The buffet is invariably set up in the staff room, which is located on the sixth floor, but before I go up I decide to pay one of my infrequent visits to my desk, see if there is anything I need to pick up, look at, or discard; usually interoffice memos fall into that last category. Make sure my plant has been watered, and my pens are all in place. Good writing instruments are so hard to come by, after all. As we exit the elephantine elevator onto the third floor, Richard excuses himself for personal reasons, whilst I head into the city room itself.
My desk is located near the front of the building with a great view of Market Street. Not that it really matters, as I am seldom there, and I never actually work there. But still, it’s the principle of the thing. Should I choose to sit there, I have a great view. I lazily saunter over. When browsing through a few miscellaneous papers, straightening up the few personal effects that I can claim as my own, and waiting for Richard, my eye is caught by something that looks out of place in the desk closest to mine, one which has heretofore been empty of all occupancy. Now it seems to have a certain lived-in look, and I glance at it curiously, wondering if the paper has acquired a new employee. There is an assortment of potted flowers in bright shades sitting on the desk—roses and carnations mostly—as well as cutesy balloons inscribed with all manner of Welcome. Obviously a new employee, but who?
As I decide to be nosy and look for some indication of whose desk this now is, I can hear Rachel’s dulcet tones approaching from behind me, and I turn to her. “Hello, Rach, what’s up?” I greet her with outstretched arms and a warm kiss. “Who’s the newbie?”
For some reason, Rachel skirts the question. “Hey, where’s your better half?” she jokes.
“In the men’s room.”
“Looking for a date?”
“No,” I frown, starting to bristle, “he’s taking a piss. What’s the matter with you? You’re acting rather strange.” And I eye her like she is some sort of alien life form that has taken over the body of my friend Rachel.
“C’mon, Max.” She takes my hand in hers to lead me in the opposite direction. “Let’s find your young master and get some lunch.”
I stand rooted in place, more suspicious now than ever. “Not until you tell me what your problem is and why you’re acting like you’re auditioning for a guest spot on I’ve Got a Secret.”
“Max, it’s no big deal. I’ll tell you over lunch.” She pulls at my hand, as I continue to refuse to budge…
…and then I hear it.
“Well, hello, Maximillian, long time, no see.”
And as the first notes of that voice reach my ears, my brain immediately registers who it belongs to, and I stop dumbfounded in my tracks, a shudder coursing through my body, giving Rachel the ohmyGod-tell-me-it’s-not-true look, even though I know it is very true. And the voice belongs to someone I had hoped never to see again. That is my first thought; my second being, wait until Richard sees her, he’ll lose his mind. And then finally I turn about to face the source of that voice, and I behold her once more. Amy Rose Banneker. Damn!
Damn, damn, and again damn!
“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?” She fairly purrs, wearing that oh-so-smug smile that I just want to rip off her face. She hasn’t changed a whole hell of a lot, actually. She was always on the thin side, and her cheekbones are perhaps even more sharply defined, her heavily made-up skin pulled taut to the point of being almost gaunt. The honey blonde hair is the same, maybe stringier, and it looks like she wears it in pretty much the same way, though I don’t pretend to be an expert in that area. It’s the eyes, though, that really haven’t changed, the same shitty brown eyes. Or is that just my own innate feelings coming through when I see that same inscrutable expression that makes you wonder if she is sizing you up for the kill?
“Not long enough,” I half-mutter to myself, looking to Rachel for some kind of explanation, for God’s sake. Hopefully that the bitch is just passing through town and she felt sorry for her and invited her for a free meal. Hello, how are you, here’s your hat, what’s your hurry? Although somehow I know, judging from Rachel’s cheesy reaction, that it’s more than this. Much more than this. And I am almost afraid to find out just what it is.
“I guess Rachel has told you that we are now fellow colleagues here at the Tribune?” she fairly crows. Which is news to me.
The look I give Rachel is not a pleasant one. She looks like she wishes she were somewhere else, far, far away.
And at just that moment, guess who walks up? I can hear his voice behind me. “Oh dear God, it lives. And here I assumed that it had died out years ago. Or hoped so, anyway. Still fighting anorexia, I see, Amy,” and he circles my waist with his arms, pointedly pulling me close to him as if to demonstrate complete ownership. Which I can’t quite blame him for, considering….
“Richard, you’re still here?” she purrs maliciously. “I would have thought that AIDS would have killed you off years ago. Or that Max might have gotten the good taste to tell you to go fuck yourself….”
March 4, 1977
GOD, how that voice takes me back, and not in any pleasant sort of way. The first time I ever heard it was back in about 1977. I think it was springtime; that sounds about right. Maybe March. Richard disappeared sometime in February, not for the first time, but it was his longest absence to date, and I was being rather sullen and uncommunicative on the whole. I wasn’t in school, I wasn’t working, and altogether I was a major mess. Adding to my anxiety, my mother was bombarding me with more dopey females than I knew what to do with—not that I wanted to do anything with them, mind you. But she never seemed to get the message.
I knew that Rachel was concerned about me. She was juggling a full course load at Wash U herself, as well as a part-time job at Steak ’n Shake. But still she found time to drop by at odd hours of the day or night, trying to lighten my mood with tidbits of gossip and silly jokes, as well as the occasional bottle of wine. All to no avail. I clung to my moroseness with a vengeance, moaning about my lost mate and sobbing over his possible and probable infidelities.
It was during this time that she began to talk about a classmate of hers, some girl who was studying to be an actress, by the name of Amy Rose Banneker. If I said that the wolf didn’t like her from the beginning, suspecting her inner nature and warning me not to trust her, well, I would plain be lying, ’cause that just wasn’t the case. Not even when I first met her face-to-face.
Rachel and my mother must have been in some sort of cahoots, and Rachel must have mentioned bringing Amy over to meet me, because my mother jumped at the chance that I might be interested in someone of the female persuasion, so naturally Juliet said yes. She discreetly left the house, taking my thirteen-year-old half-sister Diana with her. I was in my room, lying on the bed, in my usual Rimbaudish posture, listening to some of my Johnny Lee Hooker albums and re-reading for the hundredth time A Season in Hell. To make the picture complete, I had even gone so far as to don my angsty poet costume; I looked like a young Lord Byron with the open-throated white shirt, full-sleeved, soft fawn trousers, and half-boots, feeling quite sorry for myself and trying not to think of my fickle Richard.
Suddenly, in walked Rachel and this strange girl. Right into my room. No knocking. No warning. No preliminary pleasantries. Just wham, bam, thank you, ma’am, as Mr. Bowie might say. Which did nothing to improve my mood. Rachel, I wouldn’t have minded so much. Her I was used to. But I wasn’t in the mood for a stranger.
Rachel flopped down on top of me, straddling me without so much as a by-your-leave. I simply ignored her. She then proceeded to tickle me ruthlessly until I acknowledged her presence, glancing up from my volume. “Oh, when did you get here?” I asked with just the proper tone of disinterest.
“Maxie, I want you to meet Amy,” she cooed, bending over me and staring intently into my eyes, crushing poor Rimbaud in the process. I clucked at her as I set the poor French poet to rights again, turning my eyes toward her companion.
“Hello.” I
remembered my manners. “Nice to meet you,” I greeted her in a deliberately deadpan voice.
My first impression of Amy Banneker, once I had deigned to notice her, that is, was of a shy little blonde with a warm smile and a hesitant laugh.
“Amy is an actress,” Rachel said, running her fingers lightly up and down my half-exposed chest, mostly to irritate me as well as to tickle me. She removed my book from my hands, glancing at the title and groaning softly.
“You have a comment to make?” I asked snidely.
“Yeah, but I’ll hold on to it for later,” she said. “You’re obviously holding a funeral service here, judging by the sounds I hear coming from your hi-fi.”
Disdainful sniff. “You don’t know good music when you hear it.”
“Haven’t heard it yet.” Obnoxious grin.
“I like the blues, myself,” Amy interjected quietly, as if afraid that her opinion might offend one of us.
I flashed a triumphant grin at Rachel. “I see you actually know someone else with taste,” I couldn’t resist saying.
“More than I can say for you,” she added with a grin, which merely earned her a scowl at the unspoken reference to Richard.
I saw Rachel glance at Amy, and before I knew what the girl was about, she had reached out her hand and pulled Amy down on top of me as well. Damn, I swore as I felt the breath leaving my body in one fell swoop. The two girls merely giggled, despite my protestations that their combined weight was killing me.
“We’re not getting off ’til you smile,” Rachel threatened, very knowing and very supercilious. That girl is nothing if not stubborn. And apparently so was her friend. And although I cursed Rachel a blue streak for ten full minutes, telling her what I intended to do to her and to any and all future progeny, they never budged an inch between them until I finally gave in, albeit ungraciously, allowing them to pull me from my prone position on the bed. And back to life.
Thus ending my blue spell, at least temporarily.
Rachel and Amy became my constant visitors. Not a day went by without either one or both of them making their way into my room to ensure I wasn’t sinking back into my old ways, my sullen behavior. If Rachel was otherwise occupied, Amy came, which I didn’t mind, as we had become fast friends. Which totally thrilled Juliet. She wore this amused smile when she passed me in our various wanderings about the house, even though I merely shook my head at her and said, “Still gay.” She didn’t want to hear it and greeted Amy’s arrival as if she were some sort of long-lost savior twice removed.
Not having any sort of instinct where women were concerned, it therefore took me quite by surprise when Rachel took me aside one day—on a day when Amy didn’t accompany her—and told me with some concern that she thought that Amy was suffering from an impossibly unrequitable love. When I asked her for whom, she looked at me most gravely and said, “You.”
“Me?” I fairly squeaked, looking at her as if she was daft. “You’re crazy!”
“I wish I were,” Rachel sighed.
“Has she told you so?”
“No, she denies it, of course. But she talks about you all the time, and she has these weird dreams about you….”
“No, tell me you’re kidding.” I looked at her in growing consternation. “She knows I’m gay, for Christ’s sake, and she knows that I’m… not available…?”
“Yes, of course, but she has this idea.” Rachel took a deep breath. “That she is the one woman who is destined to turn you straight.”
I yelped at that! Like I hadn’t heard that one before. Some women seem to think that their vaginas contain some sort of magical restorative power with the ability to change sexual preferences with a single fuck. I just hadn’t realized that Amy was one of these or that I was the object of her fantasy. “I like her as a friend,” I groaned, “but that’s it. End of story. This is the part where the hero rides off with the knight in shining armor, not with the fairy princess. She’s living in the wrong fairy tale.”
Rachel just shook her head, tsk tsking.
The first time that Amy tried to kiss me, I passed it off as a lark. After all, I kissed Rachel and never thought anything of it. Even Richard didn’t object to that, and he was known to be a bit of a jealous git. But Amy’s kiss was different; it hinted at other things to come, and it made me distinctly uncomfortable. I pushed her away, but as gently as I could.
But it only got worse. Including the day she told me that she loved me.
What does anybody say to a woman when they spill their heart and soul to you? Thank you sounds so cold, but anything more sounds like encouragement. Luckily I am not often faced with this situation, but even once is bad enough. The look in Amy’s eyes, though, when I had to explain that my heart belonged to someone else, even though he wasn’t around and might never be, was… well, it was chilling, to be honest. It actually set off alarms rather than arousing my sympathies. Like that feeling you get when you’re watching a horror movie and you know that the bad guy has just decided to do something particularly horrible to the hero. Not that I consider myself the hero or anything, this just happens to be my story, and not that I necessarily see Amy as a villainess, life isn’t necessarily as cut and dried as all that. I don’t know if I am making any sense or not right now, but she did set my teeth on edge with the look in her eyes. And maybe I should have been warier….
After that, I tried to avoid being alone with Amy, but it wasn’t easy. My mother had given her free run of the house, so she came and went however she pleased, which meant I never knew when she would pop into my room. And I began to find strange messages in odd places, little scraps of paper with hearts drawn on them. Once there was a little picture of a wolf. I began to seriously worry. I hadn’t said anything to her; what did she know, or think that she knew?
It was a lazy May evening, early in the month I think, a Saturday night. The weather was balmy and most pleasant. I spent the evening with Rachel, with no sign of Amy anywhere. We went to the movies to see the newest James Bond film: The Spy Who Loved Me. I have to admit that great moments in cinema it wasn’t, but Bond films are always enjoyable, and this one was no exception. There are those who argue that the only real James Bond is Sean Connery, and I admit that he was great, but I also happen to like Roger Moore, and so does Rachel, so that’s that. At any rate, we watched the movie, went out for ice cream afterward and then returned to our separate houses for the night.
The weather was so nice that I opened my window, letting the breeze blow over my naked body as I lay alone in my bed. I was having trouble sleeping. I couldn’t get Richard out of my head. I missed him, and I wanted him. Even though I was hurt and angry, I still loved him and always would. Not a word had I heard from him, and he hadn’t left a note behind. He never did. But he was often the star attraction of my dreams each night, and most of them were of the erotic variety, where I would awaken to find myself in the midst of suddenly sticky sheets, to my chagrin. Rachel tried to interest me in other boys; I talked to them, occasionally went for coffee or something, but it just wasn’t the same. I loved Richard. He was my mate, my one true love. End of story.
As a last resort, I decided to take a sleeping pill. They were my mother’s, actually, but she didn’t use them often herself, and I used them even less. I hated having to use artificial means to attain respite, but sometimes I just felt the need. After tossing and turning a bit longer, I fell into a troubled slumber at last.
And then the dreams began. Richard, Richard, and again, Richard. One dream melding into the next, his handsome image always before me. Those beautiful, dark blue eyes that smoldered with such a fierce intensity whenever we made love, which was quite frequently. Those lush tresses I loved to touch, to grip, to caress. The most beautiful lips in the world, all mine—well, they should be all mine, God knew who was kissing them, who he was kissing, or worse….
Energetically bouncing about the bed, I kicked my sheet off, relegating it to the floor, but I never noticed. Richard was there. Richard w
as mine; he was murmuring words of love, eternal vows he swore he would never break. Passionate kisses fell on my love-fevered lips. He said he wanted to show me how much he loved me. Those talented lips began to travel south, down, down, down until they reached my nether regions, and I felt him take my erection—oh so anxiously awaiting his touch—into his mouth. How good he felt, how very much I had missed this. I moaned softly as he began to gently fellate me. How very, very real it seemed, almost intensely surreal….
A sudden flash of light seemed to fill my room. Confused, half asleep and groggy from the sleeping pill I had taken, I opened one eye, looking toward the door. There, to my utter amazement, stood none other than my Richard, my heart, my soul, my life! My sleepy brain registered his presence, although my sluggish body didn’t seem to understand or move. My heart filled to overflowing at the sight of him, even as I prepared to yell at him for his prolonged absence. But his attention seemed centered on something other than me, and following his line of sight, I glanced toward the foot of my bed, only to discover why my dream had seemed so very real. There, kneeling between my legs, with my hard cock in her mouth, was none other than Amy Rose Banneker herself.
Do you remember that scene in The Rocky Horror Picture Show where they discover Janet and Rocky doing it in the tank? All right, technically, they did it in the tank, past tense, before they were discovered. And then everybody looks at everybody else, and they do the infamous Rocky Horror roll call (okay, shoot me, I’ve gone to see it live one too many times). Well, that’s what this reminded me of. I looked at Richard, he looked at Amy, she looked at me, and back and forth and back and forth, and for a few minutes we were a dumbfounded tableau set in stone, before I had the presence of mind to remove myself from her maw and back away from her, and my frozen tongue managed to thaw.
To the Max Page 5
