The Seducer

by Claudia Moscovici

  By the time I gave in to his wishes, Ana reflected, Michael’s mercurial needs had already changed. In fact, the very act of submission to his will caused them to shift. Identifying Michael’s fickle desires followed the same uncertainty principle as pinpointing the exact location of an electron at any given moment. Whenever you shine a beam of light on it, you alter its position, so that it’s no longer in the same place. The instant you satisfied any of Michael’s wishes, you displaced them, such that he either wanted something more or something else. And then, the deception that really ate the cake, Ana thought with bitterness, that slick move about keeping Karen at his place for a few weeks after having already told her about the affair, ostensibly, “to let her down easy.” If you want to let someone down easy you may do it in person, but you don’t drag her to every sentimental place you’ve ever been together to watch her fall to pieces over losing you. He’s such a sadist, Ana muttered under her breath, stunned that she could have ever loved or trusted such a man. The self-professed ocean of raging passion turned out to be nothing more than a dirty little puddle.

  Why do I even bother with this woman? Michael asked himself again, his anger almost completely evacuated by contempt. She probably made a whole of ten bucks from that junk, he speculated. Karen was right. I was trading a net gain, since at least she earns a decent income, for a net loss, since Ana loves to spend money on herself and all those useless art supplies. What the hell? She’s heading back to the subway station. Maybe she’s meeting one of her new lovers there after all. Can’t wait to see what that loser looks like!

  Ana had parked close to the People Mover, the very same subway train that had taken her to the Catholic Church in downtown Detroit where she had first met Michael. She felt like their love story had come around full circle, from being everything to each other to becoming nothing at all; from having all their dreams realized to realizing they were only figments of their imaginations. What bothered Ana most was the intuition, confirmed by the psychology books she had read, that there’d never be any justice for Michael. He’d never experience even an ounce of regret for all the suffering he caused in so many lives. Psychopathy was the only disease without any dis-ease, one of the authors had put it. No matter what happened to him, Michael would merrily move on with his life, from one woman to another, from one conquest to another, from one penultimate moment to the next, substituting lust for affection and ownership for love. How I despise him! she thought.

  “Why do you want to hold on to that anger?” Ana recalled her therapist’s question at the end of their session. Perhaps Dr. Emmert was right. Perhaps there was a reason why she wanted to continue hating Michael rather than forgiving and forgetting him. I want to hold on to the anger so that I never love him or anyone like him ever again, she told herself. I want to hold on to it so that I will remember that normality and family values—everything that, with all my artistic pretensions and longing for a life of passion and excitement, I had considered too conventional and staid—are the only solid foundations of my existence. I want to remember how it took being almost destroyed by the most abnormal human being I’ve ever met to appreciate my normal, loving husband. I want to remember that there’s nothing more boring than the utter predictability of absolute selfishness, which I saw reflected in Michael and which I almost mirrored myself. Above all, I want to hold on to the anger so I that I’ll always remember that I almost threw my life away. I never want to forget how dangerously close I came to being stripped of everything I am and of everything I have. Because without my loving husband, my children, my sense of loyalty and love, my values, my passion for art, my warmth and friendliness, my deeper emotions, my honesty and trust—all of which Michael would have continued to erode, bit by bit and layer by layer, with his possessiveness and mind games—what would be left of me? A Nobody and a Nothing just like him. Only I’d become a Nobody and a Nothing with a broken heart, because unlike him, I do feel pain and I can feel remorse and I would feel regret.

  Ana had become so used to her lover by now that she could almost hear his voice in the back of her head: “Don’t act like Little Miss Innocent, cause I ain’t buying that crap. You knew what you were getting yourself into. You chose to be my lover. You chose me.” Yes, I did. My only consolation now, Ana told herself, was that I chose to leave him in the end. I learned the hard way that there are only two options when you become involved with a psychopath: losing a whole lot or losing everything. I chose not to lose everything.

  Dang! This is getting downright weird, Michael thought, stealthily following Ana as she approached the People Mover. Some of the trains stopped and left the station while others whizzed by. But she just stood there, frozen, as if she had fallen in a trance. She’s acting like she’s drugged out. Maybe her new boyfriend’s into drugs. I knew she was a nutjob. These artist types are completely out of touch with reality.

  I chose to embrace reality and reject the romantic fairytale Michael promised me, which he never delivered, which he never could have delivered since empty words is all he had to give, Ana thought, feeling more confident. She stood still on the platform, watching the movements of the train that had initially brought her to her fate. On that sunny afternoon, without a cloud in sight, Ana had the distinct impression of emerging from a haze. Returning to that spot felt cathartic. For a moment, she had a flashback to the accident scene she had witnessed by the subway, shortly after having met Michael. It filled her with a sense of unease. She recalled that the man who had thrown himself under the train had a wife and children, who probably loved and needed him. She thought back to all those great novels she read as a teenager, including her favorite, Anna Karenina. Back then she had been thoroughly impressed by the heroine’s noble suicide for the sake of love. But now she wondered how many people sacrificed their lives and families for flimsy fantasies masquerading as great passions.

  A sense of resilience permeated her, as it did on that fateful day, a year ago. Ana had the same feeling of roots, of being anchored in love, that she experienced the first time she stood by that train, contemplating the stranger’s suicide. I’d never do that to my family, she told herself. Because I love my sweet son. I love my precocious daughter. I love my decent husband. I love my life. Now that this nightmare with Michael’s finally over, I’m able to tuck my children into bed at night and look my husband in the eyes again. At that moment, the memories of her lover that had weighed so heavily upon Ana seemed to evaporate into the warm spring air. For the first time in weeks, she felt free. As she took a step closer to the platform, Ana stretched her body upright, allowing herself to expand, to spring back into shape, becoming once again the woman she had been—multidimensional and capable of loyalty and love—until she became lost in a man who, as it turned out, was an illusionist who lived only for his fantasies.

  As he saw her there so close to the moving trains, her body upright and tense, leaning slightly forward, Michael spotted his perfect opportunity. He gazed around him. People were entering and exiting the train, moving all around Ana, so the confusion of the crowd would no doubt shelter him. Plus, this could easily be interpreted as a suicide, he thought, recalling that the evening he met his girlfriend, some poor guy had thrown himself under the People Mover. So, he figured, the story would sound pretty credible. In fact, even her own family would believe it, since Ana had already proved to them that she was unstable, ready to up and leave her husband for another man. He walked stealthily behind Ana and just winged it. As easily as he told Karen all those lies on the spot, he now followed the impulse, little more than a whim, of giving in to his underlying drive to eliminate this nagging obsession, this annoying inconvenience, which ached like a rotten tooth right before you pull it out, by extracting his girlfriend forever from his life, as if she never existed.

  As she stood there, perfectly still, coming to terms with the dizzying, spiraling circularity of her life, letting go of one lost dream and embracing the promise of a new beginning with her family, Ana felt herself lose
her footing. In that instant, it occurred to her that someone had pushed her from behind. It was nothing more than a tap on the back, but enough to make her lose her balance. Ana knew exactly who that person was. She wanted to turn around and grab Michael’s hand to drag him along with her, as the heat of hatred rose from deep within, much stronger than her former passion. But she didn’t get that chance. Ana’s heart raced wildly as she stumbled forward, her hands reaching out desperately to regain her balance, as if begging fate itself for help. But she grasped nothing except for the sting of a fast, unstoppable, massive motion, the ruthless acceleration of steel that mercilessly pulled her under. Time itself stood still as reality became enshrouded by a cloud of darkness.

  Chapter 24

  She instantly recognized the handwriting on the envelope. She didn’t even have to look at the address to know whom it was from. Her hands trembled and her heart beat faster. She knew that she shouldn’t even open the envelope. The letter itself, its words, its tone, its calligraphic schoolboy handwriting, its enchanting promises, would be toxic to her. In spite of that, she opened it anyway.

  “My Sweet Karen,” it began. That opening made her feel nauseous. She imagined to how many other women he must be writing in this way. Yet the tender phrasing still brought her to tears. “I keep thinking about you,” it went on. “Not a single day goes by when I don’t miss you like hell.” ‘Like hell’ is the operative term here, Karen told herself, no longer believing him. The sugary tone reminded her of a familiar pattern. He must want something from me, she surmised. “I’ve been on my best behavior and things are looking pretty good here. In a month or so I’ll be up for my parole hearing. I was wondering if you’d be kind enough to whip up a letter of support to let these guys know that I have a solid character and that I’ve never shown any signs of violence towards you. Basically, I’ve got to prove to them that I’m not going to be a threat to society once I get out of here. That should be easy. The psychologist seems to be on my side and I’m on good terms with the prison staff. I’m asking for your help because you’re still the only woman of my life. We belong together, Baby. The sooner I get out of this joint, the quicker we can fulfill our dream of starting a life together. Who knows? Maybe soon we’ll have more than just imaginary kids ... Love always, Michael.”

  Karen could almost hear his melodious voice in these phrases, intermingling real requests with imaginary promises. She had fallen for his lines time and time again, even when everyone else turned against him. She recalled how sincere Michael looked on the day he avowed his innocence. “I swear to God, Karen, that I never laid a hand on Ana or on any other woman in my life. Babe, you know that I’m incapable of violence. Hurting a woman physically is the most despicable thing I’ve ever heard of! Let alone killing her. I may be a jerk and I may have cheated on you, but you know better than anyone else that I’m completely harmless.” She remembered how she had nodded in agreement. After all, Michael had never hit her and he seldom raised his voice to her during their nearly three years together. Even when faced with all the evidence that made him appear guilty, Karen took an oath at the trial. She stood by her man, as a character witness for the defense attesting to Michael’s gentle disposition. “All they’ve got is some stupid circumstantial evidence against me. This pack of lies has been fanned by the malicious gossip of the press, which would love to crucify me. I mean, what sells better than some sordid tale about a scorned lover who shoves his girlfriend under the train, in a tragic twist reminiscent of Anna Karenina? They’re having a field day with me. But they should have read Tolstoy more carefully. Because Anna Karenina committed suicide all on her own and so did Ana Popescu,” he had scoffed at the press coverage.

  But, in point of fact, the faint echo of Tolstoy’s fiction wasn’t what drew the press around him like flies to honey. After all, Karen reasoned, there were plenty of scorned lovers who kill their girlfriends in crimes of passion, as they tend to call them. Yet they don’t all make it into the evening news. What intrigued the press, and later the jury too, was all the evidence that indicated this was in fact a passionless crime, even if it may not have been demonstrably premeditated. Michael had sown the seeds of his own destruction by having sex with one of his new girlfriends, a blond Ukrainian stripper named Tanya something-eva, right there on Ana’s grave, only days after her funeral.

  The local news station juxtaposed two clips. The first included footage of Ana’s children and husband at the memorial service, the little girl shaking so hard that her thin shoulder blades protruded like the wings of a wounded bird; the boy burying his head into his father’s jacket to hide his pain; the husband pale and silent, overcome by genuine grief and real forgiveness, attempting to console his children. The second news clip featured Michael, bending his newest conquest over the cross of Ana’s grave. That footage, plus all the people who had witnessed him pushing Ana towards the People Mover, seemed pretty damning evidence against him. Michael’s excuse, which he delivered with a cocky smile when the journalists had gathered around him asking for an explanation, was a psychological lesson into the nuances of human suffering: “We all grieve differently,” he pontificated. “Some people cry and get all depressed. Others become manic and have sex in public.”

  This explanation, however insightful, didn’t hold water with the jury, no matter how much the defense had tried to depict Ana as an unstable woman with suicidal tendencies. The string of witnesses for the prosecution attesting to the fact that Michael had, indeed, pushed his girlfriend under the train, plus all the coverage of his callous reaction to the death of the woman who was supposedly the love of his life, had proved somewhat more compelling than any speculation about Ana’s psychological maladies. After a few days of deliberation, the jury found Michael guilty of second-degree murder, since there was no evidence that he had planned the crime in advance. They sentenced him to eight years in prison with the possibility of parole. Which, Karen knew, was exactly the loophole Michael needed to crawl his way out of that hole. But even when all the evidence pointed to his guilt, she had desperately wanted to believe his explanation. After the trial, she visited him in prison to prove to him, yet again, her unconditional love and loyalty. She took a seat across from Michael, separated from him only by a thin screen of transparent plastic.

  Karen felt almost embarrassed to voice some faint, lingering doubts that sometimes troubled her in the middle of the night. “Did you do it?” she asked him very quietly, imploring him with her eyes to deny the charges like he had before. His sad, puppy dog expression faded and all of a sudden Michael looked alive, almost triumphant. His eyes sparkled and his mouth twisted into a familiar expression. She saw the grin he always had whenever she caught him cheating on her. In that mocking smile, Karen recognized the shamelessness of being guilty without feeling any guilt. “Why did you do it?” she asked him, her eyes wide open with a mixture of horror and disbelief. And then, without a trace of regret, Michael laughed out loud and said, “I plead the Fifth.”

  This time, she told herself as she gazed once again at his letter, he won’t be able to reel me back in. But instead of not replying, as the previous two times he wrote her, Karen resolved to let him know exactly how she felt.

  Dear Michael, she wrote,

  I hope that after reading my letter you’ll never contact me again in any way, shape or form. Not only will I not write the parole board anything positive about you, but also I’ll mail them a copy of this note, so that they’ll know whom they’re dealing with. It’s true that you never hit me. But for several years, I was emotionally abused by you. I was constantly lied to, cheated on, manipulated and used. And it’s true that I can’t blame everything on you, since I was partly responsible for allowing the abuse. I bought into your lies. I forgave you each time you cheated on me. I even believed in you when the whole world seemed to turn against you. When they saw your callousness and deceit, I kept my eyes shut. Even after the jury found you guilty of murder, I still chose to believe in your innocence. I d
idn’t want to believe the worst about you. I couldn’t accept that the man I loved for so long could sink so low.

  But now that I’ve had the chance to distance myself from you and think about our past, I can no longer go along with your machinations. In fact, I no longer believe that there’s anything good or true in you. Each time I took you back, you only hurt me more. We were in an unfair match from the very start. I loved you most and you never loved me at all. Which is why you could do with me as you wished and why I was so defenseless against you. No matter how hurt, or how angry, or how frustrated, or how humiliated you made me feel, you didn’t care about my feelings as long as you could bend me to your will. And you’re still trying to do that, with all your flattery and promises, conveniently wrapped around the request that I help you again. Well I won’t. I know now that you’re a human parasite. You’re like this strange wasp I once saw on a nature show that latches on to a poor caterpillar. It bores a hole in it, lays its eggs inside and then moves on to some other unsuspecting host. The wasp’s larvae eventually eat the caterpillar alive, leaving behind only a frail, empty shell. That’s what you did to me. You fed upon my vulnerabilities and hopes. Then, after you had your fill and tired of me, you moved on to Ana. She left you before you could finish her off so you killed her, out of wounded pride and malice.