To the Max Read online

  The other is my friend Rachel. Rachel Sheldon, to be precise. The girl next door. Every good love story should have a girl or boy next door, don’t you think? Well, Rachel is mine. The only difference is that she isn’t my love interest; Richard is, which gives the story an entirely different twist. But Rachel is my friend, and that counts for a lot.

  Rachel is a girl with a great passion for life; she doesn’t believe in doing things by half measures, and she doesn’t care what other people think about her. She is refreshingly honest and doesn’t hesitate to give her opinion on anything and everything. She also enjoys playing devil’s advocate, taking the other side just because she can or because she finds it intellectually stimulating. She and Sebastian were ever my staunch defenders against the other children in the neighborhood at a time when my control of my hidden nature wasn’t good enough to allow me to defend myself without risk of great harm to them. The others perceived me as weak, and, in the nature of children, proceeded to attack me. Between Rachel and Sebastian, I was kept from devouring the little bastards, luckily for them. There are days when I wonder if I would have done the world a favor by ridding it of some of them.

  By nature, Rachel has soft brown hair with reddish highlights, at least to the best of my recollection, anyway, as I haven’t seen her natural shade in years. She prefers to cover it with other tints that run the gamut of the colors of the spectrum, some I never knew existed. I am used to it—it is just Rachel—and I have become oblivious to the looks she sometimes draws when we are out together. Her eyes are a gentle green which is almost blue—does that make aqua actually? I’m not sure—and when she is at peace, they give the appearance of peaceful lakes, but when she is disturbed, they are tsunamis in the making.

  The most noticeable thing about Rachel, once you get to know her, is this fetish she has for a particular English actor. She simply adores him and everything about him and given the opportunity would talk about him nonstop twenty-four hours a day. I indulge her fantasies, of course, but not as much as she would like, and sometimes I simply have to put my foot down and tell her, “Enough Oldman for one day, Rach.” I am a fan of Gary Oldman myself, not to the extreme that she is, but after all, what are friends for? In return, she allows me to go on and on about Richard, even though I know she has her reservations about him and gets very upset at his quirkish comings and goings. So we listen to one other, and life goes on….

  RACHEL’S main goal in life, other than attempting to meet and woo Gary Oldman, has always been to be a writer. She is a prolific writer and is never to be found very far from her laptop. After graduating from college in 1979 with her degree in history—what a pair we make, masters of the arcane as well as useless tidbits of miscellaneous knowledge—she found employment with one of the two major local newspapers, the St. Louis Tribune. By dint of hard work and a willingness to take on any task, no matter how large or small, she gradually worked her way up to becoming one of the managing editors. What a proud day that was, and how we celebrated! Rachel and I and Sebastian (Richard being in absentia at the time) borrowed my mother’s vintage Caddy and went cruising up the Great River Road to Pere Marquette Park, sitting together on railroad ties along the banks of the river, watching the sun set across the mighty Mississippi, drinking bottles of Little Kings we had smuggled into the park inside Rachel’s shawl and paying homage to Rachel’s great accomplishment, she, of course, declaiming quite loudly the virtues of her favorite Englishman. It was a particularly spectacular aerial display, as I recall, above and around us golden-pink clouds caressed a wine-stained sky, a rich claret echoed gloriously in the retreating sol. I have always preferred the sun to the moon, for obvious reasons, and sunset is a breathtaking time of day, as is sunrise, when the chariot god chases the envious moon back into its secondary role, eclipsing its pale beauty with his own surging splendor. And for once I wasn’t even thinking about Richard, which was an accomplishment in itself. Rachel giggled happily as she talked about the great things she was going to accomplish, the people whose lives she would influence, as well as the interviews she would be able to obtain (three guesses whose name went at the top of that list).

  Rachel was put in charge of the People section of the paper, which included anything from entertainment to columns dispensing advice to the romantically challenged. It was the latter that kept her screaming most nights. The woman who wrote the words of wisdom to the lovelorn, who from her picture was a sweet middle-aged lady with a kindly smile and great compassion in her demeanor, was in actuality a chain-smoking sixtyish female of indeterminate sexuality with an attitude that would try even the Pope’s patience. She had held the position for years and had no real interest in assisting any of her readers, having long ago decided that love was so much bullshit, children were for losers, and that most people should never open their mouths, let alone dare to complain. Lovely woman, don’t you think? By the time that Rachel came along, she was ready to give it all up and didn’t care anymore; and her work increasingly showed it… when she chose to do it. There were days when the woman simply did not show up at all or bother to send her column in. My theory was that she had taken a part-time job as a dominatrix, but we never could prove that. Rachel’s natural inclination was to tell her off, but being an adult and being in charge of other employees often dictates that one not follow one’s instincts. Often Rachel would burst into my room, close to tears and ready to tear her hair out—no matter which color it currently was—about the horrible, callous, and indifferent bordering on insulting replies that Auntie Claire was giving to the poor schmucks who thoughtlessly wrote to her in an effort to resolve their various issues. My advice was consistent and simple: “Fire the bitch!” I told her more than once.

  Which she did one day, to everyone’s great relief. Finally deciding that enough was enough (I think it came after Auntie Claire advised a bereaved widow to get laid and shut the hell up), Rachel walked up to her at her desk in the city room and informed her that her services were no longer required and to please take her advice somewhere else. Which, for Rachel, was rather restrained. To her credit, the evil lady did not balk or get nasty, although I understand that she was heard to mutter to herself as she walked out the door to the surreptitious humming of the witch’s theme from The Wizard of Oz. So Auntie Claire became history. Rachel’s joy was short-lived, however, for now the task of answering those letters fell to guess who? Yes, you guessed it, to Rachel herself, and now she had to worry over what to say to her poor readers. Her solution to every problem was to want to take the supplicant home and huggle and shelter them from the vicissitudes of life, an impractical solution at best.

  Now her appearances in my room were marked by much letter waving and cries of “Poor soul!” and “Lost lamb!”, and I listened to her as patiently as I could as she fretted about them, offering no advice of my own. I felt that she needed a listener, not a critic. But even my patience reached an end one day when she was going on about several particularly hard letters: a teenage boy with a crush on another boy, a woman who thought that her hot flashes were a sign of the devil, and a father who wanted his ex-wife to let him see his kids more. I’d had a particularly stressful day, and coupled with the fact that the full moon was fast approaching, I was not in the most pleasant of moods. After listening to her go on and on about these poor souls, I finally snapped. “Rachel, Rachel, Rachel, it’s really very simple,” I began. “Listen: Dear horny boy, if you don’t share your feelings with the object of your affection, you’ll never know if they are reciprocated; Dear Hot Flash, get thee to a gynecologist; and Dear Single Dad, run to the nearest attorney and get a legal consultation about your parental rights. There. Problems solved.”

  I knew I was in trouble the minute I looked at Rachel. She had this peculiar smile on her face and an evil gleam in her eyes. “I think I hear my mother calling,” I said, attempting to rise from my bed.

  “No you don’t.” She held me down with one hand, clambering onto my lap and flashing me her award-winning
smile. “You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?”

  “No, I haven’t a clue,” I lied through my teeth.

  “Maxie,” she began to coo, even though she knows that I hate being called that, it’s way too cute for my taste, although it’s preferable to the “maxi-pad” I was burdened with during my teen years, “Maxie, you’re just too perfect for words. And you would be so perfect. I just know it. I always told you you had a way with words, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, and listen to these words now,” I said, not giving in to her feminine wiles (not usually a problem with me, anyway), “I… do… not… want… to… do… it.”

  “You can use the money; you know you can,” she pointed out in a very pragmatic manner. Dammit, I hate it when she is practical and appeals to my undernourished pocketbook.

  I kept going, although I knew the argument was now lost and my struggles were only guaranteed to sink me even more quickly. “But Rachel, I can’t have a regular job, and you know it, besides which I don’t want to drive into the paper every day, and you know that I can’t go on certain days. How do I explain that? Not to mention Richard, you know he likes me to be here when he’s here.” Which was the lamest argument I could possibly make, and still I used it.

  “Easy!” Damned if she didn’t have an answer for everything. “There is no real reason for you to come into the office. You can send your columns through the computer, work at home, and still be available for Mr. Burke’s sexual pleasures”—here she arched a knowing eyebrow at me, which made me blush furiously—“when he deigns to show up, that is. And you can write your columns in advance of the full moon, so you won’t have to worry about that.”

  I went down then for the third time, Rachel happily clinging about my neck.

  AND so my advice to the lovelorn column was born. Although technically speaking, I do solve other types of problems as well. Rachel came up with the name: To The Max. I agreed to it because it was better than some of the other suggestions she had, including variations on aunt, uncle, cousin, and/or mother. But what really irked me was a mistake made by an incompetent typesetter on my first column. For some inexplicable reason, he/she spelled my name erroneously, but the error took hold, to my regret, and this is the way it reads to this day: To The Max—(written by) Maxamillion. Is that totally lame or what? I want to find this person and pound their head into the keyboard, screaming, “It’s Maximillian, you moron!” But Rachel keeps restraining me although she is hard put not to snicker while she does it. Since then, if I have heard it once, I have heard it a million times: “Maxamillion, thanks a million,” and I am thoroughly sick of it. So please restrain yourself, if you don’t mind? And pardon me for not chuckling. It does get old.

  Enough with the preamble already. I think this will serve as a sufficient introduction, at least as far as I am concerned. Moving forward now, to the max.

  Live with it.

  Chapter 2

  Werewolf in Love

  Wednesday, April 8, 1976

  WE EXITED the disco for the parking lot, the receding refrains of “Stayin’ Alive” soon becoming lost behind us, a completely other world we were no longer a part of. The gravel scrunched beneath our feet, sounding overly loud in my ears as I closely followed this exquisite man. Our hands were still clasped, by mutual consent. We wove our way between rows of silent vehicles, for the most part unoccupied as their owners shook it for all it was worth on the illuminated dance floor within the club, but occasionally we could see entwined silhouettes and a bobbing head or two, and once I caught a glimpse of pale buttocks pumping furiously in an unseen rhythm. I blushed at this even as I wondered to what purpose he had brought me here. Not that it mattered, I realized, my heart thumping so loudly that I was tempted to muffle the sound lest it betray me.

  He led me to the far corner of the parking lot, away from the other vehicles, where a lone car sat in the darkness. From what I could see, it was some type of muscle car, and he had probably parked it at this safe distance to prevent drunken drivers from carelessly flinging open their car doors and inflicting painful scratches on what was no doubt a highly polished finish. “Yours?” I asked, gazing up in admiration at that splendid profile.

  “I wish!” he laughed. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, which he held out to me. “Care for one?”

  “No thanks, it’s bad for my health.” I shook my head.

  “You have poor health?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. I merely shook my head, not wanting to get into particulars quite so soon, but I knew I couldn’t avoid the question forever. “No, the car belongs to a friend,” he continued, striking a match. The match flared briefly in a burst of sulfurous light while he touched it to the end of his smoke; I caught a flickering glimpse of his beautiful face, and God, how I wanted him then. He knew it too; it was something palpable that hung on the air between us. He pursed his lips into an exaggerated bow as he blew out the flame, and I knew it was done for my benefit. “It’s a ’69 Chevelle. A real beauty. Care to see her in action?”

  “Sure,” I replied with an attempt at being calm, cool, and collected that failed miserably. I was obviously no Sean Connery, and I was definitely a far cry from being James Bond either. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, trying to hide what was blatantly and painfully obvious to me.

  “Then let’s split,” he said decisively, pulling out the keys from a back pocket; they jingled together as he sorted through them for the proper key. He unlocked the passenger door first, looking at me expectantly, draped over the doorframe in such a way that I had to pass beneath his arm to get in. I ducked my head, moving smoothly onto the vinyl bench seat, my eyes never leaving his as he leaned in to me in an unexpected movement, catching my lips in his. Totally surprised, I kissed him back. Surprised, yes, but not exactly unhappy. He tasted surprisingly familiar, yet at the same time exotic; he tasted of smoke and wine and soft summer breezes (don’t laugh; it’s my story) and dizzying promises and adventures waiting to be fulfilled. I tried not to press against his lips too eagerly, tried to retain some semblance of cool. All for naught. He broke the kiss, laughing softly as he walked around the car and climbed in, taking his place behind the wheel.

  For those of you who have some familiarity with wolves and their lifestyles, it must be obvious by now that I am not the alpha here. ’Nuff said.

  It wasn’t until he had started the car, pulling out onto the otherwise empty road, that I realized that we had not even exchanged names. This was not typical of me, believe me, to place my life in the hands of a stranger, even a gorgeous one like him, not knowing something as elementary as his praenomen. I was usually more cautious than that.

  Turning my head toward him, I watched as he took another drag of his cigarette, eyeing intently the sexy way he put it to his lips, inhaling lightly and expelling the smoke from his well-sculpted nostrils, the other hand palming the steering wheel, guiding it easily along the deserted road. I sensed he was observing me as well from the corner of his eye. “Richard,” he said, almost as if he could read my thoughts, “Richard Burke.”

  “Max,” I replied in turn, “Max Montague.”

  “Which side of the river you live on?” he asked.

  “Other side. Webster Groves. You?”

  “Kirkwood. We’re practically neighbors.” He grinned. If I hadn’t already been in love with him at that point, that smile was the nail in my coffin. It reached from ear to ear and lit up his whole face, mirrored in the starlight reflected in his beautiful blue eyes until he fairly radiated an inner beauty. I felt such a tightness in my chest as I looked at him that, for a moment, I simply could not breathe. “At least for now,” he continued, “staying with some friends.”

  “You’re not from around here?” I asked, note of disappointment creeping into my voice at the idea that I might soon lose this angel from my life, when he had only just appeared.

  “Yeah, born and bred here.” He nodded as I breathed a silent sigh of relie
f. “But right now I don’t have my own place, so I kind of stay wherever. What about you, do you have your own apartment or something?”

  “No, I live with my mother and my sister. I’m saving up for a house, though.” I’m not sure just why I added that, but at the moment it seemed not only relevant, but important.

  “Having your own space is good,” he commented briefly. He finished his cigarette, rolled down the driver’s window a few inches and jettisoned it carelessly out onto the macadam. I bit my lip but said nothing; that was a pet peeve of mine, watching tobaccoholics toss the tattered remnants of their nasty habit out onto an unsuspecting world, and I have been known to take umbrage with careless smokers in public places for their sloppiness, but I decided that it would not be a good way to begin a relationship. At least, hopefully we were beginning a relationship. I couldn’t tell what Richard’s thoughts were; he was a puzzle wrapped in an enigma for the moment.