Hot Properties (50 page)

She always answered the same way: “Yes … ?” as though irritated by the interruption.

“Hello, I’ve called you before—”

“Age and occupation?”

“I’m thirty-one. I’m an executive.”

“Name?”

“Bill,” he said quickly, having decided to tell this lie, though he really didn’t see what safety it provided.

“Do you want to make an appointment?”

“Yes,” he said. This time there was no rush of panic, of coursing adrenaline.

“It’s important for you to understand that I offer dominance and submission. There’s no sex.”

“I understand,” he said.

He could hear a smile in her voice. “My sessions are on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I don’t have anything open until next week unless you can come today at eleven o’clock.”

Now the pressure began, powerfully present in his system. “Okay,” he said dully, automatically, unable to cry out his fear, his dreadful fear of giving in to this obsession.

“Come to Twenty-third Street and Eighth Avenue. There are phone booths on the corner. Call this number from there at eleven. I’ll give you the address then. I’m a minute away. All right, Bill?”

“Yes,” he hissed like a creature from the dark, from the muddy swirling slime of the underworld.

“See you then.”

His hand trembled while putting the phone back, an addict suffering withdrawal. It was nine-thirty in the morning. He had only an hour to decide if he was going through with it. He had told himself he would make an appointment, because, after all, he didn’t have to keep it. There would be no penalty—except, of course, that if he changed his mind later and wanted to see her she might remember his voice and refuse to give him another chance. He was convinced she already recognized him from their two conversations, both of which ended with her hanging up on him. Each time he had tried to get an assurance that the experience would be pleasurable, that he could control what she would or wouldn’t do. Despite all his cynicism about the world, no matter how often he told himself that she must be a whore who would do what the customer wanted, he couldn’t rid himself of wild and terrible fantasies. That she might be mad and actually beat him mercilessly, perhaps cut off his penis, maybe kill him. How did he know? There would be no Better Business Bureau, no other employees to stop her, nothing, no restraint. It was an illegal act—and at that, an unusual one. Not a visit to a traditional whorehouse with bouncers, a madam, a clientele. This would be in some room, isolated, no one knowing where he had gone. Who would hear his last cry, his final whimper of agony?

He could disappear completely. One of those mysteries that haunt American cities. Perhaps, like a character in a
Twilight Zone
episode, he had found the answer to all the missing persons in the world, only to reject the answer as paranoia and then at the fadeout become one himself. A victim of some diabolical group picking off those who are vulnerable to perversion.

He got such a clear image of being chopped to bits by gruff hooded men, his money stuffed away, his clothes and identification burned. How could he be traced? Naturally they would assume he’d make every effort to get there unobserved and alone, with no record of the appointment or location left behind.

But, ultimately, it couldn’t be. She had ads on television, for God’s sake. If her clients were all being murdered, someone would put it together. Anyway, this was big money. Someone, probably the Mafia, was making a ton off the pathetic obsessions of people like himself. Why kill the golden goose? No, the truth, like always, was probably much duller than he imagined. Just a service, provided gruffly and sloppily, like all the other services to the middle class in New York.

But that was what the character in the
Twilight Zone
episode would tell himself, and then walk in confidently, a lamb to the slaughter.

He looked at the clock. Nine-forty. He’d have to leave in fifty minutes to be sure that he’d be at the phone booth on time. Why a phone booth? Why didn’t she give him the address right away? Probably some screening procedure. But if you were going to murder people and wanted to reduce the chance they’d write down the address somewhere, somewhere that the police … He’d have to cut this out. It was stupid. Paralyzing. An excuse to avoid what he knew, sooner or later, he would inevitably do: go and find out if these fantasies were something he wanted to be real.

He stood up. His feet almost gave out from weakness. “I can’t do it,” he said to the empty loft, a bent figure alongside the straight ridged columns, aloof with dignity. “I can’t do it,” he pleaded.

Fred walked into his apartment, his old apartment, the one he had lived in with Marion for years, but hadn’t seen for over seven months. “This is weird,” he said to her.

She laughed. Her mood was light, girlish. She seemed tipsy to him, not because they had had champagne at dinner, but generally in a state of amusement, giggles bubbling throughout her, sparkling in her eyes, lifting her shoulders, opening her heart. He kept having flashes of worry that this was some sort of practical joke. In the couples therapy everything that she said had been bitter—complaints about him, his treatment of her, and then of the world in general. More than ever Fred had realized that her gloomy existence with him, the frowns, the rushing off to bed to read alone, the sudden fits of irritation about trivialities, had all been little eruptions of a buried, boiling volcano of disgust, hatred, and resentment.

Months ago he had given up on the marriage. And even begun dating, not simply to get laid, but with a view toward the future. But the therapy had made it hard for him to see new women, he thought. Hearing the endless list of Marion’s fault-finding left with him a dim view of his own attractions. He almost felt at times that he should warn women that he was, apparently, a colossal bore to live with. Finding himself convinced that Marion’s criticisms were valid, he became enraged. Within the last few sessions he had lashed back, fighting for himself, advocating his good qualities with a passion and conviction he never guessed were in him. Then the doctor said they should see him individually and see each other socially if they wanted.

They had had two dates, quick things, going to a movie, out to dinner, chatting about their lives superficially—the therapy was always about the past, about ugly feelings, and so they had a lot to catch up on. Tonight had been the same at first, but then she began to flirt with him, getting high on the champagne (she had suggested they order it), and now, asking him back to the apartment. For Marion such behavior was wild, wanton. He liked her for this girlish happiness, remembered dimly that in college she was like that, but still he wasn’t comfortable with it either. She simply wasn’t the woman he had lived with for eight years, and that made him wary.

She settled on the couch, kicking her shoes off and putting her feet beneath her, her oval face dreamy. “Your book was accepted.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t know how to comport himself, Should he sit on the couch and begin necking (this sense that he was in a virgin sexual circumstance with Marion was really weird, silly, and embarrassing), or sit in one of the armchairs, more formal, like a meeting of superpowers?

“How come you didn’t tell me?”

He grunted. “Come on, you said over and over in the therapy that all I did was talk about my work constantly. As long as I live, I’m never telling you another thing about what I do.” He sat down in an armchair.

She pouted. She made a big show of it, but it was real. “Oh, that’s terrible. You don’t mean that.”

Fred looked down. She was trying hard. He wasn’t. He felt ashamed of himself. “No. I’m sorry. They accepted it about a month ago. Who told you?”

“I heard from somebody who knows Bob Holder that he’s wild about it. Getting everybody in the house to read it, talking to book-club people—”

“Really?” Fred said, looking up, surprised. He had assumed for so long that Holder’s talk was merely bluster that this came as a pleasant surprise.

“Yeah. Sounds like it’s gonna be a big book.”

“No,” Fred answered. “He hypes everything. You told me that yourself.”

“Did I?” she said, looking at the ceiling in wonderment.

“Oh yeah. Told me I was a fool to believe him.”

“Can’t believe I said that.”

“You did—”

“No, no,” she said, laughing at him. “I mean, what a bitch I was. I believe you. Just what an incredibly bitchy thing to say. Holder hypes books, but when he does, they sell.”

Fred smiled at her. She was great—he loved her like this. “I want to go to bed with you,” he said.

“Great,” she answered. And smiled, sitting there like a cheerful doll eager to be played with but helpless to initiate anything. “I thought maybe you’d found somebody else.”

“What?” Fred asked, puzzled.

“You never said whether you were dating anybody,” she said, shyly now, lowering her eyes, her smile fading.

“Well …” he huffed, shifting uncomfortably. He didn’t want to admit that his sex life had been at best dull, at worst dormant, but on the other hand, he didn’t want to enrage her with a portrait of promiscuity. “I
have
gone out.”

“With anybody serious?” she asked, suddenly hoarse.

He sighed. He shook his head. “I been doing the book. It took everything I had. It was a bitch. Marion. I went out a couple times, but …” He trailed off.

She nodded. Not triumphantly, not smugly, not with confirmation. She nodded in acceptance of how hard, how tediously grim their lives had been. He felt, too, that the stupidity of their marriage, its begrudgement of love, might have been dreary and disgusting … but it was the only real content in their lives.

Tony lay in bed. The day was bright. And loud. Nearby a brownstone was being gutted. He heard its insides landing in a dumpster. He looked at the clock. Noon. He still didn’t want to start the day and it was half over. Betty usually made coffee before leaving for work. He should get up and heat it. The
Times
would be in there, the business section untouched, still ironed flat by neglect. But the C section with its reviews (not of his plays) and its Broadway column, full of plans for future work (none of it his) and gossip about those now working (none of it about him), would be on the kitchen table, wrinkled, open to the last article she had read.
All
of them read it, even the fucking stockbrokers who read the business section. Less than ten percent of New Yorkers actually went to the theater, but by God every one of them knew who was hot and who was not on Broadway—because of the accursed, the horrible, the infuriating goddamn cultural pages of the
Times.
It was better to do without coffee.

And he was dead for years, by that standard. Now, when a review made reference to the promising young playwrights, his name was no longer listed. A few more years like the last two and he would no longer be able to complain that he should be mentioned in a young-playwrights roundup.

A month had passed since he threw his fit at the artistic director of the Uptown Theater. He hadn’t returned Hilary’s calls. He had skipped the regular readings since then as well as the meetings of the Playwrights’ Lab. Indeed, he had done nothing other than attend a few publishing cocktail parties for Betty’s sake. He had spoken to a friend from college about seeing a shrink, frightened by his exhibition of rage in the restaurant, but hadn’t called the names suggested.

He sat up in bed and thought about Proust. He felt he understood his work habits today—the bedroom was cozy, protected. Still can’t read him, he thought, and laughed. The sound felt lonely in the empty apartment. Outside they worked on, the whole city, memorizing the New York
Times,
working, and not knowing his name.

Tony picked up the phone and dialed. He had to think for a moment about the number—disuse had made what was once automatic unfamiliar. It rang only once before she answered, brightly, energetically:

“Hello!”

“Hello,” he said. And there was silence, a shocked silence.

Then, tentatively, incredulously, Lois asked, “Tony?”

“Yep,” he said. “How are you?”

“Fine,” she said, sounding uneasy, as though she were constrained by the presence of someone. Could that be? “I’m fine. I’m really surprised to hear from you.”

“Why? Am I supposed to be dead or something?”

“No,” she said in good humor. “I thought you …” Again the hesitation.

“Thought I was out of your life?”

“Yeah,” she admitted, and laughed quickly. “So what’s new?”

“What’s new! What kind of question is that? I expected rage or tears of happiness or something! What’s new indeed!”

She was laughing while he spoke. “Well, I’m sorry, I can’t provide any of those things. They happened long ago.”

“What long ago? A few months.”

Her voice was gentle, solemn. “It’s been seven months at least, Tony.”

“I didn’t realize it was like a visa. What happened? I didn’t renew it in time and now it’s canceled?”

“Sort of,” she said. “Listen. I really can’t talk now. Can I call you back in an hour? Will you be home?”

“Yeah.” She’s got somebody there, he realized, shocked. It had never occurred to him that she wouldn’t remain frozen, unchanged, awaiting his defrosting presence, the warm light of her life.

“Talk to you soon.”

Who the hell was it? Who was she fucking? Some TV writer? A producer? Maybe she was fucking a TV star. Maybe she was a lesbian. He was furious. He got out of bed and turned on the shower in a rage. He stepped in without checking the temperature and scalded himself, jumping away and hurting his back against the towel rack.

“I don’t even want to take a goddamn shower!” he yelled at himself, and stood there panting, aching, his skin red, half of his head wet. After a moment the fury passed, and he washed himself quickly, shaving and dressing in a rush, as though late for an appointment.

Later he got to the kitchen. He picked up the New York
Times
and threw it across the room. It lay on the floor humpbacked, like a broken umbrella. He heated the coffee and sat down to drink it, staring at the kitchen phone, waiting for it to ring, waiting, as he had his whole life, for an explanation of why he had lost something he wanted.