Zachary and Madison

9781483545721

CHAPTER ONE

Everything seemed to be going according to Madison’s plan. That’s not to say that everything was going well, it was just going according to her plan. She was so torn about hurting Zachary, yet she must.

***

Madison had young movie star beauty this morning, rivaling Scarlett Johansson or Lindsey Lohan; dazzling couldn’t encompass how wonderful she looked. There were so many people around her desk that she no longer could address individuals, and had to speak to the entire group, which had grown to a substantial number. She greeted people, yet she didn’t quite have the time to give more than a personalized Hi, an acknowledgement that she might know them. All were pleased to receive what she had granted them.

Have lunch with me today, Ralph said. If you have time. I don’t want to be pushy.

Who are you? Madison asked, trying to recognize him in the crowd.

I’m your boss.

Oh. That’s right. Sure.

Toby the chubby mail boy asked, Can I have your autograph?

Wait your turn, Ralph told the boy.

***

Sorry, we’re just a little ahead of the story, here. Let’s start over by saying:

Zachary was ruled by inertia.

Madison was a virgin.

None of this should have happened.

***

Both Zachary and Madison worked for a gas company, not The Gas Company, but a small company that captured and bottled gases found in nature.

Although there was much to say for the garden variety of gases and blends, what Zachary liked most were the inert gases. They had been named ‘noble’ by the scientific community at the end of the nineteenth century, because they tended to stand alone. Only reluctantly did any of these gases combine with anything else, in general terms staying pure to their cause.

Inert gases were a fine thing for Zachary to manage and to hold up as a standard, because he was ruled by the force of inertia. On the treadmill of a job and a marriage and a house and a car and the usual bills, he moved at exactly the same pace that he had for years, varying little in theme, applying the same energy to everything in his life.

***

Madison was a virgin.

She wasn’t particularly pretty, though she was not un-pretty. She was not tall nor short, dark nor light, heavy nor slight, blonde nor brown. She was mired in middle-class suburban existence, and had attended neither the right nor the wrong school. She was as talented as the next girl. Madison wasn’t unusually popular; she normally irritated people after an exchange of no more than six words, and was therefore leaning toward unpopular, one of the few areas in which she showed any distinction whatever. If average were an absolute instead of being right smack in the middle, Madison would be extravagantly, dizzyingly, exorbitantly average.

Madison hadn’t wanted virginity. Over the years it had developed into a burden to her, to have this thing that she felt obligated to protect. At an earlier age Madison had been a member of the fringe that said virginity was a good thing, because her mother had said so and it took many years for Madison to understand that the older woman had a hidden agenda: It simplified everybody else’s life if Madison didn’t screw around too early. Stay away from boys, her mother had said.

So Madison arrived at age twenty-one, hymen intact, and she was angry about it.

***

There was a beauty in the inert gases, Zachary thought. Helium, argon, krypton, neon, radon and xenon had their own separate identities, and more; each had its own personality. There was krypton gas, for example. It bothered Zachary that a certain superhero story had advanced such a gross inaccuracy; there was no such thing as kryptonite, but indeed there was krypton. It was a noble gas, inert, and wasn’t the slightest bit destructive. It’d gathered a terrible reputation because of such an error, and Zachary felt that krypton had been bad-mouthed for far too long.

It was radon gas, yes, radon was the evil one, Zachary thought. That ignoble noble gas lurking in people’s basements, doing subtle harm to man and beast and unsuspecting laundry. That super guy would have been vulnerable to radon! Zachary wanted to write to the comic book people and correct them with a biting, scathing treatise on their inaccuracy. Someday, he thought. Someday.

***

Zachary was a married man.

That covered it. Not happily or thoroughly or honestly or faithfully or any other simplistic modifier that would suddenly make it okay. He’d married a woman whom he’d since likened to his sister, or perhaps to his mother; as a result Zachary and his wife seemed to be taking turns being the parent in their mutual halfway house, each half in adolescence, half in adult. After nine years and no kids together, it might be time for them to grow up and leave the safety of half a home behind them. Maybe that influenced what happened next.

***

Madison had recently been graduated from a most nondescript Midwestern commuter college, and was a new intern at the gas company.

In the next office over, Zachary noticed her. Hmmmm, he thought. He wasn’t sure what the attraction was. Perhaps there was some subconscious psychological program that she’d tripped off in him, or some latent instinct had kicked in, one that had served Homo sapiens well a hundred thousand years ago, just to continue the race in the event of catastrophe. But said instinct had fallen on hard times since common sense had proved to be the more dominant gene. This other one was not common, and it made no sense.

Madison walked by Zachary’s desk. Hello, he said.

Surprised, she stopped and looked at him. He wasn’t a nerd or looked terrifically athletic, but seemed to fall into a gray category, the one of all other men who had totally ignored her for twenty-one years, so she responded. Tie’s on fire, she said.

No, it’s not, he said, ever up for a snappy retort. Zachary looked her over, not displeased at her nondescript dress or her not particularly impressive demeanor. You new here?

She concluded that he probably wasn’t violent, or that he wouldn’t fall down more than two or three times a day. I have a new toaster, she said. Would you like to come over for some toast and jam?

What kind? he asked. Of jam, clarifying. Butter? hopefully.

You’re cute, she said.

Thank you, I try to please. Will anyone else be there?

Just the usual forty-seven other people in the office.

Ha, you’re funny, he said, snorting just that little bit.

Sorry, she said, For a moment there, I thought I saw normal.

Time? he said.

Eh?

What time should I come to your cubicle?

She had an ‘Oh, well, what the hell’ look on her face. Right now, she said, and walked away. He stood up and walked behind her, noticing that her legs were not long nor short, fat nor thin. Her behind was, well, a behind. He thought that he felt lust, though he couldn’t be sure at that moment.

They toasted each other at her desk. Zachary didn’t say much. He thought, Strawberry. It was strawberry jam. On white toast. Finally, he said what was on his mind. Wanna have a drink with me?

She sort of smiled. It was an okay smile. Sure you want to do that?

He was as sure of that as of anything else in his life. Yeah.

***

Their time together at the cocktail lounge called R U There was no better or worse than their earlier encounter. They sat in a booth toward the back, mostly out of sight. Zachary sensed that he probably shouldn’t be out with this woman, but because this was too complex a line of thought for him he let it go. Madison looked nice in the darkened barroom, and he reached across the table to hold her hand. You’re pretty, he said.

I’m a virgin, she answered. Just thought you’d like to know.

Reflexively Zachary pulled his hand back. That’s, uh, interesting, he said.

I don’t mind, she said.

What?

I don’t mind if you think that’s strange. You probably think that because I’m a virgin that I don’t want to.

Want to…? He didn’t understand.

Yes.

No? Questioningly.

You’d have to get a room, she said.

A room?

Thing with four walls. And a TV.

Oh. Well, I…

It’s okay if you don’t want to, she said.

No. I mean yes, I want to. It’s just…

That you’re married and I’m a virgin.

Right.

I can get past it if you can, she said.

***

That’s how Madison and Zachary ended up at the Man Ray Motel on a day that wasn’t particularly warm or cold, at a time that seemed okay for both of them. They did not say much. Madison undressed for him, revealing underwear that could be best described as pedestrian. Zachary tried to look excited, but his manhood, well, there it was, not doing much of anything. He guessed that if Madison was so virginal she probably didn’t know what an adequate one looked like, anyway.

You seem…small, she said, and Zachary silently bore witness that such talk would not make it any larger. Madison went to him and kissed him on the mouth, that being where one started with those things. He tried to return it with passion, or with enthusiasm, anyway. He rubbed tongues with her, and Little Zachary down there suddenly responded, being the mostly blind tool that he was. Zachary felt Madison against him, and her bosom seemed nice for such a typical bosom.

And then he…

And then she…

And then he.

And just like that, Madison wasn’t a virgin.

Oh, what, more details? Everybody wants more details. Okay.

He felt her heat, mostly normal as body temperature goes. She moaned the moan of a thousand women.

Am I hurting you? Zachary asked. He didn’t know what to do next.

I don’t think so, Madison panted, not exactly sure what she should be feeling, but this wasn’t half bad. Uh, watch your elbow.

Sorry.

They struggled together, trying this and that. Their parts fit okay as they wrestled together, and after a lot of work and more than a few awkward moments they finished, a pretty average climax by his reckoning.

Madison and Zachary lay in bed together afterward, not saying much. That was …okay, he said.

It was everything I’d expected, she answered.

Having taken her virginity, Zachary was at a loss for what to do next. He thought that something should happen, for her to shed tears of joy or sorrow, or in some way acknowledge that she’d scaled the heights of happiness and love.

Next week? Madison said.

What did she mean, next week? Don’t forget Dancing With The Stars on TV next week, my boyfriend is coming over to beat you up next week. Eh? the man answered.

Can we do this again next week? she asked again. Jeez, is this guy dense, or what? Madison wondered why she hadn’t verbally skewered him at this point.

Do what again?

The part where you lay on top of me.

Is that what you want? he asked.

I have no idea what I want. And apparently neither do you.

Do you…want us to get to know each other, or what?

It’s okay with me, she said.

That seemed to sum up their relationship.

CHAPTER TWO

Zachary drove away, getting some distance from Madison and the innocence that she’d left behind in Cabin 9 at the Man Ray Motel.

Madison had lost her virginity. Zachary asked himself where it had gone, exactly. When you lose something, it was still somewhere, only you couldn’t see it. Maybe it was tucked safely in her purse, somewhere near the bottom, next to the hairbrush.

Zachary felt responsible. Had he not said ‘Hello,’ or broken toast with her, or had that drink, or secured the room, or…

There was just a long list of violations there.

Zachary had had Puritanical baggage drop-shipped to him from a previous generation. He wondered, What would the girl do now, without her virginity? Could she still get married? Did I ruin her life? He’d been the one who’d violated her, and he should be held responsible. He wondered if Madison would notify the police, or call her lawyer to go after Zachary and make it right. He could be in real trouble.

Then Zachary wondered what he’d tell his wife. Tell my wife! Panic washed over him; he experienced an internal struggle, the tellthewife struggle, in which he was suddenly guilt-ridden and felt awful about jeopardizing his nine-year marriage over some decidedly mundane sex. Then it occurred to him that all of his sex for some time now had been pretty mundane, and it probably didn’t matter with whom he had it, it was still not terribly exciting.

So the internal wrestling match continued as the man drove homeward from his tryst with Madison.

***

Zachary’s wife was named Blithe. She was interesting in a homogenized sort of way. As previously noted they had been married for nine full years, nine years of being together, years of doing pretty much the same things every night, of watching sitcoms and eating freezer pizza. It was an okay life, though neither thought about it very much. The only thing that seemed to separate him from a huge chunk of America was the two or three or six beers that many men had while watching TV. He didn’t care for beer, and drank diet Mountain Dew, instead. Honey, bring me a Dew!

Zachary and