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Every summer, it’s the same story. I see the same dreamy look in their eyes when they approach me. I see the wants and the needs and the urgency behind their every movement. The desire for me to help them rise up to whatever great thing they dream of is so palpable, I can taste it like smoke.
And it always burns me just the same.
When I push open the door to my penthouse, the love of my life rushes across the smooth tile to embrace me, sliding and slipping excitedly along the way.
Lancelot, my Jack Russell Terrier, crashes into my legs, then tries to climb up my body as he licks and licks, his tongue eager for my face.
All the stress I was feeling a second ago drops to the floor like a sack of shoes. Or maybe that’s my luggage. I crouch down and let him have his way with me, chuckling as I rub his white-and-brown spotted coat. “Miss me?” I sing to him as he licks my face over and over. “I was only gone for a day and a half. Quit bein’ silly.”
He’s a rescue, and a damn near close call, if you ask me. Had I found him one day later, I’m certain he would have been dead. It was one really bad night after a really shitty week when I turned to the bottle and strolled down 8th Avenue, lost in heavy thoughts and despair. I stumbled over his emaciated body in the alley by King Arthur’s, a restaurant, and face-planted right next to him. Then there lay the sad pair of us that night—two thrown-away, lonely, damaged fools. It was seven years ago today.
“You know what day it is?” I ask him as I make my way to the kitchen, ignoring the luggage I’d left at the door. He pads along behind me, panting excitedly. “Our anniversary, Lance! I bet you knew that. Dinner for two, comin’ right up.”
An hour later, I’m eating at one end of the table while Lance sits in the chair beside me. Yes, he sits at the table with me. This is perfectly acceptable behavior in my home, as Lance is part of my family. In some sense, he’s my only family. He’s even eating his favorite meal from an ornate blue-and-white china bowl.
He’s the only creature on Earth—human or otherwise—I’ve ever let close to my heart. I’m not even sure my parents have earned such a place in it. When Gage Communications struck its first success, it wasn’t a call of congratulations I got from my mother; it was a lecture in morality, integrity, and how I’m throwing away my life on the spoiled rich brats of Beverly Hills.
I’d built this multimillion dollar business out of cents in my pocket, but my parents will never see it that way. I might as well be cooking and dealing crystal meth out of a white, unmarked van in Albuquerque. Considering how much damned weed my father smokes, I figure I’m ranked even lower than that.
“We started from the bottom,” I say to Lance across the table, “you and I. We started with nothing, and now look at us.”
Lance pants his response, then resumes licking his bowl clean with overflowing excitement.
Yeah, he gets it.
“Happy anniversary, Lance!” I lift my glass of bourbon in a toast, despite Lancelot totally ignoring me, as he’s six-hundred percent committed to licking every last bit out of that bowl. My words echo through the big empty condo, echo off the baby grand in the living room, echo off the ten-thousand dollar backsplash on the kitchen walls, echo off the crystal chandelier above us, echo off the floor-to-ceiling eighteen-foot-tall windows and down the giant archway into the hall and through my four guestrooms and my giant king-size bed, which I’d sleep in empty every night if it weren’t for that special canine at the foot of it.
So much space for my voice to echo off of. So much room.
So much nothing, if it weren’t for Lancelot.
What could a man like you—a man who has everything—possibly want? asked Melena over that banister.
The question still plagues me when I’m lying in bed hours later and Lance is already kicking in his sleep, his paws rubbing along the soft comforter as he chases dream bunnies.
Her voice keeps fluttering around my mind, taunting me. He’s got to want something. I stare at the ceiling, swallowed in cool white sheets and wearing nothing at all. A man who has everything …
For a man who has everything, my life sure feels like it’s full of nothing.
I put my hands behind my head and close my eyes, but even in the dark peace behind my eyelids, the question still haunts me.
Then Lance kicks me in his sleep and jerks himself awake, his big watery eyes searching for his imaginary assailant in a panic, confused.
