ANN

Maximus apparently carries a sense of Spartan organization through to his wallet. I never knew that before. Okay, so Spartan may not be so PC a term for a man of his time and the fact he was a Roman citizen makes it wrong, I suppose... but it's the description that leapt to mind for me.

"Wow. You don't even have any receipts in here past today. And my God ... your bills are arranged by denomination ..."

"Why are you looking in there? Give me that back."

"You said you wanted to show me your wallet. So I'm looking."

"I said, Anna, that I wanted to show you what I had put in there for safe-keeping ..."

"Yes and I'm looking to see."

"Anna ..."

I glanced at his face. His lips were pursed. He was trying hard not to just reach out and grab his wallet from me. "A lesson I'm surprised you haven't learned, Max ... never hand your wallet over to a woman and invite her to look. Men's wallets are simply invitations women can't resist. It's like being allowed inside the men's room at a stadium or something. It's so ... forbidden and manly."

"You wish to look inside a men's lavatory? Has this been a lifelong fetish, cara?"

"Oh ho! You made a joke! Next thing I know, you'll be kissing me in public. Right here, in fact. I bet you never would ... I bet ..."

A few seconds passed as he proved me wrong. When he pulled away, he had the most satisfied look on his face. I probably did, too. But he also had his wallet back. He thumbed through the little frosted plastic sleeves that come in every wallet. I watched him flick over the first one. It held his driver's license. And then the one just on the other side, it held his library card. The one facing that held ...

"Aww, Max," I sighed to him, my eyes flicking up to his. "That's so sweet. You have my picture in your wallet!"

So that was what he'd done with it. That little picture of me when I was in second grade that he'd wanted and I'd given him ... he was carrying it with him. Man, he does something like that and no woman would be safe from him, you know?

I reached out to touch at his thumb that kept the plastic sleeve up so we could look at this picture from my childhood that captured a smile he liked. When he moved his thumb, the sleeve above flopped down and I stroked his picture that was on his driver's license. He was going to have to get a new one now that he was moving to Louisiana.

"How did you ever come up with that last name?" I asked him, my fingernail tracing a line under his name on the license: Max Cooper.

"Uma," he said, with this little grunt.

"Uma chose it?"

"She ... suggested it. I could hardly use my own last name. Meridius."

"Is Cooper some family name of hers?"

"No."

"Max ..."

"Anna?"

"C'mon. Tell me the story behind your last name."

"Soon to be your last name."

Our eyes met. We both smiled. "So I have a right to know the story behind it, wouldn't you say?"

He grunted. I nudged his ribs. Finally he sighed. "As you might be aware, Uma has ... a most ... unusual thought process at times."

I chuckled. "Oh, I can tell this is gonna be good."

"Shortly after I ... arrived here, she helped me arrange credentials. We felt the last name needed to be acceptable in this time. We talked over many names; I wanted one that meant something to me, to connect me to my past."

"That sounds reasonable."

"We considered many."

"I bet. It's a hard thing, coming up with a name."

"Indeed." He closed his wallet; shifted to put it back in his pocket. As he did, he slid his hand over mine; he has developed this new habit of stroking the ring he gave me, as if it just means that much to him each time he happens to glance it. "We considered many. Many of her ideas were ... ludicrous. Some were in jest."

"In jest? Uma? Surely you jest."

He frowned at me before plowing on. "For instance, we considered modernizing Latin words that held resonance with me. We looked at ordinary objects such as I used as a military officer. But I was not totally comfortable with identifying myself with only my army career as I had longed to leave that behind and return home to be a farmer. She said if I had wanted to be a farmer, the only farmer she could think of was Farmer Brown, some nursery tale. So we considered Brown as a name."

"Brown?" I considered this. "Max Brown. Mmm. It's okay."

"She suggested August, obviously for Augustus, which has several meanings she liked. I was not comfortable with the imperial nature of it."

"Nice name, though."

He shrugged, looked off at the flight attendant making her way down the aisle.

"You know that you didn't need to spring for first class, Max," I said softly. "This is such a luxury. It was nice enough of you to pay my way, you know?"

He blinked, looked out the window, then back at me. Hell, yeah, we'd had this discussion. He asked me to come with him on this trip. He was going back to the only home he'd known since he'd been here so he could pack up his belongings for the move to New Orleans. And I had wanted to come but I couldn't afford to fly and driving would have taken too long since I only had three days off and he said ... he said I needed to let him be who he was and that who he was, was a man who wanted to take care of me as best he could. And that this was nothing to him, easy to do.

The practical side of it was that he wanted me with him and this was the only way to do it. Besides, he had offered, after all.

"Okay, so anyway, Max ... how did she come up with Cooper?"

"Meridius," he said softly, leaning in toward me. "It means midday in English. High noon."

"Okay."

He held his hand up before me, began ticking the progression of Uma's thought process off with his fingers. "High noon. She thought of Noone as the modern version of noon but dismissed it because it also spells 'no one' and she disliked that notion. Then she said there was a famous movie called 'High Noon' and ..."

"Oh my God! And Gary Cooper was the hero!"

"Thus, Cooper."

"Wow. That's pretty neat. I like that."

He grinned at me, wrapping his fingers around my left hand. "That is how I came by the name. Trust that it would be circuitous in nature."

I leaned in on him, looked out the window of the plane that was coming near our destination. 

"Are you sure?" I asked him for maybe the millionth time.

He squeezed my hand in his; kissed my temple; lingered there, his lips warm and soft against me. And deftly changed the subject. "I'm glad your were able to come with me."

"Well, I didn't want you to have the joy of packing up to move all to yourself, my love. Had to get in on some of that fun."

Just then the plane flew through cloud cover and the city spread before us. This was where we met. I'd never forget that.

We were coming back to pack Max's apartment up and send his things by mover to New Orleans. There was still so much unsettled. We had no place to live yet; we'd looked at a few but half-heartedly, to be honest. We hadn't really concentrated on responsibilities like that and that's unlike either of us. Instead, for the week he was there, we spent an inordinate amount of time in his hotel room. I'd shown him around town, sure. Just not quite as much as you might imagine. Mostly, he'd wanted to see the area where I'd grown up -- grammar school, church, playground, high school.

I tell you this, it's something I understand, that desire of his to picture where I spent my formative years. I was endlessly fascinated with his life as a boy. I just never had found the right avenue to pry some of that loose. I wanted the mundane things ... the strong memories of earliest childhood that when you're an adult, you're not sure are your memories or just family tales of your childhood that you hear when you're old enough to form memories you can access as an adult.

By the time we drove to his apartment, we were both antsy to start the packing. He'd called ahead to arrange a mover and had even had them drop off lots of boxes. He wanted to pack all his 'things' himself and just have the movers come take the furniture and packed boxes, load them on a trailer and get them to New Orleans. Everything was going to be unloaded at a storage facility, waiting there patiently until we found a place to live.

Inside his apartment, I had felt this wave of conflicting emotions. I couldn't help the reminder of the last time I'd been there. And I couldn't escape the remembrance of the first time I'd ever come there with him.

I remembered walking in, looking around. I remembered later, living there, never quite feeling like I should even touch his collections upon shelves but still touching them anyway just for the forbidden sense of him. I remembered his life force filling this place, infusing it with a deep warmth that made it feel like a place of man. I remembered when he'd be gone, and it'd be just me and Buck, how it had felt as if life waited for him to come back.

Of all the things I'd ever cherished about this apartment, it was how it felt like him. It had few truly glorious touches, mind you. But he lurked in every corner because everything in there had been carefully placed. I was only scratching the surface of understanding him and seeing the meaning behind many things he allowed me to see without finding the way to explain.

I was beginning to learn my own way with him. And I was beginning to understand that until I was willing to ask, he wouldn't be willing to tell. That is not as harsh as it sounds.

If he noticed my nostalgia and that curious mix of emotions being there again called up in me, he hid it. I suspect he knew. I suspect he knew it would happen and had prepared himself to help me deal with it in a practical manner.

As soon as we were in the apartment, he dropped our suitcases in the hall closet, asked me to find the masking tape and markers while he went to get the boxes and other packing material hauled up from the storage unit below. I was standing in the middle of the kitchen when he got back. At least I'd found the masking tape in there and the markers ... but I'd been lost in thinking about time there with him.

He gave me the plan of action ... I was to tackle the living room, he the bedroom. The items on the shelving near the fireplace were to be packed with great care in one box that would go with us in the car. The other items were to packed and labeled for the movers to cart away. From there, we'd get the kitchen and closets. Simple, eh?

About an hour into this, he wandered in to get more boxes in the hall. He found me standing and staring at the shelves to be specially packed. There were things I'd never felt confident enough to ask him about. He chided me and said to keep working. I touched at a slick stylus that looked to me like a very old calligraphy pen ...

"What is this?" I asked him.

"I used one similar," he said.

"But what is it?"

He came behind me, reached over me and picked it up. It was darkened by age, straight with undulating curves that tapered to a cone ending. "It was ... a pen, for lack of a better word. I used one similar to write on wax tablets ... when I did lessons from my tutor."

I looked at his face as he turned it over in his hand. How odd that he had this; something so simple, so everyday to one who'd used it ... and yet, a connection to his past that clearly called up something deep with him.

"Did you have it with you when you came over to this age?" I asked him.

"No."

"What did you have?"

"Only what I wore that day in the Coliseum."

"Do you still have it? Your clothes, armor ... I've seen your ring; it's in that box on your bureau."

He tilted his head as he put the stylus away. Smiled shyly at me. "Yes, I still have everything. Packed away at the rear of the closet in the bedroom. I even have the knife."

I didn't blink; I just looked at him. "The one ... Commodus?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

"Does that bother you, Anna? That I held on to that?"

"No, not in the least. I would have." I looked again at the shelf before me. And I wondered ... everything on these shelves was very, very old, I realized. Maybe I'd always known that. "What about these items? If these didn't come over with you, are you collecting artifacts from your time? Is that what all these are, these items on these shelves? And is that why it's so important they come with us in the car rather than be trusted to the movers?"

His fingers stroked the wood shelf where he'd put the stylus back. Then the one above it. Then he touched over a ball, wrapped in leather strips. "Memories of a past I treasure. The ordinary past."

I reached for a lamp ... I knew that's what it was because I've seen pictures of these. Terracotta. An opening in the oval central concavity where you pour oil. Another opening, at the end, where a wick dangled, waiting to be lit. At the other end, a handle fashioned, flat sided, where I can picture his fingers holding it. I was going to pack the lamp away but then noticed it still had oil in it.

"Olive oil," he said. "With salt. Made it burn cleaner and longer. An ancient trick."

"Tell me something about one of these items. One of these ordinary items. Something of your ordinary past, Max. I would love to hear it."

He had told me such type of memories, not much. About walking down a road that led to the villa where he was raised, of how he would kick stones as he walked, of the way the trees looked that lined the road, of the dip and then bend in the road that happened just before he would get the first really clear shot of the villa's garden walls. He had told me of festivals and gatherings ... of a few rituals ... of playing with friends and having girls watch them as they challenged each other in sport. I never quite knew enough to know how to ask something specific so it depended on some memory being triggered for him.

Taking the lamp from my hands, he touched over the decoration. In bas-relief, it looked like a child. He said it was Eros.

"Why did you choose one with Eros on it?" I asked him.

He shrugged. "It was what I could find. It is difficult to find one in good enough condition for me to wish to own it. It is not as if they are so abundant in this modern age that I can simply order one as a duplicate of one that I would have owned. And truthfully, I might easily have owned one with Eros. It was common enough to have a god or goddess as the decoration. But there were as many decorations as you can even imagine ... animals, wreaths, ordinary people, gladiators, circus sports, athletes, trees, creatures of the sea ... But gods and goddesses were common. In fact, I had one with Pegasus on it in my bedroom when I was a boy. It was my favorite and my ... nanny, I believe that would be the word today ... she indulged me in such matters and made sure it was there for me. I can remember that lamp as if ... Forgive me ... I can be far too sentimental and we have much work to do today."

"You can't stop now, Max." I tugged him with me over to the couch. Made him sit with me. I touched at the lamp as he cradled it in his hands. "I never really thought about artificial lighting in your time. This fascinates me because I simply know so little about everyday life in your day."

"Romans rose well before the sun. Even children. Our schooling began very early. Lamps were essential. Some were small, hand-held like this. Others were large, with many wicks, and hung in special stands to light larger areas," he said.

"You went to school?" Trying to draw him out and get him to share something personal as opposed to a lecture about his times.

He frowned. "Not as you have them today. And they were not free. Only the upper class sent their boys. There might be a few girls, but not so many in the provinces, where I was raised. And those that did, went separately from the boys for their course of instruction was not ours."

"So who taught you? And what did you learn?"

"I went to tutors after I reached the age of 7. Before that, my father taught me lessons on obedience to the law, reverence for the gods and our ancestors, our family's history. Tutors taught small groups of the young men from within my parent's class in the area."

And he started talking. Like he'd simply felt free to tell me. His tutor, the one he remembered most, was a specially educated servant of one of the local families. When I asked him what he learned, he said that in Roman education, even in the provinces, there were really three essential subjects: oratory, history and physical training.

Oratory, I had asked, like giving speeches? The power to speak, he said, was the power to command. The education of oratory, as he finally made me understand he meant it, was to give each man the ability to embrace every idea capable of being expressed ... all feelings and ideas were conveyed by words.

Is this why you know so many poems by heart, I asked him, smiling at the way he gazed at me to be reminded of how he could captivate me with words first written in a time so long ago. His tutor was tough on such matters, he said with a shrug and then pulled me in to whisper in my ear words I recognized and cherished.

"Isn't it amazing what a simple lamp can help you remember?" I asked him.

"A lamp ... light ... imagine the ordinary moments in my life such a lamp has illuminated?" he said, his eyes unfocusing and I wondered what he was remembering. "Of waking long before dawn to start the day. Of practicing my letters on a wax tablet upon my lap. Of climbing the stairs at the end of the day. Of how the dancing flames could make my bedroom exotic and mysterious just before a servant would douse it and I would fall to sleep, safe in my father's house."

"Imagine the special moments it illuminated as well," I said softly. "Of the first night in the home you shared with your own family. Of seeing your own son tucked secure in his crib at night when you'd finally come home for a visit from the front. Of seeing your wife ... her smile as you neared her. Of the first lesson you taught your son on his own wax tablet."

His eyes focused again and then turned to mine. "Do you wish to ask me anything?"

I knew what he meant. I knew there were things I would one day be able to ask. But not yet. "No, I just want to say that I love when you tell me things like this. It makes me feel as if you've given me a very special gift."

He blushed; I love how he does that. But he held my eyes with his, never wavering. "As I love when you ask me and when you listen as if nothing is more important."

"Wherever we find to live, Max, I want these items where we see them every day."

Being there, with him, surrounded by all that was important to him, I had this sudden vision of finding the place we'd live. Of just knowing it when I'd walk in ... that it'd be a place where we could make ordinary moments as well as special moments. And where we'd combine our lives in a way I suppose I'd never really imagined doing with someone else. It was now something to look forward to with realistic excitement.

Until that vision, I suppose it hadn't seemed that real to me ... that we really did have to concentrate on finding a place to live when we got back. How long it would take, we didn't know. So, I'd found a temporary place for us to stay while we looked for a place to call ours. It was a furnished condo in a time-share building near the Quarter that belonged to an old friend's extended family. We have use of it for at least two months. In that time, I figured we'd find a permanent place and be moved in. It's the oddest thing about moving home, you know ... it's having connections again. I'd missed that.

Here, in this city where Max and I had met, the connections were skin deep except in one place. A place very important to Max and me. The pub. The Come On Inn.

The impact of this move hit me again. We were moving. Both of us. Far away, really. Forever. 

He asked me, seeing the look on my face as I thought of that, "Are you all right?"

"I'm going to miss this place," I said to him. He smoothed the back of his fingers down my cheeks. "I'm going to miss the people. Our friends. The way they care about us. The way I care about them."

"We'll come back, for visits. But our road ahead is ours, cara. As their roads are for them. The connections among us are like family. And those connections are never severed."

"Stretched too far ... you know?"

"This is our path. The one we both want."

"I know. I do, Max. And I am not saying anything more than life would be so easy if you could just take everyone with you when you move like this."

His eyes crinkled as he leaned in toward me. "It would be very crowded, however. Imagine trying to find a home large enough?"

"Have you told anyone?" I asked him a moment later, as he rose to return to where he'd been packing his bedroom. "That you're moving, I mean. That we're ... you know?"

He frowned. "Why would I have?"

"Oh, Jesus, Max. They're your friends ... family ... more so even than they are mine."

"I assumed you would handle such notifications."

I couldn't help rolling my eyes at that. "You know, you're talking to the woman who walked away from here without telling anyone but Johnny. Okay, so, maybe that was different. But still ..."

"Do they know you moved?"

I started laughing. "I doubt it. I told Chili finally ... but I also told him not to say anything. So, I guess we have a bunch of big news, don't we?"

"Of course, I told Uma you had gone," he said, a slight blush coming to him. He had told me about his conversation with Uma ... and about the horrid confrontation that had led to it ... there were still tender spots in all this for us.

"We should go there. To the pub. Tell everyone that you're coming to live in New Orleans. That we've decided we are forever. Especially Uma. After all, she's the reason I met you ... and, ultimately, she's the reason we're together again." I looked at my watch. "It's nearly lunchtime, Max. Let's take a break, go to the pub for a bite, tell Uma, and whoever else is around. And maybe we can arrange to see everyone tomorrow night for a drink. A toast to what the future holds for us all."

"We have much to accomplish here yet ..."

"We have already accomplished so much, Max. We can finish the rest this afternoon and tomorrow. We'll be done by the time the movers come. Please? It's important to me."

"Then it is what we do."

The pub looked the same to me. I honestly thought I'd never see it again. I remembered the first time I'd wandered in to see Uma in her new place. Never imagining what I'd discover inside. Never once even a shadow of a dream that there I'd find the one man I'd trust enough to give him my future.

He kissed my hand, the palm, just before he opened the door.

The only people in there at that hour of the day were strangers to me. Not regulars, of course.

Andy was walking from the bar area through the doors that led to the kitchen. He glanced up as we walked in, sunlight disturbing the interior and drawing attention to the opening of this outside door. His reaction was difficult to gauge, especially from a distance. He hesitated, nodded his head, called out a greeting to me and then he slipped into the kitchen.

We sat at the bar and waited on him to return. But he didn't. In a few minutes, Uma rushed in from the back, smiling ... and I knew Andy had told her we were there, together.

ANDY

I can't say I was in a very good mood to start with that morning. I haven't been exactly hunky dory for days now to be perfectly honest. Not since that day in the park. I'd noticed Uma was gone a long time and I felt worried about her. She'd had a rough deal recently what with Maximus throwing his considerable weight around in her direction and then what happened to Cort. I had seen her withdraw into herself as she does when she's hurting. I'd done my best but even when we made love I felt like she was somewhere else inside her head. She doesn't usually close her eyes. Or cry quietly when she comes.

I tried talking to her but she just told me she didn't want to discuss it, that it was old stuff she had no wish to rehash. It was nothing to do with me or us. I wouldn't understand. Maybe I wouldn't. But I was prepared to damn well try. Why wouldn't I? My girlfriend is upset and I'm supposed to simply sit back and do nothing? What kind of man would I be if I acted like that?

There was something else that wasn't really working for me in all this. So that day I had gone looking for her in the park to try and sort a few things out with her. And I found her. With him. And they weren't fighting this time.

When she got home I confronted her and she just dismissed it. No, she dismissed me. Was I spying on her? Grow up. She could talk to a man if she wanted. Maximus and she had just bumped into each other. They had things to talk about. Could I stop acting like a petulant child, nit picking at imagined threats and start acting my age? Cort is lying half dead in a hospital bed - so Maximus and she decide to act like adults at last and make peace? What had that to do with me? Then she really hit me below the belt. "I don't ask you about that mess between you and Celia, do I?" Mess? Thanks a lot, love. That actually hurt me a lot. I love the way you dismiss my pain like some embarrassing episode in my life.

And I don't go around kissing Celia in the park either.

It's funny really. I had always thought the one I had to watch was Terry Thorne. There's not much love lost between us. I mean I thought he was what she really wanted and I was just the safe junior model who looked like him - or at least how he might have looked ten years ago if he hadn't been a soldier and looked like an advert for shaving foam. Now I realised I had been looking in the wrong direction all the time. She had lost the love of her life when Maximus tossed her over, broke her heart and almost made her completely give up on love. Now he was back, alone and needy, and giving out all those tortured hero signals again. What could I ever hope to offer her set against a man like Maximus? I don't stand a bloody chance.

Since that day, you could say we had been niggly with each other. There were no real rows but she kept her distance and I kept my mouth shut. But you could feel the tension building in the air and when I walked into the bar and copped the general swaggering in with the old girlfriend, bold as you please, I just snapped. I greeted Ann, who looked wonderful, obviously thinking everything was back to normal and there was Uma probably feeling like she'd just been kicked in the teeth. And me? Well, who the fuck cared what I felt about it all?

I walked out and told Uma they were there - she seemed okay about it but she's good at pulling down the veil on her emotions at times like this. I am not. I stayed in the kitchen and took it out on some pizza dough. Wished it had been his smug face.

It all began with me wanting a leak. I slipped into the Men's room and he was there, back turned and pissing. I don't know why it stopped me in my tracks. I mean a bloke pissing at a urinal is not exactly unusual in a public toilet. But somehow it felt like a challenge to me. The ultimate pissing contest. Up against a wall against the Gladiator himself.

Mate, I just knew I couldn't even piss at all. Talk about shy bladder. Nor could even I unzip and get it out next to him. What does that say about me? I'm scared he's got a bigger dick? He probably has. Everything about him is larger than life. Larger than my life anyway.

I reckon I must have just stood there staring at him, a mixture of conflicting emotions: I hated the bastard. Just his broad back and the set of his stance seemed to scream something out to me like he was a man and I was just some kid who would never in my wildest dreams be able to match what he was. I felt in awe of him to such an extent that I couldn't even relieve myself beside him.

Just then he finished and zipped up, addressing a comment to me, well aware I had been standing watching him. "Some men might take offence at being watched at a urinal."

That's all he said. Then he went over to wash his hands. There was something in the total lack of interest he exhibited that sent me over the edge. The guy didn't even care about if I was there or not. I might as well be an insect on the ground for all I mattered to him. "I want to talk to you!" I announced belligerently.

It was out of my mouth before I had time to even wonder what I was actually going to say. But I had said it. And I wasn't sorry.

"I wondered," he replied and leaned back against the tiled wall, arms folded. "Talk."

"Don't try to intimidate me..." I began.

"I wasn't. If you are, then look to yourself for a reason. What do you wish to say to me? Be quick. I do not have all day."

"You leave her alone! Keep away from her. She doesn't want you anymore. So stop screwing up her head."

"I know that."

"Yeah? Then what you been doing recently?" I faced him up, losing my fear of him. What was the worse he could do anyway? Kill me with his bare hands, I suppose, but even I knew he was unlikely to go to those extremes.

"Something I should have done a long time ago. Make peace. You have nothing to fear from me..." he actually answered my question straight.

"Who said I was afraid of you? I don't give a fuck about you. You touch her again and I'll...I'll..."

"...You'll - what? Hit me?" Maximus shrugged. "What good would that do either of us? Or Uma?"

"It would make me feel better," I spat out.

At that Maximus smiled. "Good. Now we're getting somewhere. And if I beat you to pulp back, as you know I could?"

"It would be worth it."

"Why?"

I hunched my shoulders. "Because I would have stood up to you. Even if I knew I couldn't win. At least you would know I would never back down."

Maximus ran a hand thoughtfully over his beard. "Do you know what that tells me about you? Do you know how much I respect what you have just said?" He walked forward and opened his arms as if to show he wasn't armed. "Hit me. Hard. The way you want to."

"What?"

"You heard me. Talking about it and doing it are two different things. Hit me. I don't plan to retaliate. I give you a free shot. Maybe more than one. Take it out on me, for I am the one who makes you feel emasculated. So be a man. Hit me."

I felt uncomfortable. I mean, it's one thing to take a swing at a bloke when he's going for you or when you're angry but I can't just hit a man like that. On the other hand I didn't want to look like a flaming pussy. I advanced on him. He didn't even flinch or appear to ready himself for the blow. He just stood there watching me, his arms stretched out and waiting. I balled my right fist. I imagined ramming it into his face and bringing my left up into his gut. I'd done some boxing when I was a teenager at the local gym. I can hit a punch bag square.

But I couldn't do it. I just couldn't go up to a man and hurt him for no reason. Even if I had reasons. They weren't the right ones. I dropped my hands and head in shame. "I can't. I can't even fucking hit you when you give me a clear chance. Go on...laugh...I confirmed what you thought all along, hey? Uma's got a little boy to play with. I'll bet that amuses you no end, eh?"

He lowered his arms and shook his head. "I knew you wouldn't hit me. You don't have the instinct.  You are not a naturally violent man. Do you have any idea how much I wish I was a man like you?"

I searched his face for a sign that he was winding me up but I couldn't see anything that looked false. He's not the sort of bloke who plays games like that anyway. I'll give him that. "I don't know what you mean."

He smiled to himself. "I know what I can do to men if I choose. But it would be far harder to walk through life having to make my way through just my integrity and honesty alone. Had I been a man like you, maybe my wife and son would not have died. Had I been a man like you perhaps I would not have lost that beautiful woman who loves you so much. Wake up, Andy! There are many ways to be a man and not all of them require the sword. I have long asked myself where I failed as a man in many regards in my life. I look at a young man like you and wonder at how you instinctively know how to love a woman as she should be loved, to win the friendship and trust of everyone you meet, to conduct yourself in a wholly masculine way even when you spend your life in a career which to my mind is effeminate - and that you would even risk injury to yourself against a man you know could take you apart out of the courage you have to stand up for your beliefs and for those whom you care about."

He spoke in a clear and open way, simply saying the words with no fancy talk or embarrassment. I could hardly take in what he was saying. A man like Maximus wished he was more like me?

"You're the finest man any of us has ever met. That's why we're in awe of you. Everyone wants to be like you and we judge our failures against your strengths..."

At that he grinned and chuckled to himself. "I am a man, Andy. Just a man. I have my flaws and insecurities too. I, too, measure myself against others and see myself as wanting. If we did not do that, then we would be arrogant fools, guilty of the worst kind of hubris. For no man - or woman - is free of fault or weakness or error. Nor is any man or woman without the higher qualities. We choose our destiny. If you want something then reach out and take it. Do not blame anyone else for denying you. I am no threat to you, nor ever was I. She loved me once but I was not enough. She loves you now and you are more than enough. What does that make me feel? You don't need to hit me to be the winner. Uma gave me the thumb...you are the victor ludorum..."

I stared at him in shock but something in his words resonated. We choose our destiny. If you want something then reach out and take it. Do not blame anyone else for denying you. I am no threat to you, nor ever was I. It has always been my mistake to blame the world for where I was - or wasn't. My parents didn't think I lived up to their ideal of how a son should be - my elder brother was the favoured one. My teachers gave up on me. My employers said I didn't have an honest face. I could go on and on. It was about time that I began to push my own way through in this world and make it listen to me instead of making out that others were holding me back.

I smiled a little bashfully. "Look, mate, I...I was out of line before. I appreciate what you just said. I still think I've got a long way to go to measure up to you. Or maybe I should just stop trying, eh? I'm not you. I'm me. You've given me a lot to think about. Thanks for being straight with me..."

He smiled broadly and slapped my back. "I told you nothing. About Uma. Nor will I ever tell a soul. For she was mine then and no one can take that from either of us. Don't try and take her past away. We all have the right to that. Our memories make us what we are today... Now go and piss before you have an unfortunate accident..." He grinned and walked out, leaving me there reeling. Bloody hell! I had just gone a few rounds with the general.

And I was still standing. What do you make of that?

ANN

The final night we were in that city where we'd met and fallen in love, we spent part of it in the company of friends. As many as could make it, came to wish us well and toast the future with us. And Max was right, of course. They are more like family; those bonds are forged in the blood that runs through the veins of each of these extraordinary men.

On the way back to his apartment, I watched the world of this city pass by out the car window. I was buzzed, pleasantly, on two glasses of wine. I was holding his hand. I was relishing how it felt to belong to something greater than just me ... to be an "us" now ... to know that in all the world, as long as I held his hand, I was safe.

It still amazed me that somehow in this whole world, we'd found each other. Here in this city where he should have never come and I should have never stayed. What did it all mean that fate had been kind to us both in such a monumental way?

I turned to watch him as he drove. I loved to watch him concentrate like that, as if the world was about to turn on him and he was ready for it ... and the world would back down. It just would.

Lights played over his profile. Green traffic lights. Purple neon lights. Yellow streetlamps. Red taillights. White headlights. They flickered and floated and flared as the car flowed like a spear chasing through the darkness of the night.

"Let's don't check in the hotel tonight," I said softly, leaning in close to where he sat before the steering wheel. He glanced at me; in the shock of a headlight's glare, I caught the cock of his eyebrow. "I'd rather spend this last night in your place."

"Everything is packed. The movers will be there in the morning. You'd be more comfortable in the hotel."

I ran my fingertips along his forearm, feeling the play of his hair and the warmth of his skin. Scooting closer, leaning in on his shoulder ever so slightly, I put my lips at his ear to say, "I'm not looking for comfortable tonight."

"What are you looking for then, cara?" He tucked his chin. I watched his eyes track the traffic around us. I slid my hand over his groin and felt him spread his legs ever so slightly in response. He wanted me to witness his arousal.

"Something only you can give me," I said, caressing him, feeling his body react. I kissed in at his neck; licked along his earlobe. "Our last night here, Maximus. We can spend it in a sterile hotel room that means nothing to us ... or we can pass the time indulging each other in a place that has been your dominion for a long time."

As he drove, I stayed edged up to him, my chin on his shoulder, my hand in his groin; my mouth at his neck alternating between nips and words of abandon. I give him lots of credit; he took it all ... all I did, though, never could quite upset that gyroscope inside him that refuses to let him wobble unless he simply wants to.

He parked. He didn't budge from his seat. He just let me drape myself over him and escalate my assault. The only thing that made him really react was in this one moment where I had one knee in between his thighs and I was looking down at him as his eyes watched my hips move ... and I stuck a finger in his mouth and said something to him about how I never knew if I liked his fingers or his mouth more when he ...

And this is when he moved. His mouth dove in at my neck and he unbuckled my jeans. I moaned softly as he ran his big hands along the top edge of my jeans until he slid his fingers down my back ... down under my jeans. He swallowed hard; I saw his eyebrows rise as he slowly looked up at me. All the while, he kneaded where he was gripping me.

"I want to see," he said, his voice appealingly rough and low.

And I had an idea.

Inside his apartment, we cleared a space before the couch and laid blankets and pillows there until it was a little nest for us amidst the boxes and furniture. I lit the lamp ... the oil lamp that was a reminder to him of so many ordinary moments of his life when he knew with certainty where he stood and what his future could be.

"What are you up to, cara?" he asked me, coming close and trying to capture me but I evaded his hand.

"I want to see," I said, looking at him over my shoulder as I tapped off the lights.

The room was a blanket of black with a shock of yellow-orange flickers. The lamp's light flared over him and a deeper shadow seemed to form behind him. I started unbuttoning my shirt as I approached where he stood in this wide-legged stance across the blankets from me. I couldn't stand still like he could; something inside me felt pent up and needing a leash. I walked around, unbuttoning, slowly, looking at him no matter which way I turned. And then he toed off his shoes and socks at the same moment he began unbuttoning his own shirt.

When he pulled it off, I paused on my last button. His arms flexed and the light played there among the contours of his torso. His hands went to his belt and as his fingers flicked it open, his biceps moved in the shifting light of the lamp.

So beautiful. He just is.

By then I had my own shirt off. His eyes watched the way light played over the swell of my breasts, set off by a bra that was black and lacy ... and had been bought with him in mind but never worn.

And this is how we stripped for the other. Letting the other see us in that flame ... the way it caressed our bodies in the play between light and dark. Shadow and highlight. Soft light. Warm color. Mysterious in what it chose to show and hide.

His jeans were off, tossed over a box near him. He had a hand down the edge of his underwear, teasing me, a playful smile on him as he cupped his girth ... but even in the lamp's light, I could see the hard edge in his eyes. He was feeling anything but playful in that night.

He is such a man. Even when he's not being overtly sexual, his masculinity can make me blush for what I find myself thinking. But like this ... almost nude, so confident, so obvious what he wants, so aware of how the sight of his body is an aphrodisiac ... he is such a man in every sense I can imagine. He never seems to have a need to swagger. He never needs to brag ... when he says he's able to give me what other men could never or that I will never forget the nights of passion in his arms ... that's not boasting ... that's just his awareness and it's just the truth.

Of course, he liked me looking at him like that. It got right to his pride ... and it stoked his fire.

I turned from him and lowered my own jeans ... slowly slinking out of them ... arching provocatively as I pushed them down over the curves... letting him see the thong he'd felt in the car when he'd put his hands under my jeans. I turned and looked at him as I bent to pick my jeans from the ground. He was nude. He was hard. He was magnificent. And I saw.

For a moment, I saw into his past. To him in a time when a lamp such as this was all that was flickering to hold the darkness at bay. To him watching a woman ... a younger him ... a man who knew what he wanted was before him and all he had to do was wait and she'd come to him because she was his.

I went to him. I put a hand on his stomach as I went to my knees. I wanted to feel the tremors that he had told me once that he felt when I did this. And I did feel them. I wanted to see him come in the lamp's light. Is that too crude?

He had other ideas.

And I liked it when he told me. I understood what he meant and I loved that he felt the same way.

He wanted to see me as he loved me that night. That's what he said. See the flame's ravenous orange edge leap out to flicker over my skin as I moved above him, with him buried deep inside me. See the caress of soft amber rims of light reach out and touch along my face so he could see my eyes when I realized I was going to come for him and because of him ... and then, he said, to watch that moment of capitulation to his mastery of my own body's hunger for him.

That night, lit by light from his time, seemed the closest we would ever come to being able to shut out the world and imagine he'd taken me back to his own world. I loved witnessing his hold of me ... his hands on my hips ... our bodies locked together.  I watched him watch me. I watched his body as he moved beneath me. The way the dampness on our skin seemed to glow with the lamp's shifting light. How the intimacy of our body's connection was shrouded because the light didn't reach into that shadow so only we really knew the joining.

The way his lips glistened from licking them and how his mouth moved as he encouraged me. How his neck arched as he gave in to his drive to thrust into me. The sight of his nipples peeking when I said I couldn't take more. The way his biceps mounded and flexed as he moved me over him with growing abandonment. How it looked to see my small hands clutching into his magnificent shoulders and how this was the last I saw because my head dropped as I capitulated.

This place, his home for several years, would always carry the vestiges of him and me forever after. I thought about that as I caught my breath, my ear to his heart, his hand on my face so gentle. It seemed to me that nothing existed outside the circle of light in which we lay. I watched the lamp's flame and felt mesmerized by it because what it showed me most that night was that he was my world now and always. I just never knew this is how it felt when you made such promises to each other as we have done.

After he doused the lamp, he rolled back to where he'd been. He purposely pulled me back to snuggle in to his chest, and I wanted to stay awake all night just to relish the way it felt to be held like this by him. My mind drifted with thoughts of this big step ... of how we were in this together and how comforting that was at the very same time it could still shock the shit out of me.

In fact, I remember telling Uma that very thing the day before ... when we'd gone to the pub. She'd come out to the bar and I wondered why Andy didn't return but she said he was busy. We didn't say much at first, really just the bare essentials that thanks to her insight, Max had come to see me and we were back together. And then Max left to visit the men's room a little while later.

As soon as he was out of sight, Uma and I just looked at each other. I laughed, nervous and knowing she'd understand. Her first question spilled out of her ... is that a ring?

Okay, well, what she really said was not quite that sedate. ("OH MY GOD, you are wearing a ring...YOU ARE WEARING A RING? I am going to faint...")

On the other hand, I was pretty nonchalant about it all because after all I'd had all of eight days to get used to the concept. ("Shit. I know! Shit. I mean ... Jesus ... voted least likely to marry and here I am hitching up the wagon. I mean ... just ... shit.")

And the thing is, Uma's the one person who would understand. We have talked about men and marriage and white picket fences and horror and other women make it look easy. We used to wisely tell each other how little we'd ever even wanted those things as we preferred no real strings, no man binding us. Never even really considered getting in so deep with a man ... though each of us had different reasons, I realize. I just never had even thought about it; she had discarded any notion of such a life as she felt she was ill suited for it, I think.

But then the oddest thing happened a few months back. I remembered that conversation we'd had, Uma and me. It was when we both were realizing that, scary as it could be with all the uncertainties, we both had found ourselves involved with men we loved: me with Max, her with Andy. I was still adamantly not thinking of marriage. I thought she was, too. I thought that of all my friends, I could still count on her to share that viewpoint with me.

However, she had rather shocked me by saying that she had found herself wishing for some sort of "normal life" of being a wife and mother. It was Andy, of course, who had made her desire this ... but she worried that perhaps she'd left it too late in life and that perhaps Andy would have been happier with a younger woman. After that conversation, it seemed to me that I always noticed their bond. Until then, it was something I'd not really paid attention to in that specific respect: that it might be a bond leading to marriage. But from that moment on, I realized it was that kind of bond.

So just as I'd gotten used to the notion that it was going to me being the last woman standing alone in this life, then everything had shifted for me. I wondered how long some part of me had struggled with the realization that my notions of what I wanted had changed because of the way I loved Max?

When we came to the pub that day, a large part of what I thought Uma and I would toast was the fact we'd both had the ability to change ... and that we were both now in relationships that had turned out to be life-changing ... and that we both had gone from never wishing for marriage to now admiring what it meant in terms of permanence.

But, here's the thing ... when has Uma never failed but to be able to surprise me?

"We come full circle, don't we?" I had said.

"Who would have ever believed it possible? It is so good to know someone else has found happiness ... hope for us all there," she had said.

"I never could have ever imagined a day when I would have met someone who'd make me change everything at the same time he likes me just being who I am," I had mused.

And this is when I told her the other news ... that Max was moving to New Orleans. Because he wanted to make this gesture for me ... he was doing it because he had known how well it would cement within me the reality that what he sought for us to be could meld with what I was finding myself wanting with him. And she said how very unlike Max this was ... the idea that he'd bend in this particular way did at first seem rather odd but then, to me, it captured perfectly the way his romantic nature could be as uncompromising as anything else about him.

We talked about how we'd miss each other. How I'd miss the friends of the pub. How they'd miss me. We covered it with joking. She said she was going to be bereft not to have Max around to trade barbs with. I suggested Chili was a good sparring partner.

This was when I learned that apparently something radical had shifted in my time away.

She said: "I have my own sparring partner behind the bar."

I said: "Andy? How can you ever spar with a man that dear?"

Her words were terse and cold: "Very easily."

My words were flowing and confused: "No way! You were talking marriage and children ... and being open to that for the first time and Andy is so wonderful."

"Was dreaming then ... not sure we are quite in that place yet. But you know... let's keep to the main news of the day! Nothing must get in the way of this."

 "But Andy loves you so ... and he has a cute ass."

"Well, of course ... but cute ass or not, there is still a bit more to it than that."

"Wait ... what's happened? I don't like the sound of this ... how did we switch viewpoints?"

"Take no notice. We'll get by." When I gave her a look, she sighed out an angry little sigh. Then said, "He saw me with Max in the park. 'Nuff said ... he is pretty possessive underneath."

"Oh. Damn. Well, why can't you just tell him? I mean, tell him something ... that was not anything for Andy to be worried about."

"Tell him what? He won't believe me. Besides, I don't think it is really about me and Maximus, although he thinks it is."

"What is it about then?

"It's about him and Maximus ... and him and every other man I've ever known. But I can't make Andy see that. Unless he does, we're probably fucked." She tossed a bar towel around, snapping it in the air. "Oh, forget it. It's not your problem. We'll either work it out or we won't."

Whoever thought it'd be me being the dreamy-eyed one thinking everyone else should be up on my cloud with me? "Work it out? What happened to dreaming of a future?"

Whoever thought it'd be her being stone cold sober about how little good it does to expect too much in this life? "It's probably for the best anyway. I'm not sure everyone has that kind of future, you know? Karma has many faces."

Karma.

And am I a bad friend to be worried for her but also confident she will find her way? Or am I a bad friend to worry over her even while I am enjoying the aspect of embarking on this new life with this man I love as if karma was invented as a concept to explain why we ever found each other?

Max believes you have to go out and take what you want from life because it's rarely just going to fall on your plate. He has a point.

I shifted around and Max murmured something in his sleep. My eyes rose until I could see his face was tilted away from me and all I could really see was his jaw and the edge of his cheek. I shifted again until I was sitting up. It was so dark in the apartment now; just miscellaneous city lights filtered through his curtains leant illumination. I bent over him and looked at his face.

He looked so peaceful. Even Uma had noticed ... it was something she told me that day when I told her we were committed to each other in this new and permanent way. She had said he looked so happy and so relaxed. That the last time she'd seen him, he'd been wound so tight that she'd been afraid he'd explode. And now he seemed a different man, one at peace with his life.

This man who'd been through such horror and agony in his life ... I wanted to keep him safe but I couldn't. Not with what he does for a living and, besides, the thing is that things happen in this world that never make sense and not everything is in our control. But whatever peace he could find sharing a love between us that would sustain us both in bad times, this was what I could to bring to him.

He is unlike any man I've ever known. Uma said he was unlike any man ... period.

And I had said to her, "Imagine if I'd never met him? I'd have gone my whole life never really being in love."

She had said, "It's karma. You had to meet him."

I think she's right.

You know that "til death do us part" bit? I don't think that applies to Max and me. I think maybe we both have a longer time period in mind.

Forever.