Plus-One With A Vengeance : 6 / 29

[ An Altered Fates Story ]
by Iolanthe Portmanteaux

 

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"Hate, in the long run, is about as nourishing as cyanide."
— Kurt Vonnegut

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The evening with Kass felt like a victory, even if it wasn't a true date. It did buoy up Max's spirit and gave him hope of finding someone.

Yet, he continued to strike out. No one seemed to want to go out with him. He wasn't exactly snubbed in the sense that women turned away from him. They just wouldn't go out with him: not for coffee, not for a walk, not for dinner, lunch, or brunch... you get the idea.

To say he was perplexed is putting it mildly. I should explain that Max is a good-looking guy. Strikingly good looking, to the point that women, young and old, turn to look, and get caught staring at him. He's also a good person. He's not vain, or spoiled. He doesn't act entitled. He's modest, considerate, looks fairly athletic although he doesn't play any sport.

If he has any bad side, I can't think of what it is. I'm sure Amber would have some strong input on that, although I'd be inclined not to trust it.

In any case, Max widened his circle. He tried visiting museums, going to bars... he joined a gym, did volunteer work. He asked woman after woman, and got rejection after rejection.

In one particularly puzzling episode, Max was at a bar, chatting up not one, but three young women, and as he put it "doing very well," until one of the three placed him as "the Max who used to date Amber," and the mood changed. The women didn't walk away or turn away or turn him off. It was like a light went out -- the light of possibilities. All the cute, flirty repartee abruptly flattened out. Max went from thinking he had a chance of getting lucky to knowing for absolute certain he didn't. He tried to ask what happened, but one of the women waved off his question saying, "It's fine. Everything's fine. It's cool."

For Max, it wasn't fine or cool. It was bewildering and disturbing.

He pored over his college yearbook, considering calling his college flames. Then he dug out his high-school yearbook and searched online to see what some of the women look like now. In the end, though, he couldn't bring himself to actually call any of them. "I know I'm desperate," he said, "but I don't want to come across as desperate, and I definitely don't want to be known as desperate."

Under normal circumstances, he would have gotten a yes right away, but for some reason these weren't normal circumstances.

"I don't understand it," he said to me. "I'm not an asshole, am I? Do I have bad breath? Body odor? Do I dress funny? Am I rude? Am I a misogynist and don't realize it? Am I one of those toxic masculinity guys?"

"No to all that," I assured him.

"Yeah, but you're my friend; you *have* to say that." He rubbed his chin, reflective. "I've got to tell you, this total rejection is seriously undermining my confidence. It's really messing with my head. You know, before Amber, I maybe got turned down twice — in my whole life. When one relationship ended, I went right into another. I've always been with somebody. It's weird to be alone. I feel like a pariah."

"I don't understand it either," I told him. "It makes no sense."

"I'm just about ready to give up," he declared. "I mean, why try, if I can only fail? At this point, I'm resolved, or resigned. I'm just going to stop looking, stop asking. If I have to be alone for a while, I'll be alone for a while; see what that's like. Maybe life is trying to teach me something, and until I learn it, this door will remain closed."

"That's very philosophical, man."

He smiled. "It's not like I have a choice, right?" He shrugged. "Complaining isn't going to help."

 

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I have noticed that sometimes when you're blocked, when you continue to fail on the same step, that things remain blocked until you give up, the way Max did. I don't know how it works. Maybe it's some kind of superstition that's actually real, or maybe what's blocking you is your own tension and anxiety. So, when you give up you stop being tense and anxious, and you're finally ready to receive that thing you've been longing for. In either case, the key is that once you let go, the dam breaks.

It happened this time as well.

About an hour after my conversation with Max, I went to buy groceries. Before I entered the store, I bumped into Kitty. She seemed quite excited to see me — which I found a little odd. Nice, but odd. I mean, we're friends, but not best friends. Not usually excited-to-see-you friends. To my surprise, she insisted on going for coffee "so we can catch up." She offered to treat.

Once we were served and seated, she just gushed at me: "I heard you moved out of your little adventure into a big adventure!"

"Um, what?"

"Remember? When I saw you in that horrible garage apartment, you said it was a little adventure."

"Oh, oh, yeah, I remember now! You were right, it was horrible in there. I didn't really see it at the time. I was so caught up in the renovation."

"But now you're with Max, huh? In the big house, living the dream."

"I guess," I replied in a puzzled tone. I couldn't understand what she was getting at.

"You were going in the grocery store just now? I heard that you're in there a lot."

Heard from who?

"Yeah, I'm, uh, making salmon in parchment tonight. I need some ingredients."

Her eyebrows lifted. "You do the cooking?"

"Yeah, yeah. Max suggested it, and it's actually a lot of fun."

A cute smile appeared on Kitty's face. My puzzlement gave way to uneasiness.

Kitty gave me a playful poke and said, "You just slipped in and took Amber's place, didn't you."

For some reason, when she said that, I saw in my mind's eye the memory of Kitty and me standing in Max's empty garage, when she came to see me on Christmas Eve. In that detailed mental picture, I could see the spot for Max's car (over there) and the spot for Amber's car (where Kitty and I were standing). With that invisible visual aid in my head, when she said Amber's place, I stupidly took her to mean Amber's parking place. I scratched my forehead, more than a little confused, and then replied, "But I already had a place to park my car. In fact, I still leave it there. I don't use it very much."

"What?" Now it was her turn to look confused.

"Kitty, why are you asking about my car?"

"Your — what?" She responded, giggling at my non sequitur.

Then, delayed understanding — All the pieces fell into place: her innuendos, the sly undercurrent to each thing she said. Her playful pokes... It hit me all at once.

My expression of shock and surprise shocked and surprised Kitty. It wiped the smile right off her face.

"WHAT!?" I gasped, nearly upsetting our little table. Fortunately, no coffee spilled and none of our food fell on the floor.

"Oh, my God! Elliot! I'm sorry! Elliot! But aren't you?" I was too stunned to answer. She went on: "I'm sorry, really sorry! I thought — well, everybody thinks that you... and Max... you know!"

"No, no I don't know!" I exclaimed, hurt. "Whatever you're thinking, it's not true!"

"But, but, nobody ever sees Max with a girl any more! He's always with you!"

"That's because every woman's turned him down! All of a sudden he's persona non grata and he doesn't know why. He feels like a pariah."

"He's— what?" Kitty began. She was still struggling to understand.

"He's going crazy," I said. "I don't know what the fuck is happening. Neither does he. Max can't get a date to save his life!"

"He's trying to get dates?" she repeated in a mystified tone. "With women? But, Elliot, no one's going out with him because everybody kn— everybody thinks you two are a couple! Aren't you?"

"No, we're not! We never were. We never will be! Neither of us are gay, or even bi! Where did anybody get that idea?" I paused for a moment, casting about for an idea, then told her, "Listen, if you don't believe me, you can ask Amber."

At the mention of Amber, Kitty stopped dead.

"What's the problem?" I asked her. "If anybody knows that Max is not gay, it's Amber. Just ask Amber."

"Uh—" Kitty suddenly looked very uncomfortable. Mentally she went back in her memory through her social interactions, calculating. Then, in a low voice, she confided, "Amber is the one who says you two are gay. She's been saying it for a long time. For months." She blushed. "As far back as November, maybe even before. That's why she left Max. Didn't you know?"

"No, I didn't know! There was nothing to know! Amber— Amber just vanished one day. Gone! Poof! One minute she's there, the next minute, gone. She didn't leave a note. She never said why. She just up and left. Just gone." I told her how Max and I discovered on Christmas Eve that she'd covertly moved all her belongings out of Max's house.

Kitty's face went white. Pieces of memories, images, puzzle pieces shifted and moved and recombined in her head. Things were falling into place; her picture of how things were, began to line up in a different way. She asked, "Amber said nothing to you, or Max, at all?"

I shook my head. "Nothing."

Kitty took a deep breath. "Wow. Well, she's been saying a lot to everyone else. She's been telling things, and hinting things, and—-" she swallowed, and looked down. "I'm sorry, Elliot, but I honestly believed it. I was actually happy for you two!"

"Ohhh," I sighed, like a balloon losing air. "Oh my God. Oh my God! I have to go. Kitty, I have to go. I have to get out of here. I need to tell Max. I need to tell Max." While Kitty fumbled with her bag, I got up and left the cafe. "Wait! Elliot, wait!" she called after me. "Dammit!" She was trying to pull out some money to leave on the table.

I got outside, and looked around, as if I needed to get my bearings. Behind me, from inside the cafe, I could hear the waiter calling to Kitty, "Miss? Miss? You haven't paid for your food! You can't just leave! You and your friend—" Then the door shut, cutting him off. Kitty appeared at my elbow. "At least let me give you a ride, Elliot. I'll come with you and talk with Max. Come on, my car's over here. Come on. I can help you explain."

 

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The explaining didn't take long. Evidently, from the day that I moved into Max's garage, Amber began a whisper campaign, telling everyone she knew her stories about Max and me, always stressing that it was strictly in confidence. She knew very well that nothing spreads faster than a secret — and her "secret" was that Max had moved me in as her replacement. That the two of us had always been in love. She claimed that once in high school she'd seen the two of us kissing.

"But that *did* happen, though, right?" Kitty asked, in totally innocence.

"No!" we responded in unison.

That's when Max told me about Amber's ménage à trois comment — that she knew -- that she "emotionally perceived" that Max wanted to move me into the basement as the first step in tricking Amber into a threesome with Max and me.

According to Kitty, Amber claimed that when she refused to go along with the threesome, Max installed me above the garage "like a princess locked in a tower," just for the sake of making Amber appear heartless and mean. She claimed that Max had hinted at moving me in with them from the very start of their relationship. She claimed Max wanted me in the bedroom across the hall.

Kitty told us, "She said that finally she couldn't compete with Elliot any more, and that's why she had to leave." Kitty flushed a deep red. "She said that the last straw was when she found the two of you in bed together."

"Oh my God!" Max exclaimed.

"But, Kitty," I asked, "Why did you just believe it? Why didn't you ever ask me if it was true?"

She shifted uncomfortably. "Well, everything she said fit everything you guys did! Like, you were living in that terrible space above the garage. Why did you go there?"

"Amber put me there. It was her idea!"

Kitty continued to look away, embarrassed. She said, "Well, okay. I had another reason. It's a little embarrassing and will sound very vain, but in my defense I didn't come up with this. It's something that Amber pointed out."

"So what is it?"

"Neither of you guys ever asked me out. Why is that? How come neither of you ever asked me out?"

"I did," Max said, looking a little irritated. "I did ask you out. Twice. Each time, you told me you were waiting for Claus to ask you. And then the two of you stuck together like two Lego pieces."

"Oh," Kitty replied, suddenly remembering. "Right, right — you did. But you never did, Elliot. Just about every other guy in our class asked me out. Why didn't you?"

It was my turn to flush red. "I knew you'd say no. I could feel it." After a pause, I added, "Besides, I haven't asked many women out. When I did, I got a lot of no's."

"Ah," Kitty said. "Sorry to hear that."

"It's fine," I told her.

Max frowned. "So now, every woman in town believes I'm gay and shacked up with Elliot."

"That's about the size of it," Kitty admitted.

"And Amber has been soaking the airwaves with this idea for—" he counted "—for five months?"

"At least."

We three fell into silence for a few moments. Then Kitty said, "I'm sorry, guys. but honestly, I thought it was true. I even thought it was nice for the both of you, that you had each other."

Max looked at me and said, "No offense, Elliot, but—"

"I hear you," I agreed.

Kitty offered to tell people the truth — to say that Amber had made it all up.

"Don't bother. It won't work," Max told her. "You can't undo a rumor. It's like trying to take pee out of a pool."

"So what are you going to do?"

"I don't need to do anything," Max replied. "I mean, I'm going to quit doing one thing: I'm going to quit asking out every single woman I see. I'll just stop. Sooner or later I'll meet somebody. It'll be fine."

"Do you want me to move out?" I asked. "It's no problem. I've got plenty of money. You know that."

"Really?" Kitty asked me. "Amber said you were broke, and that you were after Max because you're a gold digger."

I burst into laughter at that. It felt good to laugh.

Max, answering my question, said, "No, I don't want you to move out. It wouldn't convince anyone of anything. Besides, I like having you here." Then Max stopped, and started back a little. An idea had just struck him.

"Ohhh!" he said. "Now I see! You know my date on Valentines, with Kass? I went as Kass' beard, but Amber thought that she, Kass, was my beard!"

Kitty looked puzzled, so he told her, "It doesn't matter — not worth explaining." And then he explained anyway, telling how Kass punched Amber in the gut in had her thrown out of the Celestial Lamb.

Kitty's eyes bulged in surprise, but she didn't laugh. Instead she asked, "Do you mean little Kass, the dancer?"

"Yes."

"I didn't know she's gay," Kitty said.

"Well, don't tell anyone. I guess Amber outed her, but I don't how out she is."

"Okay. Mum's the word."

After a short silence, I asked Max, "What about the wedding?"

"What about it?" he challenged.

"Are you still going to try to find a date?"

"Sure," he said. "I guess."

So I ventured, "Kitty, why don't *you* go with Max?"

"To Nessa's wedding? I can't, you ninny. I'm invited, and I'm going with Claus." She shook her head, then, a little irritated, challenged me: "Elliot, why don't you go with Max?"

"If I was a girl, I would," I retorted. "Of if we were bi or gay, I'd go, but we're not."

That pretty much shut down the conversation, and Kitty left soon after.

 

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Max fell into sullen silence. I again offered to move out. The property-management company had an empty apartment I was working on. It wasn't couldn't legally be rented yet, but I was sure I could use it, at least temporarily.

"If you want to do that, fine," Max said. "But you don't have to."

"I think it's best," I said. "It will be easier for this to blow over if I'm not living with you."

"I guess," he said. "But listen, wait until Saturday, and I'll help you. I don't want you disappearing the way Amber did."

"Does it both you, people thinking this about us — about you?"

"Does it bother you?" He reflected the question back at me.

I shrugged. "I don't think people think about me much. I honestly don't care if they think I'm gay. I'm not, just for the record. But what about you?"

"I'm not gay either," he replied.

"No, I meant — does it bother you?"

"Well yes, it bothers me, but mainly because it keeps me from having someone. I mean, before this, I never knew how lonely I feel. I know this is sounds weird, but I'm lonely all the time. I want a woman to be with. You know? Someone to have and to hold?"

"You mean you want to get married?"

"No, I'm just talking about having and holding. It's nice to have someone in your arms, and for someone to wrap their arms around you. There's nothing like it. And there is nothing colder than waking up in an empty bed."

"I guess," I responded. I didn't want to say that waking up in an empty bed was my daily experience, and had been for years. "I didn't know you were such a romantic."

"I'm not," Max countered. "It's just a physical thing."