The Matrimonial Flirtations of Emma Kaulfield

by Anna Fishbeyn

  I could be the first female sultan with a hundred husbands—a sultaness, you might say. Men would line streets to be chosen by me: buff sportsmen begging to lie at the footstool of my lavish elephant-bone bed, untested virgins offering me their ignorance in exchange for slavishness, brilliant savants supremely educated in the sciences, literature, history, philosophy itching to stun me with their insights, and sensual Tantric yogis renewing my spirit with their stress-decreasing techniques. I would grow old too, amass wrinkles and sag, my breasts flat like lasagna sheets, knees crackling from arthritis, back stiff from osteoporosis, and my vagina sapped of its youth, rage, vigor. But the men like loyal round-table knights would still bow at my feet—mesmerized, wanting to possess my decrepit decaying body; yes, yes, I could be the female Hugh Hefner bedding hard, blond bodies at eighty, or the female Howard Stern devising raunchy contests to determine which man got to have his naked ass spanked by me. Ah, the world in reverse!

  I imagined Eddie’s naked body splayed on the tarmac, hands tied above his head, ready to be ravaged by his sultaness, and then I saw a tall figure quickening toward me, his blue eyes flickering from afar. I almost ran toward him, almost climaxed from the anticipation of being touched by him, when I stopped short; close up, he looked foreign, unrecognizable. His face was unshaven, hair plastered to his forehead and streaked in oil, his body demarcated by torn jeans and a T-shirt featuring a lewd red tongue and the word Hooters on its front. His empty gaze washed over the surroundings. He looked despondent and lost, and in need of someone to hold him, and it scared me suddenly to approach him—to be forced to deal with his needs.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, touching my stomach from fear, imagining that he’d uncovered the truth—any truth—about me.

  “Nothing, just tired. Haven’t slept for two days finishing something for a client. And I have to go back tonight.” He took my backpack off my shoulder and produced a closed-lip smile. “How was home, how was Grandma?”

  “In excellent form—nagging and interfering as usual,” I exclaimed as my stomach lurched again. “So you won’t be able to be with me?”

  “No,” he replied without emotion. “I’m sorry. That’s the way this damned job is.”

  “This seems worse than usual.”

  “I have a limo waiting for us. I’ll be free—if all goes according to plan—on Monday night, latest Tuesday. You can stay at my place, if you like. I have a ton of sushi.”

  He got my luggage off the conveyor without looking at me, and outside a limo driver waited.

  The black leather interior with its tinted windows, gray TV screen, and low roof reminded me of a coffin in an eighties prom movie. “To my place, Felix,” he said into the intercom. He turned to the window with the same blank stare that had greeted me. I touched his shoulder but he didn’t seem to feel me. I didn’t seem to feel myself—what terror now possessed me—did he suspect me of reneging on my promise? Cars, trucks, taxis leaving the airport were melting under the corrosive glare of the sun. The heat streaming from the outside intercepted the cold breeze of the air conditioner, and the contrast between the warmth and the cold, the pain of it, seemed to echo the strange incongruities in Eddie’s face—the luminous smile disappearing under a look bereft of feeling, sunken under gloom.

  “What’s going on, Eddie?” I pried against my better instincts.

  “Nothing unusual. Nothing.”

  I imagined that he had spies follow me to Chicago, that these nefarious creatures hid under our Brazilian dining table listening to our toasts, that there were secret tracking devices attached to my clothing. Did Eddie somehow catch my tender moment with Alex?

  “I should have been a philosopher,” he broke out in an unfamiliar tone, “with a concentration in Machiavellian ethics—it would have been more useful. Did you know I once fancied myself a photographer? I even have a portfolio—what a joke! Now I contribute money to IMAGE Magazine and visit art galleries—to assure myself I’m not completely devoid of culture. When I have time, that is, when Norton lets me off. When the client takes the bait and we shake hands and celebrate by drinking and staring at depressed strippers—our mandatory doses of healthy debauchery—that’s when I’m free. Some people sleep, others masturbate over Internet porn, the humans go to St. John’s, and I catch up on culture—culture in small doses—how long, no, that’s the real question, how long have I been working at Norton Bank? Six years if you don’t count the MBA. Six years, plus an MBA—eight years of my life dedicated to what? Spreadsheets! All I know is this fucking hellhole with its ‘golden’ perks; no one tells you in Sunday school that hell is made of Italian leather and black marble and brainless dogs—no one tells you that you’re one of those dogs!” He turned to me suddenly and touched my face.

  I sat in silence, my face strained from concentration. His eyes were vacant, darkened by bluish-mauve circles stretching from the bridge of his nose to his brows. At long last, I asked what I had wanted to ask so long ago: “Second time we met you told me you wished you could take pictures again. When I heard you speak about that painting in Nebu, I thought to myself, who is this man—he’s so interesting and different, amazing-different. I never met a guy who talks so intelligently about art—who thinks deeply about this world I so love. Don’t you dream of doing something else one day—of leaving all this? What about art, poetry, philosophy?”

  “Yes, of course, I thought about everything. I still do—about leaving. I have a box of books labeled read when you quit!” He laughed with the look of someone who’s just said something wildly outrageous. “I used to spend hours in my red room—my parents let me have it in the basement—during my junior year. I’d fantasize that my photographs were gracing the cover of National Geographic and people were talking about this or that image for years to come.”

  The limo’s air conditioner spilled freezing air against my bare feet and calves, and I wished I could cover myself in a quilt.

  “Do you still take pictures—I mean, do you have a secret red room?”

  “Good God, Emma, that’s all lost to me now.” He stared at the traffic ahead. “There’s no time for daydreams. I’m on a timer—can you understand that—I could lose this job. This guy at work—an underling—a vengeful idiot—humiliated me today in front of the client. Do you see what I’m saying: it’s the sense that you’ve wasted yourself on something that can be taken away from you in a snap of a moment!”

  “It’s not too late to change your life—that’s what you always tell me—”

  “Oh, but it is, Emma, it’s too late for me. My blood runs through that fucking bank. I’ve given too much, sacrificed too much to leave now. Not now when there’s still a chance. Besides, I could never forgive myself if I failed, if I turned out like my brother—failed poet, musician, philosopher, sadist.”

  “I didn’t know you had a brother—you’ve never mentioned him.”

  “We don’t speak. He’s my fraternal twin.” He clasped his hands together and the fingers turned red from the pressure. “He’s the lucky dilettante in the family, with two kids, a wife, and no real job. He ‘works’ at my father’s company. No, I think one dilettante in the family is enough.

  “No philosophical text, no perfectly captured image could have done for me what this—this—” he pointed at his torn Hooter’s T-shirt, forgetting momentarily, I imagined, that it wasn’t his suit, “has done for me.”

  He looked away for an instant, and when he turned to me, his cheeks burned.

  “Work cured me—by frying my brain. That’s how I got relief—by not having the time to think. And the money too, the money cures too. Like gluttony—you can never have enough—the crazy spending sprees, the sense of importance it bestows on you—I won’t lie. But when the hours worsened and my purchases just sat inside unopened boxes, money began to pass through me like air. I couldn’t feel anything—days passed without distinction, each compounded into the next, days blurred into piles of stock reports and dreary cocktails parties and lack of s
leep. I’d wake up in the morning and think: what hell am I in—what name do I give this antiseptic purgatory?” He put his hand on my open palm.

  “Do you still feel that way?”

  He gave me his entire face now, met me with gentle eyes. “Not when I’m with you,” he said. “I touch you and feel everything.”

  I threw myself at him. “You can’t imagine, you can’t imagine how much I’ve missed you!” The car jolted forward and with each violent stop, we attempted a kiss. His hands sat limply round my waist and ventured periodically inside my shirt, fingers clammy and stiff. I felt cheated. When the car stopped in front of his building, he seemed to sigh with relief.

  “I have to go back. You’ll be all right?”

  “I’ll be all right.” I stepped out of the limo in front of his building, a glittering black tower rising into the sky. His keys jangled in my pocket and heat singed my air-conditioned skin. Hot swaths of air streamed into my lungs, and I smiled at the traffic around me, stunned and gladdened by my sudden loneliness. Only hours had passed without my speaking to Mother, Grandmother, and Alex, and already they had faded from my consciousness. I felt a new truth burgeoning in my chest. I wondered if I could ferret out the feeling known as love in the intricate labyrinth of my organs, if it hid somewhere between my ribcage and my heart, not knowing whether it would be expunged into the open air and thus freed, or sucked in by that four-ventricled organ—that arena of human hell. Even so, even as I crushed it on its way out, I felt liberation and breath flooding in, and I was able to push apart the metal bars of my cage and let an arm or a leg hang out.

  I spent two days alone in his apartment like a Neanderthal deposited amid civilization. I did not shower, brush my hair, or smell my armpits, though I did stare at myself in his spotless mirror (he employed an ambitious cleaning lady from Brazil) for untold eons of time, whereupon I took the liberty of popping a few significant blackheads on my nose and investigated the state of my skin, on the prowl for wrinkles, freckles, and invisible pimples (which have a curious habit of becoming visible after such long investigations). I noted without regret the way beauty can succumb to a guilty conscience, depression, and obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and thereby vanish, to be unfortunately (or perhaps, in my case, fortunately) replaced by hideousness. I watched TV by incessantly skipping channels and battling guilt during commercial interruptions, devoured cold sushi in bed as though it were hot fries, spilling soy sauce on his fancy linen without feeling apologetic, and supplemented my Omega-3 diet with pepperoni pizza, which induced heartburn-associated nausea. I felt quiet ecstasy roil through my veins as I imagined Grandmother’s horror in catching me in this state. By the time he returned on Tuesday afternoon, I felt cleansed of Chicago, gratefully amnesiac and spiritually renewed, which goes to show you just how deceptive appearances can be, for I also sprouted unruly oily hair (smelling unsurprisingly of pepperoni), exuded garlic breath coupled with soy sauce, and brandished a few critical red patches on my nose (from my self-executed facial). Clad in the same tank top I had worn on Sunday night, I felt that sex appeal was still within my reach.

  He, on the other hand, looked spectacular; his suit glistened, his skin looked polished, and an enormous smile hung on his lips.

  “You are the hottest woman on earth!” That’s how he greeted me upon opening the door.

  “You’re just sleep-deprived,” I said, wondering how it was possible to look spectacular without sleeping for forty-eight hours.

  “Everything went off without a hitch! It was an unbelievable success! The client loved my presentation, and tonight Grant, our boss, wants to take the three of us out—Eric, Sylvia and me. I want you to be there. I just need a few hours to sleep—two or three will do. But before I sleep—” He grabbed my legs and wrapped my body round his as if I were a rope, and I thought—how strange men are! Success is what turns them on, rendering them dumb and blind; they’ll see an angel, a beauty, a model in any woman who happens to lie in their bed, and yet that very success, if taken away, can set their brains in reverse.

  For my initiation into the corporate world, I wore purple because the shirt, with its triangular cut in the front and sleeves that opened at my wrists like bellbottoms and tightened round my waist over low-cut jeans, gave me that paradoxical look of innocence and lust. “Are you preparing to seduce my co-workers?” Eddie asked, eyeing the exposed inch of my navel. “Are you already jealous?” I asked, pretending to be irritated. “No, but I’ll be watching your trips to the bathroom tonight,” he said.

  Two buff bouncers in black T-shirts blocked the entrance. The women, decked out in trendy cut-off miniskirts and stiletto heels, were sporting indifferent expressions and non-descript men. The line stretched for the entire block of 23rd street, but we got in without waiting because Eddie nodded at one of the bouncers as though he knew him personally, and then slipped him a heavy green bill. The bar was called Aqua, as it resembled an underwater aquarium, if not literally, then metaphorically; water ran inside stained blue glass walls and shark heads protruded from the ceiling. But the sharp smell of cigars wafting from private rooms, the black leather couches, and mahogany coffee tables set against blue walls created an aura of sophistication and wealth.

  A man hailed us from a nearby couch and Eddie rushed toward him, pushing through the crowds as though he were about to miss a train. Two men and a woman I immediately recognized as Sylvia were seated around a square coffee table, talking. An older man in his early fifties was puffing on a cigar, sipping a drink. The other man looked extremely young, as though he had been recently plucked from a frat pledging ceremony. He sipped frenetically from his Corona. Sylvia was coquettishly eyeing her cosmopolitan and puffing on a skinny cigarette. All I knew about her was that she and Eddie had casually slept together before he got involved with me. She appeared pale and less lively than when I’d first met her that night at the gallery, and I began to suspect that during the last couple of months the corporation had chewed years off her life.

  Eddie immediately ordered us drinks, and although I would have preferred a hot Earl Grey tea with lemon, I ordered my usual: cranberry juice with vodka.

  “Why don’t you be brave and order what I’m having?” the older man said and winked at me.

  “Is it very sweet?” I asked.

  “It’s just right,” he said and without waiting for an answer, called out, “Old Fitzgerald Very Old,” which, I saw in disbelief on the shiny black menu, cost over three thousand dollars per bottle. Then he turned to Eddie. “You didn’t tell us you had such a beautiful girlfriend!”

  “That’s why I didn’t tell you—I know how you are, Grant.” Eddie laughed, offering Grant an approving smile. The two men exchanged a secret glance that sent a sliver of pleasure through my stomach, reminding me once again that my feminist ideals did not sufficiently guard me against the serpentine poison of politically incorrect flattery.

  “I’m Grant,” the older gentleman said and extended his hand. Eddie had already informed me that Grant was known around the office as a mild philanderer, who “dabbled” in other women, but not with any serious intention of leaving his wife. His wife was not only fifteen years his junior, a former Sports Illustrated model, and a formidable hostess who knew exactly how much cleavage not to show, but she was also the mother of not one, not two, not three, but four (an entire posse by Manhattan standards) children. Grant engaged in what could only be described as the blithe, insensitive flirting of a self-satisfied executive: occasionally winking, ogling, and grabbing a butt cheek or a heavily armored breast of his loyal secretaries, who in turn were devoted to his generous bonuses. Only when there was an impossible deadline or an unreasonable client did Grant feel the need to request a discreet blow job. He was good looking in the way rich men tend to be good looking—lacking perfect features, symmetry, and a built physique, but endowed with an air of having been cleansed, brushed, massaged, polished, buffed, tanned, dyed, and sexually fed.

  “Emma,” I said. “A pleasu
re.”

  “The pleasure is all mine,” he murmured like a fox devouring its rabbit prey; although he kept his eyes on my face, I felt as though he were fondling my breasts.

  The other man rose and extended his hand. “I’m Eric.” The woman sat in silence and nodded her blonde head. “Yes, we’ve already met,” she said after a long pause. She was wearing a sleek black dress that revealed nothing except two hard pointy nipples.

  “Yes, we have, at the art gallery with Eddie,” I said.

  “I didn’t know Beltrafio liked art,” Eric exclaimed and without waiting for an answer added, “There’s so much crap out there today for millions of dollars—who buys that shit?”

  “Emma paints,” Eddie offered idiotically.

  “Do you?” Grant raised his brows at me. “Do you paint in oils?”

  “Yes, and acrylic, and sometimes watercolor,” I replied with effort, my tongue parched from nerves.

  “I just bought myself an expensive watercolor by this guy—perhaps you’ve heard of him—Grayhart?”