The Lovers of David Maxime

He never told me his name or anything. It was just a one time thing. I wanted to do it, but he refused for a while until he finally took me to a hotel. It was great."

"I had a huge crush on him, so I took an initiative. If I hadn't, he wouldn't even have looked at me. It's like nobody else ever existed for him."

"I wanted to hook up with him. I saw him everyday on this road, jogging early in the morning. He was hot, like those mysterious male leads from Sylvia Day novels, the ones who can make you scream. So I approached him first."

All the women told almost the same things. Three different women from three different backgrounds, age group and lifestyle—a young girl in her late teens, a successful lawyer in her late thirties, a shy librarian in her twenties—all of them had almost same experience.

He was aloof in general, but great at bed. He was aggressive, demanding, and he never called back. The differences were minor. The young woman who was going through her notes highlighted some parts, reread them and finally shook her head out of disappointment.

None of these experiences were going to help her. After reading the notes for one last time, she tore the page and threw it in the dustbin.

She stood in front of the dresser and chose a pretty red dress for herself.

She needed some lairs of concealer, foundation, powder, highlighter and many more cosmetics to hide the paleness of her face. The life was draining from her skin and she had to go through great measures to keep it hidden. Done with the makeup, she checked herself once again, picked a beige tote bag and a small device to record the conversation she was going to have next.

This man was in his sixties, and he had come out a couple of years back. He wore a colourful jacket and a warm smile. "You can even record me speaking. Now that I have accepted who I am, I am afraid of nothing else."

"So how did you meet him?"

"It was a bar. I was drinking alone and eyeing someone; I wanted to talk to him but had no courage to do so. I felt someone watching me as well. It was him, sitting in a corner, almost invisible. He joined me himself. It was wonderful, how the most beautiful man in the bar managed to stay unnoticed for so long.

He said to me, 'Don't you think you should try to speak at least for once?'

He spent the evening with me and took me to his apartment. That was the first time I slept with a man. It went on for the next month, we would meet, talk on different topics, and then sleep on each other's arms. That was the happiest time of my life, but when I told him that he said, 'You will find happiness when you find the one for you.' He was right."

"You had him only for a month?" the woman asked him. Her eyes were fixated on the lens of her video camera.

"He was in town for just a month. He had some business to take care of. I was lucky that he spent that one month with me."

"And he just left, just like that?"

"Of course not, he had informed me his departing date and time, I helped him even packing. I had asked him to stay in touch, or even about trying a long distance relationship. He told me that he was not the person I needed. He said, 'I will remember this time with you Joshua, even though it is difficult for me to remember. If in future you see me, and not recognize you, please forgive me. I will probably forget everything about you in the next two months. I will remember the hot chocolate you made for me, and the things you told me about yourself, the stories you told me.' We said goodbyes to each other properly. I even saw him off in the airport."

"What stories?"

"Oh, they were the stories from the Greek mythology. I studied the classics in college."

The next person she met was a woman in her late forties. She worked as a teacher during the day and online novelist during the night. She wrote under the penname, Desdemona.

"I was struggling at my workplace those days because of a colleague. Nobody talked about sexual harassment at workplace that time, not as openly as the younger generation does now. One day on my way home, I felt completely broken. I sat down on the sidewalks and started crying. That was when he found me. I like to think, God sent him to be my savior.

I was suspicious of his motives at first, for obvious reasons. I had started to lose my faith on men. Then one day I saw him with his friend, Summer. He was so caring towards her, so much fun and energetic, and so damn respectful that it brought tears in my eyes. Why couldn't I find someone like him? It was Summer who became my friend first.

Soon we had become good friends. He was very handsome, had a charm that worked on both men and women, but what I noticed was his knowledge of art and literature.

Summer was a little weird at times, but she was a genuine person. One day I told them the reason of my depressive disorder. He said dramatically, 'Fear not, milady. We will protect you.' God knows what they did, but the next Monday when I reached school the colleague came to apologize to me. Turned out, many women had complained against him around the same time. He had resigned to save his face."

"That was it? He resigned and was off the hook. Where is the justice in that?" the young woman frowned.

"There was no justice for such things in workplace, not at that time. Nobody even acknowledged the fact that man could harass his female colleagues. If you are not a sport, you should stay at home and become an obedient housewife. That was not my cup of tea, because my preference was different."

The young woman looked startled. "What do you mean a different preference? You dated this man, right?" She showed him a photograph of the man she had been researching, and added, "He mostly calls himself David."

"No, I was just a friend to him. Pretty close friend, but not a girlfriend. He brought me solution of one of the biggest problems I was facing those days, helped me recover from my depression, helped me return to a happy and healthy life, but it was all done as a friend. I dated Summer, not him."

The woman now asked the same question he had asked Joshua. "Did you ever notice something strange about him? Something good or bad or anything in general?"

Since Dorothy was his friend and not a girlfriend, she hoped for a different response. She recalled what Joshua had said, "He couldn't sleep at nights. When he forced himself somehow, he had nightmares. In his sleep, he would say the same things, like-- 'Who am I? Don you love me?'. Most of the nights, I found him sleepless. It was not a disease; he just didn't need to sleep." This response matched with that of the playwright. He never slept at night. The man was certain that David was an insomniac.

To her delight, Dorothy added to the information. 'I never saw him getting sick. It was like his body was created with precision, adding all the great features but not the diseases. It must feel great to be that healthy, yes?"

The young woman thought, 'No aging, not falling sick, not needing to sleep, yeah it must feel great.'

The last person she met was from a real estate agency. He was just an administrator who agreed to help her with some information in exchange of a hefty amount.

"Here, his name is registered her as David Maxime. He brought two properties in this city in the interval of ten years. He then rented them out. The arrangement is still on. We take care of everything because we see him rarely. Everything is done online. If there is any delay in the payment or legal issue, he or his son calls us to resort it. That is all I know."

"Can you give me the address of those two properties?" the woman asked.

"Sorry, but I cannot do that. Also, if you are looking for Mr. Maxime, then the addresses will hot help you. He has never visited the properties himself. I would rather suggest you to meet his niece, Miss Summer, or his friend Thomas Byrne. I can give you their address."

She had met Thomas Byrne once before making a silly excuse. The man was intimidating, probably a man for hire and dealing with him was out of her league. She could meet with Miss Summer, use her feminine traits and bring out some information. Better yet, she could get his current information.

our she could meet his son, about whom she was completely unaware of until now. She collected all the addresses.

She made a plan. Summer would not e easy either, so it was just better to watch her for a while, instead of speaking to her directly. She never enjoyed wasting time. However, she had very little time left.

She could not afford that kind of time or energy. If only she could find a way to seek this man, without alerting anyone else, especially Summer, Ethan Maxime, or Thomas Byrne.

She fished out a small visiting card from her purse. It was a card given to him by a very nice looking old man. He had the vibe of a fun and sweet grandfather, but turned out he was something else.

Until now, she could not seek help of a private detective because the information about David Maxime was sensitive and was meant to be a secret. But now she just needed his contact details, surely she could contact the detective for this purpose?

After thinking and overthinking for one whole day, she made the call. She made sure that just wanted his, or his son's current address and contact details, nothing else. Why? She was looking for him because he had stolen something valuable from him.