Envy Mass Market

“Easy for you to say. You’ve sold a book. For high five figures with wiggle room.”

The statements jerked a knot in the rhesus’s tail. Todd stopped bouncing and turned toward Roark. He treated him to several moments of hard scrutiny. “Oh. Now I get it. You’re pissed because I sold before you did.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Well, that’s good,” Todd said sarcastically. “Because if you were pissed, you might be acting like a jackass instead of my best friend on the happiest day of my life.”

True. He was acting like a jackass. Rank jealousy had turned him into a prick, and he was running headlong toward ruining the happiest day of his best friend’s life.

Not that it would be any different if the situation were reversed. Todd would behave just as badly, probably worse. He would sulk and mouth about life’s injustices. He would be resentful and caustic, and then he’d turn cruel.

But since when was Todd Grayson his standard for good behavior? He liked to think he was a finer person and better friend than Todd. He liked to think he had a stronger character and more integrity.

He plastered on a fake grin. “What the hell, I’ll call in sick. Let that fag we hate fire me. What time’s the party start?”

* * *

Todd said to give him time to make a few arrangements, and Roark said fine because he needed to close out his work for the day anyway. As soon as Todd flew out to run his errands, Roark surrendered to his dejection. It set in with a vengeance.

He stared into his computer screen, wondering why he had been cursed with a burning desire to do something creative but shortchanged the ability and opportunity to do it. Why would God play a dirty trick like that? Entice you with a dream, provide you with enough talent to make it appear reachable, then keep the dream just this side of being realized?

Like a mantra, he repeated to himself how happy he was over Todd’s success. And he was. He was. But he also resented it. He resented the sneakiness with which Todd had submitted his manuscript. They hadn’t made a pact to inform each other whenever they submitted work, but it had certainly been their habit. Todd hadn’t actually violated a sacred agreement, but that’s what it felt like.

Uncharitably, Roark wanted to attribute Todd’s success to luck, fluky timing, a slow book market, even to an editor with lousy taste, all the while acknowledging that such thoughts were unfair. Todd had worked hard. He was a talented writer. He was dedicated to the craft. He deserved to be published.

But Roark earnestly felt that he deserved it more.

* * *

Todd returned within an hour bringing a bottle of champagne for each of them and insisting that they drink them before moving to phase two of the celebration.

Phase two included Mary Catherine. One Sunday afternoon shortly after her miscarriage, Roark had taken her out for ice cream. Seeing the promenade of young couples with babies had caused her to get weepy. She confided that Todd had fathered the embryo she lost.

“Son of a bitch must’ve had a sixth sense about it. He’s avoided me ever since.”

Months went by. The two were civil to one another but cool. Eventually they reestablished themselves as friends but only friends. To Roark’s knowledge they hadn’t slept together again. He assumed by tacit agreement.

Today, the rift and the cause for it were distant memories. Wearing three postage-stamp-sized patches of electric-blue fabric that passed for a bikini, Mary Catherine arrived ready to party. She got there just in time to help them polish off the champagne.

“Foul!” she cried petulantly. “I only got two swallows.”

“There’s more where that came from, sweetheart.” Todd rubbed her ass and smacked his lips, first with appreciation, then regret. He turned her around and gave her a gentle push toward Roark. “She’s all yours tonight, pal. Don’t say I never gave you anything.”

“Consolation prize?” The good-natured question had only a trace of an edge.

“Can you imagine a better one?”

Mary Catherine looped her arms around Roark’s neck, mashed her breasts against his chest, and massaged his crotch with hers. “Fine by me. I’ve had a lech for you for a long time.” She poked her tongue into his mouth.

Courtesy of the champagne, he had a lively buzz going. She tasted good. She felt damn good. He liked her. He had sustained a blow to his ego, and Todd was trying to make it up to him. He’d be an asshole to decline his friend’s gesture of condolence.

He applied himself to kissing her.

“Hey,” Todd said after a few moments. “Am I gonna have to turn the water hose on you two?”

Laughing, they clomped downstairs and piled into Todd’s much-maligned car. He drove them to a marina where he had chartered a boat from an old salt named Hatch Walker. They’d leased boats from him before. His rates were the cheapest in Key West, and he got only mildly abusive if you stretched your contract time and came in late.

Walker wasn’t long on charm anytime, but today he was particularly querulous. He was wary of turning one of his boats over to three people who had obviously been drinking. Roark was just drunk enough on champagne—and wildly aroused because on the drive to the marina, Mary Catherine had given him a private lap dance in the passenger seat—not to care about the old man’s opinion of them or the amount of their alcohol intake.