Shalom Aranas

  The Alpha Heartburn Anna Hoover began her day checking emails for her boss, CEO of the advertising company Jamieson and found it unusual that there were none except for one which had no message in it. She raised her eyeglasses and peered again. That was strange. She noted to have the technical team to check on this later on. No way should this happen on her watch. Not while she was the secretary of the most notable advertising agency of their generation with international and top- tiered clientele. Her boss, Hark Jamieson, whose real name she could never know having come from an old Mexican lineage, some said, was the epitome of meticulousness and would have her fired as soon as he found her lacking in wits to keep up with work for him. Everybody knew Hark Jamieson and yet he was also the most reclusive of CEOs in America, They said he dated women but never committed to any of them which made him a most elusive bachelor in the country today. What else he did with his time, nobody knew. He came into the office, tall, wide hipped, foreign looking in a Hispanic way with smooth mahogany skin with penetrating eyes which seemed to see into the depth of one’s soul, or just plain as though he could strip you with his eyes. All the women in the company swooned over him when he passed in his dark coat suit. Always a dapper man with nary a smile for anyone but was most courteous to everyone. He was most creative and during board meetings could inspire anyone to speak up their true nature so that the product they were building could rise up to be most excellent. A true alpha man, if anyone has ever found one. He was a rare breed indeed in a world of thinkers or gamma people. He had the instincts of a leader and yet was never to be the one to relinquish his secret of how he could inspire confidence in those shy, quiet gamma people. Soon, the phone started ringing and Anna sighed. Finally, normalcy and decided to answer the phone before calling the tech. department. A heavy, dark camouflaged voice with the crackling of static in it spoke before she could speak. Listen up, we have your boss’s mother and if he doesn’t come up with 30 million dollars at the end of the week, we kill her. Click. Anna froze with the phone in her hand. She felt as though her carefully dyed red hair turned white. She raised her head and looked at the glass corner office of her CEO, opposite hers and he looked back. He seemed to immediately know something was wrong.                                                             *** At night, he would feel his body change into an alpha werewolf. He would roam the desert near Los Angeles, not in search of prey but just to flex his muscles and run in freedom at the empty, desolate landscape that was his and his alone. Sometimes, he would bring a woman to his bachelor’s pad atop a plush condominium and play with her fancies. She imagined being with him forever but when the time came for him to transform, he would leave their bed and off he would go to find his liberation, He had long given up his pack. They were sissies who did not understand his ways. They were corrupt as humans and as beasts. Hark Jamieson aka La Lobo helped the government find the route of the Sinaloan drug cartel and blocked it from entering American soil. This did not do well with his pack and so they vowed revenge. There was a skirmish and blood was let down in Sinaloan soil where La Lobo was born. The pack thought he betrayed his own countrymen. They trusted him to become the leader of their pack being an alpha male born from a drug lord who separated from his mother when he was born and gave birth to him alone in an old, hospital. To save herself and her son from the drug lord who wanted them killed, his mother boarded a ship to America and stayed with her friend, Yolanda, in Los Angeles. Raised and bred in LA, they used to live in the old, poor Hispanic quarters where he realized he was taller, stronger and yet in his quiet ways found creativity in his soul. He was good in drawing and longed to be a rich engineer someday. However, time proved he was better off as an advertising man. He was good at his pitches in his first few years as a prodigy of big ad companies but eventually, ventured on his own and created the most successful advertising agency of his time. Not only that, he decided to expand and bought other businesses but kept to his work in the ad agency which lurched in his blood. It was symmetrical to his nature as a werewolf at night, creating beautiful ads for the most prominent clients during the day. His mother lived with him in his house. He gave her flowers and cacao chocolates during weekends. It was a good life for both him and his mother that he never wanted it any other way. Her mother was not a nagual but his father was. They say, he was killed too, as drug lords were eventually killed by competition in the pack.                                                                         *** He returned home immediately after being told about the phone message. He never looked at his secretary in any other light before today. But after they exchanged looks, he felt as though he had to bring her into the picture and had her help him sort things out. The police would need a statement from her. Anna Hoover had entered the ad agency as a temp but was quickly transferred as his secretary when the need arose for someone who had competencies in computers. She was great and fast troubleshooter and had a great voice for answering personal calls for the CEO. Also, she was young enough to be ambitious to know how to handle the rigors of the advertising agency. She was a gamma herself, very artistic and with a philosophical bent all on her own. The HR trusted her to do a great job at being a secretary.                                                             *** Hark brought her home with him. His home was palatial but cold and remote as though the owner did not really bother much with it except for parties or as a repository of his treasures. Hark told Anna to wait with him in his office. Inside his office Hark opened the blinds, made her sit near the bookshelves and he himself sat before his main desk pondering about what to do next. Anna was afraid to watch him in his quiet study. And so, she looked up at the assortment of books and tried to find the alpha man by the books he read. She was, after all, a gamma girl, given to thinking and lived through the vicariousness of books rather than being like his boss who seemed to relish an adventure after hours of work at the office. His muscles rippled through his polo shirt now that he removed his coat. She could see a tuft of hair on his chest but looked away as thought she had seen too much. Hark thought about his mother. How scared she must be when they pulled her in the middle of the day or night and transported from her comfortable life. She was already frail and he worried about her health being with the Sinaloans. He knew it was them, it was their signature work all over the incident. Soon, the police arrived and a throng of press people among them. Word leaked before he could staunch it in his office where the word must have begun. He felt it didn’t come from this woman, his secretary a Miss Anna Hoover. Miss Anna, he called her. Hark began pacing the floor of his study like a restless wolf and then walked towards the window facing the front of the house and the people waiting for him to give a statement. “Okay, let’s get the people in.” Anna stood up and opened the door.                                                                         *** Soon the study was filled with people. journalists, police, NBI, forensics. They were prepared to go through the whole house for clues as to what happened. Hark left with them telling Anna to supervise around the house. “Yes sir.” She agreed and when he left she ordered carafes of coffee to be distributed about the study. Television cables fissured about the carpeted floor and the area where Anna and Hark were intimately alone now had become a place not unlike a circus. To take a breather, Anna chose to go to the backyard where there was a rose garden. It was a gift of Hark’s mother to her son. It was the only place in the house that was filled with warmth and love. It used to be that Hark’s mother who tended the garden, until now. She was assisted by a wizened old gardener who was from Sinaloa himself and whom Hark hired to escape the horrors of the town that was now fraught with so much violence. It was said that his whole family was almost killed by the squadrons of drug lords if Hark did not intervene and had the family brought to America. All these, Anna learned quickly from helpers around the house who whispered stories about their master. She stepped down the garden and overheard a conversation between the gardener and what she recognized as that of her boss Hark. “It is the seer in the desert. Only he can find your mother in time.” “But how?” Hark asked. “The desert is vast and empty. Where shall I find him?” The gardener sighed and laughed. “It isn’t you who will find the seer. It is the seer who shall find you.” He laughed again. A deep throaty laughter which sounded like sandpaper on wood. “Go to the desert with a pure heart and you will see, he shall appear. He only appears to the purest of alphas of your own kind.” Of your own kind? Anna wondered about this What on earth’s sake did that even mean. She asked herself not understanding this exchange between gardener and his master. It was as though the great alpha were being humble before the gardener this time, at this hour, asking for answers. And what about the desert? What was in the desert but sand and sky? And who was the seer? As though, Hark could feel her presence, he looked past the bushes and found her. His eyes glowed a deep red flash of light, finding her behind a rose bush. He seemed his usual brash self then. She stood up and straightened herself. “I’m sorry sir but the police need you inside to answer some questions and to give a statement to the press.” Anna spoke as though she heard nothing and that she happened to pass by. “I’ll be there in a minute. Tell them to wait. I have some important business to attend to.” Anna left in a haste, feeling caught in a very important between gardener and his master, the great Hark Jamieson. What did she really know about him? Nothing much really except for the façade he created and the aura of compact masculinity only reserved for alpha males of her time. She hasn’t met much but during meetings with fellow CEOs she could tell, he stood out among the heads of companies. For one thing, he was very good-looking, she thought with a slight blush rushing up to her face but realized too that she wasn’t alone in thinking this. Soon, Hark was back inside the house to answer questions from the press and the police. He was courteous and honest. He left his mother this morning at her room and she seemed alright. Whoever did this shall be punished by the full brunt of the law, he promised as much as the police did but with Hark, a pulse throbbed in his neck which meant he was repressing a thought to go past law and take matters into his own hands for time was an element here and every minute counted considering his mother was old and in ailing health. My God, Ana thought, his mother could die before Hark could save her from the Sinaloans.                                                             *** “I have to go to desert, wanna come with me?” Asked the great alpha Hark Jamieson. Before she could calculate the odds of her getting hurt in the process of saving his mother, she felt she’d like to be of help to this man find his mother in time before she died in the hands of the cruel Sinaloans. He was the one who explained about the bad Sinaloans during their drive towards the desert. “I think you know more about me now.” He insinuated. “Back in the rose garden?” He referred to having caught her listening to his conversation with the gardener. “Yes, but who is this seer you are searching for?” “Well as our gardener Julio said, he could be anywhere and shall find me so I bought a few beers, two folding chairs and, well, we wait. If by sundown, the seer hasn’t made contact, we go find the seer ourselves.” “I don’t understand.  Is the seer some kind of, well, magic man?” Anna asked with trepidation and care because one thing she was, she was born and bred in New York and was never raised to believe the tooth fairy or Santa Clause existing after age eight. “Don’t worry about that. He’ll come find us and you’ll see.” Hark replied and laughed. “Magic man, haha.” They drove a big black pick up truck and drove through the interstates. After awhile the city ebbed into the brown sands of the Mojave Desert. Anna’s has seen the raw part of the desert before but not in the company of Hark Jamieson who drove the truck as though he couldn’t get to the desert in a helicopter. His arms looked tough and masculine maneuvering the wheel of the truck. It was mottled with hair which she found disconcertingly sexy. Anna herself wore clothes provided by the household from nearby shops in their haste to go on this trip which not even the police and most especially the press had any idea about. If they knew what they were to do, they would have been considered lunatics, she assumed and went along with the secrecy. She wore a pair of khaki shorts and a sheer sleeveless black blouse. Hark looked relaxed also in khaki shorts and a polo shirt. In the desert he seemed to be in his elements. They opened the window and the wind whipped his dark hair roguishly about his hard-edged face.                                                             *** They spent the early part of the night seated in the folding chairs Hark had brought at the back of his pic up truck. He raised his eyes to the night stars and pointed the different constellations to Anna whose eyes almost scintillated with amazement at having Hark teaching her these things. He asked her about her family and how she came to be in Los Angeles. She answered, it was the sun and lifestyle that brought her there. It was different from the city life and so the ease of living here and its modernity combined to have a fabulous effect on her. It was something different from the way she grew up. He kept prodding her for her life story but would not give more about himself the way she was telling him about herself. He seemed very interested in her life which made her feel self- conscious but very much alive and excited about being with him. There was something almost sad or lonely about him. He seemed shy, almost. As though there was something different about him that separated him from the human race. It was just a feeling but it was so strong and when she felt he was feeling her know this, he pulled back and once again looked at the stars as he swigged a bottle of beer. She sipped her beer and regarded him. As in really regarded her boss. What was it about him that made him so different? An alpha male, she was certain of that. But what more? He had a secret behind him, she was certain and was determined to know. Her determination wasn’t rooted in knowing over everyone else on the planet who would want to know Hark Jamieson of Jamieson Industries. It was kind of a tender feeling of one who wanted to understand him so that he would not be so alone, as she felt he was. Anna was certain though, that she would never allow herself to be one of his string of women. She wanted to be his friend. Yes, it was easy to be attracted to him. Who wouldn’t be attracted to an alpha male. She was not immune to his irresistible charm. But she wanted to be different. And so, when he finished his beer he held out his hand and she held out hers and fought the feeling of being lured to his lair. His animal attraction was very strong and she mused about this. Suddenly, she was on his lap and they were kissing like fools. Her eyeglasses were removed, her hair fell from a bun into trails behind her back. Her shirt came off and he was unlocking her bra. She wanted to comfort him and felt she was, truly and not just a passing fancy for the night. Here was a man losing his mind finding his mother through the oddest of ways and she wanted to care for him. He kissed her mouth and his hand rubber her naked back. They made love on the soft sands.                                                             ***