The Schuyler Fortune

This fictional story eventually includes descriptions of sex between adult males. If you are a minor or if this material is illegal where you live, do not read this story. Go away. If this material offends you, do not read it. Go away. Please donate to Nifty to support their efforts to provide these stories. Remember that authors depend on feedback for improvement and encouragement.

The Schuyler Fortune-3

Each brother wore dark glasses; one shaved his head. They spent cash for food and gas and avoided cameras when possible. They avoided rest areas and took regular exits to nondescript gas stations, small mom and pop grocery stores and cafes that did not appear crowded. The debit and credit cards stayed in their pocket. They constantly looked for cameras.

At I-495 they circled around Boston and continued north on I-95. New Hampshire was out although the 'Live Free or Die' motto sounded good. They knew that Portsmouth had a sub repair base and figured it would attract all kinds of people, some wonderful, some not so.

At Biddeford, they found an all-day breakfast place way off the freeway and ate. Their cell phones and IPads were still turned off. At a small Citgo station, they picked up a Maine map and started to look for a place to hole up.

Bangor was too far away. Lewiston/Auburn was too far from the coast. Augusta was official Maine.

They weren't looking for official.

Their goal was to get lost for a while. Non-descript vehicle. Check. Sunglasses. Check. Changed hair. Check. Inside during much of the day. Check. Cash only. Check. Avoid cameras. Check. Make-up to cover spots and accentuate eyebrows. Check. No excess noise. Check. No booze or drugs. Check. Stay away from low-life neighborhoods. Check. Say hi to the landlord every day for a minute. Check.

They figured that a college town like Brunswick was used to new license plates from anywhere, close to the coast, having the northernmost New England Amtrak station, host to a fancy college which attracted students from all over, close to a couple of north and south roads and just populous enough to get lost.

They slowed down on Pleasant Street, passed the Curtis Memorial Library and turned right on Maine Street.

Driving past the grassy mall (the ice-skating rink in the winter), the brothers turned left just past the enormous grey church on the hill where Harriet Beecher Stowe had attended, and went out north and east past the college and the ex-navy base.

After Cook's Corner with its shops, Wal-Mart, and the cable company, they found an old cottage, one of perhaps eight or nine similar units just visible off the road past an older Bath Iron Works shop and decided it would do after checking with the laid-back proprietor on site.

The cottage they checked into was set off from the others for 'peace and quiet'.

The unit was, pretty much, what they asked for. Two bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom with shower and a sitting area with TV.

Ignoring the scent of eau de pine-scented cleaning solution in the room and falling into their beds, the brothers slept most of the rest of that day and all night.

The next day a postcard went out to Joseph's mother's house with an address on it. Only an address. It was mailed from a postal box near a large parking lot two towns away.

Angelo and Paul huddled in the small cottage on the old Bath Road for a few days, venturing forth for food and newspapers, none of which nourished them well or cheered their souls. Maine was not warm yet.

The proprietor of the motel had rented the cottage for one month and seemed happy to get cash.

The tiny kitchen boasted a tiny microwave, a 2-burner gas stove, a refrigerator of a certain age, no dishwasher and no garbage disposal. A Walgreen drug store was 4 miles down the road.

A Wal-Mart and Lowe's were closer in the other direction. Pizza Hut, Sears, Big Lots, a cinema, a couple of gas stations and a combo KFC/Taco Bell completed the offerings. Bath and Brunswick were close.

The town motto seemed to be 'live and let live' in a reasonably progressive atmosphere close to Topsham and Bath. They didn't explore much, didn't buy much, stayed in their cottage during much of the day, and didn't carouse.

They kept a low profile.

The interesting architecture of Brunswick, beside the large old mill by the river which had knitted yarns and fabric for soldier uniforms for Maine since 1812, if not before then in 1809, consisted of Civil War era brick multistory classroom buildings on the college campus and a lot of typical old white multistory New England houses in the central neighborhoods. Union major brevet general Joshua Chamberlain's old house was now a museum close by and his grave housing the Lion of Little Round Top at the battle of Gettysburg was just down the street from the college.

Further from town the houses followed the history of the American economy, first larger single homes built between 1910 and 1940, then a gradual shrinkage of house size and opulence during the war years, a sprinkling of base housing, and the 1950s. Then, further out, getting bigger again through the end of the century.

The eating was good.

There was great Vietnamese food right near the college, also Chinese, Mexican, German, Italian, an insouciantly fabulous circus deli featuring sandwiches, potato chips and a signature pickle. There was a popular, fast-food joint called Fat Boys, regularly seasonal, a jettisoned Navy base with runways longer than many large airports and other businesses including an urbane, prolific, and talented goldsmith family, a health food store which featured high prices but great variety, and two fine Indian restaurants.

Angelo brought home chicken salad sandwiches and tuna sandwiches from a local market on Upper Maine Street across from the college when he wasn't scarfing down calzones and pizza there with sunglasses even on gray days. He thought one could live all their life and not each such sandwiches...what a shame that would be.

The brothers thought it ironic that such a great place for so many was a hideout for them.

They wore dark glasses when out and never travelled together after the first week.

The two brothers stayed in their room much of the first week, scared nearly witless.

Angelo figured that Joseph would be watched like a hawk.

Joseph hadn't wanted to go anywhere and figured that he would just sit on anybody that threatened him. Joseph's bulk housed a very bright mind.

As he mulled over the possibilities for communication between Maine and New York he decided that the safest way was to avoid wireless routers and any voice cell traffic.

Satellite dish internet might work, he thought, but then he remembered a yellow and black sign and a little boy standing in front of it while his mother (father?) told somebody a message that they wanted sent to Aunt Helen.

He tried to remember how he felt about that but only could remember the sign.

Western Union. He had wondered why not Southern Union or Northern at the time but forgot to ask. As a small boy he had a lot of questions but not enough time to ask them all.

A one-time cipher appealed to him and he rose with some effort, slightly short of breath with exertion and donned his hat, coat and gloves for the trip down the hall to the elevator. thence to the doorman.

The taxi arrived; he stuffed himself in slowly and asked to be taken to the New York Public Library, the main branch with the lions in front.

The NYPL section on coding and ciphers is sufficient. Almost every modern book on the subject sits on shelves there, a few were seldom read and more than a few were classified and thus unavailable to the general reading public.

Joseph settled with a few books, a legal pad and a few hours later smiled, replaced the books and made his way home. Over the next day, between frequent bouts of sustenance and caffeine-filled beverages, he studied his notes and developed a plan.

The brothers received a FedEx parcel three days later at their cottage. They noted Joseph's handwriting on the label, tore it open and found a notebook. In it was a series of pages of numbers and letters in numbered paragraph form. The numbers and letters made absolutely no sense.

At all.

To Joseph, who had achieved near randomness by arriving at paragraphs of thirty characters by the somewhat tedious process of alternating the notes found in Poulenc's "Gloria" (each note in each solo) with the first ninety sequential letters beginning in the Third Chapter of Mark in the Holy Bible (KJV). He spiced that mixture with every third, fourth and eleventh character substituted from characters found in certain portions of the Kai-Lung, changing the original Chinese characters to their Unicode number.

Joseph was a fan of Ernest Bramah and disciplined himself frequently at work to stay focused on task by paraphrasing to himself the part about how entrancing it was to wander through a garden of bright images...which was usually enough for him to sigh over the imagery of words so brilliantly put...and get back to work.

No paragraph was alike. There were nearly twenty of them. The short note in the package asked the brothers to keep the notebook and its contents private and safe and to let him know if for any reason they thought someone had even seen the notebook, let alone the paragraphs inside.

The first test came the next day. A Western Union telegram arrived in the afternoon from one Peggy Sterling of New York City for pickup by Angelo or Paul Salvetti. It advised the recipient 'to pick paragraph three'. In addition, there was a text of some length, which looked like groups of numbers, entirely random in appearance.

When Angelo read the telegram, he began to smile. He knew one-time ciphers from Army training days and set to work transposing the numbers. He laughed out loud as he finally read:

"Mary had a little lamb...and the doctor fainted!"

The brothers decided to send Joseph a telegram with further instructions. In code. A paragraph number was specified.

The Salvetti brothers learned that the threat was to Nick primarily, but extension to his brothers was contemplated should Nick neglect his duties at Rikers. None of them believed that. They all felt that Angelo and Paul were still in danger. They knew too much. Word was, on the street, that Nick wouldn't be hit unless all of them were, so Nick was safer where he was for the moment, protected some at his job.

Over the next couple of days, arrangements were made for the brothers to be flown from the Brunswick airport by a private jet service to another private airport about 200 miles from the Idaho-Wyoming border. At arrival, they walked about a mile to the nearest small town having stashed their suitcases near the airport.

Once in town, the brothers located a private party who needed to trade his truck for cash and was willing to grant privacy to the brothers, purchased his brown 2012 Ford F350 pickup with 38,000 miles and decent tires on it, then drove back for their suitcases.

Later, in the middle of downright nowhere, their GPS voice said to turn to the right; they turned into a long asphalt driveway with no gate and nothing in immediate sight.

They traveled for a couple of minutes around small hills then across a concrete and stone bridge over a rushing creek. As they turned north again, curving off and down from the bridge, the tired brothers saw a large resort style mansion, full porch, large barn and a helicopter pad. They drove into the barn and Paul got out and closed the barn door.

Joseph's mother met them at the front door. Her presence wasn't expected, and a look of stunned surprise swept over the brother's faces like a wave of fans at a football game. "Hello boys," she said quietly, "and welcome home. I will cook for you."

Rosa Weber Alioto was delighted to feel needed again. Twice-married, twice widowed, she looked forward to mothering again. She shooed them upstairs to go unpack and sleep and invited them to breakfast with the crew at eight a.m. in the small dining room. She led the brothers to the elevators and gave them passkeys for the 4th level and room keycards for the resort rooms on that level. The rooms had kitchens with refrigerators and microwaves and pantries, which were stocked.

The maids had brought in bowls of fresh fruit and they found plenty of snack material. They watched the news for a little bit and then, after warm showers, fell into their respective beds and fell into an untroubled, comfortable sleep for the first time in almost a week.

They both woke early. They had travelled west for two time zones only so jet lag wasn't a problem. They dressed and gathered in the hall to go down to breakfast. Paul thought to bring a legal pad and pen. Angelo felt safe but totally without cues. In front of a giant fireplace, he drifted into a fog of second sleep for a few minutes before breakfast.

Up for a few hours already, Rosa silently led them a few feet to the dining room where a wonderful breakfast was ready.

Yes, know thyself: in great concerns or small, be this thy care, for this, my friend, is all.

Juvenal

I, Michael Ross, learned that trouble happens. I hadn't realized at age sixteen that bad shit happened to kids my age and especially not to me.

I learned. Boy, did I. Violent change does happen to teens my age. Change had come to visit me all of a sudden. I was devastated and depressed.

In retrospect, I wasn't locked up like my mom had been. Guess whoever got to decide didn't think I was much of a threat.

A week after the accident, my cook and security detail in Pennsylvania came to get me out of the hospital. No one could be bothered to take me in, so to speak, so I was dropped off at the house in Flourtown where the staff did as much as they could to make me feel alive again; they did as much as I was ready and able to receive.

My attitude was evident to everybody but me. I just felt kind of numb, woke some days wondering where my mom and dad were and even caught myself talking out loud to Barbara when I heard someone behind me and sometimes not.

I visited a shrink for several months and felt that if he couldn't bring them back, he probably wasn't worth the effort. I was acting like such a kid because I was a kid. I had no experience at this kind of empty. No tutor taught this stuff.

The cast on my left arm was irritating, the attention from the staff more so and my attitude about losing my parents and my sister was pretty dark, although I would have bit my hand off before emoting about how I felt then.

Gradually I resumed my tutors' assigned tasks and threw myself into what interested me, which wasn't much at first. My ribs started to hurt less when I took a deep breath.

I was too young to run the company. No one knew where mom or dad's will were located. For the time being, two attorneys named Cooper and Stutlin from the trust corporation were flying in our jet, spending our money like rushing water over a waterfall, running the company, changing advisors, banks, accountants, attorneys, and computer passwords.

In short, I was in limbo, orphaned. That's how I felt anyway. No friends.

There were lots of people around the house and wherever I went, including security and household staff. We had a butler, a housekeeper, and a cook as well as maids and grounds crew. The housekeeper managed the maids and ordered supplies and food; the butler supervised the grounds crew and signed for deliveries.

The cook prepared meals for the staff in her professional kitchen with large refrigerators, freezers, convection ovens, microwaves, commercial char broilers, induction cooktops, commercial waffle and crepe makers, warming and holding equipment...and supervised the kitchen assistants who washed in the dish room, did the prep work and the pot washer.

Oh, and I got to eat, too.

The great irony here was I didn't have dinner parties and at that age could not have cared less about servants. Had someone asked me how many elegant parties the Flourtown estate hosted after the accident I would have immediately replied 'zero'.

The butler and housekeeper drew enough money directly from the trust for incidentals, staff checks were directly deposited from the trust and enough money landed in the household account to feed the staff and I: for travel (with the Sikorsky for local trips as far as New York City, never with Rainier) and my education. Period.

My dad, the Judge, was dead. Barbara was missing, probably dead. My mother was missing, probably dead. I was left with, well, no family.

Like I said, I had no expectation of seeing my immediate family on this earth and, for that matter, no long-term hope for happiness outside of, say, a bank vault.

And so, my life progressed through part of high school at an exclusive academy, afterwards to a college in Iowa called Grinnell College whose endowment was so big that no student, after applying available loans and scholarships received a bill with a balance.

Not that my trust cared much. I was worth way too much to get loans for college. My scores on tests, tutor reputations and recommendations and, quién sabe, possibly a generous donation from the trust had helped me get in.

At Grinnell I majored in business and finance with an eye to achieving pre-law credits and graduated summa cum laude, having tasted life that seemed fine along the way.

Like good wines and Midwest steaks and casinos and love and libraries.

I discovered the joys of computers at Grinnell and the trust sent me a really nice MacBook Pro and an iPad.

I had friends at Grinnell.

The first friend I made was a roommate from a poor family (poor compared to mine) was a trim, cheerful guy with a great personality and a real talent with languages. He wanted to get away from his mom and dad and three other siblings in any way he could and decided to study French and Philosophy. His shy twin was similarly constructed only he was a mathametician, but I couldn't hold that against him.

I met Marcus Jones at the cafeteria early on.

He was sitting by himself at one corner of the giant room after loading his tray with food from the fabulous Grinnell buffets. Grinnell kept their students very happy and could afford to do that. Students entered and had culinary choices beyond most college kids' wildest dreams. They had access to whole different cuisines at many meals and catered to the tastes of different cultures as well.

I digress.

Marcus was a trim handsome guy about my height, great smile, not particularly shy, actively friendly, filled with tenderness, a good dresser, built like a swimmer, package from heaven (which observation scared and surprised me), somewhere between skinny and average weight, warm brown eyes and skin color mix of honey and milk chocolate.

I went over and asked if I could join him and with a full mouth he just nodded. After he swallowed, he smiled. "Sure. No charge." He turned out to be from Brooklyn.

I knew real soon after meeting him that I wanted to be with him all the time. He was a trifle naïve, if by that one means 'too good to be true', a good listener and he liked me. Oh, hot as fuck too and scary bright.

His mom was a nurse who did private duty nursing for a living. Marcus didn't talk about his family very much, but I learned he had a younger brother, John. His dad had left them at some point. Marcus was interested in criminal justice and forensic computer science with a minor in finance.

Like most college students, he knew the general subjects that interested him and was preparing for any number of occupational outcomes, but one issue for him was the same as mine: `What will I do after college?'

The college, located in the middle of somewhere on the mid-Iowa plains wasn't far from the town where a famous company made washers and dryers which, in their marketing, were famous for their bored service technicians. We, the student body, were not, on the other hand, bored at all. We were a diverse and fun-loving bunch.

For a few years, the campus men specialized in medieval sword fighting. Sometimes we would have a lawn picnic and talk half the day away. Usually we just studied our socks off. There was no dearth of competition at Grinnell with really motivated students who had worked hard to get there.

Marcus and I first fooled around a couple of weeks after that first meetup at the cafeteria.

My roommate and I had a code, the necktie around the doorknob protocol, which gave us a window of time.

Marcus, not my roomie yet, had come over to shoot the breeze. I had thought about coming out to this guy who made me dizzy and erect just looking at him and I just 'happened' to be stepping out of the dorm room shower in a towel after his arrival. I opened the door to the hall, hung the tie over the doorknob in the hall, closed the door and then stepped over to him.

I'll be damned if that towel just didn't fall off (not cinched well enough I'm sure). When his eyes dropped to just south of my waist, I asked him if he liked what he saw. To say that he looked a little like a kid in a candy store might have overstated facts, but he stood and stripped in about ten seconds flat. Naked, we were skin on skin, mouth to mouth and cock to cock pretty quick. I loved cupping his cute ass with my hands. Turned out he thought my ass was spectacular.

Particularly so.

Marcus and I did a little sword fighting over our own, not particularly medieval, however.

To say I was turned on wasn't overstating fact.

He guided me down and I nursed there as if parched. I sucked but knew I didn't have the skills to swallow all of him yet. Marcus brought me up, turned me over, and climbed on top of me, I spread my legs and he raised them even further, lifting my ass off the bed. He scooted down and began to wash my behind with his tongue, then making his tongue hard, he stuck it into me rapidly, in and out. It wasn't long before his hands were exploring just like mine. I had lube and condoms in the drawer, reached over to get them out, and rolled one down on him with some difficulty. A magnum would have been a better size.

"I'm not going to hurt you on purpose." Marcus warned me that the first time might be intense. In any event he was slow and sweet at first ramping right up to raucous and thrilling. Marcus had tenderness and energy both... to spare.

After my butt adjusted, that is to say, after I got over feeling crucified, I felt better, just pretty much felt full. The memory of my dad telling me that it always feels better when ya quit knocking your head against a brick wall came flooding back to my head.

Having my best friend's cock inside of me was as close as I could get to emotional sunshine.

He somehow knew which buttons to push inside of me and I knew right then that I wanted to live. This business about dying a happy man could wait.

I could tell when he came. He yelled into my neck quietly, froze, and his body tensed and surged a bunch of times. It was about that same moment when my cock spurted semen clear up on my face and shoulders. A little later after we snuggled and wiped each other down some and slept for a while, I walked to the bathroom.

The wonderful sensation of my lover's cum, lots of it, snaking and dribbling out with little air bubbles, oozing its way down my leg, reminded me that my lover's sperm was on the move. Marcus joined me in the shower and I washed his back and... stuff.

We both liked sex, liked each other; we repeated variants of our first time a lot those four years. He told me we were a good team; the moves that turned each of us on turned both of us on... like a light switch.

I don't remember exactly when I told Marcus about my family and the accident. He asked if I had looked for any of my family since the accident. Then I looked down, and around some before answering.

I began to say no. At that second, I got a really bad headache with an eye irritation causing tears in both eyes, if you can believe that.

I had some trouble seeing clearly and told him that I needed to get to class. This on a Sunday afternoon.

I ran off toward the commons, looked back once and saw his frowning face and brown eyes boring into mine. I don't think I fooled him any.

Marcus and I had few classes together except for finance. My major was art like my mom's had been. In view of the fact that I didn't know tons about money management, I made an early decision to choose finance for my minor as well.

There was zero chance I would ever work in a bank but wanted to manage my money well and needed the theoretical structures of finance and economics, which determine how money works and flows.

Almost all of us had the option to study abroad at some point. I chose to spend a few months in Paris getting acquainted with the treasures of the Louvre and the Musée National du Moyen ge, among the dozens of other museums in the city. I applied, was accepted and began plotting my Marcus strategy three months prior to leaving.

Marcus wanted to study finance at the Sorbonne for a semester, but his scholarship didn't cover that. I sat him down and told him I had rented a hotel suite near the Louvre for the trip. I didn't want to go alone, probably put on a little poor-me act and in what I thought might be the final coup, told him a very small white lie.

The trust, I mentioned (read 'fibbed'), the trust 'preferred' that I have a companion for the trip in addition to the security guys and would pay for both round-trip tickets, all expenses paid.

I was confident he didn't know two things. Number one was that I was to inherit that trust someday and number two was the astonishing value in the trust.

Marcus may have seen through this travel story. Don't know. But he said yes for his own reasons.

Hearing that, I asked the travel office at the trust to make two first-class ticket reservations through to Paris. St. Louis to JFK on United, thence to CDG-Paris on Air France.

I rented a car in Grinnell for the trip to St. Louis and off we went with a suitcase apiece, current passports in hand, wallets, credit cards, a few thousand euros from a Forex booth at JFK, toothpaste, cell phones globalized, laptops, iPads, chargers, the whole packing list checked off. Mine anyway.

Marcus had not traveled and wasn't a packing-list person. He brought everything he needed without a list.

It impressed the hell out of me. Didn't matter to me. I knew he would reinsert some within a day or two.

The flight over to Paris was a real lark. We slept.

Most morning air arrivals from North America arrive early in the Parisian day, a real pity. Most arrive long before the hour that normal tourist hotels will allow new guests to check in.

The fabulous hotels will admit you at one a.m. if your private jet wanders in at that hour; actually, anytime if you have a suite reserved and paid for no matter if you swam the English Channel to get there. This grand 'swim if you want to' option required that the proffered check had already cleared or a wire transfer be in their computer system already.

For the rest of the hapless visitors (notice the Gallic shrug and sniff here about the welfare of 'les touristes'), there exists the ironclad rule which may be enforced to the minute that if the hour is not yet three p.m. the `bed isn't ready.'

At three p.m. "exactement" the thousands of weary, rumpled travelers from abroad wandering the streets of Paris, some carrying suitcases with various garments falling out at the oddest times (think of underwear on the sidewalk of L'Avenue des Champs-Élysée), get sucked up and put to bed early, the hotels hoping not to see or care for them until breakfast the next a.m.

There are those who still argue that the caring process never begins, like, even never as in "jamais."

The fabulous hotels care, all right, for a price, and show it by charging outrageous rack fees and rarely discount. They need not. There is, as P.T. Barnum of American circus fame once remarked, a sucker born every minute. He didn't add that paying a price for luxury and getting it was scarcely the definition of a sucker if the choice was conscious.

I was glad I had asked the Schuyler trust to wire the money to prepay a reserved suite plus 30% extra to cover incidental charges at the Georges Cinq.

The wired funds landed at their destination with seconds usually and were as good as cash in your hand. The receiving business or bank didn't ever place a hold on a wire, on the other hand...the second the funds left your account they were gone...poof.

I wasn't a fan of the Marquis de Sade nor did I amuse myself dumping my briefs on the Champs-Élysée.

Marcus and I took the train from the Charles de Gaulle airport train station to the Gare du Nord, having figured out the trick of a 'composted' ticket for the train tickets bought in the airport for travel to the train station in the city, then a limousine to our leased suite at the Georges Cinq. Marcus loved the hotel and the buildings around it. I loved being with him and the hotel too. It was like this love-fest going on.

Check-in was easily accomplished after presentation of the paid reservation and passports.

The receptionist took one look at our credit balance and did not ask for a credit card to be imprinted.

We were escorted to a high suite facing a quiet garden far below as I had requested. We ordered a lot of food from room service and when I tipped the staff, I looked at them directly, shook their hands individually, smiled, and thanked them in French for their delightful service.

From their professional reaction and raised eyebrows, I knew they would not forget us and wouldn't be shy about dispensing more great service. The raised eyebrows were not related to a slipup on my part as I expressed myself in the French language, naturally.

Marcus lifted his eyebrows ever so slightly while smiling at a cute waiter who blushed and tried to keep his gaze away from Marcus's groin. My French may have stumbled a bit at that point, however. The waiter told us that if we needed anything whatsoever to call the need to his attention.

I told him in French (as an aside) that we were normal horny college kids and asked him to drop by after his shift if he wished and perhaps we could discuss a tour or something.

He blushed, reached down to cover his own bulge about that time, and hurriedly left the room.

After walking down the Rue de Rivoli a little way past St. Paul church at a brisk pace, perhaps an hour's walk, perhaps two hours, we consulted guidebooks and did what some French of all ages do (mostly on the sly) and snuck over to The American Café on the Rue Malher. There, Canadians ran a breakfast diner joint complete with a horseshoe-shaped center counter (for better viewing of other patrons). Each stool in this red and white checker boarded, chrome-accented, and new old-fashioned café faced its own toaster. We knew this because we looked through the window. It was closed for the owner's `vacance'. We were tired and starving by then and willing to try anything.

We tried 'anything'. We really did. As a strategy for finding fine dining, it sucked.

We settled on a very late supper at a small bistro on the corner and practiced eating biftec like the French do, with knife in the right hand and busy upside-down fork in the left hand. Soon we had those moves down and dirty so sufficient food reached our mouth to sustain life. What with cutting the hunk of meat, lifting the food, stabbing it, and moving food over to the back of the fork with the knife we finished the meal.

Afterward, I politely raised my hand, caught the bistro waiter's eye and said, "L'addition, s'il vous plaît," and waited. I handed the check and credit card to the suspicious waiter after noting a tiny upward curl to one end of his ever-so-elegantly mustachioed upper lip and a tiny raised eyebrow on the same side upon seeing my black AMEX Centurion card.

The waiter wasn't used to seeing anodized titanium apparently at this location and besides which he said he wasn't sure they took American Express, even though the sticker beside the door promised that very result.

The manager was called, a conference held, gesticulations produced, heavy sighs exhaled and finally the card was grasped like an asp with two fingers on a corner of it and carried off.

It returned (the card and the waiter both) with a triumphant smile (just the waiter) as if he had personally convinced someone to take it. An equally dramatic presentation of the card and the bill was signed.

The performance was better than the biftec which was on the order of linoleum, thin, tasteless, rubbery and cold compared to say, a Ruth's Chris Midwest wonder. Anyway.

Very much later, we arrived at the Place de la Bastille, where only a flat plaque marks the site where the Bastille prison was stormed and later razed, now sacred to French history as the spot where the 'Spirit of Freedom' began.

We glanced at the plaza, the new Opera House and the great `gold' Mercury statue in the center of the plaza, now visible in floodlights. Marcus and I were through walking so took our lives into our hands and took a taxi back to the Georges Cinq. The cute waiter never came by.

The next morning, we separated, Marcus to register at the Sorbonne and I to use my Museum Pass at the Louvre. I had dozens of favorite places there from previous visits with mom.

As soon as that thought hit, I had no favorite place anywhere. I forced myself to put a spring in my step and headed for the busts of the Caesars. They, with their faults, their mistakes, their loves, their absolute power, were nearly all represented in the Louvre in a huge space, some having been carved either during or soon after their reign. If you could ignore their blank eyes, you could admire the ass kissing of the sculptors who knew that the current Emperor might see this work and ponder an order or two.

Unblemished, powerful, arrogant, some downright mean-looking, others just homely, all of them had been magnified larger than life only to last for as long as stone lasts in this museum by the Seine river in a place they had called Gaul. A wild tribal region, Gaul and its battles with Rome had made some of their reputations leading up their career ladder to Emperor, but none had wanted to stay very long. Neither had their legions.

Now, people all around the world made it their business and pleasure to visit Gaul, sample its wine and view its cathedrals and art museums. Who knew?

I gave La Gioconda the slip that day. I had been there and seen her. From the Caesars, over I went to the Mesopotamian treasures and somewhere found the Code of Hammurabi stele. The treasure had come from Iran in 1901. Before that it had been lost to view for a really long time. Having some law background now as a modern law student, seeing that rock brought tears to my eyes for the poor bastard, the ancient law student back in antiquity straining his eyes to read the rock sans glasses with sand in his eyes.

One of the first codes of law with specific punishments for specific crimes written (read, 'carved') (in this case on a tall polished rock in tiny ancient characters), one had to marvel at a legal first, harsh in punishment, equitable in application. Shades of Judge Ross.

Then I got down to my familiar European art thing, i.e. taking notes and noting similarities between mom's (my) paintings and the master's works on display at the Louvre and remembering my art history studies at Grinnell. That, after all, was my shtick.

Hours passed. I skipped lunch. At five p.m., food thoughts intruded, and I wondered if Marcus was hungry. I exited the Louvre and called him.

He had spent the last hour at Saint-Chappelle, basking in the world's most extravagant display of stained glass and was, indeed, thinking of food. We arranged to meet in front of Notre Dame and a half hour later we were politely arguing about where to eat.

He wanted French fare. I did too. The problem, apparently, for him was an ingrained sense of `let's not spend money on stuff that only passes on through anyway' and my thing was to find the best and enjoy it. Just different looks and feels by two hungry guys at the elephant that everyone owns, I decided. We ended up with Chinese takeout.

Marcus talked about his day. The office at the Sorbonne that dealt with visiting temporary students was very helpful and efficient. The paperwork was minimal by French standards. He had produced his passport; the clerk had found his name on a computerized list and that was, voila, that.

He had been given a folder and a list. The folder contained a copy of the rules of the University, a map of the classes he would be attending and no end of helpful tips for surviving in Paris. The traffic. The strikes. The usual warning against pickpockets in some places, the usual.

Papers in the folders mentioned the oh-so-slight possibility of crime and how to deal with that, a slightly longer section. Then there was 'how to report a fire', calling the local Parisian chapter of what the French so elegantly call the `Sapeurs-pompiers.'

These dudes had a great record fighting fires and gave both men and women a thrill doing it.

French Army units of long standing, ever so organized and formal at fires, the Sapeurs-pompiers were one of the largest and oldest fire brigades on the continent (with the most masculine hunks possibly).

I thought their uniforms magnificent, though more special when half removed, erotic really.

The vision of a group of male twenty and thirty-somethings stripped to the waist, uniform trousers on, Sapeurs-pompiers dousing each other with a fire hose to wash toxins off or cooling down after a fire or whatever, tanned muscular chests heaving and laughing together...blurred my distinctions between visions and wet dreams.

All that added to the auditory thrill: the characteristic sound of their fire truck `siren' was as stirring as the Marseillaise, all seven verses of it.

Rapid alternation between two fixed notes instead of up-and down, continuously-wailing changes of pitch sent blood rushing to great places.

Including my brain, for sure.

I am nearly certain that Marcus never told me what the rest of the list was about. We were both tired after crazy sex, the curtains open, a light afternoon breeze, sunlight streaming in on our naked bodies, light both soft and intense at the same time, the kind of light only received in Paris.

We fell into the arms of Morpheus as if pushed there.

Awakened at a very early morning hour (think 3 a.m.) by nothing at all except Paris night sounds, we looked at each other and felt a little chilled without a sheet in this giant room with Louis Quinze antique furniture and an unusually efficient air conditioner (`central air, naturellement').

We scampered still nude to the great glassed-in shower and studied the French plumbing. Warm water finally rained from the large shower-head and fragrant French-milled lavender soapsuds ran down our slick skin.

We soaped each other all over and got hard. Marcus turned to the shower wall and I rubbed my cock between his ass-cheeks until I nearly came, backed away from my approaching peak, applied some soap to his butt, and pushed my way into glory and fucked him into next week.

After I came, we rinsed again, toweled off with great soft and plush cotton towels, slept for an hour, then checked out the minibar for snacks, couldn't find chocolate or cookies, and called room service.

The pleasant surprise was the serious French waiter we had met earlier. He brought up truffles, a whole plate of fresh-baked madeleines and some ripe peaches into our suite where we awaited, now warmed, clean, dry, and naked.

Alain introduced himself again, formally, in French, his brown eyes caressing both of us; he began to smile and breathe a little harder, came over to the bed, and then carefully took off every stitch he wore.

Then he lay on his back at the edge of the bed, his cute ass supported by a pillow covered with a towel.

The invitation, displayed, seemed clear enough.

Marcus and I looked at each other, figured it might just be part of the already impressive service and nodded. Neither of us were exactly reluctant.

Marcus stepped over to the bed, leaned over the waiter between his legs and they kissed, Marcus' ass winking at me, then with admiration he kneaded Alain's pecs for a minute, licked his nipples and brought his own tongue down to briefly tickle the waiter's navel. Usually thorough, Marcus took the opportunity to tongue every patch of skin in sight.

I remembered one of the peaches, cut a slice off and crushed it over Alain's uncut cock, careful to drip the sticky, wonderfully fragrant peach juice right onto the glans, then Marcus sucked that cock like there might not be another tomorrow.

Marcus had no problem getting or keeping an erection. He stayed hard, wrapped himself in latex, and rimmed the waiter using more ripe peach juice.

I got on top of Alain in a soixante-neuf posture; Alain sucked my engorged cock while I ate his. I reached over, got the gel lube, and applied some to Alain's anus and Marcus' cock.

My face and eyes were at front-row center to watch Marcus' cock apply gentle contact. Marcus groaned his signature low-pitched grunt at his initial touch and shifted around a bit as if orienting himself to the direction of this task of the reptilian brain we men possess.

Alain's delighted moans at my efforts to hum the initial bars of Beethoven's Fifth symphony in different keys on his cock accompanied Marcus' sounds.

It wasn't too long, then, watching my lover's cock first touch and entry into Alain's tight cave, the glide 'down the runway', the slow in-and-out thrusts, the visual feast of milk-chocolate thick cock contrasted to light cherry-pink skin, Alain's peri-anal skin grasping the thick shaft of my lover's cock as it drew back then getting dragged back in with the next thrust in, the tight circumference of Alain's hole trying to suck and hold Marcus' cock, my lover's cum finally wetting his shaft further, Alain's vacuum cleaner action on my cock... brought me gasping to a hot, nuclear blast in Alain's mouth.

Nearly drowned him.

Alain made some remark about the three musketeers which lingered in our memory as we all lay exhausted, stuffing madeleines into our mouths, slight flavors of coconut and almond mixed with ripe peach juice with eau de cum faintly scenting the air.

"Les Trois Mousqetaires!"

"Ca c'est bon, non?" Alain had talent for understating fact. It was good all right; it was glorious!

Alain invited us one weekend to visit his home in the 6th arondissement where he lived with his younger brother Saul, a nineteen-year-old vision who not only was a budding chef, but sought comfort making passionate spit-roasted `desserts' (a dedicated bottom like his brother only, he could be persuaded to make his older brother squirm with delight using his cock and fingers) and, apparently, with friends his brother on occasion brought home.

Saul loved long flexible vibrating double-ended toys which he sterilized after each use. Fresh batteries and voila, two bottoms were suddenly connected and soon content after some volcanic cheek to cheek maneuvering.

Fun to watch but not what I was looking for.

For Alain and Saul as brothers, bottoms, and Frenchmen, the toys provided real intimacy inside their small family.

We enjoyed casseroles, fabulous roasted vegetables, soups, braised beef, and duck at Alain and Saul's home. We were a little surprised, not disappointed, that this French family unit didn't serve wine. We didn't mention it or ask.

They explained one day in passing that they had lost both parents to alcohol and related liver disease and had vowed to never touch it as adults.

That academic semester passed quickly. One weekend Marcus and I took the TGV to Geneva, another weekend to Rome and stopped in Milan for a couple of days, including a day trip to Lake Como.

We flew Air France back to JFK one morning, having bonded like the lovers we were.

Then, back at Grinnell, life went on, slightly less exciting and a lot more work.

Grinnell, Iowa (the town) tolerates its college citadel of liberal thinking. The College is the biggest employer in Grinnell, after all, and one must eat.

On balance, however, the college is hidden out in and among cornfields and acres of soybeans and grain to shield both from passersby on the Interstate and the surrounding conservative farmers too.

I graduated just after Marcus, missed seeing his brother and mom, said goodbye to Grinnell and on a fine early summer day figured I'd play anonymous, hopped on the bus back home to Flourtown, rode a taxi then walked in and saw Mrs. Tracy, our cook, look up from her stove and move toward me.

She gave me a brisk hug, then put up with me for exactly one week.

She sat me down then and asked what I had planned. I talked to her about my acceptance to George Washington law school in Washington D.C., and my temp summer job at a law firm in SoHo doing in-house running and sorting.

I told her I had a feeling my mom was alive. I cried most of the afternoon in my room. Then I got mad and got out.

Again.

Somewhere out there, a happy life must surely exist for me. I had tasted it at Grinnell.

I took a personal inventory and felt poor in one respect. I had no close friend except the one that counted. The man of my heart, Marcus was surely now cast to history, of course, never to be seen again.

The blue funk had once again descended.

I wasn't sure who to depend on at the trust which I had hopes of inheriting but wasn't even close to managing or getting any good feelings about the trust with Rainier being flown around by two lawyers who didn't have anything to say to me, actively cold and rude.

As I remember it, I remember hanging on to hope, working to put aside the numbing, plodding day-by-day progress with my life. Some days that worked great, others not so much.

I wanted answers about my family and at the same time wasn't sure I really did.

I didn't know if anyone really cared for me. I just didn't know. I missed my family a great deal.

To be fair, there were some decisions mine to make. What to do with all that trust money some day? I had never met my grandfather and had no idea what he would have wanted me to do. Whom to date or not? Should I do any personal investing or let the trust do it all? Should I learn anything more about business? Did I really want to practice law? I knew mom had loved fine art and knew the pieces at home.

Then a call came several years after the accident.

The butler brought me the news that a Mrs. Mary Tate at the Circuit Court had called. I knew she was dad's former Court secretary and couldn't imagine why I would get a call from her.

I grabbed my cell phone, called the number and asked for her office. "Michael? Is that you, child?" I recognized her voice and she went on.

"Honey," Mary said, "can you get away for lunch tomorrow at noon at my desk in room 312?" At first the room number seemed strange, but I figured she had been transferred to another position after dad was killed. Turned out that supposition was correct...she now was director of court legal services, an administrative position supervising secretaries and clerks.

She offered to bring lunch. I was not starving for home-cooked food, but her potato salad and her lasagna were first-class (we had been invited to her house once) and I decided anything she brought would be good.

The following day I tried to walk and look cool as I sauntered up the court steps and found Mary. Her desk was loaded with food. Not lasagna and not potato salad, but it turned out great.

She looked at me from time to time as we ate. After the last flourish of my napkin and after lemonade, she began.

"It's time for you to know that your mom had some extra money that your grandfather gave to her. That is now yours with attorney committee oversight," she said.

"Your mom left you all of her private collection of gems and art as well as this money, none of which is part of the Schuyler trust that will be yours later."

"What you don't know is that your mom and I were good friends. She had asked me to keep some things out and separate from your dad's attention in case something happened to her."

"I took the liberty," she continued, "of petitioning a friendly judge here to declare your mother as deceased under the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania."

"That petition has been granted for purposes of moving ahead with her will even though we do not have a death certificate or other information regarding what happened to her after the accident."

"I am very sorry for your loss. I personally have lost one of my best friends as well."

"To reiterate, you need to know that her will leaves all of her money outside of the Schuyler trust plus her gems and art collection in two repositories to you to help you pay living and other expenses before age twenty-five, when the Schuyler trust inheritance from your grandfather becomes your responsibility."

"The trust holds your grandfather's original stocks, real estate global properties, the Flourtown house and land in Pennsylvania, bonds, precious metals and a good deal of money. The trust will continue to fund some education expenses now. As you know your mother was the beneficiary, the owner of the trust after your grandfather's death. Now that your mother is deceased, you are the beneficiary of the trust and will control it when you reach age twenty-five.

If you apply, they probably will continue to include travel. I expect that those who work at the trust want to continue their good relationship with the new beneficiary."

She listened carefully to my story about the hostile attorneys, indicated that she understood and responded only by saying that their future with the trust also depended on a good relationship with me.

"What goes around comes around," she said.

"They will also continue your monthly checks for household maintenance and start a monthly allowance soon, but this money that we talked about today should make a great cushion in the meanwhile."

"Your mom had made other separate plans for her art collection and gems in Philadelphia. Your dad didn't know about those because your mom wasn't sure he didn't have designs on the collection. They were not included in the trust or placed all together in Manhattan for that reason."

"Her secret art collection consists of paintings for the most part. In addition, there are vast numbers of important art pieces and gems belonging to your grandfather's collection in the Manhattan repository as well which you will get at age twenty-five.

The Philadelphia objects are yours now."

"I must ask you," Mary continued, "to remember that your mother's art and gem collections in Philadelphia are definitely not part of the Schuyler trust. The documentation is binding and legally complete under both Pennsylvania and New York state law."

"They are entirely distinct just as your mom wanted. She didn't want all of her eggs in the same basket. Looking back, that worked out well for her and you. Your mom's separate cash, art, and her gem collection are yours now; the trust will be yours without lawyers supervising your expenses or flying in your jet in a few years."

Mary was prescient about that but neither of us had a clue about how the jet and the attorneys would finally be separated or when.

"Your mom loved a wide variety of objects with emphasis on Asian and European objects, mostly paintings and tapestries, and a few sculptures. She was at home at the Louvre and the Prado, whose directors knew her well," Mary said. "She was generous to them. The reverse was also true."

"Many of the museum curators around the world would call your mom and ask her to buy pieces that museums could not afford at the time. The curators of major museums knew that she often would give them the right of first refusal in the future if she chose to sell; furthermore, she would put it in writing.

That way, she often learned about rare and exquisite objects of art coming on to the market before other collectors and dealers knew. That competitive advantage built up an extraordinary collection virtually unknown outside the academic and museum world. "

"Those rights of first refusal have expired on some pieces," Mary went on, "but you may wish at some point to let those museums know that you will honor your mother's commitments as they legally stand now."

She told me that the contracts had no language requiring that anyone who inherited the collections to honor the buyback provisions.

I had seen and studied contracts before and a standard legal paragraph in paralegal 101 and law student 201 said that all or certain parts of a contract would survive the death of either party (or a paraphrase thereof).

If this contract survival paragraph had been left out, the perhaps it was a separate memorandum of understanding that just escaped scrutiny somehow.

As it happened, one of my philosophy tutors at home insisted that I read Judeo-Christian ethics and discuss these in detail with her. She had told me that following those principles, in addition to basic personality ornaments such as honesty, for instance, could enable me to proceed with a certain grace and ease through the business world (and the financial world that my future held) regardless of profession and independent of any declared religion or philosophical adherence.

The same tutor had insisted that I write an essay about integrity defined as `being who you say you are'. She taught me that things belonging to others weren't mine. Taking what belonged to someone else was stealing according to her. Honesty builds trust, she had said; stealing destroys trust.

I was tempted to push Mary for details, curious about how much and how many and where and about total value but decided that well-bred Philadelphia men with manners didn't discuss such things unless necessary and I figured there would be time to learn the details. She went on.

"There is a panel of three lawyers that your mother named to be your trustees in the matter of her will only and they will advise you only until you are twenty-five years old, but unless you start doing something to harm yourself or significantly diminish your principal, the panel will try to agree with everything you propose or at least not oppose you. They are on your side."

Mary told me they were young, liberal men and women who actually recalled how it is to want and need and be in love and spend your interest money generously for reasonable things. Mary laughed and allowed that drugs, alcohol, parties, purchased sex, multiple fast cars and huge philanthropic donations were, by this will's definitions, not reasonable. Even a per cent figure to a church or some other kind of regular and recurring donation would incur review by the lawyer panel which would have the final word.

She told me that she would coordinate with the trio to arrange our first meeting to get acquainted soon even though the expenses for my own upkeep weren't imminent. The group, she told me, would meet in Philadelphia for our first conference and when I got to New York, they would meet me there since they were all based in New York City.

As I spoke to Mary, I didn't know the vast extent (or the ongoing costs) of the art collection, its exact storage location(s), the current pieces on loan to museums; I didn't know about the Lloyds of London policy that insured the entire collection, the existence of the curators, labs and staff that cleaned and maintained the objects.

I didn't know that the attendance at many of the exhibitions at major museums around the world depended on some of mom's loans of art objects and my ignorance at this point was just as well.

I was beginning to be overwhelmed with the information.

Mary told me that the legal advisory panel would inform the storage facilities in Philadelphia and Manhattan that I was the new owner to arrange for access. She gave me the address of the both repositories and asked me to go to Philadelphia to register as owner in two weeks and Manhattan in three weeks. She handed me a large folder of documents to take and guard carefully.

"I have the originals safely tucked away in case any of those get lost," she told me.

In addition, transfer of mother's bank accounts to mine would occur after I approved which of several options would suit me best to minimize the tax effects of wealth transfer. She pointed me to a form to fill out and return to her which listed those options.

She insisted that I employ a private financial advisor, tax planner, and attorney team outside the trust to get independent good advice.

"Whatever you spend on that team will pay for itself time and time again," she said.

I thanked Mrs. Tate for the great picnic and for the information and may have done more than just saunter down the court steps.

I might have somersaulted or danced or something.

New York was warm and kind of sultry that summer. I found a great air-conditioned loft in a safe neighborhood a block away from the Soho law firm and even closer to the subway. The trust hired a real estate firm in Manhattan at what I thought was an exorbitant rate to finagle a search, but I asked them to call off their hounds and hired one closer to me, a firm that labored for me, myself and I.

Two weeks after seeing Mary Tate, I took a taxi to the Manhattan repository door and the door actually opened.

Someone inside was expecting me.

I showed my driver's license and passport to the man on the other side of the bullet-proof glass and put my palms and fingers up to the optical reader on the wall to record that data besides looking into a retinal scanner that digitized both my retinas for additional identification and security.

I filled out the beneficiary form, signed it, and he notarized the form after I signed some signature cards and had a formal photo taken. I was invited inside and sat in the director's office for an orientation of about thirty minutes.

The director gave me a credit card which I had not seen before, a Barclay's bank card which if presented to a bank teller at several different correspondent banks of Barclays around the world would get me either a small printout with the total gem weight and number of objects of art in the repository (only the numbers printed out) and what he called a checksum number, a number representing the total of all of the numbers permanently assigned at random to the paintings in the repository.

He told me it was another way to keep track of the items stored there. He explained that the checksum was obtained by adding all the random numbers, then adding the digits in that total, then again adding the digits in that number, repeating the process until a three-digit number was produced. That number didn't change very often. If it did, some piece had been added to the collection, or sold or stolen or was missing. Usually a check of the repository logs would explain a change in the checksum number. The director was responsible for verifying that number and its changes every morning.

The director also gave me a website URL, only accessible to the beneficiary (me), access only allowed with a combination of clicks on a large Captcha grid in order in a certain time-frame with only one chance a day to click the correct pictures in the correct order to prevent lockout. He explained the grid to me and asked me to just think about the correct content pattern, to never write it down nor repeat to anyone. If hackers found the page, they wouldn't know which squares to click the first time and if they tried a pattern, the director was notified immediately and a computer at the repository immediately changed the pattern.

More correct clicks on a similar grid linked to the first URL accessed another page where my complicated PIN along with date of birth, social security number, current zip code and whatever else would allow me to view the repository webcams, get the total gram weight per bag of any bag of gems there, access the total worth or estimated selling price if known and the total known gem value in the repository.

The art collection didn't lend itself to that kind of data, but the beneficiary could see a list of what art pieces were there on the website, dates acquired, referring museums, any related contracts, contract expiration dates, available data about item value, prices and other relevant data.

I left the repository feeling overwhelmed.

My real estate firm came up with the contract for my loft. The contract provided a lease for three years, renewable yearly if both parties were pleased with each other, locking in the lease costs during that interval.

A new, slightly bored legal type who was cute enough in a young, fresh kind of way worked at the law firm where I was doing the intern thing. He agreed to look at it and found a couple of items to change.

I thanked him with his door locked during his lunch hour. He ate while I did, kind of.

For me, the loft was just a place to sleep, eat and repeat the process. I wasn't bringing people home for quick liaisons, didn't host parties or barbecue anything. There was a service for laundry, dry cleaning and daily cleaning.

Within a month, I had hired an Ecuadorian lady to cook. Her food was only OK at first until Mrs. Tracy, our former cook from Pennsylvania, was brought in to bring Elena up to speed on my lifelong food-related likes and aversions.

I had, caused some consternation in Mrs. Tracy one day, by announcing my intent to minimize dead animals in my diet. I had read a little about living longer, decided the science was yet young on the subject, and found some material about some populations who lived longer on average that didn't smoke, drink or eat meat. Then I read a Harvard study that confirmed that plant-based diets had health benefits.

I didn't smoke. No problem there. I drank some alcohol but hated feeling drunk and the resulting lack of control. I wasn't about to give up milk, eggs and other dairy products just yet. Exercise I could take or leave, but the people who wrote about health always included something about it in their books.

I knew that people who write books on a topic always want to write the absolute best book they can on that subject, so they get out their computer, gather the best ten reference books on that topic and start putting words together. If they get stuck, they browse the reference books and, voila, there is a chapter on something which they forgot to put in their own book, so they add the subject to their book to be complete and around it goes.

An incestuous business, writing books with health advice to would be health nuts.

I digress.

The loft building was quiet and had a pool on the roof as part of a gym for leaseholders only, which charged a bundle of money each month for the privilege. So, every resident was a member, but few actually used the pool or gym because of deep-seated resentment about the fees or pure cussed laziness, never expressed except through the mechanism of voting with the proverbial feet. It was a class thing, I thought, perhaps some kind of a game:

So, I exercised anyway. In case it was important. I hated to swim. I didn't like not being able to breathe when I wanted to breathe (like underwater). I loved feeling alive after exertion, however, so I swam anyway and eventually learned to like it better.

Some of that had to do with learning to swim in a slightly warm pool in very cold Pennsylvania weather at age seven when the difference between air and water temperature seems cold to a skinny kid. I shivered easily then, still did. One day after a workout in the pool, high above Manhattan, I toweled off after brief sauna time and a very long shower thinking the extra minutes might just bring some eye candy in to shower, stopped the dream just before my skin wrinkled, got dressed and wandered back down to my loft.

In the locked mailbox by my door, I found a business envelope addressed to me from the Schuyler trust.

I was surprised for some reason to get my first monthly trust check--an allowance of a pretty staggering amount of seven figures.

Four point one million smackers.

I knew the trust was good for it and that all of it was mine, so to speak. Maybe. Someday. Perhaps later.

But now?

The amount shocked me right then. I stuffed the check inside my jeans, took a taxi over to the Third Avenue Fidelity Investors office, walked in the door and asked for the Managing General Partner.

I wouldn't have known, but the sign at the entrance said they had one.

Once in the door, I noted the luxurious interior, probably funded by their profits off people like me, I thought, then saw a very large marble receptionist desk a long way off across the huge lobby.

When I finally hoofed it over there, the receptionist looked up, looked at me in my jeans and almost rolled her eyes at the nerve of this whatever kid-type person wandering in and asking for the head honcho. She might have liked my eyes or my shoes or had an epiphany or I don't know what, but she decided to ring a secretary on some upper floor somewhere anyway.

A short conversation ensued and after she hung up, she got sulky, probably mirroring the attitude on the other end of the phone and sat her manicured little self right up in her chair and with her newly bored facial expression told me that they had a broker that handled walk-ins.

I looked at her, felt devalued, gritted my teeth, girded up my inner loins, smiled all perky-like and thanked her ever so much for the honor of seeing that broker. With a tight smile, she focused on my right ear and called him, her purple-glazed nails reflecting the chandeliers.

In ten minutes, a balding, short, lumbering man in an ill-fitted suit came up to me and with a jaundiced, fake smile shook my hand while looking somewhere else and asked what he could do for me. I mentioned that I would like to set up an account but needed to see the Managing General Partner first.

He gave a strangled burp from his morning soda slurp probably and casually, firmly asked me to have a seat.

He wanted to know my name. He asked for my social security number, date of birth, took a copy of my passport and driver's license and whatnot. Then he got right to the heart of his speech.

"How much would you like to invest today?" he said, "I'll be happy to set that right up for you."

I handed him the check as his intercom buzzed. He answered it without looking at the check and told somebody that, sure, they could bring him a tall mocha soy latte no whip, no sprinkles, etc. on their way back to the office, asked them if they had seen his briefcase, then turned back to the check.

He stared at it for a minute, colored up, coughed, looked to his right and his left perhaps thinking he was being videotaped for a prank or something.

"This here check yours?" he blurted out. I reached out my hand for the check, thinking that I had wandered into Alice in Wonderland by mistake.

"It's my monthly trust check," I replied as evenly as gritted teeth would allow.

He handed it back to me, stood up, and slicked his few remaining hairs back with the palm of his hand. He grabbed the telephone and dialed, breaking out into one of those cold sweats you always hear about, and said to somebody, "We're on our way up."

I relaxed a bit, figuring that phrase was code for `we've got a live one' and marveled at the change in him induced by the printing on a piece of paper.

"Let's go see the Managing General Partner," he gulped, tried and failed at gracefulness getting up from his chair, "and we'll just get this set up for you."

The august offices of the Managing General Partner seemed nice enough and the secretary in the anteroom calm and soothing. "The boss will see you right away," she offered. "Would you like anything...?"

At that precise moment a middle-aged lady, this side of neat and tidy, came out of her office and invited me into her office, politely thanking and dismissing the floor broker and the secretary. I told her that he had begun to register my account on his computer. She accessed that and told me she would be happy to answer any questions.

Perversely, I asked her to have the newest broker at that office handle my account. I figured he or she would stay and maybe make partner for having "brought in" my account and we could grow old and happy together or something, business-wise.

To her credit, she did try to discourage me from toying with my money. She stressed the value of experience with these matters. She told me that their youngest broker only had a minor in Finance from a Midwestern college...and about that time I had a brain-flash. An image of Marcus Jones in a suit sitting behind a desk came into my head. I must have zoned out some because the next thing I heard her saying was, "He really is a beginner, but we take great pride in supervising our new brokers, blah, blah."

A deep and rumbling laugh tried to leap out of my chest and mouth and nose which I stifled with a cough at the thought of "wouldn't it be a kick if..." and then she was out the door and back in followed a few minutes later by, yep, Marcus Jones in the flesh.

Marcus had his professional smile on and my face put on a polite smile after a smothered mutual gasp that lasted about a millisecond and the "let's play this cool" message passed between us in another couple more milliseconds while shaking hands and enduring the introduction.

My heart wasn't playing anything cool. It skipped a few beats and told my brain to assume that I was home again. Inside of me, I was silently screaming...I had found my guy.

Since I had known him from Grinnell, Marcus Jones had apparently gone to work for Fidelity and when he saw my face that first day, he managed to stay professional, and agreed with his boss, the Managing General Partner at that office, that this indeed was a great start for his work with the firm.

When she finally left and closed the door, I kissed him right on his orbicularis oris, all four quadrants of those lip muscles. We clapped each other on the back three times, grabbed each other's balls and broke into our traditional Grinnell Fight dance.

No one at the College would have recognized it. The dance didn't exist in Iowa. We both had the moves down, nevertheless.

We had invented it for joint celebrations after successful grades and tests and any new top ten fruitful fucks at Grinnell.

Marcus, astonished at the turn of events that day, settled down into the old friend he was. Over the next few weeks and months he became a sort of go-to person for financial stuff. I don't think he had known as much as he thought about my finances. How did I know that?

He became very, very formal and his brow sprouted a few drops of sweat when he saw the amount of the deposit. If his manager had tipped him off beforehand, he did a world-class job of hiding it. He never told me what he thought that day at our first meeting at Fidelity, but to be kind, he may have wanted to spare me from what he really thought.

Had to have been something on the order of "What a scammer this guy is!"

Or perhaps, "This is way above my pay grade, but I can't exactly admit that to Michael!"

By the end of the visit, he had written out a brief note with his cell number and address and where he was eating for supper and why didn't I meet him there—and handed it to me.

As he opened the front entrance door at the end of the session, he was saying standard broker phrases such as "It's been a pleasure making your acquaintance and we look forward to a long and helpful relationship." and "I want to personally thank you for becoming a Fidelity customer."

All just loud enough for the hovering Manager and surrounding crew of young brokers wiping drool from their chins unobtrusively and trying not to look as if they were paying abject attention to this episode of the wonderful game of 'Wonder how long it will take me to steal this account?'

Little did they know that Marcus had a real big head start (pardon the pun) on keeping the account and me for a friend and lover as well.

When Mother had said, "Sometimes it's who you know, not what you know," I had added some salt, about a grain's worth, in fact. Now I was pretty sure she was partially right.

I subtracted the grain of salt.

What Marcus knew about financial planning (considerable) was augmented by his total willingness to refer some complexities on to someone who knew more than he did. He handled the broker part just fine and even found a few bargains for me. Whether the good work was all his or whether he was coached by his manager, things went smoothly.

When Marcus finally learned my net worth much later, we had a few awkward and strained moments but no attitudinal crisis.

I think, in retrospect, that he knew me well enough to know that I was in this love relationship to stay with him for the long haul financially and also that he felt a deep comfort with working for me while working for Fidelity, using their vast resources in the belief that a rising tide does indeed float all boats.

I didn't think Marcus begrudged the time he spent on my account. It was all business first. Our relationship just added to his delight in doing a good job for me. I convinced myself of that.

Number one, the commission on the initial order was enough to float him to a senior level broker position.

In addition, I got the distinct impression that he liked to call and talk to me. About anything. If the pretext was my account, so much the better for both of us.

Marcus set me up with a Fidelity brokerage account, a Chase bank account and an AMEX Centurion card explained to me as "the top plastic for dudes." I didn't quibble with him. It wasn't really plastic but titanium last time I checked.

By the time I left, I had access to a private webpage accessed with some very high-tech access identification hardware, a private telephone number that reached the dedicated computer that handled my account along with passwords and PINS.

Marcus was given this insane console which had priority internal traffic to the firm's NYSE trading services a few milliseconds quicker than the average senior broker.

Marcus was very impressed with that. He figured that over time I didn't need it, but the toy was spectacular. He offered to tie the trust brokerage service in through Fidelity to work through his speedy connection. I politely declined, saying that it would be good to revisit the issue when I became more involved with trust affairs. I didn't have the heart to tell him right then that the Schuyler trust had even faster direct connections to the trading floor through their trader on the floor. It had cost a lot to arrange it, but the trust had money of which he knew nothing yet.

Marcus laid out a plan for my personal money, investing in a diverse portfolio of stocks and bonds. He wasn't comfortable with higher risk investments or junk bonds and tended to stick to stocks that had a reasonable dividend, issued by well-managed companies with a long history of growth and profit.

He explained that the increase I would see in my net worth from this portfolio would consist of any general increase in the market itself over time in addition to the dividends.

He explained that the NYSE had increased in value since the 1930's gradually to beat most other investments in the world over the long run.

He thought the biggest risk to the value of my personal portfolio was churning with its downside of huge commissions eating into dividends and effectively erasing market gains. He urged me to consider a long-term hold policy on all of my investments since they were adequately hedged and diversified.

I sat there wondering how Marcus had ever become so serious and, well, business-like. He would have died a thousand miserable deaths in college before admitting that he might end up in a stockbroker's office working for a major firm, even for ten minutes.

It wasn't cool then.

I zoned out a little while Marcus went through the fiduciary part and the contract and got to thinking about my life and where I had been.

A taxi took me to Gunter Seeger NY that night. I arrived at 8 p.m. on time, dressed nice, and asked the maître d'hôtel for Marcus Jones and received a prompt reply, "Please step this way. I'll escort you to your table."

Marcus was sitting in his best imitation of `I'm cool with this' at the table, but I saw both feet tapping the floor and nine of ten knuckles rapping a piano tune on the table. His eyes looked miserable. He darted a gaze around the room at the hip crowd. I wasn't born yesterday and recognized discomfort when I saw it.

"I didn't know if you would want to eat here."

My eyebrows must have risen a little to signal a `what are you saying to me' message.

"I'm hungry. You're hungry. You're here. You invited me. I came. Chill out."

I think he had to hear it out loud. Feet and knuckles settled down a little. I got the feeling that his day had been a lot for him. The manager. The me he didn't know and was finding out about. High stakes. And a hip dinner to be hip at. Higher stakes. He didn't know yet that I wasn't hip. I wasn't interested in pretending to be cool, not with Marcus anyway. He did seem to be wildly interested in what I ordered for dessert.

One of the problems having him for a lover was that I didn't have much practice making or keeping one. I wasn't sure what that might entail.

I wasn't sure how to tell if things were going well, didn't have a friend "barometer" or any other kind of meter that enabled me to assess stuff. What if he thought I was high maintenance or something?

As I continued to overthink the whole thing, I wondered if he wanted my business now that he knew a little more about my wealth, but did he want to be friends because he liked me or what?

I liked what was in his head and how he talked and how he looked and how confident he usually was (not counting this meal) and how well he had learned the broker-spiel thing.

I was stuck on him for something I hadn't taught him and that was pretty much everything.

I wasn't sure what he saw in me. What would he gain from eating with me, being seen with me or watching me get older?

How would I know if he was telling me that I was an ok guy?

My mind went to the appetizer menu and concentrated real hard about then. This line of thinking wasn't likely to produce answers anytime soon.

I looked up and he was smiling at me or maybe with me as he asked me what I wanted to eat. There was no obvious answer for that one, either.

I wanted it all. I wanted to taste life, smell it, inhale it, chew it, hug it, lick it, kiss it and swallow it and be consumed by it. I wanted to be naked with him. So, I gulped and ordered everything in sight.

Turned out the food was off the charts, too. The service was great. The sommelier was bored since we both decided to see what we would get without alcohol. The place was clean and we both decided to mark our years of friendship here each year while carrying out more food than we had eaten.

At the loft, I left the bed where a gorgeous milk-chocolate naked guy lay sleeping beneath a satin sheet after our wild loving, now breathing quietly in contrast to his wild outpouring of energy fucking me, now sated with a relaxed and oddly innocent facial expression.

Physically and emotionally naked, I went to a tall window overlooking an avenue far below and listened to the distant rumble of yellow taxis and the faint sirens far below. I saw lightning in the distance and sensed, rather than heard, the rumble of thunder over the city.

I rummaged quietly through a desk drawer to find a AAA battery for my Bose noise-cancelling headphones. Perhaps they would silence more than the noise.

I wondered what it would be like to think of only one thing at a time instead of twelve at a time. Other than boring and non-productive, I thought, answering myself. I dug through the whole drawer finding one D battery. Who the fuck used those?

It was about then that a big scary thought came into my mental view. What if being busy and overthinking things was my current way of dealing with bigger issues.

I had a few of those.

There was the elephant: Where was my family?

There were the baby elephants: How would a best friend judge what I did with advantages most guys my age didn't have? How could I get used to being alone? Did I have to? What if I had a close friend and lost that friend? How could I survive that?