by Brian Olsen
Alan was saved by the arrival of yet another drag queen. He needed a moment to take her all in. She was six foot something, African-American, probably in her early forties, though it was a little hard to tell under the make-up. Her wig was enormous, with long, black, wavy curls cresting atop her head before cascading down to her ankles. Her gold dress was tight and blinding, sequins reflecting and magnifying the dim lights of the restaurant. It stopped just above the knees, showing off a truly magnificent set of legs.
“Peter! You made it!” the queen exclaimed.
Pete jumped to his feet and wrapped his arms around his old friend. His head was just at the right height to nestle in her ample bosom. “Of course I did! It’s been too long since I caught one of your shows, I’m way overdue.”
The two broke their embrace, and the tall queen noticed Alan for the first time. Alan had stood when Pete got up, but had been shifting awkwardly in place while they hugged. She looked him over carefully, then turned back to Pete.
“I see you’re having the chicken.”
Pete barked with laughter. “This is Alan, we met through my trainer at the gym. Alan, this is Kevin Bailey. Kevin was my roommate in college.”
“Peter, honey, honestly, has my tuck come undone? Girl, I am working, Kevin Bailey is in a duffel bag in the dressing room until after the second show.” She turned back to Alan. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Alan, I’m Annie Hooker.”
She extended her hand as if expecting him to kiss it; instead he took it by the fingers and waggled it gently. “Nice to meet you.”
“Oh, he is precious,” she said to Pete. “You said you picked him up after gym class?”
“Be nice,” Pete replied.
“Bitch, I am the epitome of courtesy. Alan, have we met before? You look very familiar.”
“I don’t think so,” Alan said.
“Hm. Must be the drugs kicking in. Well, I will leave you two to your date, I have to finish getting ready. Pete, if things go well, remember to check his ID – fifteen will get you twenty. See you after the show!” She ran out of the room, into a door leading behind the stage.
As they sat, Pete smiled at him apologetically. “Sorry about that. Kevin’s just teasing, it’s part of his act. He’s a nice guy, honestly.”
“It’s fine. Do I really look that young?”
“No! Not at all. Although...I thought you were a little older, to be honest. I don’t know why. You look exactly your age, really.” He smiled wanly.
Alan was a little annoyed by Pete’s disappointment, though he knew he was being hypocritical. He had been worried about Pete being too old, and now he was the one feeling defensive about his age.
“Fair’s fair...how old are you?” Alan asked.
“Forty. Just turned forty, in fact.”
Alan had been hoping for thirties. “Well, that’s not that big of an age difference, really.”
“Right. Fourteen years, that’s not...that big a deal.”
“Right,” Alan replied. “I mean, if you think about it, you’re only technically, biologically just barely old enough to be my father. But it would be really unlikely.”
“I...guess that’s true.”
“That came out a lot weirder than it sounded in my head,” Alan added.
They both sat in silence for a moment. Their waitress approached the table and handed them their drinks. “You boys ready to order?”
“Oh god, yes,” Alan said. “We men are ready to order.”
They placed their orders, and the waitress took their menus and left them to their mutual awkward silence. After a moment, Pete began, “Look, if you want to...” but Alan cut him off.
“Okay, two things. First, I am twenty-six, fine, there’s an age difference, but I’m not a fucking child, despite the hours I spend playing video games. Second, that was really amazing, what you said just now when I told you I didn’t know what to do with my life. You made me feel better in fifteen seconds than my best friends have been able to do in three years. So...fuck the age difference. I don’t know why I’m cursing so much but I know I want to keep getting to know you.”
Pete positively beamed, his eyes shining with reflected candlelight. “Awesome. That’s awesome. I absolutely want to keep getting to know you, too.” He held up his drink. “Cheers! Oh, sorry, you probably don’t remember that show.”
Alan clinked his drink. “Watch it, old man.” He took a sip and let go of all the tension that had built up in him since that afternoon. “So, you said you’re a lawyer?”
As Pete talked about his work, Alan found his veneer of comfortable cynicism being chipped away by his date’s unbridled positive energy. Pete was so incredibly enthusiastic about everything. He specialized in intellectual property law, which Alan would normally have found incredibly boring but which Pete made sound like the most interesting, exciting job in the world.
“I enjoy helping artists with lots of creativity but little business sense avoid getting taken advantage of,” Pete said. “Basically, I like to help the little guy not get screwed over by the big guy.”
Alan scarcely noticed as the waitress brought them their meals. In response to a question from Pete about how he knew Mark, Alan launched into the story of the last few years of his life – of moving to New York with Caitlin, meeting Mark and Dakota, and finding their apartment in Brooklyn. Pete hung on his every word, laughing genuinely at the smallest of jokes and cheering at the most minor of triumphs.
Pete was just about to tell him about the case he was currently working on when the lights got even dimmer and a dramatic chord of music played. A voice sounded over a loudspeaker: And now, ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between, Tuck In is proud to present your star performer for the evening, direct from a personal appearance in a doorway on the West Side Highway, the fierce, the fantastic, the fucking fabulous Miss Annie Hooker!
The music picked up and Annie strode onto the stage from behind a curtain. Pete burst into applause, and Alan and the rest of the diners followed suit. Annie had a microphone in her hand, and when she opened her mouth Alan realized that she was actually singing, not lip-syncing. He didn’t recognize the song, and a shouted whisper to Pete resulted in an answer he could only partially hear – it was an ABBA song, he said. Gimme Gimme Gimme something something Midnight. A fantasy midnight?
He forgot about the title and got swept away in the performance. Annie had a superb voice, a rumbling baritone that soared to a powerful falsetto without a crack, and she worked the stage of that cheesy theme restaurant like she was a headliner in Vegas. For a moment he wished Caitlin were with him, as she would have loved it, but then he looked at Pete’s beaming face and was glad she wasn’t. Crap, he thought, I think I could really like – oh, a man after midnight, that makes more sense.
After a few more songs and some shockingly filthy banter with the audience, Annie took her bow and headed backstage. Pete, breathless from cheering, turned to Alan. “Isn’t he amazing?”
“Yeah!” Alan replied. “She’s awesome! She...he was your roommate?”
“Roommate and best friend. We were each the first person the other came out to. He started doing drag while we were still at NYU, he would get dressed in the dorm bathroom then head off to do a show at the Pyramid Club. He did Wigstock a few times too. He used to be a lot grittier, real old-school New York drag, but he’s softened up a bit, focuses more on the singing now.”
“Wow. I’m surprised I’ve never heard of him,” Alan said.
“Yeah,” Pete said, hesitating. He seemed about to reply to Alan’s comment, then changed his mind. “He’s the reason I switched career paths, really. He knew I wasn’t happy with what I was doing, convinced me to make a change. I think he was hoping for something more dramatic than just becoming a different kind of lawyer, but it worked for me.”
“I was hoping you’d become my personal bodyguard, you muscle queen,” said Annie, who had crept up behind him while they were talking. “I need help fending off my over-zealou
s admirers.”
“You were amazing!” Pete said. “You just get better and better.”
“You were great,” Alan said in turn. “I really enjoyed it.”
“Thank you, darling,” she replied. “Thank you both for coming out tonight, I really appreciate it. I need to wash off my star-shine – what ordinary people call perspiration – and grab my dinner before the second show. I’m hosting Bingo afterward, you should move to the bar and stick around.”
“I think Alan has another engagement, but I’m game,” Pete said.
“I might be able to stay,” Alan said.
“Stay,” Annie commanded. She leaned in close to him. “Stand up whatever pretty little thing you lined up as your backup date tonight, honey, this is the real deal you’ve got here.” She stood up straight and leered lasciviously at them. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, which isn’t a very long list.” She scurried off backstage again, her heels clacking on the restaurant’s tiles.
“Do you like Bingo?” Pete asked as they sat down.
“I do, actually,” Alan said. “I kind of love it. I have terrible luck, though, I never win.”
“I used to have bad luck,” Pete said, “but lately it’s been changing. I keep winning things.”
“Like what?”
“Like my gym membership. No offense to Mark, but I only go there because it’s free. I’m not going to renew. All the cardio equipment is faulty, I think it’s trying to kill me. I keep falling off, and while cardio is far from my favorite activity, I’m not quite that uncoordinated.”
“How’d you win it?”
“Some promotion. It came in the mail. I hadn’t renewed at my regular gym yet, so I figured why not? But the gym membership’s nothing. A few weeks ago I won a car.”
“Wow! How’d you win that?”
“That one I honestly don’t know. They kept sending me emails saying I won, but I assumed they were spam. It wasn’t until the manufacturer started calling me that I believed them. Somebody entered me, I guess, I don’t know. Whoever did it, I’m grateful, the car’s awesome. It’s a Kurihara Neuron, which means nothing to me because I know nothing about cars, but it’s amazing. It’s got that auto-park thing, a computer that parallel parks for you, have you heard of that? It takes over the steering wheel completely. I don’t drive it much but it’s perfect for the city.”
“Sounds fun. I miss my car, I left it back in Indiana when I moved here.”
“It’s been useful lately,” Pete said. “I have a client living upstate who insists on periodic face-to-face meetings but hates to come into the city, so I drive up to see him.”
“Is this the client you were about to tell me about?”
“Yes! Good memory. I can only tell you what’s public record – I probably shouldn’t talk about it at all but Betty brought me another vodka tonic when I wasn’t looking and I never drink. You know Amalgamated Synergy, right?”
Alan froze. He tried to keep the shock from registering on his face. No fucking way, he thought.
“Yes...”
“Well, they bought this website Jumpa a few months back. My client created a bunch of their most popular games – Work It and CollegeTown, a few others. Do you play those?”
“Yes. Yes, I do. Your client created Jumpa?”
“Not Jumpa itself, just the games. Amalgamated Synergy bought Jumpa, and the deal included all of its games – obviously, since it’s a games site and wouldn’t be worth much without its content. Except, and this is more complicated than I’m making it sound but I don’t want to bore you, basically we’re saying my client retained ownership of his games, so the guys who owned Jumpa didn’t have the right to sell them. So we’re suing Amalgamated Synergy over the rights.”
“Wow.”
“I know, right? My little firm is suing this massive multinational corporation. We don’t have a chance in hell but it’s really exciting. I mean, we’re right, we’re completely in the right, but they can just keep throwing money at this until they win. It’s strange, I would have thought they’d settle just to make this go away, but they seem determined to fight it out. So Amalgamated Synergy is pretty much my entire life right now.”
“Huh.”
Pete took another sip and continued, oblivious to the change in Alan’s mood. “My client’s not making it easy. He’s got a lot of rage issues. We settled with the original Jumpa guys, but he’s really pissed off that Amalgamated Synergy keeps making money off of his creations. He’s this crazy hacker – I don’t know if people still call themselves that, but honestly it’s like something out of a movie, it’s amazing what he can do, and he keeps hacking into their computers. I’ve convinced him not to do anything stupid, and I told him we can’t use any information he gains, but he keeps getting in there just to prove he can. I don’t know what he’ll do when we lose, erase all their hard drives probably. Oh, shit, I shouldn’t have told you that. I am such a lightweight.”
Alan’s mind was buzzing. “So you don’t work for Amalgamated Synergy, right? You never have?”
“What?” Pete’s smile was confused. “No, no, of course not. I’m suing them, I don’t work for them. Why?”
“It’s just...there’s something going on...I guess you’re not a part of it but it’s still another pretty big coincidence...”
“Sorry, you’ve lost me. Are you okay? You look kind of pale.”
Slowly, Alan told him about the ways in which Amalgamated Synergy had been intruding into his and his roommates’ lives. Pete listened attentively, smiling in amazement all the while.
“That is so intense,” Pete said when Alan had finished. “That is mind-bendingly amazing. I was there when Mark was talking to that woman, I didn’t see them but I was on the treadmill while they were talking. You think she’s behind everything? She’s fucking with your roommates?”
“We don’t know,” Alan answered. “We are utterly bewildered and a little terrified by the whole thing. If she is, she is some kind of criminal mastermind because whatever she’s doing is insanely complicated. We can’t see any real purpose to any of these coincidences. I had kind of written it all off, honestly, but then you start talking about Amalgamated Synergy...”
“And Jumpa, and Work It, which are also part of this whole thing. Wow. I can see why you think there must be some connection there, but I just don’t see how my lawsuit could have anything to do with it. I’ve never met anyone named Pickle, unless maybe I’ve nodded hello to her at the gym without realizing it. The only interaction I have with Amalgamated Synergy is through their lawyers.”
“No, I know,” Alan said hurriedly. “I don’t think you’re part of some vast conspiracy to fuck with my life, honestly.”
Suddenly, he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He apologized to Pete as he dug it out and read the text message from Caitlin: leaving home now meet you outside of dereks apartment.
“Shoot,” he said. “I’m sorry, I can’t stay for Bingo. I’m having a good time, I was going to blow off the party but now...”
“That’s fine, I understand. Don’t worry about it, I’d want to go too, you might get some answers out of it.” Pete smiled at him broadly.
“Do you ever stop smiling?” Alan asked him. “Sorry, that sounded rude, but I just mean...do you?”
Pete’s smile lit up his face. “Not really. Why should I?”
Alan smiled back at him. He considered for a moment. “So...wanna come to a party with me?”
Chapter Ten
Mark losing
Mark stood on the sidewalk outside Pickle’s apartment building while Dakota fussed with his tie. He had planned on wearing the same pair of jeans he had been wearing all day, but Dakota insisted they dress up. They both looked pretty hot, he conceded – he could definitely rock a suit, even a cheap one, and the tight red dress she settled on almost made him forget that she was his best friend and a lesbian.
“It’s fine,” he said, fighting her off.
“It won’t stay straig
ht,” she insisted, attacking his neck again. “There,” she said finally. “Much better. Now put your arms down at your side, your cuffs are uneven.”
“Stop!” He yanked his arms away from her. “Stop using me as an excuse to not go in. I look good. We both do.”
“Okay. Okay. Fine, you’re right. I’m nervous. I’ve never accused someone of spearheading a conspiracy before.”
“You’re not going to say it like that, are you?” he asked her. “At least wait until we’ve scored some food before you get us thrown out.”
“Let’s just go in before I lose my nerve.”
She led them into the lobby, where the craggy-faced doorman eyed them suspiciously.
“Hello!” Dakota said. “We’re here for the Dundersfield party.”
The doorman’s suspicions didn’t wane. Mark heard a dial tone as he hit the speaker phone on his desk, then a couple of quick beeps, followed by a ring.
“Hello?” came a woman’s voice.
“Miss Dundersfield, there are some more guests for your party here. Should I let them up?”
“Oh, all right...I thought everyone was here, who is it?” Mark heard another woman laugh, then say: “Is it a muscular Asian boytoy?” Pickle spoke again: “Muffin, shut up! God!” She paused, then asked the doorman: “Is it?”
The doorman hesitated, possibly insecure about confirming Mark’s boytoy status, so Mark called out, “Hi, Pickle, it’s Mark from the gym.”
There was a long pause, then Pickle said: “Hi, Mark. Come on up.”
The doorman glared at them. “Penthouse,” he spat out, and Mark and Dakota strolled past him to the elevator bank.
“Penthouse!” Mark whispered to Dakota as they waited for an elevator. He was grinning from ear to ear. “Holy shit! A penthouse on the East River!” A door slid open noiselessly and they slipped inside. “Fuck. This elevator is amazing. Is that real gold?”
