Undying Love (16 page)

Rejection after rejection came. I was downtrodden, thinking about a Plan B. Was it law school? Buy a restaurant and get some Cordon Bleu training? Start a blog about being an unemployed writer? Allee, however, never stopped being my cheerleader. “Remember, you just need one to sell,” she said.

It happened at the end of April. On a gloomy, rainy day. When I opened my email, there was one waiting for me from the Acquisitions Editor of
The New Yorker.
My eyes grew wide as I read the words. They loved my story! I had sent them the one about the aging father and son. On top of wanting to publish it in the July edition of the magazine, they wanted to know if I would consider being a regular contributor. They were familiar with my
Arts & Smarts
articles and thought I had “a voice and perspective” that would fit well with their readers. Holy shit! The prestigious
New Yorker
wanted me! The one magazine my father revered and coveted but couldn’t get his greedy hands on! I couldn’t wait to tell Allee and called her right away on her cell. Fortunately, she was on her lunch break and picked up. “I’m coming home!” she squealed.

Thirty minutes later, Allee flew into the loft, holding a soaked umbrella in one hand and a bottle of expensive champagne in the other. She was beaming. She no longer wore her unnecessary eyeglasses, which I now understood she used to separate her daytime and nighttime personas and safeguard her identity when she was working for Sid.

“Congratulations, Madewell!” She wrapped her arms around me and crushed her lips into mine. “Let’s celebrate.” She popped the cork, and we guzzled the champagne straight from the bottle.

She then proceeded to tear off my jeans and tee and ravage me. Her work uniform came off too, along with the trench coat she was wearing over it. High from the afternoon champagne, we melted onto the cool hardwood floor, a tangle of arms and legs, unable to get enough of the other. We climaxed together, coming with reckless abandon. When I finally recovered, I sat up, stretching my long legs out in front of me, and positioned her naked body on my lap. She sat with one knee up and the other outstretched while I nibbled her ears and neck from behind, my arms folded around her full, heated breasts. The warmth of her buttocks on my swollen cock coursed through my body.

“Don’t go back to work,” I breathed in her ear.

Breaking away from me, she stood up and put her Met uniform back on. Even in that plain uniform, she was sexy and beautiful to me.

“Madewell, just because you’ve got a job again doesn’t mean I can afford to lose mine.”

I twisted my mouth in frustration. I suppose she had a point.

“You’ve never had to worry about money a day in your life.” Her tone was snarky, and I wondered if we were verging on a fight.

What she said was true. I had never had to worry about getting food on my table, paying off student loans, or keeping a roof over my head. Sometimes I could be a self-centered jerk.

I loved that only Allie could do that... make me see the best and worst of me. Hoping to avoid a fight that I’d never win, I let it go.

Rising to my feet, I pulled her into my arms and covered her mouth with a final, passionate kiss.

“Keep writing, Madewell,” she ordered as she let herself out of the loft. I shot her a wink. She was my lover, my muse, and the woman with whom I was going to spend the rest of my life. She was mine. As I started editing another story, I couldn’t wait for her to come back home.

NINETEEN

L
ife was good. In fact, life couldn’t be better. I enjoyed writing musings on the New York cultural scene for
The New Yorker
and sold several more short stories. One of them was even nominated for a literary prize. Allee, who was so proud of me, told me I should try my hand at writing a novel, but I wasn’t there yet.

Good things happened to Allee too. She got a promotion at the Met and was now the Assistant Curator in the painting department. For her, it was a fantasy job, and one step closer to her dream of being a curator at The Musée D’Orsay. She no longer had to wear that uniform. I took her shopping at Barneys for a new chic wardrobe. I told her she had to look the part. I also told her that she had to stop equating me paying for stuff with taking money from her johns. It was a hard concept for her to get through her thick, stubborn skull, but ultimately, she acquiesced. When we got back to the loft, she gave me a fashion show, parading in front of me in all of her new outfits. Everything she put on looked great on her lean, curvaceous body. And everything she put on, I couldn’t wait to tear off.

With our hectic work schedules, we kept putting off getting married. Finally, we set a date, but couldn’t agree on where to hold our wedding. The one thing, however, where we were on the same page was that we both wanted a very small, intimate affair. Only a handful of our closest friends and family members. We knew exactly whom we wanted to invite. Still, we could not decide on a place. One night after marathon sex, it came to me. When I told Allee my idea, she said, “Madewell, sometimes you’re fucking brilliant.” Getting a compliment from her was like winning a big jackpot lottery ticket. On the other hand, getting a mind-blowing blow job from her was like being handed an instant win. And that’s what she gave me before we drifted off.

We decided to get married on the very spot in Central Park where we had completed the marathon together. The finishing line was going to be our starting line for our life together as husband and wife. It was a beautiful Sunday in early May, with spring in full fragrant bloom. Duffy, wearing a suit for the first time since I’d known him, was best man, and my sister, looking very pregnant, was maid of honor. Her partner, Beth, was going to officiate. We’d invited a handful of others… Marcus, who had grown very close to Allee and was going to give the bride away since she had no father… my beloved nanny Maria…my mother who had not yet shown up…and Samantha, Allee’s gorgeous blond friend from the Met. Chatting with her while I awaited Allee’s arrival, I couldn’t help wondering how my life would have turned out if I had asked her instead of Allee to show me the Picasso; fate is a strange bird. All the while, Duffy couldn’t take his eyes off her. I swear he was getting a hard-on beneath his dress pants.

My heart did a flip-flop when I spotted Allee heading my way on Marcus’s muscle-bound arm. Nothing could have prepared me for the intense emotion that swelled up inside me. She was wearing an antique ivory, mid-calf dress and a band of flowers around her head. Her dark, long hair hung loose, the shimmering curls cascading gloriously over her shoulders. She could have easily been mistaken for a belle époque beauty that had stepped out of Renoir painting. My bride was a work of art. I, in turn, was wearing a classic long-tailed morning suit, and could have been mistaken as a gentleman of that era.

Her eyes never left mine as we silently exchanged “I love you’s.” Her slow, steady progression toward me felt like an eternity. I couldn’t wait to have her in my arms.

Finally, that moment came, and I swept her next to me. “Baby, you look beautiful,” I said softly.

Her eyes twinkled as a warm smile flashed across her face. “You don’t look so bad yourself. Is everyone here?” She scanned the small group we’d invited. “Where’s your mother?”

“I don’t know,” I murmured. “It’s getting late. Maybe we should start without her.”

A mixture of anger and disappointment coursed through me. What beauty appointment was holding her up? Or was she at some charity fundraiser? Or maybe she’d had one too many to drink? My heart numbed.

“We should wait for her. She’s your mother. She couldn’t possibly miss her only son’s wedding,” insisted Allee.

Sometimes I didn’t know whose side Allee was on. At one point, she even thought we should invite my father. That was the only time we’d ever gotten into a major fight.

“After all he’s done?”
The fucker.
There was no way I was going to reconcile with him after what he had done to me. And done to Allee. I was perplexed, in fact furious, that Allee would even consider sharing the same air with him. I couldn’t even imagine the consequences. Except I knew they would be ugly.

“Stop being so hung up and egotistical,” she chided. “At some point, you’ve got to let the past go. He’s family.”

She was pissing me off royally. “Yeah, and I suppose you think Sid’s family too.”

“Fuck you, Madewell!” she said hotly. Tears were brimming in her eyes.

I immediately regretted what I’d said, but not soon enough. She stormed out of the loft. I spent hours combing the streets frantically looking for her, my heart growing sick with worry by the minute. Did she hop on some Greyhound bus? Get hit by a car? Run into Sid? The possibility that something terrible had happened to her sent a wave of panic over me. Damn my big mouth! Finally, I spotted her at our local newsstand reading comic books. It was close to midnight. I sighed with relief.

She pretended she didn’t see me and kept her head buried in the comic.

I sidled up to her and poked my head over shoulder to see what she was reading.
The Avengers.
“Why do you read superhero comics?” I ventured.

“Because they can wipe out the bad guys and save the world,” she said, burying her nose deeper into the pages. “I’ve read them since I was a kid.”

She had always been looking for someone to save her from her wretched, loveless childhood. I had to remember that beneath her tough-as-nails veneer, there was a thick layer of vulnerability. A soul that needed rescuing.

“Baby, look at me.” I gripped her by the shoulders and spun her around to face me. Her watery eyes met mine.

“I’m sorry I said what I said. Sometimes I say things I don’t mean.”

“Shut up, Madewell.” She slammed her lips against mine, then pulled away. “You are my Superman.”

I held her face in my hands and bore my eyes into hers. “Don’t ever run away from me again, baby. You had me scared shitless.”

When we got home, she gave me a blow job that made me fly.

And now, I was going to be her Superman for life.

The ceremony started without my mother. For whatever reason, damn her, she wasn’t coming. My eyes met Maria’s as a pang of sadness shot through me.
Mí
pobrecito!
I heard her say silently.

The ceremony was short, but beautiful. Allee and I had each written our own special forever vows.

As I braced myself to recite mine, I saw my mother saunter up to us from the corner of my eye. She was chicly dressed in a pink, raw silk suit, but she looked older than the last time I’d seen her. Her lips pressed into a thin line, and fine wrinkles were etched around her mouth and eyes. Perhaps, she was in between injections. But the sadness in her eyes told me it was something more. She flashed a faint smile as I began my vow. Butterflies fluttered in my stomach even though I had practiced these words so many times before. A gentle squeeze of the hand from Allee and her loving gaze gave me the power to go forward. I began with a quote by Henry David Thoreau.

“‘It’s not what you look at that matters; it’s what you see.’ When I first laid eyes on Allee Adair, what I saw transcended everything I had ever seen before. I saw a work of art that all the money in the world could not buy. And now I ask her to give me everything that she is in exchange for my love, and to share her life with me as long as we live.”

Allee’s tearful eyes stayed locked on me the whole time. Her lower lip quivered and then she bit down on it to stifle a sob. I could hear Maria positively bawling and was shocked to see my mother withdraw a lacy hanky from her clutch bag to dab her eyes. A small crowd of spectators, some dressed in jogging outfits, had joined our wedding party and watched the scene unfold with hushed, voyeuristic stares.

Now, it was Allee’s turn. She took a deep breath and then broke into a dazzling smile. Her eyes never strayed from mine as she began with a quote from Picasso:

“‘Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot; others transform a yellow spot into the sun.’ Ryan Madewell, who paints with words, transformed me into the sun. I promise to rise with him and set with him every day of my life… until darkness prevails and death do us part.”