PERSONALITY + Puissance

By Bob Stafford

Nick Doherty has a secret ability—so secret, in fact, he doesn’t even know it exists. Outwardly, he has it all: a prestigious career, a bevy of eager women, and he is intriguingly well-liked. What no one can imagine is his possession of two overactive amygdalae that radiate any spates of fear or anger he might have into those nearby with an amplified effect—a reverse empath, if you will. Nick’s unusual power makes him an emotional powder keg to those near him.

All his aberrant behavior is demystified in a letter bequeathed by his father, who confesses information withheld until his death about their family curse. Newly aware of his undetectable superpower, Nick exploits it to bring down his diabolic rival and systematically advance his career, until a life-altering event flips the script, and he reboots on a quest to oxygenate the lives of others on a grand scale. A humorous primer on dealing with misfortunes through dogged determination, PERSONALITY + Puissance is a thought-provoking read about relationships and self-evolution.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: May 4, 2024
• ISBN: 9781662938818

Book preview

CHAPTER I

Where Tumbleweeds Come From

Awhistle of approval caught Nick off guard when his car door opened. He’d never mastered the folksy head-turner, but then never needed it to attract attention. Unfolding his long legs from the cramped roadster, he squinted up at an oddly familiar face.

Sweet ride, boss. I’ll put you up in VIP, the face grinned, valet-speak for mo-money.

Respect the clutch, Nick cautioned, it’s older than you are.

Striding through the orange neons fluttering around the outline of its namesake, Nick entered The Monarch…such a regal name; such a dump. Nestling into a dimly lit corner of the wee beastie’s belly, he chewed on the conundrum holding his keys hostage. Andrus…Mike Andrus, amazing himself for recalling a client he’d met only briefly. Dead ringer.

What’ll it be, shug? a passing barmaid asked.

Oh, um…a black and tan; thanks.

His cell woke up; it was Mike Andrus. Being after market hours and technically the weekend, he let his call of duty wait. That was weird, he reflected on the synchronicity, thoughts can’t penetrate a skull as thick as mine. Still…Behind him, the explosion of a tray on the unforgiving concrete floor scared the metaphysics out of him. Leaping to his feet, he exchanged wild-eyes with a server who suddenly broke hell-bent for leather out the side door. Marooned amidst a morass of shattered glass and alcohol, he tried to wave down the busboy…who promptly retreated behind a table. It wasn’t the first time that sort of thing happened.

I can’t believe you’re leaving without some breezy on your hip, Steven kidded as they wrapped up the night’s revelry. Nick couldn’t deny it; the ladies kept him capering about, not that he ever wondered why he was always the designated target.

At least I wasn’t the one scared hitless all night, Nick retorted. Sometimes, getting lucky means going home alone. His wingman ignored the slight, just like he always did.

Drinking channels your inner fortune cookie, brah. I’ll catch up with you after hitting the head.

The grinding of gears and clenched teeth marked the arrival of Nick’s prized possession at the valet stand. He hid his anger; restraint his father drilled into his skull since he was a kid…not that he didn’t have a bucketful of unnamable reasons of his own. Those hovering nearby never had his father for a mentor. In an act of unfocused rage, the valet leaped from the car with exploding eyes and sacked the nearest guy for a loss, starting a chain reaction of swinging fists in the surprisingly scrappy queue.

What the hell… Steven squinted as he wandered up.

Don’t forget to tip, Nick cautioned, strapping himself in, the valets really struggle to make a living.

Never a dull moment when you’re around, Steven said, shaking his head.

On the short hop home, Nick chewed on the evening’s performance. His interactions with humanity too often reminded him of house cats. When they weren’t rubbing themselves against his leg for attention, they either had their hackles up or were unaccountably bounding off into the bushes somewhere. He didn’t understand feline impulses any better than the two-legged ilk he pretended to, only that he exercised more restraint. Who’s to say what’s normal anyway, except its perfect image…ourselves.

*****

The morning sun scratched a hole through the bedroom shade, a laser beam of provocation to Nick’s left eye. Outside, sirens raced past each other in opposite directions and a crow fell from the sky. After defeating gravity, he made his way to the bathroom to splash cold water on the slits where his eyes used to be. Bending over the sink, he was rewarded by a white hot flash eliciting a curse on humanity in general and one generous bartender in particular. He couldn’t remember why he’d let himself become a potted plant last night, but vowed by all things holy to drink less on his Friday night toots, a spurious declaration predicated on the same commitment made last Saturday. He didn’t know why he drank really…not to escape; maybe for the opposite reason, to lower his inhibitions enough for a cool sip of that ineffable, humankind connection he just couldn’t seem to plug into sober––nor through a vagina.

After a therapeutic infusion of Columbia’s finest and a toast sandwich, Nick popped two Advil and flopped into the depression of his Maverick recliner. At the stroke of ten, his zombified Saturday morning was resurrected by separation anxiety…the frantic cry of his cell waking up alone in a pair of slacks on a doorknob.

Morning, honey, Justine cooed.

I know, he capitulated to the daily phenomenon. The unseen fingers drumming at the other end of the line cued his duty.

11:30?

Noon, she countered, I have to put on my face.

Where’d you leave it? he asked.

Top down, cruising and perusing brunch options, the comfortable pair tooled around the bubble of their uptown neighborhood in search of that perfect bistro befitting their mediated palettes. Attentively admiring each other while grazing on the brunch buffet, their ardor crackled like resonating Tesla coils frothing in bottomless belinis. Retreating to his condo, the lovers dissolved in each other. Perfected, they fell asleep, cuddling like lost puppies.

It took a convenient memory for Nick to unsee Justine’s perilous eyes…dizzying pinwheels of green and blue and amber that threatened his nomadic tendencies. Twenty-eight years of detachment had sculpted him into a serial monogamist with girls on the side, flitting from one to the next like a busy bee in a spring meadow. Justine didn’t need to know about the wildflowers or his reasons for maintaining a discreet distance, a balancing act not unlike a porcupine’s dilemma in winter. Huddled together in burrows to share body heat, their quills prick each other, driving them back apart. After several painful encounters, they figure out the closest place they can hover while still sharing at least some warmth. Nick just happened to have longer quills than most. It wasn’t surprising, considering his genesis.

Beginning life as a breach birth, Nick made his grand entrance feet first, whether from bashfulness or just anxious to get a head start, no one can rightly say, but anyone who took time to notice could see he grew up in spite of his family, much as an oak takes to seed or a cuckoo tricks others into raising its young. The cuckoo grew up as sturdy as an oak, an only child, as were his brother and sister. The happiest part of his childhood were his first three years; he didn’t remember much. As he grew older, he ran away from home every day, assimilating life from benevolent, but still aseptic, strangers. Although there had been one…

Her hair was the color of the paper shell pecans littering neighborhood yards in November and her name was Ginger Gay, known by everyone as GiGi. Towering three inches over Nick and twenty-nine days smarter, she was his next-door neighbor and only friend. Evenings before supper, you usually found them doing the stupid stuff kids do that amazingly never poke out an eye. GiGi tried on Nick’s new Cub Scout kerchief on the way home from school that nightmarish afternoon, pouting because girls weren’t allowed in the den. Both failed to see the white cargo van with a long scar down its side creeping along, three minutes from an ordinary childhood.

As the van pulled alongside, a burly man with fat fingers flung open the side door and clambered out while the vehicle continued to steal forward. Nick froze for a split second, regaining his wits in time to scramble into the dark but friendly woods, fifteen feet and a drainage ditch leap away. In one of those horrific, deer-in-the-headlights, milk carton moments, GiGi forgot how to run, letting herself be scooped up and spirited away in the glare of a low winter sun. Her bloated and broken remains, wearing only a kerchief knotted tightly around her neck and a pink Powerpuff Girls sock, were found a week later at an illegal dumpsite twenty miles and two suburbs away by a man disposing of a broken washing machine under a railroad trestle. Gone…having barely ever been.

The boy knocked dutifully on his friend’s door on his way home from school for the next week. He didn’t know why…trying to restore a frayed sense of security perhaps, or maybe the collision of his small world with an atrocity defying credulity. No one ever answered the door, nor was he aware the dread his 4:00 tolling exacted on her mom at the precise time her only child disappeared forever. The boy stopped his petitions, but continued his evening vigil from the front stoop, waiting for the tomb’s screen door to open and reverse the intransigent nature of evil. Grief counseling wasn’t really an option back then; good citizens swept such tragedies under the rug and moved ruggedly forward. But it did happen. Nick remembered and mourned. GiGi’s family remembered and mourned too, moving away quietly after the funeral; no one really knew when. He replayed the brief, but vivid scenario over and over in his mind, frame by frame, a thousand times in the weeks that creaked by. He should have yelled, Run GiGi, run! He could have grabbed her hand and pulled her to safety. She would have been saved if he hadn’t been so self-absorbed…reacted a split-second faster. Coulda, shoulda, woulda…survivor’s guilt that eventually wound up over six-foot tall. Fortunately, he didn’t know the real reason for her disastrous hesitation and was just resilient enough to spring back, although mindful not to get that close again. It was just easier that way.

The following summer, the Doherty kids were handed off to their grandparents in Mentone, a sunbaked pinprick in the TX panhandle. The calico kitten Nick was tormenting one morning ran under the farmhouse. Squeezing into the pitch-dark crawlspace to recover his playmate, the boy felt his way along the cool loam towards the sound of plaintive mewing. Too far in to back out, he froze at the recommendation of a rattle. Unsure of the distance between himself and extinction, he remained catatonic, waiting for his heart to either burst free of his ribcage or danger to pass…which it did.

A granddaddy-sized rattler oozed across one mortified leg, then the other, while he scrunched his face so hard the white spots burst behind his eyes. Only then did he hear the faint, slithering nightmare that would continue to startle him awake him from the oppression of night. He’d blundered into a nest of vipers, his only shot at survival being to melt into the earth until certain rescue, every child’s assumed expectation of their caretaker. Nana called him to lunch after what seemed an eternity, but his vocal cords were severed. He wasn’t sure if snakes had ears, but couldn’t risk it.

If Nana had only been there with him, she’d have known what to do. Her derring-do every morning was his favorite amusement…herding snakes away from the porch armed with her lethal broom…go on now, scoot! He’d forgotten her warning…steer clear of the snakes under the house, little heart. They’re especially fond of pinky toes, so always wear your boots outside. Don’t expose them even a trice. He wasn’t sure what a trice was, so he tramped around everywhere in his boots, just in case. His pinky toes were protected; it was the rest of his business that concerned him right now.

Isolated three feet beneath muffled voices and creaking planks, the blackness of darkness became an ally, blinding him to the terror of flicking tongues and dead eyes. Controlling panic one breath at a time, he remembered his friend’s advice during another rough patch…everything will be fine, Nicky, even when it isn’t. You just have to wait and see. He told himself the snakes didn’t want to bite him any more than he wanted to bite them; still, there was the rustling. He wasn’t very good at praying, but he knew how to talk to GiGi. That’s when he knew he had a guardian angel. Those weren’t the sounds of slithering at all; they were the gentle beating of wings fanning away evil. Everything had worked out for her just like she’d said. Having chewed on death at the tender age of nine, he’d mastered his first lesson on faith…you can’t hear invisible wings until you believe.

Grandpa came home from the field at sundown. Sunny, his border collie, jumped out of the rusty pick-up and ran to where Nick had crawled into purgatory. The dog’s bark heralded his rescue after six hours of silent screams dissolved in tears. Although the night terrors eventually stopped after expending a body weight in sweat, secreting the emotions that saved him, never did.

Dad didn’t commiserate much with Nick’s trauma; the boy’s persistent smell of snakes didn’t hold a candle to his battle with PTSD. Dad left the room if the subject came up…actually, any conversation that turned emotional. Nick’s mom, Joanne, tried to compensate, but that passed; she wasn’t strong enough to stomach a life of detachment. Her catlike appetite permitted little past her lips except sour foods…buttermilk, sour pickles, grapefruit and yogurt lined the refrigerator door, curbing a desire for after school snacking. A lack of calories gave her tall figure a wispy elegance envied by other women, those who never suspected the requirements to sustain it.

Nick was twelve when the light flickered out of his mother’s eyes. Life-weary and secretly suffering from a gastric tumor, Joanne told Nick to have dad collect her in the park after work.

Mom, he changed the subject, I need a dollar for the field trip.

Joanne unclasped her purse and slipped her son a twenty. Everyone will be hungry later, she sighed, stop by Popeye’s and pick up a twelve piece.

Although the boy thought her request odd…they never ate fried food…children didn’t ask their parents why.

Sitting under a live oak confiscated from an unhappy squirrel, Joanne shot herself through the heart, residence of her greatest malignancy, leaving behind a foggy husband and three shellshocked children. The boy blamed his father…knowing why without ever knowing why, a wedge that grew between them like a squamous cell. Nick only discussed his mother when cornered, explaining away her death as lead poisoning, gallows humor others nodded at politely. They didn’t ask questions either, squirming over such morbid details being akin to farting during tea without a dog nearby to blame.

Nick’s weakened condition didn’t escape the attention of a certain bully, nor did he fight back when he got pushed in the dirt, disappearing into himself until the wailing stopped. Dad made a rare personal appearance that evening, lecturing his son on the importance of fighting back. He told him life would be a long series of ass-kickings if he didn’t, each one stealing a little more of his self-respect. Dad’s advice earned Nick a second shellacking, but also marked the end of his harassment. Part of the lecture gobsmacked the youngster right between his raccooned eyes…you’ll never be a man ’til you’ve committed to a cause worth dying for. Although intended as dramatic license, children take a more literal view of such things, its ferocity squeezing his testicles.

Nick took to secretly staring at his father for the next couple of weeks, wondering what dark place his dogma came from. What a father had been ill-equipped to teach a son about love, he substituted with what he was conversant in: the warrior’s code. Nick got it and never let himself be bullied again…principles do matter; selfhood must be pursued and defended when necessary; it is possible to be right and everyone else wrong. One day in particular and one day too late, Nick would understood better what his father had tried to tell him without actually telling him, a secret imparted under irreconcilable circumstances.

A disturbance in the magnetic flux subverted the cultural zeitgeist on the day Nick ascended to manhood. Cars were traded in for vehicles, brothers and sisters demoted to siblings, everyone under thirty got ink but forgot cursive, men started shaving their heads and women, their vaginas––the very word lifted from the medical dictionary for unabashed insertion into the common lexicon. It also coincided with the day Nick developed a zipper problem, his quixotic quest to siphon feelings from lovers he seemed incapable of generating himself.

He was aided in his campaign by command of a certain je ne sais quoi. Some call it animal magnetism; those without it, jealousy. His lopsided smile was like a roofie to certain females, a subgenre susceptible to moral amnesia in his presence and absolution for what invariably follows. And in that mudslide of sex, he became the most innocent of victims, the one never believing he’d done anything wrong nor given a chance to employ that natural capacity from which humankind is conceived…love.

That’s not to say he didn’t envision falling in love and everything that followed like disciples await The Rapture, an earth-shattering event regularly predicted, but incapable of being wished into existence. Procrastination never solved anything that didn’t die first, of course, and the passing parade of distractions intersecting his libido didn’t exactly instill much incentive to pursue commitments past dawn.

He rationalized his tumbleweed love life with the flaw-o-meter: the long stems of Rose…who was simultaneously carrying on a smoky affair with Marlboro Red; sweet little Suzette…who didn’t quite measure up; bodacious Joules…and her son. Doorknobs all. He didn’t recall their last names nor metabolize you can’t love someone in pieces; you love them to pieces, but then, it’s easy to be a gourmet when you’re not hungry. Intimacy with strangers was all he had. It may be called manliness, but didn’t feel that way so much. If they could all just be bundled up into one lovely package, he rhapsodized.

Lissome as a gazelle, sanguine to a fault, Justine came closest, but her inconsistent availability conflicted with his consistent needs, not that he could concede love’s primary demand…equality. He’d forgotten that empathy wasn’t a flaw, envisioning his utilitarian lifestyle as tidy as everyone else imagines their own to be, even as all the shining ethics that defined his work days descended under covers in darkness.

CHAPTER II

Taking a Powder

Sunday morning. Eight o’clock. Nick rolled over for a wake-up snuggle…and missed. A yellow glow peeked out from under the bathroom door. Good, he nodded, time to stop getting busy and get busy. He and Justine were codependent that way…workaholics who lapsed on Saturdays. Maybe that’s why they clicked…mutual willingness to forego constancy for balls-out hedonism one day a week followed by six days of recovery. She was sleeping around anyway…wherever work took her. With the launch of another cycle, it was time to dive into the old roller bag and tackle those necessary unnecessaries that kept his name anchored at the top of the company’s production reports. Although muffled by a closed door and running tap, Justine nonetheless divined that tiny ping to which all must submit.

Hand me the phone, will you, sugar? she asked, poking her head through the door. Nick fumbled her tote from the nightstand, freeing the canister hiding inside to find sanctuary. After delivering her cell, he tracked down the escape artist under the bed and popped the cap.

Whoa, he drew back. What’s all this, he asked when she emerged from facial reconstruction, remains of the dearly departed?

I’ll tell you on the way, she said, pushing him out the door.

You know I was in the bay area last week, right? she began chattering in the brisk November air.

Yeah, he acknowledged, missed you.

Missed you too, she squeezed his hand, searching those drifting blue icebergs of his. In addition to being the world’s foremost authority on foreheads, Nick reminded her of that perfect chair that arrives without assembly instructions. You might have a general idea how it all fits together, but not so much you’ll risk your tush on its stability…oh well, maybe someday; she’d just keep tightening his bolts.

Well, she said, fogging the air, "I made one last cold call in Chinatown after stopping for a noodle fix. Nick, the doctor’s office was one of those old-timey emporium looking things…a long, narrow room you’d expect to hear a muffled shriek coming from, filled with a bajillion jars and drawers. A tiny Asian lady popped up from behind the counter like a jack-in-the-box and led me to the back. I swear a jar of eyeballs followed me the whole way. Anyway, the doctor was mixin’ and fixin’ something in his workroom, decked out like a mad scientist doing the dishes. I gave my pitch and offered samples, but he told me he didn’t need anti-depressants or anti-inflammatories…doctors who dispensed them depressed and inflamed him.

"He went at it like a skid row reformer…med school didn’t teach wellness, the medical industry only cares about the sick, overprescription, the FDA…blah, blah, blah. Anyway, that lady popped up again with a pot of tea. He apologized, and I accepted, of course. You can’t share a cup of tea and stay mad a minute.

"Before I realized it, he was taking my pulse and staring into my eyes…really hard, then took a whiff of my garlic noodles. Doctors have some kind of voodoo like that, making close quarter inspections without seeming invasive. You’re overstressed, he said; eat more greens and apples, he told me, take flaxseed and avoid sugar. If I didn’t, he inferred I’d be hypertensive by dinnertime. Making a snap diagnosis like that is so unprofessional, honey; I mean, who isn’t stressed out from the relentless screed of social media and politics?"

Anyway, he gave me that canister and a plastic bottle with some foul liquid. Supposedly, they help you remember to do jumping jacks. I forgot most of his BS, but apparently the powder’s from some super old volcano and I’d be first on the block to test drive it. He asked for feedback…like I’d actually eat dirt, right? Pretty cagey, flipping my narrative to push his stuff, n’est-ce pas?

Nick shrugged. I’d like to try them, he said, waggling a finger.

Why, for Pete’s sake? she asked.

I need more mojo to keep you satisfied, he teased.

Brother, she rolled her eyes, performance anxiety is the least of your issues, papi. Be my guest.