by Rob Manary
“Elise and I have a date.” He is friendly, warm. “We take a walk around the grounds this time every day.” Elise smiles up at him.
I straighten and stand. I offer a nod to the orderly who has picked up my burden and I smile towards Elise. “I’ll see you soon, Lisee.” She offers nothing in return. I cannot be gone from the building fast enough. Before my driver has even gained the front gates of the place I am sitting in the back of the car, tears streaming down my face. Today was not a good day.
I am packing for my trip to Toronto when the phone rings. I grab the receiver and am greeted by perhaps the strangest greeting I have ever received. It is Wayne.
“Tell me everything you know about tuna fishing in the North Atlantic,” he whispers.
I pride myself on my composure but this is a little beyond anything I am prepared for so I stall. “Isn’t your customary salutation ‘Brandon’?” I tease, buying time, trying to process exactly what he has asked.
“I’m not fooling around, man. Shit, what do you know about tuna fishing in the North Atlantic?” There is a strange sense of desperate urgency to his hushed tone.
I had heard him correctly. “I don’t know anything about tuna fishing in the North Atlantic, in the South Pacific, or in the Indian Ocean. I know exactly zero about tuna fishing. Are you on some strange game show?” I laugh warmly, the conversation is ridiculous.
“Brandon! C’mon, be serious. Can you look it up on the internet? Help me out!”
I shake my head slowly. He is serious and this is strange even for Wayne. “What have you got yourself into?”
“Guy asked me what I did for a living. Shit, I blanked, man. I told him I was a tuna fisherman in the North Atlantic.”
I suppress the urge to howl with laughter. “Why did you tell him that?”
“I don’t know, shit. I was watching the Discovery channel last night and it must have stuck with me. Now he’s asking all sorts of questions and I got nothing. I’m in the toilet at the bar and he’s waiting for me.”
“Here’s what you do, Wayne. Go out there and tell him you are a secret agent and you can’t really talk about it. I’m flying to Toronto in a couple of hours. My flight lands at eleven. Be there to pick me up.” I hang up on him, laughing.
Moments after I end the call with Wayne the phone rings again. I pick it up with a smile, ready to weather more of Wayne’s nonsense, but instead it is Darwin Oaks. Darwin is one of my first girlfriends, a fling that was passionate but brief. She married and I don’t fuck married women. It would have never worked with Darwin and me. She wanted and trapped a billionaire, and although I am far from a pauper, I am certainly not a billionaire.
Again and again Darwin and I find our paths crossing. Each time she tempts me with that magnificent body of hers, offers me herself, and I refuse. On her wedding day she told me that I shouldn’t worry about her husband, there was no reason why she and I couldn’t continue a physical relationship. She half begged me to fuck her shortly after she had exchanged her wedding vows. I don’t fuck married women, I told her.
“Brandon, I’ve just come from a private show of your latest work. It is exquisite; I simply must have “Icarus Ascendant”. I called to let you know I’ll be bidding on that piece, perhaps on all three. You should have called me,” she chides. “You could have used me as model.” She laughs sweetly. I would be lying if I said her voice didn’t drive me wild. It would be accurate to say that the sound of her laugh lit a fuse directly to my cock. I could feel myself hardening, despite myself.
“I didn’t hear that you had divorced, Darwin.” I chuckle.
“Brandon, you are so old fashioned.” She sighs and it sets fire to my libido. Visions of her contorted in ecstasy, those long tanned legs of hers wrapped around my waist, pulling me deep inside her, fills my mind. “I’m wearing a short black skirt and no panties. The driver is stealing glances of me in the mirror. I’m spreading my legs slightly to allow him a better view.” She continues and my breath hitches. I know she hears it and she continues, lowering her voice. “I’m sliding my hand beneath my skirt and running my fingertips along the outside of my lips. Do you remember how you would go down on me, Brandon? You said I tasted so sweet. You used to lick me so thoroughly, sucking on my clit until I would squeal.” It is her turn to catch her breath. I say nothing, but blood rushes to my manhood, making me almost painfully hard. I let her do the talking. “I’m sliding a finger inside myself and wishing it was you. I remember how you used to fill me, to make me beg you to stop, to beg you not to stop. Brandon, meet me tonight, please. I need you so badly.”
Fun was fun but this is dancing dangerously close to the edge. I decide to end it, to put us both out of our torment. “Darwin, meet me at the Plaza at midnight. I’ll be registered as Pablo Picasso.” I hang up the phone. In writing this journal I find I do that often, but I couldn’t take anymore of Darwin’s torture.
Waiting a moment, I call the Plaza and make a reservation for tonight under the name Pablo Picasso. I also instruct the concierge to have a bottle of champagne chilled and delivered to the room at midnight with a card in an envelope that is to read: “Darwin, I don’t fuck married women.”
Extremely pleased with myself, I hang the phone up once more, and barely does it hit the cradle it is ringing again. This is why I don’t own a cell phone. I really don’t enjoy talking on the phone and the idea of being reachable anytime, anywhere is abhorrent to me.
“Hello,” I say. I find, generally, that is the best way to begin on the phone.
A voice that I have never really heard before greets me, but the voice is achingly familiar. “Icarus?” The tone is playful. “I loved the flowers. Thank you.”
I am struck dumb, it is St. Claire. I am rarely without words, but she has taken me aback. “Brandon, you can call me Brandon,” I finally say.
“I like Icarus better,” she half teases, and I like the woman instantly. Rarely am I thrown for long and I recover quickly, but she is on the attack already and has me quickly against the ropes. “Now you’ll tell me you just happen to be in Toronto this weekend or next week and you’d like to take me out?”
“Is that the script?” I am a teenager again, nervously fumbling for the right words. St. Claire has me completely at her mercy.
“Icarus, I’ve got you cold. A guy doesn’t find out a girl’s favorite colour, favorite flower, and where she is staying, then spend hundreds of dollars on flowers unless he wants in a girl’s pants. I’m not one of your dizzy little tramps.” She laughs. “You’re going to have to try a little harder. So tell me when you’re coming to Toronto and tell me the only reason you’re coming is to see me and we’ll get together.” Her voice is perfection, almost musical the words. She laughs softly and I am smitten. “Well?”
“I’m packing my bag now. I’m flying out in a couple hours.” There is no point in lying to her, she had stripped bare my artifice. “The only reason I’m coming to Toronto is to see you.” Inadvertently, I exhale a long breath, it sounds deafening in my ears.
“Good boy and eager, too! You’re cute and you send flowers. You keep being honest and you just might get into my pants, but don’t expect me to just get on my back or my knees for you. I just ended it with my boyfriend, my heart is broken, and I don’t want to go there again.” Her voice is mesmerizing. I am drawn in, she makes me dizzy. “So I am upfront with you too, I’ll tell you that my latest album, “I Want to be Dirty”, is much heavier and darker, more grown up than anything I’ve done. I’m changing my image, but unfortunate publicity has overshadowed what I want to accomplish. I want to be seen with you, bad boy Brandon Fahr, and I want to be seen with you very publicly. You know how to make the tabloids dance. I need you to do that for me.” The woman is everything I had heard of her and more, my admiration for her grows with each word. “And since we’re being completely honest I find you incredibly attractive.” I notice that her voice lowers. “And I’ve thought of little else but you since you sent the flowers. Don’t fuc
k this up, Icarus, you’ve got a good thing going for you.” Again that laughter that I think I can lose myself in.
“I really don’t know what to say.” And that is the truth.
“I can’t wait to meet you, Icarus. Call me in the morning.” As seductive as Darwin had been moments ago it is nothing in comparison to a word or two from St. Claire. And then she hangs up on me. I think that is the moment I lose my heart to St. Claire.
Friday, Day 5
The flight was uninteresting, and the hotel Wayne had chosen was only moderately passable. I will have to find more suitable accommodations. The Delta Chelsea is only a step above a Holiday Inn, and only a very small step, a baby step. I slept poorly.
After learning what St. Claire wanted from me, at least superficially, I gave Wayne the task of finding numbers for whatever gossip columnists the Toronto Star and the Toronto Sun might have, also what fashion editors and entertainment editors they might employ. I have a list too, one of freelancers. Then I smile. St. Claire is thinking of me as I have been thinking of her, it is a good foundation.
Room service arrives.
I share breakfast with Wayne which is only slightly painful.
“You know the last time we had breakfast together?” he asks.
“I wouldn’t even guess,” I retort. I want to lose myself in thoughts of St. Claire. She had taken me quite unaware the night before and I didn’t want to come across so poorly again.
“Never! We have never had breakfast together!” He laughs. “Never! Isn’t that something? All the time we’ve know each other we’ve never had breakfast together.”
“Wayne, I’m sure we’ve had breakfast together.” I don’t want to play this inane breakfast trivia game with him. Honestly, I wish he would just shut up and eat his toast.
“After clubbing one night we went to a Denny’s. You had an omelet and fucking bitched the entire time about being at a Denny’s. It was like, shit, five a.m. I’m not counting that as breakfast. Other than the Denny’s we’ve never had breakfast together.”
I don’t answer, hoping he will take my silence as an invitation to shut up.
“We should have breakfast together more often. Like, shit, maybe once a month. Once a month a Wayne and Brandon breakfast, no matter what we are doing we set aside one morning a month for each other.”
“No,” I say evenly, and he takes that as a cue to finally move on to his toast.
Being cold to Wayne is like what I imagine kicking a puppy feels like. Perhaps, it is fun at the moment, but surely you feel bad afterwards and I felt bad afterwards. “You’re doing a great job with Guy. I really appreciate it,” I offer as consolation.
Widely he grins, my little puppy. “Guy says St. Claire talks about you all the time.”
“Nice.” It is my turn to grin. “Now call all those numbers I gave you, and the ones you found yourself, and tell anyone who will listen that Brandon Fahr is meeting Rachel St. Claire every morning at her hotel, the Royal York.”
I shower and dress while Wayne attacks the phones. I dress simply in faded jeans and a dark blue shirt that falls long, just over my hips, with four small pearl buttons at the neck. I choose a largish onyx cross and position it so it looks to have just slipped free from under my shirt and appraise myself in the mirror. I like what I see, but run a hand through my short blonde hair to give it that fashionably mussed up look.
Entering the living room of the suite I notice Wayne has finished on the phone. “Easter,” I say. “No matter what, we will have breakfast together every Easter morning. Now that is a holiday, Wayne, that’s a pretty big thing.”
For a moment I get ready to dodge, thinking he will tackle me in some sort of ill conceived hug, but he regains himself and smiles broadly. “Easter!” he says and claps. “Good! Now, from what I got on the phone there’s going to be a few photographers, probably more than a few, waiting for you at the Royal York.”
I make my first mistake here and I don’t even know it until I hang up the phone. I am thinking I don’t want St. Claire to know I am calling from the Delta Chelsea so I take Wayne’s phone. I am never this careless. I hope St. Claire doesn’t catch this and have it come back to bite me.
On the first ring she answers and I realize I don’t know what to call her. “A little eager, St. Claire?” I say, echoing her comment of last night.
“A lot eager, Icarus.” She sounds delighted. “St. Claire… I like that. “ She tries it out, it rolls off her tongue, so beautiful that voice. “St. Claire, yeah, call me that.”
“There is a cadre of photographers on their way to the Royal York to get a glimpse of us. Are you ready for your first performance?”
There is a pause of a heartbeat or three. I have taken her by surprise, but she recovers quickly. “Should I meet you in the lobby or outside?”
“Outside I think would be best. Photo ops outside in the morning always play much better than shots they have to take through the windows in the lobby.” I smile to myself that I have taken her to the ropes this time. “I’ll see you in fifteen minutes?” It is my turn to hang up but she stalls my hand with a quick: “Hold on!”
“Yes,” I say calmly.
“Where are you staying? I’m sure I’ve talked to everyone who is everyone in town and you are completely off the radar. You got in last night and disappeared. Where are you staying?”
I laugh warmly. “I’ll see you in fifteen minutes, St. Claire.” And I do hang up.
I throw on my waist length leather riding coat and toss Wayne his phone. “Find me a better hotel, Wayne, one I’m not ashamed to be seen leaving.” And I am out the door.
I get the cab driver to drop me off just up the block from the Royal York. I see a figure waiting. From the long flaming curls of red hair, I recognize St. Claire instantly. She is more petite than I thought, but even from a distance she is a beautiful creature.
I walk towards her and realize I have caused a bigger frenzy than even I had thought; there are at least a dozen photographers. They are calling to St. Claire, happily snapping away, asking her questions. She is smiling, taking it all in, offering cute little jabs to their queries.
Looking down the block she spots me and we move towards each other. Closing the distance we are soon feet from each other. I cock my head and give her my most winning boyish smile, and then my eyes catch hers. I am drowning in those green eyes of hers. I am lost, struck immobile, her emerald eyes ensnare me. I don’t believe in love at first sight, but if I did, this would be it. The seconds are swallowed and I am hypnotized, but I notice something wondrous: she is as caught in my eyes as I am in hers.
We regain ourselves; she smiles and nervously bites her lip. It is genuine, stunning. “What do we do now?” she whispers, her breath a little shallow.
“We kiss,” I say with a confidence I don’t feel. I fear she could shatter my heart with a word.
The words are barely from my lips when her lips find mine. I think her intention was just a small peck, a chaste greeting, but her lips stay on mine a beat, and then another. I take this as invitation and gently open my mouth to hers. She follows my lead, the kiss broken long moments later by the clapping and hooting of the photographers. Perhaps feigning embarrassment, she buries her head in my chest. I wrap my arms around her, giving the photographers lots of fodder. She looks up at me. “What now, Icarus?”
“Now we go inside,” I whisper back to her.
“Or we could kiss again?” She takes my lips before I can respond. I slowly slide my hands down her body and take her hands. The kiss lingers, she takes my breath. Finally, it ends and we move hand in hand towards the entrance.
We walk in silence through the lobby to the elevators, my hand in hers, our fingers intertwined. Once the elevator doors close she turns to face me, but doesn’t let go of my hand. “I got a little carried away, but don’t get any ideas, Icarus.” She shakes her head and locks eyes with me. “Fuck, you’re hot and such a good kisser. Is it wrong I want to kiss you again?”
/> This is as much invitation as I need and I take her lips this time. She steps into my arms, my free hand goes around her and I draw her closer. Again, I open my mouth to her and she responds. I slide my tongue between her lips and I can feel her heart against me. I can feel her body, her need, as she clings to me, her tiny body so small in my arms. It is she who breaks the kiss and playfully punches me in the chest.
“Those are exactly the ideas I don’t want you getting. I’m not falling into bed with you. If I do...” She fumbles for words. “If I do, it won’t be tonight, it won’t be because you got me all worked up in a fucking elevator. Fuck.” She grows quiet and solemn. “Just don’t ever fucking lie to me, Icarus, and don’t break my heart, okay?”
“I promise.” I mean it, then I shake my head and chuckle. “You say “fuck” a lot.”
“I know, right?” She laughs. “It’s a terrible habit.”
St. Claire becomes all business once we hit her suites. I finally meet Guy, her dancers, her bodyguards, her entire entourage. I ache to be alone with her again. Too soon, I agree to sneak out the back of the hotel and I am gone as she gets ready to face another fourteen hour day of rehearsal. As I sneak out I wonder if she can still taste me, if the feel of my lips on hers lingers for her as it does for me. I agree to call her again in the morning. She seems disappointed, I should have pushed harder.
Saturday, Day 6
I appraise myself in the mirror and like what I see. I wear white cotton pants and a loose black shirt. There is bold white embroidery around the neck of the shirt that flows in a vee down the chest and there is white embroidery around both wrists. I put a little mousse in my hair and muss it up, I like the effect. I wear the onyx cross from yesterday around my neck and add a silver thumb ring. I blow myself a kiss in the mirror and laugh at my vanity. The phone rings.
I slept better last night, likely because I moved to the Ritz-Carlton, the Wellington Suite to be exact. The phone rings again as I leisurely make my way across the room. It is six a.m. so it can be no one but Wayne with another one of his crises. I pick the phone up and don’t even say hello, he will talk without needing an invitation. Instead, it is St. Claire.