The Seducers

by Martin Shepard

  The Seducers

  Martin Shepard

  New York

  for charlie and grace

  I. The Whole Truth

  1

  She alighted from the northbound bus on Eighty-second Street and Third Avenue. It was one of those muggy, clothes-clinging, perspiring, weekday New York mornings in mid-July. The Orange Julius stand was doing a brisk business in soft drinks, some older Hungarian ladies were fanning themselves as they sat before their opened windows, and two shirtless young Puerto Rican garbage men—muttering in Spanish—hefted refuse into a truck in front of the Tik-Tak Bar and Grill.

  She wore a short wraparound patchwork skirt, a beige tank top, sandals, and carried a worn canvas shoulder bag whose color, originally white, presently defied description. Her age was less describable. Twenty-five? Thirty? Thirty-five? It was hard to tell. What was incontestable was her attractiveness; her hair was long and straight, her skin pale white from having spent most days indoors, and her legs nicely sculptured. An erect posture and purposeful way of walking made her seem taller than five feet four inches.

  By staying in the middle of the block and rapidly moving her gray eyes from side to side, she managed to avoid the gaze of those few passing men or women who may have wanted more intimate contact. The sanitation men watched her pass and winked appreciatively at one another, but her impersonality along with the high humidity caused that to be the most public display of attention she received.

  At the corner of Eighty-third Street she turned to her left and waited for the light to change. She looked at her watch. It was ten-fifty. A clicking sounded inside the traffic post, an amber light flashed on Third Avenue, and buses, trucks, cabs and private cars came slowly and noisily to a halt. On red, a crowd of half a dozen crossed westward, she in the midst of them. Then she headed south again, past two store fronts, and idly looked at the fashions in the window of Grace’s Thrift Shop.

  She opened her bag with a tense motion, took out a half-empty pack of Marlboro’s and matches, put a cigarette to her lips and lit it. Inhaling, she replaced the pack and matches in the bag and again looked at the watch she wore on her left wrist. Ten fifty-four. Then she glanced at her right hand. The thumb and forefinger stained with nicotine held the cigarette. Her nails were bitten off, and there were bruise marks that resulted from uncertain hammering while hanging some prints in her apartment one week earlier. An involuntary twitch flashed across the left side of her face and her teeth clenched as she looked away. She took another long, deep drag and again headed north.

  On Eighty-third Street she turned toward Lexington Avenue. After ten paces, the atmosphere was markedly transformed. The litter, the shops, the crowds and the traffic of Third Avenue gave way to a tree-lined block where road congestion was at a minimum, refuse was neatly canned, and fashionably dressed white people occasionally entered and left the brownstones that occupied both sides of the street.

  At precisely eleven o’clock she stood in front of just such a house numbered 164. She stepped down three steps to the left of the main stairway, reached into her bag once more and took out an atomizer of inexpensive perfume which she sprayed, furtively, about her wrists and neck. Ringing the buzzer outside the door, she heard an answering click and entered.

  A man in his early forties, half a foot taller than she, stood just inside the air-conditioned vestibule. He, too, was sandaled, wore impeccably tailored blue jeans, a yellow cotton sports shirt, and a gold-fisted figa necklace. Tanned from weekends at his East Hampton summer home, trim from year-round jogging, tennis and careful dieting, he smiled as their eyes met. He was clean-shaven, had pale blue eyes, long if receding sandy colored hair, a full nose, large soft lips, and a rather underdeveloped chin. If she looked like a frightened girl who uncertainly pretended to be a woman, his manner appeared to be that of a mother’s child who was somewhat more familiar with the role of professional man.

  He nodded, she mumbled a “Hi” while looking at her feet, and moved past him toward the door opposite the entrance—past the soft brown leather couch on the left wall and the matching chairs on the right. When she paused, abruptly, to grind out her cigarette in the ashtray that lay on his coffee table he almost walked into her but caught himself in time. She glanced at the periodicals that rested there: Newsweek, The New York Review of Books, The Village Voice, Esquire, Vogue, The New Republic. That done, she straightened up and entered the innermost room. He followed and closed the door.

  It was cool, quiet and pleasing to the eye; rosewood furniture and a deep-pile golden carpet, plants that hung from pots, sprawled from costly ceramic tubs, greens and browns with occasional dashes of blue and red that invited one to be at ease. An original de Kooning nude dominated one wall, Papuan tribal masks another, shelves of books a third, and the fourth consisted of sliding glass doors that led to a walled and private garden.

  She turned and faced him, looking at him now without hesitation, and spoke.

  “I still want to go to bed with you.”

  She put down her bag, took a step toward him, then another, and her body was against his. Burying her head between his shoulders and his cheek, her arms reached out behind his neck. She stood on tiptoes, thrust her pelvis against his, and began a slow, undulating movement that started in her hips and spread to include the two of them. It was like dancing in the mid-fifties, except for the lack of music and the stationary feet.

  His touch, formal and tentative at first, grew more certain as the moments passed and the swaying motion took hold. Aroused, now, he lifted her chin and kissed her tenderly. Stepping back momentarily, their lips still connected, he undid the buttons on his shirt, the heavy brass buckle of his belt, the snap and zipper of his trousers and stepped out of them, kicking his sandals aside. As he undressed, she unfastened her skirt and removed her black lace bikinis.

  Their mouths parted and their hips came together again. She took off her T-shirt and pulled him toward the floor. Entwining his legs in hers, they rolled from side to side, tan flesh on white. He was soft and gentle, she determined and direct. He tried to disengage himself from her; tried to tease and play and satisfy her before his passion spent itself. Leaning above her he sucked upon each breast and then began to run his tongue down her belly and toward her thighs. But she stopped him, pulled his face toward hers, parted her legs, and led him into her. She was clutching at his back, breathing deeply and sighing softly; it was more than he could endure and with a high, wrenching cry crescendoing from deep in his belly, he came.

  Dr. Jonas Lippman, psychoanalyst, had just made love to a patient for the first time.

  2

  Jonas lifted the two cases of Pouilly-Fuissé with care and placed them in the trunk of the sedan. Next came Phoebe’s blender and wok, two suitcases filled with the remainder of her summer wardrobe, along with Liza’s portable phonograph, record collection, and Polaroid camera. On closing the lid, he noticed a chip in the paint. Frowning, he went to the glove compartment, took out the touch-up, shook it well, and dabbed a bit of the forest green color along the raw edge. He stepped back a foot, decided the addition was unnoticeable, and was momentarily transfixed by the simple elegance of the car. He swung the garage doors open, entered the automobile, inhaled the smell of leather, pulled out into the street, and rapidly pressed the horn rim twice.

  Liza came out first carrying Tulips, her Manx cat, in one hand and a Raggedy Ann doll in the other. She was such a funny child, he thought, watching her with amusement and delight as she closed the garage doors. Turning, their eyes met, and she broke into a big, toothy grin as she headed toward the car. Wide-eyed and pigtailed, peering through her glasses, breasts budding on her four feet ten inch tiny thirteen-year-old frame, she was seen by him alternately as someone’s opinionated grandmo
ther, a wise old owl, and a shallow-valued adolescent consumer whose major interests were her wardrobe and a filmland sense of style.

  He sounded the horn again. A moment later Phoebe came through the front door. She was a tall woman, nearly his own height, her dark hair smartly cut, her movements graceful from years of studying dance, and her stillnesses artfully posed. They would be celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary on Labor Day and despite the years of familiarity she still maintained her fascination for him. He watched her descend the stone stairway, pictured the nearly flawless form that filled her tie-dyed blouse and Saint Tropez jeans, but failed to see the pursing of her lips and the narrowing of her eyes.

  “It drives me mad,” she tartly said as she entered the car, “to have you honk like that.”

  It was not the first time she had told him this, yet his eagerness to escape the city streets before the weekend traffic began caused a not untypical lapse of memory.

  “Sorry.” He took a deep breath, turned the ignition on, and pulled the Mercedes 450 SE out onto the road.

  He turned left on Lexington Avenue, left again on Eighty-second Street and made a final left turn on Third Avenue, without having to stop. Briefly flooring the accelerator, Jonas pulled between two trucks, swerved around a bus, and was the lead car up Third Avenue, timing his throttle to the staggered lights. Phoebe said nothing, but continued to stare straight ahead, her face subtly registering her mounting displeasure. A cleaner’s van pulled in front of them as they reached Ninetieth Street.

  “Pass that car, Daddy,” squealed Liza, her body bent forward in the rear seat. He gunned the engine.

  “I’d rather we get there late than not at all. It’s no fun for me when you drive so speedily,” Phoebe added.

  “Oh, Mom,” sighed Liza. “Daddy’s a safe driver. He’s never had an accident.”

  “That’s the trouble. If he did have one he’d be more cautious, being as fussy as he is about the car.”

  Jonas eased off the pedal, moved to the right lane, turned east on Ninety-sixth Street and headed toward the FDR Drive. They hit their first red light on Second Avenue. He looked at the clock. Twelve forty-nine. With luck, they’d be out at the house by three. He could not understand Phoebe’s ill humor. Would he be irritable if he were beginning his summer vacation today? Not at all. If it were possible he would gladly have changed places with her.

  The light turned green and his reverie was broken.

  “Put on the air conditioner, Dad,” Liza piped. Standing on Ninety-sixth and Second Avenue made them all aware of the still, humid, oppressively hot weather. Jonas closed the windows and threw the air-cooling switch, felt its chill as they passed First Avenue, went through the underpass, turned left, and entered the Drive.

  “Any other requests?” he asked, turning his head and looking back at her.

  “Yeah. Some music.”

  He pressed another button. The sounds of Steppenwolf cascaded from the Blaupunkt. And he was back in his reminiscences. He thought of his need for Phoebe—his real pleasure when she smiled and the tightness in his belly and the tension in his jaw when she scowled. Like now. And like always, when she cut herself off from him, he pretended a nonchalance that he almost convinced himself he felt.

  He stopped to pay the toll at the Triboro Bridge. As he pulled away from the gate house, he turned and asked her:

  “Something bothering you?”

  “No. Should there be?” she answered curtly, still looking through the windshield and avoiding his sideways glance.

  “You seem irritated with me,” he continued in a soft and solicitous voice.

  In the back, Liza rolled her eyes heavenward, lifted a book on horses from the seat, heaved a sigh of boredom, and began reading. Phoebe said nothing. Jonas reached out to touch her.

  “Let’s be friends,” he asked. She waited, letting his hand hang aimlessly in midair above the tray between the bucket seats until, feeling foolish, he pulled it back and placed it on the wheel.

  “Of course we’re friends,” she finally said. “Does that mean I’ve always got to smile? Sometimes I think your work as a psychiatrist has affected you. You’re so damned oversensitive to the slightest thing.”

  What did she want? Was he expected to entreat, to beseech, to apologize again for blowing a horn? Would that restore her affection? And if it did, would the indignity of begging for her favor do anything but erode his own self-respect? He decided, finally, to abandon attempts at further conversation. Time would heal this breach of contact, he mused, as the automobile sped along the Grand Central Parkway.

  “Can you stop the car soon? I have to go to the bathroom,” Liza commanded.

  “Can’t it wait?” Jonas grumbled, resenting both having to stop and having his daughter’s words intrude upon his thoughts.

  “Not very long,” she replied, “unless you want me to wet the carpeting.”

  “Didn’t you go before we left the house?” he asked, taking the exit that led to the Long Island Expressway.

  “Sometimes, Father, your bladder fills up whether it’s convenient or not,” she answered huffily.

  He had already decided to stay on the service road and stop at the first gas station he saw when Phoebe interjected.

  “For God’s sake. Stop the car. If she has to go, she has to go.”

  Jonas pulled into a Mobil station, got out, slammed the door shut, and asked the attendant to fill the tank as Liza went to the restroom. He walked inside the stationhouse, took three quarters out of his pocket, placed them in the vending machine, and selected a pack of mentholated cigarettes. He tore the pack open, slammed it against the side of the machine, grabbed at the protruding end of one butt, placed it between his teeth, and lit it. Inhaling deeply, he walked back to the Mercedes, paid his bill, and again took his seat behind the wheel.

  “Must you smoke in the car?” Phoebe asked, staring at him briefly.

  “Yes,” he answered, knowing smoke bothered her, “I must.”

  Liza came out of the ladies’ room. Jonas puffed twice on his cigarette. When she entered the car he said, crisply:

  “No more stops until we’re out in the Springs.”

  He turned the starter key, stepped on the gas, put the car in gear, pulled swiftly away from the pump and was soon on the Expressway. If nothing else, the strained atmosphere ensured that he would be left to his own reflections. Of what? Of the unfairness of it all. If anyone had a right to be grumpy it was he. Why? Because after the weekend he had to go back to the city alone and listen to people talk about problems when he’d rather be out on the beach or piloting his boat. And because he’d have to sleep alone for four nights.

  It was not his idea to have Phoebe go to the Hamptons before him, but hers. “It’s too hot in New York,” she said. “And besides which, Liza’s friends are all away. She has nothing to do and is driving me crazy. At least in the Springs she won’t be underfoot all the time.”

  “What will I do without you?” he asked in truth and jest.

  “Imagine a grown man asking that,” she countered in a tone that left him uncertain. Was it a mischievous conspiratorial suggestion? Or was it a put-down? He could think of no sophisticated arguments to oppose the move and so acceded.

  He looked at the instrument panel. The clock registered one fifty-five. His speed was a constant eighty as they passed the Nassau–Suffolk County border, but his mind raced beyond measurable limits. He hoped that Phoebe’s iciness toward him thawed, thought of his return to work in three days, and knew that he had another eleven A.M. appointment with Arlene on Monday.

  Arlene. Every Monday and Wednesday at eleven. He had been seeing her now for five months. Frightened, lovely, frigid, bright, humorless, and lonely, she posed prior experiences and habits had led her to. The threat? She had undermined his standard operating procedures.

  He looked in the rear-view mirror. Liza was dozing. He turned to his right. Phoebe’s eyes were also closed, her head bobbing drunkenly from the base of he
r neck. Up ahead a patrol car cruised. He slowed his speed to sixty-five so as not to overtake it.

  Last Wednesday still confused him. He wished, one moment, that he could take the intimacy back. The next second he prided himself on his daring; on casting caution and convention aside in his attempt to help Arlene overcome her inhibitions. He thought of his own satisfactions; of making love to a young and beautiful woman who truly desired him. Did he exploit his therapeutic position? Did he use her for his own ends?

  Jonas turned south on the William Floyd Parkway, and glanced over his shoulder. No police. He moved his speed up to ninety, rocketing past cars in both the right and left lanes as he wove his machine smoothly through traffic. The music was fading out and he switched the radio off. Opening his window, he turned the air conditioner off, too. At two-thirty he turned eastward on Route 27. As he took the curve, Phoebe gave a start, but again settled into benevolent somnolence.

  Might his intimacy with Arlene be dangerous? Might news of it jeopardize his standing within the professional community? He reasoned that this worry related to his own doubts and his reflexive, mindless guilt. He was not likely to tell anyone. Nor was Arlene. What could she say, anyway? “I convinced my analyst to go to bed with me to help me overcome my aversion to sex and to men?” Was he not, after all, most reluctant to accept her suggestion; questioning her motivations, venturing that she’d be better off seeking out others to experiment with, even departing enough from analytic technique to tell her that he was a happily married man?

  “No,” she had insisted. “No. No. No!” She was not falling in love with him. She was not trying to seduce him for ulterior purposes. It was simply a case of logic.

  “And what logic is there in our sleeping together?” he had asked.

  “The logic of my always freezing up with men in social and sexual situations. The logic that tells me most men aren’t willing to play ‘therapist’ when they’re aroused but want to take their own pleasures. The logic of my trusting you to be there for me—not for your own purposes; of your knowing my fears and my history. The logic of Masters and Johnson who’ve shown that ‘in-bed’ therapy works. And the logic that this talking treatment hasn’t helped at all during the months we’ve worked together.