from R-72

by Michael Mazza

September 13
John Travolta is in your kitchen, propped in front of an open refrigerator with his face wrapped in damp dishtowels. You’ve got three fans blowing on him—two oscillators set on wooden chairs and a Super Tornado duct-taped on top of the fridge door breezing steadily across his face. You unwrap it to see a flattened nose, a glass eye skewed in its socket, his broad comic face sagging like a stroke victim.

You curse.

Rule number one: Don’t steal a wax-museum statue from people who can hurt you. Rule number two: Don’t transport it to your apartment in a beat-out Subaru in late summer when the mercury is pushing past 90 and the air conditioner is dead as dead. You were so close, a few feet, within inches, and now here you are: You alone with Travolta. Alone with a libido so gone that all the gods of myth and man can’t do a thing to resurrect it.

Months earlier
The night sky is the blackest linen snapped out above and flecked with platinum. Tiffany is on your arm, formal and sleek, though cautious as she navigates the red carpet on spindly black heels. You escort her through the opening of a massive white tent in the parking lot next to Davies Symphony Hall. But this is her world, really, not yours. She’s just allowing you to take the lead.

Inside, the annual symphony gala post-party buzzes, and you remind yourself to thank Tiffany’s parents for the invitation. Anthuriums and birds of paradise rise from the center of the table. Before you is a place setting. Silver flatware. Expensive crystal. Fine china. It’s a black-tie affair. Obscene wealth is crushing you in every direction. How did you get here, a simple Catholic boy from St. Louis sitting among San Francisco’s social elite? You feel uncomfortable in your rented tux, but you could get used to all of this. For the first time in your life, possibility is before you. You see clearly the road ahead.

Tiffany sits next to you, legs crossed, fingers poised around the stem of her champagne glass. She couldn’t be more delicious in her slinky cobalt gown. She has all the fresh features of a Seventeen magazine model, washed jade eyes dusted with gold mica, blonde hair rising high and loose, her soft jawline set off by Mom’s diamond-pendant earrings. She sprinkles caviar onto a wedge of toast, careful to keep the fingers of her blue velvet gloves clean. She places it to your lips, and you accept it tentatively, tasting the salty jelly for the very first time.

Several yards away, Tiff’s father, Chuck, stands huddled in conversation with other men of means. The mood looks serious until it is broken by the kind of robust laughter reserved for accomplished men. He throws back the last of his drink, 26-year-old scotch, a spirit befitting a corporate titan with steel-streaked hair and twenty thousand people at his beck and call. His wealth allows him to stay in shape—squash games at the Pacific Club, the annual triathlon, a mahogany tan nurtured on Noreen, the 40-foot yacht named after the hurricane he once navigated through. This could be me some day, you tell yourself, as large ideas like destiny and purpose run loose in your head.

A four-piece jazz ensemble fills the tent with Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady.” And there, three tables away in her black spaghetti-strap gown, is Tiff’s mom, June, bubbling in conversation with Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, the evening’s guest soloist. She sips champagne and places her palm to her chest, fawning over the violinist. June is still put together at 48, curvy and tan, cold blonde hair cropped short and sassy, glinting halogen blue eyes, no vestiges of a plastic surgeon’s knife. Her aura has a wealth-enhanced sexiness. It’s clear where Tiffany got her genes.

You feel a smooth dot of velvet under your chin.

“Come here,” Tiffany says, using her fingertip to pull you close for a kiss. You see her slip a tiny scarlet pill between her teeth. Again she kisses you, docking with your mouth, delivering a hit of R-72 from the tip of her tongue.

“What is it?” you ask.

“Trust me,” she says.

And you do, swallowing and washing it back with champagne. She rises from her chair, grabbing your hand, leading you through the crowd to the dance floor.

Twenty minutes later, the tiny beauty mark above Tiff’s left breast becomes a psychotic turn-on. An erection rises with hydraulic force. Metallic light snaps behind your eyes. You need relief from the sexual acid burning your thighs. You pull Tiff in tight.

“Let’s go,” you whisper in her ear, desperate.

“Where?” she asks.

“Anywhere. A car, a closet, an alley, anywhere.”

“Does something need attention?” she asks, smiling slyly.

“Now,” you say, gritting your teeth.

“Patience.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I understand,” she says.

You’re pissed, but her teasing unleashes atomic pressure beneath your belt. You excuse yourself, buttoning your jacket to conceal your erection. You split the crowd, dodging, weaving, and then bumping with a half-spin squarely into Tiffany’s mother. Her martini sloshes, but you snap your fingers around the rim and save it from spilling.

“I’m so sorry,” you say.

“No worries,” she says, “Your face is red. Do you need a drink?”

“I’m fine,” you say, forcing your fists down into your jacket pockets, hoping she won’t see the berm in your pants. You can tell she’s had a few by the sheen in her eyes. She takes a step in close, slides her fingers around the lip of your upturned lapel, and smoothes it, running her palm down your chest with an unmistakable pressure that is channeling desire.

“There,” she says. Vodka sparkles on her teeth.

“I’m on my way to the restroom,” you say. “Catch up in a minute?”

“You owe me a dance,” she says.

You straight-shot to the men’s room, latch the stall door clumsily, and relieve yourself with discretion, ignoring the steady clatter of footsteps echoing off the tiles. Tiffany flashes in a fleshy-pink dream show behind your eyes for all of 90 seconds before the sudden rise to glory succumbs to a cool descent, and a transitory sense of satisfaction.

Remnants of May
This evening, you’re in deep, jacked on the drug. An airline blanket is laid out, a postage stamp on the side of a sweeping green foothill. A six-story satellite dish looms above you catching data bits out of space, and there, across the humming strip of highway 280, a tsunami of Pacific fog swirls on the crest of black mountains. You welcome twilight, deep-space blue and the celestial silver speckling high above. But it all comes down to this—you and Tiff and the hyperconcentrated union of drug-induced sex. You’re face-to-face with her, grabbing her wrists and driving them onto the ground above her head, thrusting into her your entire soul as she writhes and takes you in.

Her lashes are Venus flytraps cupping the coital bliss of her mica-flecked eyes. The fiber optics of her blonde hair transmit white moonlight. You slide your hand to her breast, which fits neatly in your palm. Your tongues collide. Your heart speeds. Silver flashes behind your eyes.

Your hypothalamus is in overdrive and you wonder if two pills were too many. But you’re young, all of 24, you remind yourself, and your heart can take the racing meth effect, the seizing rise and fall of your sexuality. The fever. You salute a drug that allows a man to outpace a woman’s orgasms.
She moans. You buck harder, tangled in clothing. There is the oscillation of pheromones, love data, desire out of control as you savor the creamy salt of her tongue, the tang of her skin. You climax, again, for the seventh time. Nuclear synchronicity.

“One. You. Only,” she whispers, her pupils wide. This is right, you tell yourself. So right. Right and true and forever.

Your skin prickles as it cools. You palm the cleft of Tiff’s back and tuck in tight enough to smell the stale breath of after-love. The two of you could be the only people in the world, but when you turn your eyes to the sky, the red blips from aircraft high above remind you otherwise. Tiffany slips the tip of her finger in your ear and wiggles it gently, playfully. You laugh.

“Hi,” she says, quietly.

You loll your head and meet her eyes.

“Hi.” There’s an ease to the exchange brought on by exhaustion and satisfaction. With her, you believe anything is possible. With her, you can go as far as your imagination allows.

“Ever thought about riding the dot.com wave?” She asks. “You know, get stupid-rich and never work again?”

“What made you say that?”

“Don’t know. Random thought-bubble.”

“Yeah. Who hasn’t?” You say. “Not sure what I’d do or who I’d hook up with. I want to get my MBA, anyway.”

Tiffany suggests that ideas like college degrees and 40 years of hard work are analog thinking. An easy comment, you think, coming from a person you assume will inherit millions.

“I have some very good friends that have a startup,” she says.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Can you keep a secret?”

“What?”

Tiff’s face gets intense. “If you tell anyone, I’m completely dead.”

“What?”

Tiff lifts her head and scans the hill briefly before she whispers. “They have a side business,” she says. “They distribute R.”

“No way,” you say.

“They’ll give you stock options, but without web or marketing skills you’ll have to deal.”

“No frickin’ way.”

“Seriously.”

“How do you know this?”

“I dated one of the owners. I can get you in.”

“What’s it called?”

Tiff’s eyes shift to the sky.

“What is it?” you say again.

She turns back.“Tresbien.com.”

“Your company?” you say shocked. “I thought Guy A and Guy B were legit. You’re not—”

“Involved? No. There’s a wall between that business and ours, but I know more than I care to.”

“Wait, which Guy?”

“Which Guy what?”

“Which lucky-Pierre, lover-Guy guy?”

She slaps your chest. “Stop. It was a while ago.”

“Not the crazy looking one?”

“No, Guy B.”

You’re tweaked, recalling a photo of the sleek, French CEO in the San Jose Mercury News. “You dated Guy B and now you’re assistant Human Resources director? No irony there.”

“Jason, it’s over. The IPO is in October. I just want to make my money and get out.”

“Why risk it?”

“Tiffany, dear,” she says sarcastically. “Mother and father would like to give you a couple of million in mad money. Go buy something nice.” She looks to the sky and sighs. “You think I’m going to inherit that any time soon? Chuck only lets me draw a thousand dollars a month from my trust. Him and his work ethic.” Tiff turns back with enthusiasm. “It’s like a second gold rush, Jason. Doesn’t that excite you?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

You figure the operation is some complex money-laundering scheme to inflate the opening share price. But you still listen, intently, even though the idea of getting rich under the thumb of her French ex-boyfriend really chaps your ass. Then you remind yourself: at this moment Tiff’s warm, naked skin is alive against yours, not his.

For weeks you weigh the consequences. What if the Feds find out? What if the SEC burns down their necks? What if you get caught? Did you really go to college just to be a drug dealer? But the opportunity’s there. Get in. Get out. Get the three things your desire is lit up for: Tiff, R, and good old American fuck-you money....