Chapter 10

Things changed from that point forward. While never ‘cold’ Jay hadn’t ever been publicly affectionate before. Now it was all handholding and kisses in public. We even got frisky in a Portal a few times, slipping away from the rest of the Crashers for a short while. A month later I even met her mother.

It didn’t end well.

“So, Al, what grade are you in?” Mary asked. She must have known full-well that I wasn’t a student, but feigned shock well when I responded I was a 22 year old janitor at a mental hospital. “You see that as your career, moving forward?”

“Yep, benefits, stable pay and a discount for all my crazy relatives” I quipped. “Honestly, my family didn’t have the money for university, and I didn’t apply myself enough to earn a space there anyway. I was too busy with hockey.”

She looked like she’d bit a lemon.

“That’s the truth, but it’s not the whole story.” I continued, “I was granted a weapon, and can enter the portals. The Silver and prizes from there are worth real cash in this world, and the magical goodies also work here. Think of the possibilities if I could sell you a magical token that makes you 15% smarter than you currently are — permanently”

Her sour look went to ‘mildly suspicious’ as the silence expanded.

I pulled one of the two healing potions, suddenly glad that they had rounded bottoms. They wouldn’t stand on a table, but they were gnarly looking and appeared ancient. I’d heard that even empty bottles went for $100 to collectors.

“This is a healing potion. Rich guys like Jobs would’ve paid a million bucks for one of these, even if it didn’t cure him, he’d have paid it at the end just to try it. Guys like me are going to be the only source of these.”

At the last moment, I’d changed from ‘we’re’ to ‘I’m going to be the only source” after seeing Jay’s terrified face. I’d bet dollars to doughnuts she hadn’t told her precious Momma what she’d been up to with me (at my place or in the portals.)

Mary went from ‘mildly suspicious’ to ‘mildly interested’. “You’ll need a way to connect buyer and seller”, she finally spoke.

I suddenly recalled Jay mentioning that her mom was in sales for some medical company or other. “Imagine if your company could study and possibly replicate this stuff” I said, shaking the bottle and then storing it in my inventory.

Mary’s look went from ‘mildly interested’ to ‘downright predatory’ as the implications set in.

“Imagine the money you could make betting the stock market against the Big Pharma stocks when something like that is released to the public, or is even said to be being researched...” I trailed off since her look was rapidly approaching ‘starving bitch in heat’ and I really didn’t want to go there. I’d been aiming for just not getting thrown out on my ear, now I was worried she wanted to have my babies.

“So tell me a story about your charming daughter. They have so much to say about cheerleading, friends, and the social networks at school, but are tight lipped about themselves” I tried to change subjects (while sliding an innuendo in there) and Jay was taking one for the team. From her mom’s response, it seemed like the ‘they’ thing was old hat, she didn’t even blink when I used that pronoun.

I remember a chat I had with my stepmom; she was all bent out of shape when one of my cousins changed names from Lindsay to Kyle. I just rolled my eyes at her whining, then opened my big fat yap and blurted out something like: “It’s hardly something new, I edit the names I have for people in my head to something more palatable for the listener all the time”. Then I went and stepped in it deeper, “I can’t just call my coworker ‘stupid lazy moron’, I have to call him Claude. In the same way I call you Elizabeth instead of...”

“OK, I get your point!” Elizabeth sniped at me.

We never really got along all that well.

“Well, for one, did you know that Connie had been winning Dressage competitions for nearly a decade, and may even have had a shot at the world Juniors?”, Mary prodded, poking her daughter with the word ‘had’.

“Mom, I’m sure that Al doesn’t want to hear about that kid stuff” Jay whined.

I’d known her name was Connie St.Clair for some time but had never used it on her. She’d voiced her preferences for the name ‘Jay’ and the pronoun ‘they’ and it didn’t cost me anything to use those and even helped me secure some great ass for a while.

Relationships are Give and Get like that.

“Sweetheart, getting to know about each other is part of building a strong, healthy, lasting relationship.” I whined back at her. “Tell me more, Mary...”

And so it went for another half an hour before Jay abruptly told everyone that we had to go. I was just as pleased to avoid what was beginning to smell like entrapment on Mary’s behalf. Despite already dishing out on Jay’s childhood, she seemed to be ready to pull out old baby pictures next. That I could do without.

Jay stopped before getting in the truck. “I’m staying here tonight” she said lightly. I’ve heard this tone and phrase before. Often it was me who was delivering the line.

I stepped around the truck and gave her a hug and a kiss in the forehead. “I’ll be waiting for your call when you’re ready.” I stole back the healing potion from her inventory as she walked away, it took effort not to grab her measly 14 Silver and the shiny stones she had too.

She never did call.

Through Mary, whom I kept in touch with because her company did actually end up buying healing potions for ‘research’ at 100k each, I learned that Jay (now reverting to ‘Connie’ and the ‘she-her’ pronoun) had been accepted to U of T’s program in medical/mechanical engineering. In four years she graduated towards the top of her class and landed a job in research for a few years before following her mother into the medical sales field. I lost contact before the inevitable ‘1.7 children’ appeared. A nice stable, boring, predictable life after a few months of wild abandon with me and the portals. I suppose she was just getting it all out of her system before buckling down and heading off to her great shining future.

For me, I was left with a few girly things abandoned at my place that she never intended to pick up. They all got pitched a few weeks later when it became apparent she wasn’t returning to claim them. All I kept was a single earring I’d unhooked while she was ‘distracted’ one time. The Stoners took her abrupt departure in stride. One of them mentioned in passing ‘I knew she was just a tourist’. I hadn’t, and it left an odd feeling for me. I’d done my share of leaving, and experienced being ‘left’ before, but it’d never really affected me much. Andy and some of the ladies at work must have seen it, for they actually sat and talked with me over lunch. Many of them told me their own stories of love and loss. I’d have scoffed at these just a few weeks ago, but I recognized some common ground in their own experiences. Saying so only managed to score me points with most of em’, and Andy in particular took it upon herself to try to ‘fuck my blues away’.

“Men are so simple” I heard Andy say a few days later once she’d seen me around without my recent hangdog look.

Without the Stoners going into portals anymore, my ready supply of Silver was drying up. I’d made a killing with robbing the shit outta those two fellas the cop was after, but I wanted to identify more stuff, and buy more healing potions, and to do that I needed silver. A single scroll of identification cost 125 Silver, same as a healing potion. The average pink, level 1, mark 1 portal had ten monsters, and (on average) 25 silver. Unless we went to deeper levels, I was going to make level 1 before I ‘earned’ enough silver to buy a single scroll or potion. The Silver I hadn’t earned was still usable (and I’d use it!), but I couldn’t depend on windfalls like that again.