Free Mr. Love: A Romantic Comedy by Sally Mason Page B

ego taking a dent, Gordy?” Suzie asks, appearing by the window.
    “You’re not here,” he says, turning his back on her.
    She pops up by the mini-bar.
    “Oh yes I am. I’m wherever you are.”
    “Why are you tormenting me?”
    “Because I’m you , Gordy.  Don’t you see? I’m the other you waiting to be freed.”
    “What are you saying? That I have a transgender psyche?”
    “You’re a putz.”
    When he heads to the mini-bar she disappears and he pours a shot of Scotch, hoping he’s seen the last of her.
    But when he turns she’s perched on the bed.
    “Lay off the sauce, Gordon. You’re becoming a lush.”
    “Why the hell do you speak like a character from a dime novel?”
    She smiles at him.
    “Because I’m your id , Gordy. I’m everything that’s primal and carnal and just plain fun waiting to burst out of you like a geyser. I’ve had enough of this life of the mind crap.”
    “Please go away.”
    “When last did you get laid Gordon?”
    He takes a belt of his Scotch and says nothing.
    “Four years ago? Five?”
    “I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.”
    “I saw the way you were eyeing that babe, Jane, earlier. You want to do the wild thing with her. Admit it.”
    “Don’t be obscene.”
    “Oh, come on. I saw you undressing her with your dirty little eyeballs.”
    “This is juvenile.”
    Gordon turns from the bed only to find Suzie leaning against the closet, arms folded.
    “You haven’t had any action since you ended it with Ludmilla, have you?”
    Ludmilla Orson, a fellow academic at the University of Northern Colorado, where Gordon had spent a year.
    He and Ludmilla had shared a love of dead philosophers, and this, after many conversation-heavy meals, had led to tentative talk of marriage.
    A union of like minds.
    When the university didn’t renew his contract and he’d moved on to South Dakota they had promised to stay in touch but a few desultory emails had dwindled to nothing and he hadn’t heard from her in four years.
    Suzie says, “And action isn’t really the right word to describe you and Millie in the sack, is it? I vividly recall a journal entry of yours at the time: Ludmilla is about as easy to thaw as a layer of permafrost. And half as passionate. Quite amusing, Gordy, if a little sad.”
    “Go away.”
    “C’mon, Gord, own up to some real, red-blooded feelings. You want recognition. You want the limelight. You want to bed hot babes who swoon over you at book signings. Why else did you spend ten years sweating over that monster of a tome?”
    “Not for any of the reasons you have just mentioned.”
    “Why don’t you come out and admit to writing Ivy , Gordon? Think of all the fun you’ll have. It’ll be you, not frumpy little Bitsy getting to hang out with hot Ms. Cooper tomorrow, getting pampered and preened. And it’ll be you getting all the media attention. Think of the stir you’ll cause if you reveal that Viola Usher is a man .”
    “Over my dead body.”
    “Don’t talk to me about dead bodies, Gordon, that’s my field of expertise. And it saddens the hell out of me to see you squandering what’s left of your youth and vitality on that boring, pretentious book when a world of pleasure, happiness and even love could be yours.”
    “I’m a serious writer. That is what I live for. Now leave me in peace.”
    And just like that she’s gone, leaving Gordon alone with his empty Scotch glass and a horrible, traitorous impulse to call Jane Cooper and spill everything.
    To let the cat among the publishing pigeons.
    But he reigns in this urge, pours himself another very small Scotch purely for medicinal purposes and takes to his bed thinking of Kierkegaard and Sartre and Nabokov and Camus.
    And not thinking of Jane Cooper.
    No, not at all.

20
     
     
     
     
    When Bitsy Rushworth wakes she hasn’t the foggiest idea where she is.
    She lies a moment in this massive, very, very comfortable bed, blinking up at a high, foreign ceiling, sunlight