“The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.” –Hegel

The bird of prey was the most conspicuous creature on the premises, given its perch, but there were others. A huge display of stuffed animal heads covered every conceivable nook and cranny of the cherrywood walls. These were not your typical bucks with antlers, but large game animals, including buffalo, rhinoceroses, and wildebeests. They resembled paintings of Oudry rescued from the French salon and layers of darkening varnish. There was not enough room on the walls to accommodate them all, so some were stacked two deep between divans and fake roman busts.

The visitor rang the bell on the serpentine marble top desk, whereupon an elderly, dapper man, pickled in odoriferous mothballs, came out of a back room. He looked like a funeral director summoned inconveniently from his dinner.

Michael queried him. “Do you have any rooms available on the ground floor?”

The man looked up, thinking he was being set up for a punch line. “We only have one room available at the moment, sir. On the top floor.”

The painter hesitated, but was anxious to see his friend. He placed his credit card on the counter.

The stoop-shouldered concierge finished up with a blue carbon slip. “Would you care to take advantage of our wakeup service, sir? Or our gentlemen’s library?”

“Gentlemen’s library...?”

The immaculate man paused to consider his words judiciously. “Videos, sir. Videos of a particular nature. This is a gentlemen’s hotel. We offer it as a service to our guests and residents.”

The guest got the gist of it. “No thank you.”

Michael strolled up to the rickety elevator, but was spared the confrontation when a familiar voice sprang from a darkened lounge.

“Mike?”

He turned to find Omar standing under the owl.

The pals headed down the sidewalk to a favorite tavern, and on settling into a booth in the back the lawyer ordered a round of beers. He assessed the painter’s state of mind. “What would compel you to drive up here at night?”

Michael rambled. “You should move to Stonesthrow. Keep me on the straight-and-narrow before I end up a homeless wino badgering people with a metal detector.”

The friend rolled his eyes. “Don’t pull that Van Gogh number on me. I don’t want you FedExing me your ear in some pity-grabbing attempt to make me feel guilty. What’s wrong?”

Michael burrowed down deeper into his mood. “I thought moving to a new town would be a healthy change, but everything is confused. A dream-come-true and a nightmare—all at the same time.” He took a sip of his wheat beer. “The caretaker’s child next door has gone missing. I dreamt about seeing her asleep the very night she disappeared from her bedroom. I may have even heard her scream. But I can attest to nothing given my sleepwalking. And now the police have searched my house. I think I’m their prime suspect…”

Omar cut him off. “I’m glad you came up. It saves me a telegram.”

“Telegram? Since when do you send telegrams?”

“Since it’s likely your phone is bugged.”

“What are you talking about?”

Omar swelled in his take-charge way. “You know, Mike, I knew this whole inheritance thing smelled fishy from the get-go. I’ve got a number of friends out in Hollywood, and they hear things. Know things.”

“Like what?”

“Fox is launching a new reality TV show in January. I don’t know what the title of it will be, but I do know the premise. And I know they’re filming it—as we speak—somewhere in the greater Chicago vicinity.”

“Well...?”

“The show is about scaring people. More to the point, it’s about setting up hidden cameras and microphones in a house somewhere and luring some poor unsuspecting sap into it with a phony story, then putting him through paces with spooks, goblins, and the whole nine yards.”

“And you think I’m the sap?”

“Admit it. It’s an uncanny coincidence, isn’t it? Considering what you’ve told me.”

“It sounds farfetched, Ommie.”

“Well, listen, asshole. Check out the house when you go back home. The place may be wired to the rafters.” He rattled off a to-do list. “Check your light fixtures, behind mirrors, your phone… But be careful about it. If they think you’re on to them, they might try something like sending another squad car by your house to cow you. They’ll make you think you’re under police surveillance.”

“I’m already under surveillance.” Michael was dreary for effect. “The police told me not to leave town. They may have even followed me up from Stonesthrow.”

“If they show up, we’ll say you came to consult with your lawyer. Don’t worry. I’ll come down in a couple of days and sort it all out.”

Michael took another swig of his beer, wanting to be comforted if not wholly convinced.

In the quiet interval, Omar leaned away to study his friend, wanting to redirect his thoughts. “So... do you have a coffeehouse in this one-college college town of yours? Some place you can take me when I come?”

“Yeah. Bean and Nothingness.”

“Any pretty girls in the caffeine drug trade, there?”

“A few.”

Omar knew his pal too well. “A few, my ass. You only say a few when you have only one in mind. Like you can blow smoke up my skirt, you bastard.”

“Well, there is one.”

“Hah!” The friend smacked the table with a laugh. “If you were anymore predictable, Greenwich would strap a goddamn clock to you back!”

The painter wanted to quibble. “I met her at a party before I met her at the coffeehouse. So it doesn’t count.”

“You went to a party? Picked up a chick at a party?”

“Nothing like that.” Michael could see his friend’s mind rushing ahead. He cut him off at the pass. “I think she’s fooling around with a college professor, though. A painting prof.”

“Then it’s not some blue-eyed college boy? She’s got a thing for older men?”

The artist played with a matchbook on the table. “I couldn’t say.”

Omar snarled. “Again with the smoke!”

“I don’t know how close they are.”

“Is he married?”

“Yes.”

“He’s a married man banging a student and you’re worried about breaking up true love?”

Michael was about to raise a challenge.

Omar laid into him. “Even if she dumped this geriatric lover tomorrow and started parading around you in tassels and making little hearts in your latte foam, you wouldn’t do dick about it!” He thrummed the table in frustration. “Seize the day and stop looking for excuses not to act!”

Michael thought of more. “This may all be a power trip for her. She already has me sized up as a mentor. I mean, who am I to her, anyway? Just another aging guy with encroaching prostate cancer who leers at her between slurps of coffee.”

The lawyer’s eyes widened in amazement. “You’re psyching yourself out! Does it matter why she likes you?”

“It wouldn’t be ethical for me to act of this, anyway. She lost her father. Just last month.”

“Was she close to him?”

“Yes.”

“She’s a daddy’s girl, then?” Cogs were turning in the friend’s mind. “She wants to be coddled and cuddled by a father—now more than ever—, and you want to get in her pants. It’s a slam-dunk.”

“I’m not that plotting.”

Omar sighed. “Agendas, conscious and unconscious, abound on all sides at all times. Reason and ethics are always afterthoughts in these matters. Instinct more than happenstance is why you’re in each other’s lives all of a sudden.”

Michael remained conflicted.

The friend mapped it out. “Don’t look at this as yet another occasion to be humiliated. Look on it as a golden opportunity. You can play all this prof’s roles—mentor, father, flesh and blood lover—and without the complication of a clinging wife. There would invariably be transference of affections on her part, sooner rather than later. Love is one of those rare times in life where two wrongs often make a right. You would get your artistic ideal, and she would end up with the better man. What could be more virtuous?”

“You know young women, Ommie. Their whims and games.”

Omar thought to arrest his friend’s panic. “Look, Mike. There isn’t going to be a written invitation—ever. Every woman plays the percentage: the across-the-room stare, and then the icy shoulder when you’re at arm’s length. There has to be at least one hurdle for you to tackle, even though it is sometimes only inches high. Love easily won never wrote a poem. Every woman knows this. Desire is always your weakness and her strength.”

“But that’s sounds so manipulative.”

The friend waxed more philosophically. “Men live by logical deliberation, Grasshopper. But women live by intuition; and intuition puts them closer to the heart of things. Women don’t see what they do as manipulation. It never rises to the level of reflection for them: rationally or morally. And when confronted with it in those terms, women don’t understand it as such. Most men think women are stupid because they can’t name their motives. But men are the stupid ones because they think it all comes down to dotted i’s and crossed t’s.”

Michael laughed. “This coming from a man who thinks women are cattle!”

“Not cattle—sharks. I respect women more than you think. ‘Hold your friends close, but your enemies even closer’. For me that often comes to a couple of grand a night.” Omar finished the last of his beer. “Speaking of which, we need to get back to the hotel.”

The painter suddenly looked old. “Can love save me, Ommie?”

The friend pulled in his talons. “In a manner of speaking—it can.” He then sounded a note of caution. “But that’s not what troubles me. Your tortured relationship with women would baffle an air traffic controller. Most men settle—and sooner rather than later. But you have so compartmentalized your needs and so cultivated elaborate screens to hide them, I fear not even you can fathom the Frankenstein your heart would likely create.”

Michael couched his dilemma in more practical terms. “I wish there were more older women of my acquaintance.”

Omar was not buying it. “That sounds like something a weasel would say to get laid by an older woman after a long night at striking out at the bar. Save the phony virtue.”

“I would never rule a woman out because of her age.”

“You don’t have to. Nature does it for you.”

“But…”

Omar was brittle. “How many attractive thirty-something women do you know who hang out in coffeehouses looking for a ‘good man’ with no economic prospects?”

Michael slumped.

“Look—it all comes out in the wash. In the realm of womanhood, there are pretty young girls and then there are frumpy, sweat-suited creatures of indeterminate age. There is switch in women where they go from being lines of poetry in a book to being boarded-over storefronts—all in a sobering blink. It’s all a bait-and switch, Mike, so get what you can while you can. By the time this bohemian goddess turns into a doublewide, you won’t be able to get it up anymore, anyway.”

Michael dulled. “That sounds selfish.”

“We’re all biology’s bitches. Everyone gets it up the backside in this world. No exceptions.”

“And where is the honor and duty in that?”

“Listen, Mr. Darcy. Reality Check: Jane Austen never married.” Omar slapped a twenty down by his empty glass and stood up.

Michael rose with a smattering of resolve. “I hope, in the end, desperation will be enough of an incentive to make me act.”

Omar howled. “Only a pathetic loser like yourself would see being backed into a corner as a triumph of the spirit!”

The painter almost sank back into his seat.

Omar gave his pitiable friend some final words. “For such a passionate artist, you wield logic like an addict wields a needle. What you need most is to get laid. And I don’t mean fall in love and all that crap. I mean get your brains royally fucked-out. That would get you past all this self-defeating subterfuge. You need distance. And leverage. Neither of which you got.” He moved toward the door in a change of direction. “Will you be able to sleep tonight?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I will send a sleeping pill by your room.”

“Booze and pills don’t mix.”

The lawyer dismissed the adage. “You just need the right pill.

Among the many contrasts between the two friends were their attitudes toward women. Whereas Michael was a romantic idealist, Omar saw women as means to an end. The philosopher regarded the painter’s views on the female sex as willful distortions arising from not living in close quarters with his specimens. Given his disdainful view of women on the whole, Omar was less exacting on both tangibles and intangibles in partners. What he wanted was very particular, and it required directness and little finesse in getting it. Michael, for his part, had so over-thought every aspect of the female psyche he had rarely acted on any impulse. Omar was by nature a ‘big picture’ person, and resultantly was both blinded to and often blindsided by details. But it was always water off the back of a duck for him, either way. The painter, to his regret, lacked that constitution. Michael could see, where his friend could not, the inevitable outcomes of personal entanglements: how prolonged intimacy would run afoul of diverging interests. Omar would argue (rightly so) all relationships might be destined to end as a result of over-familiarity, but life must be filled with something, even happiness derived from short-term self-deception. Michael could not dispute the point, but there was something in his character that ruined him for even his fair share of self-deception.