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  Colleen sighed. “My life has been a cavalcade of blesses and curses, bad choices tempered by remarkable luck and good fortune. I think that taking somebody under my wing could be good for my soul. But even if I treat her well, if I am doing it for my own benefit? Does that poison the well of good intentions?”

  “That’s not for me to say,” said Orson. “But I believe you have a fine heart, and you will make the right decision.”

  “You’d think,” she said, sighing. “He is the wild card though, as I said.”

  “Perhaps things will be different this time,” Orson suggested.

  Colleen cocked an eyebrow. “Do you actually think that?”

  “Only that it is conceivable,” Orson said evasively.

  Colleen laughed. “Just as it is ‘possible’ that our dear leader in DC is in fact competent.”

  “Well, people once believed that there were no black swans,” said Orson, “until a black swan was discovered. Don’t cast doubt just yet.”

  Colleen smiled sadly. A black swan indeed. “Thank you Orson. That will be all.” He bowed and walked off. Colleen closed her eyes. For thirty-five years my life has been defined by you, Tristan. Can things finally be different?

  Chapter 2

  A Preview - Curvy Attraction

  Henry Feinstein sat fuming at his desk. These fucking bitches dare accuse me? ME?? They’d be nothing without me!!

  “Mr. Feinstein?” His secretary said, interrupting his train of thought.

  “Hmm? What now.”

  “There’s someone here to see you.”

  “I’m not taking any damn interviews or meetings today.”

  “Well...” she began, but she was interrupted.

  “Oh I’m sure you’ll make an exception,” said the sultry male voice from outside the door. A man stepped into view. Feinstein stiffened. The man before him wore a black Ermenegildo Zegna suit complete with a black shirt and tie and matching House of Testoni black shoes. His hair and facial scruff were jet black as well, along with a black ring he wore on his right middle finger. The only part of his outfit that wasn’t entirely black was his sunglasses. Sure, the frames were a macho black consistent with the rest of his wardrobe, but the lenses themselves were a coral pink. Scowling, Feinstein gestured for his secretary to go away.

  “Fine. Sit.”

  “I intend to,” said the man in black. He put his feet up on the table, angering Feinstein further.

  “Not many people have your balls,” said Feinstein.

  “Hardly,” said the man in black. “It’s just that you’re unaccustomed to dealing with people who have more money and more power than you do. I’m no more or less brave than anyone else who crosses your path, I can simply afford to be more brash.” He smirked. “So tell me Henry, how does it feel to have your world crumbling around you?”

  “What do you want?” asked Feinstein through gritted teeth.

  “I want us to both end up happier than we currently are. But I doubt that will happen, sadly. So the better question is: what do I expect? I expect that you will grudgingly give me what I want and I will leave here with another notch on my belt.” He sighed. “It’s actually peculiar that I haven’t bought a movie studio yet. You know, just recently I bought Valkyrie-Cooper Tech. I still let Lucille Cruz run it as the CEO of course—god forbid I do any actual work—but my appetite just wasn’t sated yet.”

  “Look at you,” sneered Feinstein. “You don’t even create. You’re the worst kind of capitalist, and that’s saying a lot coming from me.” Feinstein burst to his feet. “Listen you little shit. Hundreds of the movies I produced have been nominated for Oscars and dozens of them have won. I have my own collection of little gold men behind you on that shelf!” He pointed to four Academy Award trophies behind the man’s head. “What do you do? You don’t create. You just acquire. Over and over and over again you just buy and sell, trade and repackage, that’s all you and others like you are any good for.”

  “Perhaps,” said the man in black, “but as I see it, everything in this world is mine by right.”

  Feinstein blinked, staring slack-jawed at the maniac before him. “You’re insane.”

  “Perhaps,” he repeated, “I can never tell, if you must know the truth. You see, I’ve always gotten what I wanted when I wanted it. You’re right that I’ve never created because I’ve never had to. I never even had to work hard at school.”

  “Oh, I’m sure your tutors wrote lovely college essays for you,” spat Feinstein.

  The man shrugged. “I never had a tutor. Everything was always just obvious to me. I never even studied really. Success just seems to come naturally to me.” He leaned forward, taking his feet off of Feinstein’s desk. “There is seemingly nothing beyond my grasp, be it tangible or otherwise. After graduating from Harvard at seventeen, I breezed my way through Columbia’s business school, and once I went to Wall Street, millions rained down on me. So I left and swallowed other businesses whole, and the millions became billions.” The man scratched his chin. “I realize I just said that things come naturally to me, but I think we could agree that this whole thing is rather unnatural, correct?”

  “You can say that again,” muttered Feinstein.

  “Agreed. So we recognize that my gifts cannot be natural, and thus, they must be unnatural, or dare I say, supernatural. The only explanation for my blessed existence is that I am factually blessed.”

  Feinstein tightened his fists. “Are you seriously delusional enough to think that you’re, what, some kind of god?”

  The man in black shrugged again. “I was thinking more in terms of a demigod, if I must be honest. Even Achilles had his heel, just as I have my migraines,” he said, tapping his glasses.

  “And here I was thinking you just saw the world through rose-tinted glasses,” smirked Feinstein.

  The man smiled warmly. “The rose tint does make this otherwise putrid world that much more tolerable.”

  “Oh, so the world is putrid now?”

  “What else would you call a world in which the kindest accusation against one of the most powerful men in Hollywood was simple masturbation into a potted plant?” laughed the man, causing Feinstein to go several shades of pink darker than the man’s own rose shades. “So enough chit-chat; you know why I’m here. You have two options. The first is that I buy your studio outright for a simple crisp one billion dollars. You might recognize that number as more than your entire net worth. Actually, let’s double the offer; 1 billion for you directly, the other billion toward the company.”

  “You know that’s not how this works,” said Feinstein, eyeing the man before him oddly. “You can’t just offer me money. There are other partners, investors—”

  “That isn’t my problem, Henry,” said the man in black. “You will make this happen. If you don’t, then I will use those 2 billion dollars to make sure that every one of your accusers has the best legal army imaginable to destroy you. Even the false accusations from those just trying to be swept up in Hurricane Henry will decimate you in court.”

  With that, the man in black stood. “My second-in-command (so to speak) will contact you within the next couple days, give you time to get everything in order.” He stood to leave.

  Feinstein fumed, red-faced and quivering. “You seriously think you’re that much better than I am, Blackwood?”

  The man in black—Mr. Tristan Blackwood—sighed. “Mr. Feinstein, do you not understand? I think I’m better than everyone. You’re a mongrel like all the rest. But even if that was not the case, I have never shot my load on a plant on account of a woman refusing to consent to... whatever horrors I’m sure you had in store for her.” Blackwood reached up to straighten his tie, realized it was perfect, and strode out.

  * * *

  “How’d it go with Feinstein?” asked Blackwood’s assistant, Catarina Honeywell, once he stepped onto his private Boeing jet that he named “Uruk” after the city-state ruled by the posthumously deified ancient king Gilgamesh, a figure
that Tristan found himself identifying with.

  “As expected,” replied Blackwood. “The man is an overgrown baby. I told him you would follow up with him in a few days to finalize everything. Think you can handle that, Mercy?”

  Honeywell rolled her eyes. “Will you stop calling me ‘Mercy,’ ever?”

  Blackwood chuckled. “You’re the second-in-command to a mad billionaire and you have a bionic arm. How are you not Mercy Graves?”

  Honeywell pursed her lips. “First of all, as we discussed many times over, the only iteration of Mercy Graves with a cybernetic arm was in Young Justice. Secondly, you are not bald, which is kind of a big deal if you fancy yourself as Lex Luthor.”

  “Jesse Eisenberg wasn’t bald. And come to think of it, neither was Gene Hackman.”

  “Jesse Eisenberg’s head was shaved by the film’s end and the joke with Gene Hackman’s version was that he was constantly wearing a toupee. Mr. Blackwood—Tristan—focus.”

  “I’ve focused enough for one day. I’m going to go write in the back.”

  “Not yet you’re not. Strap yourself in for takeoff, then do whatever you want.”

  Tristan scowled, but then allowed his lips to curve back into a smirk. “You’re sometimes worse than my sister, you know that?”

  Honeywell narrowed her eyes and curled her prosthetic hand into a fist. “You do realize I could crush your skull with this, right?”

  “Of course I do. I bought it for you, remember?”

  “How could I forget? You only remind me every other time you see me.”

  "What can I say? I like that my right-hand does not technically have a right hand."

  “You’re terrible,” said Honeywell, but then she laughed, and the plane readied itself for takeoff.

  “To the core, and I love nothing more,” Tristan said glibly. He poured himself a glass of scotch. “Would you care for some?” he asked. “1964 scotch malt whiskey from The Glenlivet’s Winchester Collection.’”

  “Do I even want to know how much it cost?” asked Honeywell.

  “Let’s just say that I got a five thousand dollar discount and it would still pay for half a semester at a private university.”

  “That’s so vile.”

  “And yet,” said Tristan, pouring it into his mouth and swallowing. “Ahhh... it is so delightful.”

  “Don’t you ever want to do something better with your money?” asked Honeywell.

  “That reminds me,” he said. “I still want to help fund Feinstein’s victim’s legal expenses. Whatever it costs. Make it happen.”

  Honeywell did a double-take. “Even if he agrees?”

  “Of course.”

  “But isn’t he giving his company over based on the promise that you wouldn’t do that?”

  “I will do as I please whenever I please and however I please. That is how things are, and how they were always meant to be,” he said with icy simplicity. “He’ll still get my money. Everybody wins, Ms. Honeywell. Everybody wins.”

  But mostly it’s you who wins, thought Honeywell. “Yeah I’ll take a glass,” she said grudgingly. She took the glass from him and put it into her bionic hand for him to pour.

  “Don’t drop it,” he teased.

  “One of the benefits to having a robo-limb is that my grip is not to be trifled with,” she retorted.

  “Now the game becomes making sure that it doesn’t spill even with the takeoff. And speaking of which...” and with that, the plane rushed forward and began its ascent.

  Chapter 3

  A Preview - Curvy Attraction

  “Thank you so much Dr. Ballard!” said Mrs. Williamson. “I really don’t know what I would do without you.”

  “Not a doctor, and it’s my pleasure,” said Bethany.

  “Well Doctor or no, you’re a treasure.” Mrs. Williamson began to walk off.

  “Oh! Erm... I hate to be this way, buuuut....” said Bethany awkwardly

  “Oh! Right, of course.” Mrs. Williamson pulled out her checkbook. “Do you have a pen?”

  “Always,” said Bethany, reaching behind her ear and handing it over.

  Leaning on Bethany’s mailbox, Mrs. Williamson scribbled out a check for three hundred dollars. “Here honey!” she said. “See you same time next week!”

  “Adieu,” said Bethany. Mrs. Williamson drove off.

  “I see you’re handling yourself well,” said Colleen, who had stepped outside, cigarette in one hand and cosmo in the other. She dragged from her cigarette then took a sip from the glass, smoke rising from her nostrils as she swallowed the deliciously toxic concoction. Bethany sighed. While Colleen’s drinking did not make her uncomfortable per se, she had grown up in an environment in which drinking was all but nonexistent. So to suddenly be friends with what Bethany decided to loosely consider a “functional alcoholic” definitely gave her pause. She addressed her gardener for a moment. “Fernando, please refrain from drowning my chrysanthemums.”

  “Apologies Ms. Blackwood. But you see, it hasn’t rained for days, and it’s unusually hot, so—”

  “Just because a man is dying of thirst does not mean that he could breathe underwater,” Colleen interrupted. “So please be delicate. And while we’re at it, you seem to be ignoring the pansies. Do please divide and conquer, good sir.”

  “As you say, ma’am,” said Fernando, rolling his eyes the moment Colleen looked away.

  Colleen refocused on Bethany. “Well? What was Rita going on about this week?”

  Bethany grimaced. “Doctor-patient confidentiality. Sorry!”

  “But didn’t you just say you weren’t a doctor?”

  “You have good ears,” laughed Bethany. “But don’t split hairs.”

  Colleen shrugged. “Well given that I got you most of your clients I felt compelled to track their progress.”

  “They are progressing spectacularly. Thank you so much for asking!” said Bethany, clear sass in her voice and her eyes twinkled at Colleen. In truth, she was quite grateful for her nosey neighbor. Colleen’s circle of friends (and in turn friends of her friends) were all wealthy enough such that they didn’t question Bethany’s admittedly inflated rate of three hundred dollars a session.

  In truth, Bethany suspected that Colleen could probably desperately use a cognitive behavioral therapist of her own, but she wasn’t about to suggest it. While the woman had an antiquated snobbery about her, she also made Bethany feel quite welcome. She just had an odd way of communicating it.

  “Anyway, that was my last session for today,” said Bethany.

  “Oh? So early?” inquired Colleen.

  Bethany raised her hands in a shrug. “Both my 4:00 and 5:00s canceled.” She smirked. “Between you and me, the 4:00 didn’t cancel until this morning, so they’re still going to pay for it.”

  Colleen made a face that Bethany had come to recognize as the closest the woman ever came to smiling. “I admire your tenacity, Bethany. It’s quite becoming, especially of somebody your age

  “That means a lot,” said Bethany. “That said, now I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the remainder of my afternoon.” She turned to head back inside.

  “Bethany,” said Colleen quickly.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you golf?”

  “Uh, sort of “I’ve done so with my father a few times, and I’m not the worst. Maybe second-worst?”

  “I haven’t played in quite some time. But as Fernando was saying, the weather has been uncharacteristically nice. I was wondering if you would like to join me?”

  Bethany beamed. “I would love to! Oh shoot, I don’t think I brought my clubs with me from Utah. That was pretty dumb, huh?”

  "Well as it happens I have a perfectly good set of clubs that are of no use to me," said Colleen.

  “How’s that?” asked Bethany.

  “I’m left-handed. A well-meaning friend once got me a set for my birthday but it was for righty golfers.”

  “You’re looking pretty ambidextrous right now,” tea
sed Bethany, gesturing to Colleen’s cigarette and cosmo.

  “Don’t be absurd,” said Colleen. “I drink with my left hand so that I still have my right hand available to do other things.”

  “Like... smoke?”

  Colleen rolled her eyes. “If I so choose to, I could put the cigarette in my mouth and still have this hand available,” she said. “My gosh, it’s like you’ve never had a drink before!”

  “I haven’t, remember?” pointed out Bethany.

  Colleen sighed. “One of these nights I’m going to have to insist that you live up to the LDS initials.”

  “Pretty sure that by not drinking I’m definitely sticking to the Latter Day Saint schtick,” she said.

  “What? I thought it meant ‘let’s drink scotch,’ does it not?” asked Colleen.

  Bethany cracked up, and even Colleen briefly chuckled at her own joke.

  “Well this former missionary needs to go get changed before heading out with you,” said Bethany. “Be out in a few!”

  “I need to change as well,” said Colleen. They returned to their separate homes.

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