Chapter 19: Secret Origin

“Well, of course you’re coming!” Amy was insistent on that late Sunday afternoon, as he poured her another vodka tonic in his kitchen.

Kirby looked at her and shook his head. “Amy, I’m not into parties like I was when I was younger. I think I’ll just give this one a miss, okay?”

“Maybe you don’t understand, dude. This is Miss Adelaide’s big Fourth of July party. Fucking everybody will be there, lots of the important people in the Guild, politicians, famous people. The governor usually shows up for a while. Ellen might be there!”

“Ellen?”

“DeGeneres. Ellen DeGeneres, comedian, brilliant talk-show host, icon to millions. You’ve heard of her, right?”

“Is she a…?” He let his question hang.

“Yes. Duh. I thought even bald, burly, beard-o’s knew she was gay. Once upon a time, it was a big deal.”

“I was going to say, ‘Is she a sorceress’.”

“Oh. Yeah. No, I don’t think so. She and Miss Adelaide met on some lesbian pride committee or other. She came to the party, like, three years ago. It’s a huge social affair. Most of the folks there won’t have anything to do with the Guild or any of that.”

“So, you’re saying this event is going to muggle-friendly? Or do you sorcery-types call us non-magical folks mundanes? I’m going to have to know the lingo if we’re going to talk about this stuff.”

“Well, King Beard-O, I’d look down my nose and tell you with the airs of an actual sorceress that those silly Harry Potter stories are ridiculous, but—”

“But you’re a tremendous nerd,”

“I love them,” she conceded. “They’re awesome fucking books. And, yeah, ever since they came out a lot of us have called the non-magical folks muggles. The more traditional approach, however, is refer to ourselves as Artists because we practice the Art. We’ve gotten cutesy-clever about it. Miss Adelaide, when she’s planning to meet with people about Guild business, tells Katherine to pencil in a meeting of this-or-that Arts council or fine Arts committee.”

“And Katherine doesn’t suspect anything?”

“C’mon, dude! Miss Adelaide is a rich, high-society type. She is on, like, a dozen fine arts councils for all kinds of groups. She gives so much money to museums in Oklahoma, Texas, and other places, that they’d probably name galleries or whole fucking buildings after her if she didn’t insist that she remain anonymou.” She thought for a moment. “But it’s a loud kind of anonymous. Everybody more-or-less knows, for example, that she paid for that new Georgia O'Keeffe at the OKCMOA.”

“And that’s a museum here in OKC?”

Amy did her grade-A eye roll, the one that involved her head, neck, shoulders, both arms, and every other part of her upper body. “Philistine!” she accused, affecting a hoity-toity accent and high-society air that was equal parts Judy Dench and Mrs. Howell, from Gilligan’s Island. “The Oklahoma City Museum of Art is the finest collect of artistic excellence in the known world—or as close as we’ll get to it in Oklahoma City.”

Kirby grinned. “Better than the Cowboy Museum over on I-44?”

“Puh-lease!” she exclaimed with mock condescension. “How would I know? Do I look like I’ve ever set foot in a cowboy museum? Do they offer special admission prices for gay, Asian anesthesiologists?”

“Fine, fine.” He held up his hands in mock surrender as he acknowledged her point. “Cowboys aren’t your thing. Point taken.”

“And, for the record, I visited the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum twice on school field trips, once in the sixth grade and once in the ninth grade. They’ve got some awesome Frederic Remington's—and they’ve got a whole section devoted to cowgirls. I’m not beyond admitting that the notion of getting roped by a rugged woman who smelled of horses had a place in my adolescent fantasies.” She winked.

“Yeah, in mine too,” he quipped. They shared a chuckle. “So, is your very tall girlfriend into horses and roping?”

“Noooooo. Not even. She’s an indoor type.”

“Well, she was a coach. So, she’s a jock, right?”

She gave him a pixie-like shrug. “I don’t really know. We’ve only been dating a couple of months. It hasn’t come up. What was she like when you taught with her?”

He thought for a moment before he replied. “She had short, blonde hair. She wore tracksuits a lot. She taught in a different building. I passed her in the halls, but not very often. She was a coach, so she was just about never at faculty meetings. I didn’t remember that her name was Ditka. I thought she was Coach Ditko, like the artist. Lots of the kids called her ‘the Hun’.”

Amy snickered. “No, it’s Ditka, like that football guy—no relation she says. The kids must have found that out her first name was Matilda and called her ‘Matilda the Hun’. Middle schoolers don’t have sophisticated wits, like ours.” This last was said with a flourish of hands that alluded to their own sophistication with all the sarcasm possible for a gesture to muster.

“So, what was that you called her when you introduced us Saturday night? The music was loud, and I didn’t really make out what you said. It wasn’t Matilda.”

“Yeah, it was pretty loud. Her nickname is Mutt, short for Matilda.”

“She’s not what I think of when I think about a mutt. She’s absolutely no dog.”

“Oh, fuck no,” agreed Amy. “She is so fucking gorgeous—and so fucking hot in bed!”

“No need to rub it in, doctor. It’s been so long that I’m not sure I remember what all that sex stuff is about.”

“Bullshit!” She dismissed his words with a two-handed gesture, miming pushing them aside. “You just need to find the right woman—or broaden your horizons to dudes—and get back in the saddle. Get right back up on that horse. Or right back on those whores. Or whatever. Y’know, dude? I’ve got a few bi friends and a few straight-ish ones, too. Maybe I could set you up? It’s possible that one of them is into excessive body hair.” She reached across the table and fluffed the thick hair of his forearm with her fingertips.

“Yeah,” he said with a voice containing zero enthusiasm. “You get right on that. Use those exact words, ‘excessive body hair’. They’ll be lined up at my door.” He sighed. “Seriously, though, my head isn’t in a good place right now to think about relationships. My divorce fucked me over in all kinds of ways and it seems like it just won’t stop. It’s been five goddamn years and it still reaches out and fucks me over when I least expect it.”

“Look, dude,” she said, “I know we haven’t known each other that long, but we’ve shared some stuff. We’re getting to know each other, and it’s been cool hanging out. If you want to, I don’t know, uh, talk about some of whatever’s going on, y’know, you can talk to me. I’ll probably curse too fucking much and by bedside manner is shit, but I’ll listen and I guaran-fucking-tee I’ll be honest with you.”

He exhaled, not quite a sigh this time, and said, softly, “Thanks. That’s... that means a lot to me. I don’t know if I can talk about it all right now. At some point, though, when I can talk about it, I’d be glad to have you to talk to, profanity and shitty bedside manner and all. And if you ever need to talk to somebody…”

“Okay, cool. Good to know. Got any experience helping lesbians navigate the treacherous waters of 21st century relationships?”

“Not as much as many might suppose, given my worldly-wise reputation. Care to tell King Beard-O the First your worries? I am a bartender, after all.”

“Well, your majesty, my girlfriend seems distant lately—and not just in the bedroom.”

“You told me last week that you thought she was attracted to someone else,” he prompted.

“Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know. I think I’m in love—or I could be obsessed. Or whatever.”

“You’ve got it bad for her, huh?” There was sympathy in his voice.

Uncomfortable with the sympathy, or any emotion really, Amy kept her reply superficial. “You’ve seen her, right? Those crazy long legs, those eyes! That hair! I can’t imagine her with blonde hair—or even with short hair. She’s so fucking perfect, dude.”

Kirby took a deep breath. He looked like he has something on his mind. He started, “I feel what you’re saying, babe. I—”

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“Don’t call me ‘babe,’ dude!” The vehemence in her voice seemed to take him aback.

“Sorry.”

She nodded and waved off his apology. “No, I’m sorry. It’s a reflex. All my life men have called me ‘little girl,’ ‘kid,’ ‘kiddo,’ ‘sweetie,’ ‘babe,’ even ‘little darling’. It’s especially fucking bad at work. Male doctors are such condescending douches. I’m maybe a little over-sensitive. You weren’t being a dick about it. Continue. You were at ‘I feel what you’re saying…’”.

“All I was going to say was that, while I don’t believe in love at first sight or anything—at least not when it comes to me—your girlfriend, Mutt, might have changed my mind. Here I am, knowing I’m too broken for a relationship, knowing she’s your girlfriend, knowing she’s a lesbian, and some dumb part of my brain wants to ask her out anyway, to marry her and make babies, even though there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that I’d have the guts to even ask her out in the first place—even if she came up to me and told me she was secretly straight and had a fetish for dudes with excessive body hair.”

Kirby was strange to her way of thinking, and she was not sure how much of that was because he was a man and how much of it was because he was Kirby. He looked relieved to have said what he did, like he had felt guilty about having those feelings about Mutt. He’s so cute, so broken and so cute. When he finds the right person... “Well, to be clear, I don’t plan to let Mutt go, but Mutt is bi, so you might conceivably have a hope at some point in the future. Unfortunately for you, all her ex-boyfriends—and I’ve seen the pictures—are the pretty-boy, male-model type and so it wouldn’t be much hope. Unfortunately for me, if my track record is anything to go by, she won’t be my girlfriend much longer. I’m thirty-five years old and my longest romantic relationship lasted less than a year. My average is about five months.”

“Well, I’ve only really had one serious, romantic relationship.”

“What?” Amy’s sat up, sloshing a bit of her drink on the table.

“It’s true. I never really dated in high school. I had more than a few one-night stands and hook-ups in college, but no serious relationships until I met Tina. Hell, even that started out as a one-night stand, or maybe it was a random hook-up, but it just worked and we wound up married. Until it stopped working.”

“How did you figure out when it stopped working?”

Kirby looked away. After a moment he looked back at her. When he spoke, his voice was low and rumbly. “I had no clue—until she told me she was pregnant with somebody else’s kid.” His enormous shoulders slumped.

Amy said loudly, “Well fuck that bitch! You’re a good guy, dude! Any bitch that would do that to you can just go straight to hell!” He smiled, but it was a weak smile and she noticed him wiping the moisture at the corners of his eye.

“Thanks for that but, hell, I can’t even wish for that. Despite all the ways it fucked with my mind—the ways it still fucks with my mind—part of me feels that Tina was trying to be noble, to keep me from getting hurt even worse. She said it was a totally out-of-the-blue, carried-away-by-the-moment mistake when she slept with him. She’s never said who it was. She claimed that she still totally loved me and that she in no way wanted to be with him, but that she couldn’t be married to me while she carried another man’s child.”

Amy shook her head and said, “Look, dude, I don’t know her. Maybe everything she was saying was true, but that’s just fucked-up. I’m sorry that happened to you, dude. What’s even more fucked-up was that she didn’t even give you the chance to reject her. She’s the one who fucked some other dude, accidentally or whatever, and she ended your marriage. You didn’t even get to, I don’t know, make her pay or cast her out, or whatever. She cheated and then she broke up with you.” Tilting her head to the side as the thought struck her, she asked, “She couldn’t just have gotten an abortion?”

It was Kirby’s turn to shake his head. “That wasn’t an option for her.”

“Okay. Well, if she still loved you and you still loved her, even though what she did had to hurt like hell, couldn’t you have to tried to forgive her and raise the baby as your own?”

“I forgave her. I asked her to stay with me. I offered to be the child’s father.” His voice caught, choked with emotion. “When she said no, I... I…”

She reached across the table and put her tiny hand on his. “Shhhh,” she calmed him. “You don’t have to—” He looked up suddenly. The pain she saw in his eyes stopped her words.

“I even begged her, Amy. I loved her and I was so scared to lose her. I was terrified that everything I had dreamed of for my future, the life I had mapped out with her, was over. In my fear, my desperation, and in the love I still felt for her, I begged my wife—who was pregnant with another man’s child—to please work things out and make a life with me.”

“And she still said no.” Amy’s words were more an observation, not a question.

“And she still said no.”

Kirby’s repetition of her words brimmed with emotions. Deep, painful ones. She felt for the guy. She liked him. But deep painful emotions were not her forte. “Fuuuck! But she said she was still in love with you? Was she just lying? I mean, like, was she actually involved with someone else and just trying to let you down gently—or to make people think that she wasn’t a scheming, cheating bitch?”

“Not that anybody can tell. I moved here to get away from her and Houston and all the people we knew, but I stayed in touch with some mutual friends. I was too humiliated to even tell my friends why I was getting divorced for a long time. It was even more humiliating to find out how many people assumed that I was a shit-heel who abandoned his pregnant wife. I’ll give Tina credit for being honest, though. She told everyone who asked the truth about why we split, put the blame entirely on herself. Anyway, our friends said that she didn’t even date anybody after the divorce. Before this summer, I’ve gone back to Houston every summer since I moved to OKC to earn money working construction. Last year, I saw her and her kid at a barbeque. She looked good. The kid was about four and cute as hell.”

“Please tell me you at least gave the bitch the cold shoulder,” begged Amy. “Tell me you gave her such a bad case of frostbite that her tits froze off.”

“Nope. We were civil, almost friendly, but it was awkward as hell. It went way past awkward, though, when her kid came over. I knelt to shake his hand and introduce myself. I held out my hand and the kid hugged me around the neck. Someone, somebody’s sister or cousin or whoever, was passing by and said, ‘Your little boy looks just like you’.”

“Ouch!” Geez! I’ve never been kicked in the nuts, but that had to— “Wait! Did the kid really look like you?”

Kirby nodded.

“Oh. My. Fucking. God.” The individual words forced themselves from her lips “You aren’t going to tell me that it actually is your kid, are you? That would be a total mind-fucking plot twist, if she lied to you about sleeping with someone else and split with you for some other reason.”

He chuckled ruefully, and Amy marveled that he could chuckle about any part of this. Her new friend was so wounded. “No, the kid isn’t mine, but—”

“How do you know? Did you have a DNA test done? How can you be sure?”

Abruptly, Kirby stood. His chair knocked against the wall of the bungalow’s breakfast nook. “Look, I’m sure. Okay?”

She looked up at him. “I’m not trying to be an asshole about it or anything. It—this whole thing you’re describing, your divorce and everything—just seems like there’s pieces of the story missing.”

“Yeah, well there might be a couple of those ‘mind-fucking plot twists’ you seem to be looking for, but I can’t do any more of this heart-to-heart stuff right now, Amy. I’ve never really talked about this shit, about my shit, with anybody before now. I’m glad that I had someone to talk to about even this much of it. Thanks.”

“No problem, dude,” she said. “This doctor is always here to help.”

“Really? You’re all about helping, are you?”

“Well, duh! Have you even met me?”

“Well what about this?” He pulled off the blue T-shirt he wore. “How, exactly, does this help anyone?” He pointed to the scar on his chest, where the Abyssal wolf had bitten off a chunk of flesh. Centered on the area where his nipple had once been, free of the thick hair of his chest, was a patch of scar tissue almost the size of his palm. Unlike one might expect of large, disfiguring scars, this one bore a very strong likeness to a wolf’s head.

“Oh, that.”

“Yeah, that. I noticed it last week, and I’ve been snapping a pic of it with my cell phone every day since. Every day, it looks more and more like a wolf.”

“Would you believe that it’s a side-effect of the Abyssal wolf’s deadly magic?”

“What I’d believe,” he countered, “is that my doctor got a little too damned cute with her mystic mumbo-jumbo.”

“Awww,” she whined. “It’s gonna be soooo cool! It’s gonna be awesome when it’s done. You’re gonna love it, Kirby.”

“Ummm... No.”

“C’mon, dude!” She had difficulty speaking and struggled to control her giggles. “It’ll be epic!”

“That’s how I know you’re just fucking with me: I’ve never heard you actually giggle like that before. You think it’s funny that anybody who sees me without my shirt will think I, what, branded myself with, what, a wolf brand?”

“Like the chili!” Her giggles threatened to turn into guffaws.

“Whatever! It looks like I’ve—I don’t know—burned or cut off my own nipple to make a wolf scar on my chest. Only a psychopath would do something like that. It’s fucked up! I’ll never get laid again if I’m too embarrassed to take off my shirt! Fix this!”

“Pffft!” She waved away his concern. More laughter followed as he glared at her. “You’ll get laid more if you keep your shirt on. Your body looks like you slathered yourself in glue and rolled around on a barbershop floor.” Her thin frame shook with laughter.

“Dammit, Amy! Can you fix this or not?”

“Yeah, yeah. Fine, fine,” she said, still wheezing after having brought her laughter under control. “But you have to wait until the day after tomorrow—and I’m gonna take a picture of the finished product for my scrapbook.”

“Fuuuckk,” he said.

“Oh, don’t give me that. It hasn’t hurt you one bit and I’ll fix it Tuesday afternoon. We’ll come by your place at about three, get you fixed up, and then we can all head over to Miss Adelaide’s.”

“I told you already. I’d prefer to spend a quiet day at home for the Fourth—and why do you want me to drive? And who is ‘we’?”

“’We’ is Mutt and me. She’s my girlfriend and—”

“Until further notice,” he ribbed her.

She stuck her tongue out at him. “And you’re gonna drive us to the party because you’ve got Miss Adelaide’s Land Cruiser. It’s the safest thing to travel in, next to Cruella. With all the shit that’s going down, we don’t want to take too many chances.”

“So, you’re going to guilt me into going to the party? ‘If anything happens to us because you wouldn’t drive us, Kirby, it’ll be all your fault’?”

She smirked. “Well, sure, that. Plus, the Land Cruiser has all the built-in remotes programmed to get us in the back gate and underground garage. It gets crowded as anything and parking is a beast. If you don’t get there before the rush, the wait for valet parking is forever.”

“So, I’m your chauffeur. Am I going to have to tend bar at the party, too?” He asked this as he refilled her vodka tonic.

“Probably not.” He placed the drink on the table in front of her. She had a sip. “Look, you’re getting into a party where almost everybody else who’s going has to pay three grand just to walk inside the gates. What’s to complain about?”

“Three grand? What kind of party is this?”

“It’s a fundraiser—don’t ask me for what.” She held up her palm to him as she took another sip of her drink before continuing. “I haven’t been keeping track. Miss Adelaide does two big charity parties every year, a Christmas ball and the Fourth of July shindig. Some years, it’s for one of the museums. Other years, it’s for medical research, or gay rights. It’s always formal dress. There’s always—”

“Ding-dong,” announced the doorbell.

“Oh!” Excitedly, Amy leap from her chair. “She’s here!”

“Who?”

“Mutt, dummy!” She zipped out of the room. “And you might want to put your shirt back on!”