinks.
“I had them set this up for us,” he says. “I think we’ll be able to do some very good work here.”
It looks that way.
One thing I’ve always been sure of is that men are uncomplicated. Exasperating, yes. Infuriating at times, sure. But I’ve always felt like I knew where I stood when it came to whichever guy was next to me. He wanted something from me, and I wanted to believe that he was as interested in getting to know me as getting into my pants.
Conrad is complicated. You hear that we’re all made of many selves. Angry you, lustful you, petty you, generous you, cruel you, and so on. The light and the dark have to fight for center stage and if you’re lucky your good attributes spend the most time front and center. Conrad seems like he’s got a million sub-modes battling inside him. It feels like he wants me to figure out who he is. Or maybe, who he could be. He said he feels protective of me, but I feel the same way. Is that crazy, feeling protective of a man who has so much money that money has essentially ceased to exist for him? A man with such resources that he has unlimited options? A man with such good looks that he could fill this yurt with a grateful harem at the snap of his fingers.
I watch him start the fire and it doesn’t seem crazy at all. He knows what he is. He knows what he’s not. He’s curious about who he might become. It’s hard not to respect that. It’s impossible not to want it for him.
“Is this going to help us fall in love?” I say.
He looks around the yurt. “Oh yeah. This is kind of like a primitive atom smasher. But in here, instead of atoms, it’s all of those pesky inhibitions that make people put up their walls get destroyed.”
Once the fire’s going, he sits in a wicker chair and pats his knee. “This is what people do,” he says. “Come sit on my lap. You’ll be overcome with desire and emotion.” He throws back his head and laughs. “Please don’t ever tell anyone I said that. I just had to see how it sounded out loud.”
I sit on his lap. I put my arms around his neck. He can laugh all he wants, but I’m overcome with desire and emotion. “You know, I think that all of this touching can really confuse the issue.”
“You might be right. It’s tough to experiment in a vacuum.” He kisses me and I put my hands in his hair. It’s hard to believe that the normal world is only 15 minutes away. By helicopter, that is.
When we separate I say, “You know, I thought of something that might help. It’s straight of the girl’s guide to falling in love.”
“Is that a real book?”
“Probably. And one of the non-negotiables. You’re supposed to meet my friends so I can get their opinion on you. The good news is that right now I really only have one friend, so this will be easy.”
“If we’ve got two weeks out here, how long would you need for your friend to give me an evaluation?”
“No more than a night or two.”
“All right, give her a call. If she says yes, I’ll have someone go get her.”
Angela screams so loudly into the phone that the yurt nearly collapses. I don’t give her the details; I just present it as an invite. She wants to know when we’ll be getting married. She wants to know if she can marry him. She wants to know what he looks like naked. Conrad can hear the whole thing. He looks like he’s regretting this decision. When I hang up, he says, “We stay here tonight. We’ll bring her up to the house tomorrow afternoon.”
“And what are we going to do in the meantime?”
“I need to spend a couple of hours writing. I want you to do the same. Then we need to add another layer to the experiment.”
“What should I write about?” I say.
“That’s up to you, Maya. But it might be helpful for you to write about what you want from a man in your life. Then you’ll have a better way to gauge whether I can be that man or not.”
He delivers this speech like he’s Spock. But I know he’s just trying to appeal to my analytical side. It’s not a bad strategy. I know I said it before, but it bears repeating: when you find a man that encourages your mind, you don’t just throw everything away and worship him just because he’s not fixated on your body, but it’s an un
common thrill.
As I put the pen on the paper, it is quickly apparent that I know much more about what I don’t want than what I do. Other than my night with Conrad, the rest of the men in my life haven’t exactly set the cosmos on fire. Let’s see:
You already know about Ian. Cheating, charming, cowardly.
Tim had been a waiter with a screenplay in a desk at home. He called him mom three times a week and cried when he couldn’t pay his bills on time.
Nick had been in the city for a summer before returning to an oil rig somewhere in the ocean. He had been an adorable moron whose T-shirts all had words on them.
There had been a philosophy professor whose name I couldn’t remember. He used words like “Kantian” at the breakfast table before the sun had come up. He had approached sex like he did his classes: painstakingly, clinically, as if he thought Socrates might show up and judge him.
Other than them, there had been a few boyfriends when I was a teenager. What I wanted was what they were not. I want ambition. I want stability. I want someone who adores me and challenges me. I want someone independent who has passions of his own. I definitely want someone who had a body, a pair of eyes, and ass like Conrad’s. I’m not proud, I can admit it. The thing I want most of all, I think, is for someone to know everything about me. Not that I’m overflowing with unshared secrets, but I’ve never been in a relationship that passed beyond that guarded stage where you’re not even you, you just send your representative to date in your place.
Conrad will know me if I let him. But I guess we have to follow the experiment to its end. Good God, this is all so weird and wonderful. Angela is going to lose her shit when she gets here.
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