Mr. Personality by Carol Rose

the body to make a sexual diversion sound interesting, but he couldn’t quite see her in the role of mindless anything, much less mindless sexual partner. She had too damned much character.
    His lips twisting into a mirthless smile, he acknowledged the validity of his mother’s tense, acidic opinion that girls only distracted him from his bigger goals. His first pre-pubescent crush at the age of ten had earned a powerful reaction from his mother. The cute blonde girl who lived two floors up in their building was “irrelevant.” Max remembered Susan Tucker spitting out the word as if it were coated in lemon.
    The summer sun streaming valiantly through their grimy kitchen windows, she had dished up oatmeal with an angry zeal that should have driven the nutrients from the grain.
    “ I don’t care how ‘nice’ she seems. You’re ten years old and you have high school to finish if you’re going to get into Yale next year!”
    With Max quiet at the table, Susan Tucker had gestured towards Pete, hunched silently over his bowl. “You don’t see Peter going all gaga over Jennifer Townsend. There are more important things to think of. Peter has spent the last month working his way through his summer reading list.”
    It had been there even then, the subtle sense of competition from a brother who had no real bent for high academic achievement. But the Tucker seniors had pushed him, all the same. It was a wonder Pete hadn’t hated Max when they were kids. But he hadn’t.
    Not then.
    The image of that small kitchen filled with tension made Max wonder why he’d ever felt a hunger to connect with his driven parents. He had longed for it, though. Ached as a boy to be able to bring home the award, the scholastic honor, that would finally satisfy them. Finally make everything okay.
    But Susan Tucker had died as unsatisfied as she’d been that summer morning, standing at the stove angrily making breakfast.
    “Girls just get in the way,” she’d said in her harsh voice, the faint ever-present fear behind her eyes. “There’ll be plenty of time later in your life to lose your good judgment over a blonde!”
    How right she’d been, Max conceded grimly. Several times over, it seemed, since he couldn’t deny his response to Nicole. He really didn’t need the distraction now anymore than he had when he was shooting for admission to Yale.
    Sitting in the window on the landing, he pondered. The apartment seemed quiet, just the faint clicking of keys from Nicole’s typing. Outside, the muted rumble of cars and the occasional horn sounding from the street below. Somewhere in the distance, a jackhammer cracked pavement. He fleetingly wished he could do the same to the solid lump his brain seemed to have become.
    Nothing. Nothing there.
    Maybe these ideas were hopeless. He should probably stop spinning his wheels here and try catching hold of something else. Maybe the book lay waiting, fresh and eager, if he’d sift through some other possibilities.
    Getting up, Max went back down the stairs, along the hall and into the office where Nicole worked. In the far corner, stood a filing cabinet. That must have been where his last assistant kept the wisps of story ideas he’d handed her from time to time.
    “Have you been messing around in these files?” His voice was expressionless as he rummaged through the manila folders, unable to find what he sought. It was bad enough to have his head in a jumble, order in the filing system seemed like it should be simple in comparison.
    “What?”
    “Have you been moving things around?” He looked for an “idea” file and found nothing.
    “Oh, yes,” she responded sarcastically. “That was the first thing I did when I came in this morning. I rearranged the filing system the way I like it. The alphabet is so out-dated.”
    Max grunted. Nothing under “story ideas.”
    “Listen.” Nicole watched him. “If I don’t get to interrupt you, I don’t think you should get to interrupt