Resonance

Chapter One

For Charles Montgomery Burns, the summer of 1926 had proven as capricious and treacherous as the waters of the North Sea. His postwar sojourn in Europe had brought him both great joy and bitter resentment. After he and Lyla had parted ways, he had roamed across Europe, looking for good times and, for the most part, finding them. His beautiful cousin, bless her heart, had been too good for him. Not in the self-deprecatory sense, but rather in the sense that she had been too good to appeal to him any longer. Yet still... she had been so beautiful, and their parting had left him with a stomach churning more wretchedly than the Spanish flu that had stricken him the year prior to their meeting.

But that was the last time his partner's failing was being too good for him.

His discovery of the exquisite decadence of Berlin nightlife acted as a salve to his wounded heart, and after a few dismal encounters with prostitutes left him feeling ever more ensconced in spiritual solitude, he sought to mine the city of its myriad offerings of giddy thrills until the yearning in his bosom was sated. He became a fixture in the audiences of cabarets, frequently flirting with the performers but never making a serious attempt to seduce them.

He had several casual flings with women and dispensed with them just as easily. He rarely made the effort to chase women, but nevertheless, they seemed to regularly fall into his lap as though he were the positive ion to her electron. Or perhaps it was the other way around.

Amid his many excursions to clubs of all sorts, he came upon a few catering to a different sort of clientele than he was accustomed to fraternizing with. One night, he stepped into Schwenkzeit, one such club populated almost entirely by men. It was not his first visit, as he had gone a couple of times in the last few months, but it was the first visit he resolved to make conversation with a fellow patron rather than keep to a corner, drinking and observing and curtly brushing off anyone who approached him.

He began the night as he had begun every night there – sitting at the bar nursing a martini, scoping out his surroundings with surreptitious glances between staring at his drink, when he spied across the room a svelte man in his early twenties with golden brown hair, cropped close to his scalp and the nape of his neck save the two long tresses of his bangs. He didn't avert his eyes fast enough, and the man took notice of Burns and smiled. Too late to look away, he maintained eye contact and flashed a roguish smile.

The man approached him and sat beside him, and Burns felt his chest quiver.

"May I buy you a drink?" said the young man in fluent German.

"Yes," he responded, also in German, albeit with an increasingly obvious American accent. "So, are you from Berlin?" The bartender brought out another martini, and the German man paid for it.

"No, Potsdam." He sipped his own drink. "And you are American?" Burns nodded. "Where in America are you from?"

"I've lived many places. The north, the south, the east, the west."

"I've seen you here a few times before. I assure you, there's no need to be shy. We Germans are not so prudish as you Americans."

"I am not shy! I am..."

"Inexperienced?"

"No. At boarding school, I had some experiences."

"I see. Tell me – what is your name?"

"Monty."

"Tell me, Monty – have you kissed a man before?"

"No, eh – what is your name?"

"Engelbert."

They sat in silence for a moment until Burns said with indignant insistence, "Well?"

"Well, what?"

Not even looking at him, Burns casually sipped his drink and said, "Aren't you going to kiss me?"

"I will now." He set Burns' martini back on the counter mid-sip and kissed him. Burns' eyes went as wide as they could go, his shoulders tensing up as he held his breath. "How did you like your first homosexual kiss?"

"It wasn't my first." He sipped his martini. "My first was much better."

"But you said –"

"I lied. But this is true: Cole Porter is better at kissing than you."

"How is this?" He kissed Burns again, this time much more passionately as he ran his hands up and down his back, sending tingles down his spine.

"Better."

"Let me take you home, and I will show you how much better I can do." Seeing the uncertainty in Burns' eyes, he said, "I want you, Monty."

"Let's go." With that, they walked out of the establishment and to Engelbert's flat for the first of many trysts.

"Möchten Sie gerne etwas trinken?"

"Huh?" He rubbed his eyes. He had fallen asleep on a recreational chair on the luxury ocean liner deck again, dreaming of his nights in Berlin. Those wonderful, miserable nights. He blinked his eyes open and shut a few times, then turned to the ship steward and said, "Ich hätte gern einen Cognak."

"Sonst noch etwas?"

"Nein, nein." As he waved him away, he lifted up to his face the book he'd left open against his chest. The Wealth of Nations. Surely, it was no more interesting a tale than the wealth of Burns, but his grandfather had always badgered him to study economics and had often lambasted him for his improvidence, of which his years gallivanting about Europe, spending but not earning, leading the life of the idle rich, was a prime example. If he demonstrated a keen understanding of capitalistic principles, surely he would regain some esteem in his grandfather's eyes.

It was unlike him to postpone a task he'd set for himself, but the events of the last few years had preoccupied his attention.

Berühr mich.

Yes. I'll touch you.

It had been so good. Why was it that all the best fruit was destined to rot?

Gib mir das Geld, und ich werde niemand sagen.

Take it. You've already taken everything from me that mattered. What's a thousand dollars?

He shut his eyes again, straining to keep a tear from escaping. Damn you, Engelbert. Damn you, Germany. Damn you, Lyla. Damn you, France. Damn you, futile dreams of sweet romance.

No. Monty Burns would follow in his grandfather's steps and be a great tycoon, not some idle, empty-headed elite chasing childish dreams of love. He was thirty-two years old, for heaven's sake – much too old to lead such a frivolous lifestyle. He stuck his nose back in Wealth of Nations and read until he finished twelve hours later.

When the ship docked in New York Harbor the next morning and he traversed the gangway from ship to shore, he stopped briefly, removed a sepia-toned photograph of Engelbert from his jacket pocket, and tore it up, letting the pieces fall to the waters below as a final farewell to his six years of travel abroad.