ll good things must come to an end, I suppose, and the ladies departed early to go home and compose their letters of resignation. I was left feeling both elated and frustrated. Elated because of the way our three-way relationship was developing well and frustrated because I still had two more weeks at work and it would be a month before we could all be together all the time. Still, what was a month? For the promise that our long-term future seemed to hold, I could afford to be patient for a month.
Charles had other ideas. To him even a day was too long to wait. He reminded me of a child who sees a new toy and wants it now. He importuned me during my final weeks at work to take advantage of the women there, to go out clubbing and pick up more girls, even to drag them in off the street. His constant nagging was extremely irritating and I couldn't understand why he was so obsessed with sex. For me, I had had more sex in the last month than I'd had in the last two years and all of it so mind-bogglingly good I wondered how I'd been satisfied before. I tried to interrogate Charles about his obsession.
"I'm not obsessed," he said huffily.
"Charles," I said with as much patience as I could muster, "today alone you've proposed that I grab some girl or other at least six times. It was the same yesterday and the same the day before. I call that obsessive behaviour."
"If I'm obsessed then it's because you are. I only take the thoughts from your mind."
"I'm not obsessed with sex."
"Yes, you are. You're primitive ape-mind thinks about sex all the time. Whenever you see a female, you assess her for her copulative potential."
I was honest enough to admit that, in a crude sort of way, he was right.
"Yes, but just because I assess them doesn't mean that I want to jump their bones. It's an intellectual reaction, or probably an instinctive one."
"It must be instinctive. You don't have enough brain to have an intellect."
"Coming from someone with as much common sense as a five-year-old child I resent that," I said hotly.
He sighed. "You still don't get it, do you? With me you are what you call an alpha male. You can have whatever you want. Nobody can stop you. Reach out, man, and take it! Even that disgusting caveman realised that simple fact of life. It's only you that keeps putting all these artificial barriers in the way."
It was my turn to sigh for I was again reluctantly forced to admit that he was correct to a large extent. The idea of taking what I wanted without considering others was alien to me. I had been brought up to be grateful for what I was given which is why I probably wouldn't amount to very much. It was simply not in my nature to reach out and grab; the guilt I would feel at such an action would immediately negate any pleasure I might derive from it. Now, here, I had been given the opportunity, indeed was being actively encouraged, to take what I wanted without any consequences - and I lacked the gumption to make the best use of it. I felt totally depressed.
"So how does this alpha male thing work, anyway?" I asked more for something to say than any real interest.
"I don't know," he said, smugly.
"I thought you knew everything." I couldn't keep a trace of bitterness out of my voice.
"You asked me a similar question when you first released me and I gave you the same answer then. I don't know precisely how my powers work. I know how to use them but not how they work. How does one of your vehicles work?"
"What?"
"I asked you to tell me how one of your barbarous transportation vehicles worked."
"I don't know, exactly. There's an engine and you feed it with petrol and air and there's some sort of explosion but that's about all I know. Oh, and there's a clutch which you use to change gears and you need a low gear for hills and a high gear for going fast. I'm not mechanically minded."
"You surprise me. You do appear to know something after all. The point is you don't know much about how it works but you can drive it; make it start and stop, steer it round corners. It's the same with my powers. I can control them but I don't know the details of how they work. I'm not a quantum physicist."
"So they're based on quantum physics, then?"
He gave an exasperated sigh. "I don't know what they're based on. Quantum physics is a good as anything. It might be sympathetic magic for all I know."
"I may not know about cars, but I could learn," I said brightly.
"Oh? And how would you go about that?"
"I dunno. Night classes, maybe."
"Quite. And pray tell me which local institution is running a night class on the theory behind my powers?"
"I hadn't thought of that. So what do you know?" I was becoming quite interested in this conversation.
"I told you…"
"Bear with me," I interrupted. "You've used your powers quite a few times now. Describe what you do."
"Hmm. It varies."
"Varies?"
"Depending on what I'm doing."
"Okay. Try a concrete example. I walk round a corner and bump into Tonia. You persuade her to have dinner with me. What did you do?"
"Much as it pains me to admit it, you explained it pretty well to her at the time."
"But I just made that up on the spur of the moment."
"Nevertheless, it was a reasonably accurate description, given your limited powers of perception."
I was sceptical. "Suppose you put it in your words."
"If you insist. As you were staring stupidly into her eyes, I manipulated the environment so that she saw you as an extremely desirable male."
"So you did something to her."
"I manipulated the environment."
"I'm only a dumb ape-man. What does that mean?"
"What it says. I altered things in the environment so she would react favourably to you."
"I assume she was part of the environment?"
"Naturally."
"As was I?"
"Of course."
"Then you manipulated both of us to achieve a favourable outcome."
"If you put it like that, yes."
"So you manipulated me to appear to be an alpha male in her eyes."
"No. I manipulated the environment so you would appear as such in her eyes. What has this to do with anything?"
"Wait. If I've got this right, I was still the same and she was still the same. It was the way she perceived me that was different."
"Very perceptive." The praise was grudging.
"So it wouldn't have mattered if I'd been a three-eyed frog, she'd still have seen me as a knight in shining armour?"
"Er, yes."
"Good. Now supposing I'd been a real alpha male, you know, Mr Irresistible. What then?"
"How should I know?"
"You're the one who keeps going on about alpha males. But never mind that. Suppose I really had been her ideal man. Would she have accepted my invitation?"
He sighed. "I don't know. Logic suggests that, as I made her see you as her ideal man and she accepted your invitation, she would have done the same for the real thing. Really! Now I'm an expert on human psychology?"
"According to you, you're a bloody expert on everything. Now here's the real point. You didn't make me into an alpha male, you just made it appear I was one. And I assume you did much the same with Debbie and Harry and Lola. Correct?"
"Much the same, yes."
"So all this talk about turning me into an alpha male is just that - talk. All you can do is make me appear to be an alpha male - you can't actually turn me into one."
"It's the same thing, isn't it?" He was sounding defensive.
"No it's not the same thing at all," I said scathingly. "Others might see me as Mr Wonderful but I would know I wasn't. I'd be a fraud. How d'you suppose that'd make me feel?"
"Good?"
"Good? To see all around bowing and scraping and know it was all a lie? No it would not make me feel good. It would make me feel a complete shit. That's what it would make me feel."
"Why? What difference does it make? If everybody around you treats you as one, then you are one."
"Hah! The Emperor's new clothes."
"The reference is unknown to me."
"It's a fable. A tailor cons a very vain Emperor into believing he can make him the ultimate suit of clothes. Word gets around and the whole populace want to see this wonderful suit. The Emperor parades down the street and everybody oohs and ahhs and says how grand he looks. The trouble is - he's stark naked. The point I'm making is that what you do is an illusion, a con trick. It doesn't change reality and, sooner or later, like the Emperor, I'll get found out. Like the first time I meet a real alpha male."
"Are you doubting my abilities?"
"No, merely trying to define their limits. And to work out what you can really do. So you can change my physical appearance but you can't change my nature. You can 'manipulate the environment' to obtain useful information providing you know what it is you want to find out. You can 'manipulate the environment' to make people think I'm a good guy, to do what I want and to ignore me if I don't want to be seen. Wait a minute. The bouncers at the night club saw me, one of them nodded to me. They must have seen me."
"They did. I merely manipulated their environment so that it was correct that you should be there and they weren't to concern themselves about you."
"But what about after I left? If all you did was manipulate the environment so they saw nothing wrong with me waltzing in and out, what happened when I left?"
"I do not follow your train of thought. If they thought about it at all, which I sincerely doubt as they were, if anything, even more moronic than you, they'd have remembered your visit but it would not have caused them any concern."
"So you did change them," I said triumphantly.
"I manipulated the environment so you could enter and leave the club safely," he said in a tone of exasperated patience.
"Yes, but that manipulation of the environment caused a permanent change in their memories. So, by definition, you changed them."
"The results of the manipulations are permanent. I didn't forget about money when we left the bank and you still have all this furniture - and a number of coffee services."
"So the effect on Tonia, Lola, Debbie and Harry are permanent, too?"
"Of course. I'm surprised you need to ask."
"They'll always think I'm their number one guy?"
"On top of all your other failings you have an inferiority complex. Yes, of course they'll always think of you as their 'number one guy' - until you tire of them and tell me to change them, of course."
"What would happen then?"
"You have a mind like a butterfly. Nothing would happen then. They would stop seeing you as the greatest thing since sliced bread, that's all."
"Yes, but would they be upset? Would they remember our time together fondly or would they hate me for what I had done to them?"
"What on earth and any other planet in the known universe does it matter? They're only females."
"They are not 'only females'. They happen to be the women I love and I'll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head when speaking about them. If you want a reason that directly affects you, they're your meal-ticket. They've more brains than you and I put together and they're the ones that are going to make us rich and powerful, or is your memory span so short you've forgotten that little fact."
"Females aren't meant to be smart," he said huffily. It was as close to an apology as I was going to get. "I can arrange it that they will have fond memories of their time with you."
"If you can do that sort of thing with them, why can't you do something similar to me?"
"What? Give you fond memories?"
"No, jackass. Make me believe I really am an alpha male."
"Ah… Well… The situation's a bit more complicated."
"Oh? Do tell."
"Well… It's difficult to explain. The manipulation takes place in a nexus of energy with me at the centre. To affect a manipulation I reach out and adjust the energy strands in the immediate vicinity. That is, of course, nothing like what I do at all but it's the best I can do with this pathetically crude language of yours."
"I think I sort of get that. You mean it's like lots of interwoven threads. You pull this one to find out about money. You pull that one to make a woman mine. And yet another one to make me invisible."
"Considering you human's inability to think in more than three dimensions, it will have to do," he sneered. "It is, of course, infinitely more complex than that and involves infinite space-time dimensions which, of course, I can manipulate precisely."
"So you're at the centre of this infinitely complex web of energy which you can manipulate as easily as a child can Lego bricks…"
"I'm pleased you are, at last, beginning to appreciate my talents," he interrupted. Sarcasm was another thing he had no concept of.
"…but why does that mean you can't manipulate me?"
"I should have known your appreciation was limited," he sighed. "Because I am at the centre."
"Yes, but…" I began then stopped as it dawned on me. "Right. I see it now. You're the focal point. You see everything in relation to you so, obviously, you can't change yourself and, as you're part of me, you can't change me. But wait a minute, you can change me. You can change my appearance."
"That is because your appearance is not you. It is only your outward manifestation."
"You mean like my soul, or something?"
"I do not know what a 'soul' is. I mean your essence - the you that is you."
I wasn't going to chop logic with him and point out that 'the me that was me' was conditioned as much by the body I wore as anything else so I let it pass.
"Okay. So you're the nexus of all these forces. Why do you need to inhabit a body to use your powers?"
"Because I am not the nexus, you are."
"I am?" I was stunned.
"Yes. All living things act as nexus. I am merely an operator that can manipulate the forces surrounding the nexus. Now, if you've finished, I am growing tired of these inane questions."
"Well, you've give me a lot to think about. I don't know if my brain can handle any more right now. So thank you. Oh, I have one more question."
"Yes?" he sighed.
"Why have I suddenly become the world's greatest lover?"
"What do you mean?"
"If I'm being honest, I have to say that, in the past, my performance in bed was, well, mediocre. Now, suddenly, every woman I make love to has orgasms all over the place and whatever I do seems to please them. Come to that, I seem to be much more inventive and 'in tune' with their needs. I've done things recently I only read about in porn magazines. Why is this?"
"You are the world's greatest lover because they believe you to be. As to why you've suddenly become more 'inventive', as you put it, I have no idea. Perhaps because you know you're a great lover, you're behaving like one. It all seems so needlessly complicated to me. Stick it in them and get them off, that's all that's required."
I was so flabbergasted at his crudeness that I shut up.
I thought about telling the ladies about my conversation with Charles but decided I should keep it to myself. After all, they appeared to be quite happy with the explanation I had given them and, besides, I wasn't sure I had really understood all of what Charles had said. There was still something niggling in the back of my mind not about what he said but about what he didn't say. I was fairly certain he could not lie directly but he could be very evasive when he wanted and I suspected there was more to him and his powers than he was letting on. However, as I didn't know the correct direct questions to ask, I knew I would have to wait. At least I knew more now than I did previously.
Other than Charles, something else had been niggling away at the back of my mind. It was a comment one of my ladies had made in passing in connection with something else. I tried to replay the various conversations we'd had but nothing came to mind. It was an overheard conversation in a supermarket that brought it back. As I'd been waiting in the check-out queue; the two women in front of me were lamenting the state of teenagers today and how come they had no idea of what a real job was like and why did they always pick the most unsuitable people to hang around with. At the time I only smiled to myself as their mothers had probably had exactly the same conversations over twenty years ago. It was only later that I remembered Harry's comment about her mother's probable reaction if she suddenly acquired a car. And then it hit me.
"Ladies," I said to Tonia and Lola that evening. "Do your families know about this?"
"This what?"
"That you've packed in your jobs - jobs you, and probably they, sweated long and hard to get - and are setting off on some ill-advised, illegal, fly-by-night adventure?"
They looked at each other. From the expressions on their faces it was clear they hadn't even considered their families.
"I assume you're fairly close to your parents. I know Tonia has a brother but I don't know if you've got any brothers or sisters, Lola. I suppose it's none of my business, really, but I thought I ought to mention it."
"What about you?" Tonia asked.
I shrugged. "My mother's dead. I haven't seen my Dad for nearly ten years and my sister lives in Havant - she married a vicar. We exchange Christmas cards and that's about it."
Lola sighed. "My parent's will not be happy. They both supported me though University and my Dad was really chuffed I chose law."
Tonia nodded in sympathy. "I don't think my Dad'll be too bothered - he hasn't had much contact since the divorce and my Mum won't understand. She's a bit scatty in a nice sort of way. It sometimes takes some time for her to get the point. I still don't think she really understands why I wanted to be an accountant, although she accepts it and, of course, appreciates the benefits."
"This is going to take careful management," Lola said.
There was silence as they thought about how they were going to approach their parents.
"Of course, we could just tell them 'fuck it, this is what I'm doing, so there'," Tonia said tentatively. "After all, we're big girls now and able to make our own decisions."
"We could," Lola drawled. "But I, for one, don't want to think of the repercussions of doing that. Besides, I still love and respect my parents. I don't want to fall out with them."
"Implying I don't?" Tonia said testily.
Lola held up a placating hand. "I never said that. I know you and your mum are very close."
Tonia gave a short laugh. "One person I'm definitely not going to say anything to is Stephen."
Lola grinned. "That would not be a good idea. Tonia's brother," she explained at my puzzled look. "He has a nose for the risky venture and he'd be here like a shot if he knew there was loose money around."
"You don't like your brother?" I said.
"I love him to bits. But he's not what you might call, reliable. He likes to think of himself as an 'entrepreneur'. Unfortunately, he hasn't got an ounce of business savvy."
"And he gets so enthusiastic," Lola laughed.
"He does rather rush into things. Each venture is the greatest thing since sliced bread and with just a little bit of investment it's guaranteed to make everyone very rich - mostly him. He can never understand why everyone in the world doesn't see it and give him their life savings. Because I was an accountant, he expected me to give him money without question. I tried to get him to see sense by going through the sums which, of course, never added up. It only made him upset so I had to tell him rather firmly that I wasn't going to put a penny into any of his ventures even if it was the Bank of England. He was a bit hurt and didn't speak to me for three months but at least he stopped asking."
"So how are you going to play it?" I asked.
There was a thoughtful silence.
"How about this?" Lola said after a while. "We've been offered senior positions in a new and exciting venture being set up by a rich entrepreneur. It's a risky venture and all very hush-hush but we believe it'll work. If it does we'll be very rich. The reason we want to do it is because we're being given much more power and authority to set things up our way. It's a really exciting, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And, anyway, if it fails, we can always get another job. Both of us are good enough to know that we're quite employable even with a year out. How does that sound?"
"You sure you don't work in marketing?" Tonia said.
"It's not, strictly speaking true," I commented. "In fact it's not true at all."
"It's true depending on how you look at it," Lola said firmly. "We've set up a Partnership, right? The Partnership is going to be funded by you, the rich entrepreneur, right? If it all pans out, we'll be stinking rich, right? It's exciting, too. So it's not a lie at all."
"Maybe, but it's still a creative use of the English language."
Tonia nodded thoughtfully. "But it's not exactly a lie. Yes, I think I can sell that. I'm not sure how much of it my mother'll take in but she'll accept that it's what I want to do."
"The key thing is to present it as a career move," Lola said with a grin.
"And not as a step off a high cliff," I laughed somewhat sourly.
Lola turned on me. "What's the matter with you? Don't you believe in us? Tonia and I have thrown away our whole careers because we believe. We believe in you. We believe in us. Without belief we're non-starters. Have we chucked it all in for nothing?"
I started back, blinking. She couldn't have startled me more if she'd slapped me in the face. She was right. I had nothing to lose and so nothing invested. She and Tonia had invested everything and that investment depended on me to pay off. If I didn't play my part, everything was for nothing.
I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders. "I apologise. You're right. This'll work. We'll make it work. I promise you."
"Keep saying that every hour of every day until you believe it here…" she poked my forehead, "…and here…" she poked my chest, "…and here." She poked my crotch.
"Yes, Ma'am," I said then gave a sheepish grin. "It's a bit mind-boggling, all this. I'm not quite used to it."
"Better start, buster. This is the way it's going to be."
I pulled her into a hug. "Thanks."
"So when are we going to drop the bombshell?" Tonia said.
"Soon as possible. This weekend," Lola said firmly.
In a moment of uncharacteristic intuition I realised that Lola was having her own doubts and was dealing with them by keeping firmly focussed.
In the end everything went fine. Tonia's mother did not understand what her daughter did in the first place. That Tonia was convinced it was the right move and seemed happy was the most important thing to her. She gave her blessing without too much of a fight.
Lola had a harder job. Her parents were very proud of her. To them the security of a large firm and a good pension were things worth hanging on to. Lola had to be at her most persuasive to convince them that it was a good move. Fortunately both of them were realists and it was that that swayed the day. They knew as well as Lola that a black woman had limited opportunities, especially in a white male dominated profession like the law. Indeed her father took her aside later and privately confessed that he had been more than pleasantly surprised that she had got as far as she had. Then he looked her straight in the eye and asked if she believed, deep down inside, that she was doing the right thing. She met his gaze without flinching or blinking and answered, "Yes". That had done it. He had nodded once and given his blessing.
"It was the scariest thing I've ever done," she said afterwards. "I don't know if there are witchdoctors somewhere in his ancestry but he has this ability to look at you and somehow see right inside your soul. When I was young, if I'd done something wrong or told a lie, he'd come up to my room and fix me with that look and say, "talk to me". It didn't matter how much I tried, how much I rehearsed - and believe me I tried and I rehearsed - there was something in that look that would make me forget it all and all the lies and prevarications would fly out the window and I'd find myself telling him the real truth."
"Scary," Tonia said.
"It was then but now I appreciate it now. He never lost his temper or shouted or punished me much. He'd just nod when I was finished and leave the room. I used to go round for days afterwards feeling like shite. I think I punished myself worse than he ever could."
"You going to tell your folks?" Tonia asked me.
"I'll let my Nan, my sister, know if we move. She'll pass it on."
"That's sad."
"What is?"
"That you don't have a family."
I shrugged. "I do have a family. We're just not very close, that's all." My family relations were not something I wanted to discuss. "At least I won't have them queuing up for hand-outs when we're rich," I grinned.
"Talking of hand-outs, how long d'you think it'll be before Stephen puts in an appearance?" Lola said.
"He's off gallivanting in Germany or Holland or somewhere just now," Tonia laughed. "But probably three days after he's spoken to Mum."
"So we can expect a visit, then?" I said.
"Count on it."