You Can Let It Go [ZARRY]

Three

Harry:

The alarm went off  at 5:00 a.m., but I was already awake. Outside the huge windows of my bedroom suite, the morning was gray and drab.

I threw off  the Egyptian cotton sheets and crossed my room that was minimalist but
modern, like a five-star hotel suite. The fireplace was cold. The immense walk-in closet was nearly empty. I didn’t live here; I had my own penthouse in the city, but Dad had gotten sick, and so I moved back home to help get him situated. As soon as he was stable, I was out.

I put on workout clothes and headed through the upper floors of the east wing. My athletic shoes made no sound as I descended the long, curved staircase that led from the east wing to the marble foyer. Its twin curved down from the west wing.

In the kitchen, Ramona was there with her team preparing breakfast.

“Good morning, Mr. Harry,” she said. “The usual? Fruit, eggs, coffee, and would you like sausage or bacon?”

“Bacon,” I said without stopping. “In my room at seven.”

“Very well.”

I passed through the butler’s kitchen, the formal living room, the dining room, and the “family” living room that was just as cold and unlived-in as the formal one but for the baby grand piano in the corner.

I continued down into the basement that had been converted into a rec and workout
room.

I lifted weights at fifty reps per arm, did fifty squats with a barbell across my shoulders, three hundred crunches with the medicine ball, and then ran five miles on the tread.

At precisely 6:30 a.m., I went back upstairs to my room to shave and shower.

With steam from the running shower filling the cavernous bathroom, I drew the razor over my chin and made the mistake of making eye contact in the mirror.

A mask stared back. Green eyes, hard like rock. Brown hair in a two-hundred dollar cut short on the sides, longer at the top so that a lock fell over my forehead. Pale skin. Broad mouth. Sharp jaw. Long, straight nose. A memory rose up around me, screamed in my ear.

Pretty boy, ain’t you? Look at that face. But who’s it for, eh? You’re a ladies’ man; don’t tell me different.  You were trying to thwart nature. Spit in the face of God with all your gifts. Genetics like yours are meant to be shared. You gotta spread your seed. Put
it in a woman’s womb and let it bear fruit. Sons. A lineage. You don’t want to stray from the path nature intended, do you? Of
course not. That’s why you’re here. To set you straight. Now pick up your tool, pretty boy, and get back to work.

I flinched out of the memory and half-expected to see my breath plume with icy Alaskan air. Instead of a forest of green trees brushed with snow, the bathroom materialized around me; expensive tile and chrome. Instead of an axe in my shivering hands, there was a razor. And instead of Coach Simon screaming in my face, only my reflection stared back.

Holy shit.

I sucked in a breath through my nose and the fear retreated behind the green of my eyes. Green like the moss at Copper Lake in Alaska. Still and flat and cold.

I picked up my razor and got back to work.
I dressed in a Valentino suit of deep blue with a lighter blue silk tie and slipped on a pair of Ferragamo shoes. As I’d commanded, Ramona had one of the maids bring up my breakfast—fruit, coffee, bacon—on a silver platter and kept warm under silver domes, precisely at 7:00 a.m.

I sat at the bay window that overlooked the grounds that were still summer green, the pool not yet covered for winter. I ate the
food, hardly tasting it, and read the news on my phone.