AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I should have written,” he said. “After that night. When I was reassigned.”
“I could have, too,” said Charles. “When they sent me back.”
The rest was left unsaid between them. They each knew that they had been careful not to be followed that night in Istanbul, but they also knew that even the best spies were sometimes caught with their pants down. Charles doubted that a couple of men spending the night together was viewed as cause for incident given the larger scheme of things, but the timing of their separation had seemed conspicuous. Perhaps the English and the Americans had simply not wanted their operatives getting too close. They might have been on the same side, but that didn’t mean they’d ever stopped spying on each other.
But what did it matter, really? Dickie had found a way back to him. It was the kind of luck that Charles hadn’t ever dared to dream of. To have survived the war, to have found a friend and ally and partner in Iris, to not have been caught out in one of the bar raids that were happening with alarmingly increasing frequency…was all that not enough? To ask for more would be churlish, arrogant even.
Still, each time that Charles left Dickie’s hotel in Manhattan and made the journey back to Brooklyn, he would allow himself to indulge in a daydream of what it might be like if things were different. To not have to look over his shoulder when they arranged to meet. To be able to sleep in Dickie’s arms for more than a single night. To wake up and drink coffee and eat eggs and read the newspapers. To live. Together.
It was an idle fantasy, nothing more, but still he found himself giving voice to it.
“Wouldn’t it be something,” he said, “if the world were different for those like us?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, if a man could kiss a man like he would his sweetheart.”
“I believe I did that mere moments ago.”
“You certainly did. But you know what I mean. If we could do that the way men kiss women. Freely. Openly. Without reprisal. As if it were…oh, I don’t know. Ordinary.”
The moment he said it, he felt foolish. The very idea of such a thing was a child’s imagining, even further beyond the limits of possibility than his and Iris’s flying captain.
“It would be quite the thing,” said Dickie. Charles watched the cigarette burn down until the embers were almost touching Dickie’s fingers, and yet the other man didn’t move. “Quite the thing,” he said again, eyes unreadable. A sudden sadness came over Charles, and a pang of guilt that he might have hurt this man—a man whom he held more dearly than even he had realized—by taunting him with the one thing they would never have.
The name of the movie finally came to him. Now, Voyager. Paul and Bette standing by the window, looking out onto the garden, smoking cigarettes and dreaming of what might have been, once upon a time. Charles reached over and took the now-dead cigarette from between Dickie’s fingers, placing it next to his own on the ashtray beside the bed.
“Don’t let’s ask for the moon,” he said. “We have the stars.”
* * *
•••••••••
Richard Ranger, the soldier, pilot, and hero known across the galaxy as Captain Kismet, has faced all kinds of challenges and trials: marauding aliens, robots from another dimension, and, of course, the perpetual machinations of his arch-nemesis, Omega Man. But he is about to face his greatest adventure—and danger—yet: LOVE.
Penny Haven, the humble and loyal scientist, has been by his side through thick and thin, and knows his heart and his bravery even better than his friend and companion Axel, the extraterrestrial prince known also as Kid Crimson. But Penny’s inquisitive nature may be her downfall. Ever since Ranger was first imbued with his cosmic gifts in the wormhole, Penny has sought to understand how such things are possible, and her search for knowledge has led to experiments that are beyond even her talents. On her secret moon base, Penny is building a machine capable of tapping into the unfathomable powers of the universe. But what she doesn’t know is that the slightest miscalculation could tear open a hole in reality and propel her through time and space, where she will be lost forever. Will her hubris, like Icarus’s, lead to her downfall? Or can Captain Kismet reach Penny in time and bring her back from the brink of destruction by finally confessing his true feelings?
And all the while, Omega lurks, ready to strike when Kismet and those around him are at their most vulnerable…
“Are we sure we want to turn Penny into some kind of mad scientist?” asked Charles. “She’s Ranger’s girl Friday. The readers seem to really like her.”
“It’s a metaphor,” said Iris. “For how women are constantly being told they’re overreaching whenever they try to pursue their own ambitions.”
“Hmm.” Charles rubbed his stubble. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to know,” said Iris. “You just have to make it look good. Eleanor, what do you think?”
Eleanor jumped at being called on, having seemingly given up on trying to follow their conversation from her position on the couch. Charles had been so engrossed in his and Iris’s work at the desk that he had almost forgotten she was even there. Eleanor was a rather pretty young thing who had the tendency to giggle like a schoolgirl, and Charles found her mildly irksome, but he knew Iris was fond of her, and so he tried not to let his irritation show.
“I think it’s very like a man,” said Eleanor, after a moment’s thought, “to see it as his job to rush in and interrupt a woman’s business. To think he knows better.” She looked at Charles pointedly, and Iris smirked.
“I can see I am outnumbered,” said Charles. “I shall make it look splendid,” he added to Iris, and she blew him a kiss.
Charles knew it had never been Iris’s plan for him and Eleanor to be in the same room at the same time, just as he had absolutely no intention of her ever meeting Dickie. But Iris and Eleanor had no other place: Eleanor lived with her husband, and it might raise more suspicion for two women to go to a hotel than two men, so Iris had started inviting her over to the apartment in Brooklyn.
When Charles had walked in a few days earlier to find Eleanor cradled in Iris’s lap, girlish face flushed as Iris worked away under her skirt, they had all been mortified. Iris could probably see the surprise flit across his face as the two of them had sprung apart like a couple during a bar raid, and she had braced herself. Instead Charles had simply laughed. It was only after the horror at being caught gave way to relief that they joined him in his mild hysteria, Iris’s laughter low and throaty, Eleanor’s tinkling like a bell.
After that, Charles had begrudgingly accepted Eleanor’s occasional presence, although Iris did her best to keep them separate. They never dined together, for instance, and so later that evening, when Charles suggested they go out for dinner to talk more about Kismet, Iris gave Eleanor a discreet peck on the cheek good night and sent her out of the apartment.
