The Seducer

by Claudia Moscovici

  “That’s what we always tell ourselves before the fact,” Michael replied, unfazed. “But when it comes right down to it, when we love someone, we love them for life, no matter what they do.”

  Ana examined his tranquil features. “Funny. This is the first time I’ve heard you speak of unconditional love.” She then thought for a moment and changed her mind. “But then again, it’s not that surprising after all.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you said it in the context of expecting it from me. When it comes to you, everything’s conditional. I bet if I cheated on you; you’d drop me in an instant.”

  “You’re damn right about that!” he replied. “But I’d still love you and cherish our memories together, the way I do those with Amy and Karen. I just wouldn’t be your partner anymore.”

  “Spoken like a man who thinks he’ll be the cheater, not the cheated,” Ana remarked.

  Michael didn’t like this formulation. “I don’t trust you either, if that’s what you mean,” he responded, put on the defensive. “But it doesn’t really matter. If you cheat, I leave. It’s as simple as that.”

  “So much for cherishing our memories!” she pounced on the contradiction.

  “Hey, you know me. I prefer to enjoy life rather than dwell on what could of, would of, or should have been,” he boasted, confident that he could rebound from any failed relationship with great ease.

  Ana thought about her past. “Unfortunately, my memories aren’t so easy to erase. When I fall in love, I love with all my heart. And when I’m mistreated, I hate for life, the way I do Nicu. I’ll never cherish a shred of memory with him for as long as I live. We probably had some happy moments together. But for me, the bad always erases the good.”

  “That’s because you’re a pessimist while I’m an optimist. You see the glass as half empty when I see it as half full,” Michael pointed out.

  Ana shook her head. “It’s not a matter of optimism or pessimism. When people abuse you physically or emotionally, like Nicu did me, it erases everything good they ever did. It makes all the positive seem phony,” she delivered a warning with her gaze as well as her words. “At any rate, what I’m trying to tell you is that if you ever cheat on me, I’ll never act like Karen.”

  “She just loves me.”

  “You have way too much power over her, Michael!” Ana gestured with both hands, becoming heated once again against her rival. “She needs you so much that she’s giving you the reins to her life. All you have to do is tug at her strings,” she mimicked the motion, “and she reacts in whatever way she thinks will please you. You’re walking all over her.”

  “And you’re caricaturizing her,” Michael retorted.

  “I’m afraid you’re the one who has turned her into a caricature,” Ana countered.

  “It’s not my fault. Karen is who she is. That’s her personality. She’s clingy and dependent. We’ve known this for a long time,” Michael exculpated himself.

  “Sure, but you encourage her dependency. So, somewhere in there, you must enjoy it. Otherwise you’d have broken up with her once we fell in love.”

  “Let’s not go over that again,” he said in a tired voice, growing weary of the whole conversation. “We’re going round and round in circles. We’ve already covered the argument of symmetry.”

  “Alright then,” Ana conceded, eager to get a satisfactory answer for her more pressing concern. “Now we have symmetry. I’m divorcing Rob to marry you. So then why are you still encouraging Karen to spend a few more weeks at your house, in our current circumstances?”

  Michael fidgeted with impatience, feeling backed into a corner. “I already told you. I’m trying to minimize the damage. For your sake and ours. I don’t want Karen to freak out and criticize us to my parents.”

  “Even though she’s done that already.”

  “I’ve hurt her enough, alright? I’m not going to be even more of an asshole to her just to please you!” Michael lost his cool.

  Ana gazed at him. She noticed that his regular features were distorted by anger. “Whatever you say ...” she responded, unwilling to pursue their altercation any further. She saw no point in it. Whenever Michael had made up his mind about something, nobody could dissuade him. Ana gazed at his small, fragile hands with unusually rough nails, which had dingy brown crescents underneath: peasant nails, her grandmother would have said. It occurred to her that Michael never really showed his hand. The only thing you could do is play the game to the very end, like Karen did, and risk losing everything or cut your losses and fold. Lately, Ana had been often tempted to fold. But she didn’t have the heart to go through with it. She recalled her father explaining to her, a long time ago, Newton’s first law of motion. A body in motion tends to stay in motion unless an external force is applied to it. By now, inertia was the main force that still kept her moving, within her lover’s orbit. The unbridled attraction that had them gravitating around each other for almost a year had all but disappeared. Yet after having gone so far already, Ana felt like she had to pursue with courage the path she had chosen.

  Chapter 7

  Karen recalled that she had left one of her favorite sweaters in Michael’s drawers. She especially missed the one he had given her on her last birthday, a tiny white angora sweater that went down to her navel. He said it reminded him of something Audrey Hepburn might have worn. She opened the second shelf on the left. When she spotted it, she experienced a sense of delight, like someone reuniting with an old friend. There it was, bright white and speckled with touches of silver. It lay neatly folded into four, just as she left it almost a year earlier. Karen lifted it gently and placed it next to her cheek. She breathed in, allowing its softness to embrace her face. Its scent haunted her with the aroma of days gone by, when she and Michael were happy and in love, or so she thought, because she was. She recalled that Michael had handed her a golden bag with a silver bow. “Put it on for me,” he had told her. When she reemerged from the bathroom wearing her black skirt with the white angora sweater, his glance radiated admiration. He approached her slowly and removed it with one swift motion, pulling it with both hands over her head, effortlessly. The memory of the last time she wore that sweater became almost too painful to bear. She placed it back into the drawer, to bury it in their past, where it belonged.

  Karen noticed a sliver of white lace. She peered more closely and spotted a pair of white lacy thigh highs that were still attached to a matching garter belt. She pulled out a red bustier with a shoelace design in the front, whose hook was accidentally caught on the fabric of a black dress made of stretchy fabric. Underneath them lay a red and black plaid miniskirt, completing the picture of the kind of gifts her fiancé must have purchased for his girlfriend while he refused to spend any money on her. Karen crammed the lingerie back into the drawer and slammed it shut. The flash of anger took her by surprise. Before this moment, Ana had been more or less an abstraction to her. Now, however, the other woman became tangible and real, embodied by these fetish objects. The air in the room stifled her, redolent with the perfume that another woman wore, with memories that weren’t hers. Enough is enough! Karen decided. She walked resolutely towards the door.

  As she was stepping out, Michael walked in. He seemed surprised to see her going out this late. “It’s past ten o’clock,” he observed, then added, since old habits die hard, “Sorry I’m late. I had a meeting.”

  Karen glared at him. “I know all about your meetings. I’m surprised that you didn’t bring her over. That way we can have an even bigger meeting together. Maybe your darling would entertain us with a fashion show.”

  “What the heck are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about all the stuff you bought her! The thigh-highs. The bustier. The miniskirt. The black dress,” she listed each item emphatically, like a prosecutor enumerating evidence in court. “What kind of a person would leave all this stuff behind for me to see?”

  Michael said nothing in response. He waited cal
mly for her anger to subside.

  “You two deserve each other!”

  “That much is true,” he agreed with an insolent smile.

  “I’m going out,” Karen announced, heading for the door.

  “Wait. It’s really cold outside,” he grabbed her arm. “Where are you gonna go at this hour, in the dark?”

  “It’s not like you care,” Karen pulled her arm away and left.

  Michael sighed. Women. They’re so jealous, he thought, as if he had never experienced that emotion before. He opened the refrigerator and removed the tuna casserole. This will have to do, he decided to settle for leftovers. He warmed up the dish in the microwave. For dessert, he treated himself to a scoop of fat free vanilla ice cream that Karen had purchased for herself but hadn’t even opened yet.

  The phone rang. “Hello?” It was Ana again. Didn’t I just see her? Michael asked himself, annoyed. He was hoping to finish correcting the last of the student essays before Karen returned for round two of their altercation. “Hey,” he said flatly.

  “What happened to ‘Hey, Baby’?” Ana asked him, her tone between playfulness and reproach.

  “Karen just had a fit,” he told her, to justify his sour mood.

  “What happened?”

  “She found some of your stuff in my drawers.”

  “Why was she looking in there?” Ana asked, unsympathetic. “Is she from the Securitate?”

  Of course. The mandatory reference to communist Romania, Michael thought. By now, he could predict Ana’s comments. Does she read from a script? he wondered, all of a sudden aware that he was becoming as bored with his new girlfriend as he had been with his former fiancée. “Well, the Romanian Secret Police sure could have used her. She conducts very thorough inspections,” he commented blandly. “Honestly, I don’t know what the hell she was doing rummaging through my drawers. Maybe she was looking for her clothes, since she left some over here. She prefers to pack lightly,” he said by way of explanation, hoping to conclude the cross-examination.

  “But she already knows about our affair. So why is she getting so possessive all of a sudden?” Ana wished she could eliminate the suspicion in her voice. Maybe that was part of what was driving Michael away.

  “Listen, speaking of the Securitate, I don’t need this interrogation from you also. What can I possibly tell you that you don’t already know? She’s jealous. She’s upset. I was waiting for the shit to hit the fan. I knew I had gotten off way too easy. I just didn’t know what, specifically, would set her off. Now we know.”

  “I’ll call you in a little while to see if she got back home safely,” Ana said. “It’s so dark and cold outside. Not the best time to go out for a walk.”

  “Why the hell do you care? It’s not like Karen’s your best friend.”

  Ana was about to comment on his tone, but she refrained. “She’s a human being. I’ll talk to you later.” After hanging up the phone, she felt uneasy about the whole conversation. It’s as if Karen and Michael were having a lovers’ quarrel and she was the unwelcome intruder who had unwittingly stepped in the middle of it. Somehow, she felt superfluous. She nevertheless called her boyfriend an hour and a half later, as promised.

  “She’s not back yet,” Michael announced preemptively as soon as he heard Ana’s voice.

  “What do you think happened?”

  “I have no clue. She’s probably walking around the neighborhood, like a headless chicken.”

  Ana envisioned a despondent woman walking aimlessly in the dark, lost in the suburban maze. “Then why don’t you go search for her? Aren’t you worried?”.

  “This isn’t exactly a high crime area,” he retorted. “Don’t forget, live in one of the safest suburbs of Detroit.”

  “I know, but still ... How long has she been gone?”

  She could hear the static of the phone line while Michael checked his watch. “A little over two hours,” he estimated.

  “I think you should go look for her.”

  “Yes, Boss!” Michael responded, not accustomed to taking directions.

  “Will you call me once you find her?”

  “Sure. But won’t it be too late for you?”

  “No. I haven’t been sleeping well lately.”

  “Join the club!”

  After hanging up the phone, Michael went into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of cognac. He decided that if Ana called to nag him again, he’d tell her he had gone to look for Karen but hadn’t found her. Heck, he might even tell her that he went to the police station to file a report, to look like he was really concerned. As soon as he stepped out of the kitchen, glass in hand, he noticed that Karen’s tan coat was back on the hook.

  “Hey!” he called out, mustering a friendly tone.

  She didn’t reply. The door to the guest room remained closed.

  Michael cracked it open and peeped in. Karen was sitting at the desk, writing something. “I’m glad to see that you’re back okay.”

  Her glance was like an arrow, filled with poisonous reproach. “I hope I’m not interrupting a hot date with your Gypsy girlfriend.”

  “Where the hell were you? I was getting worried.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you were worried to death about me. I should have called the paramedics, in case you had a heart attack or something.”

  Ah yes, the familiar sarcasm. Where would we be without it? Everything’s back to normal, Michael observed. He attempted to think of something constructive. “You could wear her lingerie if it will make you feel better,” he proposed with a suggestive grin.

  “What did you say?” she squinted at him.

  “You know, if you wanted to get back at Ana ...” he began to explain. But before he could finish his statement, Karen stood up and took deliberate steps towards him. “Michael, you’re the most insensitive person I’ve ever met!” she declared, pushing him with the tip of her fingers out of the room before shutting the door in his face.

  That’s the thanks I get for trying to help, Michael thought, steadying himself with one hand on the wall, so that he wouldn’t spill his drink.

  Chapter 8

  They reconciled by making love. If you could call their constant tension fighting since, in point of fact, Ana and Michael rarely fought. Yet there was a negative energy vibrating in the air from her side and from Michael’s, increasingly, Ana began to sense detachment. They washed each other’s bodies, using the flat of their palms covered in foamy soap, with slow, circular motions, somewhere between functionality and caress. The lightness of their touch, along with the warm flowing water, seemed to wash away the tension, allowing it to flow into the drain and evaporate elsewhere, liberating them.

  “I love you so much, Baby,” Michael wrapped his arms around Ana’s naked waist, his voice raspy and sweet, filled with nectar.

  This is the man I know and love, Ana reminded herself, beginning to feel safe again. “Should we go out for lunch to the Joyful House?” she suggested the ambiguously named Chinese restaurant they used to frequent, located only a few blocks away from his house.

  Michael’s well-disposed smile was replaced by a scowl: “I hate that place!” he said with a vehemence that startled her. “It’s so freaking expensive and the food’s too greasy. Plus it’s dim as hell in there. I can hardly see you when you’re sitting across the table.”

  Ana didn’t recall her lover ever complaining about that restaurant before, the scores of times they had eaten there together. “Why didn’t you tell me that you didn’t like it?”

  “I went there just to please you.”

  Ana was left to conclude that Michael wasn’t that concerned with pleasing her anymore. But she refrained from reproaching him, for fear that his reply would only confirm her growing suspicion that their best times were already behind them, the honeymoon over before it began. “We don’t have to go there,” she relented, stepping into the bedroom to dress.

  “You’re wearing that skirt again?” Michael directed her a disapproving look as she
slipped on her pencil skirt.

  This question, too, took her by surprise. She recalled that only a few weeks earlier, when they were having lunch together at Panera’s, Michael had asked her very sweetly to get him a fountain drink. He said he wanted to watch her walking in that “hot, tight skirt” that, he had claimed, made him “drool with desire.” “It may come as a shock to you, but sometimes I wear what I want,” Ana retorted. He should buy himself a lap dog if he needs someone to obey his commands, she thought.

  Michael took a deep breath, in and out, as if this small act of defiance was part of a larger, and much more significant, battle of wills that he fully intended to win. For now, however, he didn’t insist. He chose instead to bide his time and lose this battle in order to win the war: “We can go to the Chinese restaurant if you like. One last time. Because if it were up to me, we’d have never gone there in the first place.”

  “How kind of you!” Ana no longer bothered to contain her sarcasm. Michael’s bossy attitude bothered her less than his growing indifference, which cast a pall over their lives. It’s too late to tum back, Ana reminded herself. We’ve already taken the plunge, jumped over the precipice together. Now I have to do whatever it takes to land safely on the other side. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, Michael had warned her. In a sense, Ana felt that he was right. She had lost her parents long ago. She had alienated her husband and in-laws. Her own children felt betrayed by her actions. Michael was the only ally she had left. Besides, having chosen her lover based on their spell of all-consuming passion, Ana now wanted to rise to the challenge. She wanted to prove to herself that she could care about a man and remain loyal to him when they lived through the real-life difficulties of an actual relationship, not just the pleasant diversions of a love affair. Even small compromises, she hoped, might reflect a mutual willingness to make their relationship work. “We don’t have to go there just for me. We can go anywhere you like,” she told him.

  Michael felt obliged to exhibit some graciousness as well: “No, Jet’s go to the Chinese restaurant.”