Fake it for Real

1. Finn

1

FINN

Through the haze of a fading hangover, I felt the presence of someone else in my bed. I knew I was in my bed because the smell of freshly cleaned linens filled my nostrils as I inhaled deeply. It was one of the things I always did upon waking. Smell the sheets, and then try to piece together the events of the night — once I had deciphered if I was home or in someone else’s bed.

Around three nights each week, I would find myself with the same predicament, wondering who slept soundly beside me and where I had ended up after a night of drinking way too much, losing all my inhibitions.

The person beside me stirred then draped one long arm over my side. I always went to sleep facing away from the person I had gone to bed with. It made slipping off the bed and getting the hell out of a stranger’s bedroom much easier. And many times, I’d had to do just that.

Of course, when I woke up in my own home, slipping away was not an option. But I always had my driver waiting for the woman to walk out the front door so that he could drive her home or to wherever she wanted to go.

Moving slowly out from under the slender arm that laid across my side, I got out of bed without making a sound and headed to the bathroom to clean myself up. The mirror was never my friend on mornings like these, so I avoided my reflection at all costs until I had showered, shaved, and done the rest of my business.

An hour later, I emerged from the bathroom looking like myself again — ready to face the world and the young lady who was now sitting up in my bed. I looked at her face and could not recall a thing about her — other than fleeting scenes of a night of s*x that didn’t seem that memorable. “Morning. Did you sleep well?”

She ran a hand through her messy dark locks. “I think so. I drank a little too much last night. I don’t normally do things like this. Do you?”

“All the time.” I threw her my signature charming smile to ease my words. “So, let me walk you through the process of one-night stand etiquette. We wake up. We get dressed. We exchange pleasant goodbyes, and we don’t expect a thing from the other party.”

She looked a little taken aback. “Finn, are you sure you want me to just walk away from you after how much we connected last night?”

Rats, she remembers my name — and I’ve got no clue what hers is. Oh well.

“That man you met last night is not the real me. That guy only comes out at night and after a few drinks. I’m actually a total bore most of the time. Do yourself a favor and don’t think too hard about what happened. We had a good time, but now it’s over and might not ever happen again. Or it might happen again if we end up at the same place and we both want the same thing. But that’s highly unlikely — at least, in my case, it is.”

“Okay then.” She pulled the sheet around her and got up, moving about the room, retrieving her clothes that were scattered about, and then going to the bathroom to put them on.

I was glad she wasn’t the kind to try to argue that what we had was special. Mostly because it never was. Not to me, at least.

Waiting patiently, as I had nothing else to get to anyway, I sat down on the settee at the end of the bed and checked out my cell phone. There were some random pictures of us dancing and laughing, and then there were some more decadent pictures of our night in bed.

Holy crap, did I really let her do that to me?

Alcohol makes me do things I wouldn’t normally do if I were sober. But boredom leads me to the stuff more often than I should. I let alcohol take the lead, following along as an alternate personality comes out in small amounts until it takes me over completely — and then the hedonist in me comes out. I do whatever I want to, so long as it doesn’t involve hurting anyone. What had once been a once-a-week habit had turned to something that happened every other night.

I had inherited that from my carefree father. I was his only child, and he’d had me late in his life, though early in my mother’s life. She’d been his twenty-year-old maid, and he’d been in his sixties when the two spent a few nights doing the horizontal bop, as my father called it.

Of course, he’d never married my mother. He’d never married anyone. He preferred freedom over all things. He did take care of me and all I needed, though. I was the one person in the whole world that he’d made a commitment to, and he had stuck by it for my entire thirty-two years of life.

He’d sent me to college at UCLA, where I got a bachelor’s degree in art history. I hadn’t cared what I went to school for since I would never have to work. Richard — that’s what I called my father, as he didn’t like to be labeled in any way, not even in a fatherly way — had chosen my major. He said it would make me more interesting if I knew about art and the history of it all.

I supposed he was right. I was popular at his friends’ parties because they all had expensive art that they knew next to nothing about, and I could tell them all about their outrageous purchases.

People with more money than they could ever spend tend to spend money on things that they believe will add to their fortunes one day. Art was one of those expenditures that anyone worth their salt as a millionaire or billionaire had plenty of.

Looking at the painting I’d scored at the last auction my father and I had attended, I took in the priceless piece of art. Well, there eventually was a price put on it as the auctioneer enticed bidders to start the action at seventy million dollars. And it kept creeping up, several hundred thousand dollars at a time. Two hours later, I told my father that I would love to have that painting for my bedroom. So, he upped the ante by a million dollars, and I went home with an Amedeo Modigliani oil painting that he’d done in nineteen-seventeen, titled Nu couché. The title was French, and it meant nude reclining — and boy was that broad reclining!

A hand landed softly on my shoulder as I admired the work of art that hung on the wall facing my bed. She’d emerged from the bathroom without me detecting her movements, which meant she was accustomed to sneaking around. I didn’t like sneaky people at all. “Did you paint that, Finn?”

“No.” I got up to see her out, texting my driver to be at the front entrance, ready to go. “It’s a rather famous painting done by a rather famous French artist. I won’t bore you with the details.”

“Oh. A French artist, huh? Explains the woman’s hairy armpits. Gross.”

I thought the hair under the French woman’s arms was on the beautiful side. When a woman felt beautiful all on her own, not having to shave every speck of hair from her body, I appreciated that. Not that I’d met any woman who was like the one in the painting. I had the idea those sorts of women no longer existed in today’s world — at least not in the world I inhabited.

Not interested in getting into the history of the painting, I asked, “Are you hungry?”

“Starving,” she gushed as she leaned in and took my arm, wrapping herself around it. “Are you taking me to breakfast?”

“No. I’ll have my driver take you anywhere you want, though.”

“You don’t want to come with me?”

“No thanks.” As we walked down the stairs, I saw her scanning the entrance.

“I was totally blasted last night. I had no idea you lived in such an amazing home.” She batted her false eyelashes at me. “I had no idea you’ve made so much of yourself, Finn.”

“I didn’t,” I said.

And then I heard my father as he came into the foyer from his office just off it. “I did.” He held out his hand to the woman on my arm as we paused in front of him. “And this young goddess is?”

She giggled. “Oh my gosh, aren’t you handsome.” She held out her hand, and my father took it, kissing the top of it like he did with every woman he met. “And so formal too. My name’s Sidney. Sidney Stone.”

“And I am Finn’s father, Richard Murphy. It is a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Stone.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you too, Mr. Murphy.”

“Mr. Murphy was my father. I am merely Richard.” My father was in his nineties, but he acted like he was still a young pup. I found it funny.

“She’s on her way out,” I interrupted their little exchange, for my father could make that idiotic s**t last a lifetime if I let him. “I’m having my driver take her to breakfast.”

“It’s past noon, Finn,” he let me know.

“So, he’ll take her to lunch then.” I moved toward the door, ready to say goodbye to last night’s woman and move on with my life. “Thanks for the good time, Sydney.”

“You too, Finn. Should we exchange phone numbers?”

I shook my head; I wasn’t that type of guy. “Not on the first date. Not that it was a date at all, but more like a hookup. So, not on the first, second, or even third hookup. After that, who knows? Not me. I’ve never had more than three hookups with anyone — ever. So, don’t be offended by anything I say. I say it to all the girls.”

“Have there been many?” she asked with wide eyes.

“I suppose you could say that.”

“Should I be worried about anything?” She ran her hand in a circle over her nether regions. “You know what I’m asking, right?”

“I get tested regularly and am in excellent s****l health, and we used condoms. So, you have nothing to worry about from me.”

“Good.” She breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, I guess this is goodbye then. One last kiss?”

I settled for pecking her cheek, as that’s all anyone got from me before we parted ways. “Have a great life.”

“You too.” She looked around as she stepped out the door. “Seems like you’ve already got a great life, though.”

“I know, right? Bye now.” I closed the door before she could say anything else.

When I turned to go and see what the chef could stir up for me to eat, I found my father still standing right there. “Oh, hey.” Patting him on the shoulder, I stepped to the side and tried to walk away.

“Hang on, Finn.” He reached out, grasping my arm. “We need to talk. Come into my office.”

“Richard, I am famished. Can we talk in the kitchen while Egon makes me something to eat?”

“It won’t take long for me to say what I need to say. Then you can get on to the kitchen.” He led the way to his office, and I followed.

Taking the seat on the other side of his desk as Dad took his chair behind it, I asked, “What’s on your mind, Richard?”

“You are on my mind, Finn. I have been taking stock of my life recently and have found that I come up short in certain areas. Areas that you have patterned yourself after your patriarch.”

“Not sure what that means.” I looked up at the enormous chandelier that hung high above his desk. “Do you never worry that one day, this thing will come crashing down while you’re sitting here toiling over whatever work it is that you do, and smash you into bits?”

“I have never worried about that. The men who built this home for me were the finest craftsmen in the entire world. I trust their engineering and laborious work.”

“I wouldn’t sit under anything this big. Can we hurry this up, please?” I had never liked coming into my father’s office. Good things rarely came after being summoned into it.

Nodding, he said, “Since you like to follow so closely in my footsteps, I feel it necessary to counsel you on where a life like mine will lead you. It’s not the best place to be, Finn. It’s lonely. I have never settled down with one woman. And now, I am alone in life, and it’s not the best feeling.”

“You probably could get yourself some company if you wanted.” I saw no reason for him to be alone. He had stopped socializing when he’d entered his eighties. The man never exactly said how old he was, preferring to refer to his age by the decade — the eighties, the nineties, etcetera.

“Carousing around the party scene to find a suitable woman to spend the night with is no longer an option for me, since I grow tired so easily nowadays. And hiring a woman is out of the question.”

“I don’t see why you say that. Terry’s father hired a live-in mistress.”

“Terry’s father is only in his sixties. In other words, son, he is still a sexually functioning man, and I am just the opposite of that. An old person’s body can’t do what a younger person’s body can do.”

“They make pills for that,” I recommended. “If you’re too embarrassed to buy some, I’ll get them for you.”

“That is not what I am looking for in my life anymore. And one day, you will find yourself feeling the same way that I have for years now. s*x is not all there is to life, Finn.”

“Richard!” I could not believe what my father was saying. “Might I remind you of the cardinal rule you told me about after I hit puberty and was locking myself in my bathroom for hours at a time to pleasure myself?”

“I know what I said, but I was wrong. Yes, s*x is a natural part of life, and no one should be ashamed of expressing themselves in a s****l manner or accepting s*x from women who also find pleasure in it. Especially when that pleasure is found without needing a commitment. That said, there is only a certain window of time for which that is true. If you live life the way I told you was best, then all you have to look forward to are years of being alone. It’s not the best. It’s the worst way ever to live.”

“I happen to love my life.”

“I loved mine. Up until my body said, no more. Now, it would be nice to have a companion to hold hands with. Someone to wake up to each morning instead of an empty pillow. Someone to just talk to and grow old with.”

“So, young women are out for you?” I asked. “Is that what you’re saying? Because we can make a visit to the old folks’ home and find you an old woman who would probably love to get to come live here with you and do all that stuff you said you want now.”

“I don’t want some old woman who I don’t even know. You just aren’t understanding me at all, Finn. It’s time to find a good woman and settle down with her so that you two can begin living your lives together, instead of alone. That way, when the years have aged you both, you will have a bond that can’t be broken.”

“Sounds painful. I’d rather not.”

It’s not as if a leopard can change his spots.