Hot Properties (52 page)

“What? Have more class?”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“Guess again, honey. I’m just as stupid and mean as everybody else.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” she answered.

This was a mistake. Probably she had just begun a romance. It could fall apart, fail to move beyond dating, he might even be able to break it up—there were lots of possibilities. The nicer he acted about it, the more points he would have racked up for the day, the inevitable day, when she would seek more adventure, and he would be back in the game. It happened to everybody, to every relationship, to every marriage, it would happen to her and this guy. How could he be a major writer and be so inept at dealing with people? He knew them inside and out. “I’m jealous,” he said quietly, convinced this was a lie, a manipulation. The silence on the other end told him he had finally come up with the right approach. “I’m still in love with you.”

“No you’re not,” she said, but there was a lot of emotion in the voice, what sounded like relief and pleasure.

“Yes I am,” he answered very softly. “I’m glad you’re happy, though. Are you getting married?”

“We’ve only been dating for two months, Tony,” she answered self-deprecatingly. How amusing this game was— now she was minimizing the seriousness of her commitment, just as he had once played down his marriage with Betty. “Life is a performance,” his mother had said countless times, only moments before entering a party. Standing gloriously in her fluffy white mink, Tony dressed neatly and conservatively in gray flannel pants, a white shirt, a gray cashmere sweater, a red tie, and a cute little blue blazer, his hair a little long the way she liked it, just before ringing another door to enter another show-business party. Squeezing his hand and smiling brilliantly, “Life is a performance,” she’d say, her rich voice making music of the words, the syllables stretching and moaning like a lover in ecstasy. When he was very young the phrase was magic, an incantation that summoned up a mother he loved and admired Her gloomy and scary moods were gone at those parties, she was funny, a little dangerous sometimes, but fast, fast, fast, catching people with their ideas down, showing up the pompous and the self-righteous. Later, in adolescence, he realized the sentence was desperate, a tiring athlete hoping to have one last good game. Indeed, the quick wit had slowed, the years of drinking slurring more than simply the words: the new faces blurred into the old, the politics of the sixties merging oddly with positions of the fifties, attacks and defenses losing their accuracy and cleverness, the fast talk now merely garrulousness. That made her seem more right than ever: life
was
a performance. People began to have less patience with her acting, and the invitations came less frequently, and then so did the parts. The same loss of muscle tone and quick reactions were happening to him, witness the blunder at lunch with Hilary Bright and this conversation with Lois. And he didn’t have his mother’s valid excuses: the blacklist, a monster for a husband, a career crippled, an addiction to drink. The truth was he didn’t have his parents’ virtues: his father’s ability to command, his mother’s brilliant talent; he only possessed their faults: his father’s arrogance and impatience, his mother’s vanity and weak nerves.

“I love you,” he said.

“Then why the hell did you stop seeing me?”

“I was scared.”

“Of what, for God’s sake? Hurting Betty? How do you know she’d even miss you?” Lois groaned at herself. “Oh God, it’s starting.” She sounded wounded. “I hated this the most about our affair. It turned me into a shit. I don’t even know Betty. She’s probably a wonderful woman. I’ve got somebody else now, Tony. And I’m glad. God! Am I glad!”

“I’m happy for you too.” He swallowed. Something about this defeat was appalling. It was so fucking unexpected. Lois was an option for him, not a human being capable of hurting him. “I’m sorry I called,” he said.

“You haven’t left her, have you?” she asked, blurting it out, scared and excited.

For the first time he felt better. She still wanted him. She had given up, gotten involved to reassure herself, probably by now almost convinced the new relationship was more than mere compensation.

“I guess you haven’t,” she said after a pause.

“I don’t love her,” he said. His stomach contracted on the words, like a poison hitting his system, shriveling his strength and well-being. “I know that now. I love you.”

“Well—” she began, and there was a choking noise. “It’s too late,” she let out, and now there were tears. “Too late,” she mumbled through them, and hung up.

Betty looked energetic and concentrated as she flipped through the rack of dresses. She stopped at one, frowned, pulled it out partially, and angled it so Patty could see.

“Are we getting that old?” Patty asked.

Betty smiled and let it go. “There’s nothing here.”

They walked outside into a glittering day. After the dark, cool interior of the store, the sun was blinding. Betty turned from it suddenly and stumbled into Patty. “Whoa,” Patty said, holding her up.

Betty looked at her and smiled. “Can you imagine spending your life doing this?”

“Who does?”

“Our mothers.”

“They didn’t shop their whole lives.”

“No?”

“They changed diapers, remember?”

Betty laughed. “No, somehow I don’t think my mother did.” They walked on. Patty wanted to confess to her: get rid of this damn secret, talk it out, find an exit from the ridiculous mess she was in. Betty seemed happy these days, carefree. Patty was glad. She had grown much fonder of Betty, despite her wariness of the business situation they now faced.

“Things are going well with Tony,” Patty said.

“Oh?” Betty said, surprised. She glanced at Patty. “I’m glad to hear it.”

“Aren’t they?” Patty asked. She was used to Betty’s moods shifting with the ups and downs of Tony’s life.

“Not for him. I feel good. I’m happy to be publishing your book. I got a good novel last week from Paul Yarmouth—”

“He’s a good agent.”

“—yeah, I think you should talk to him about representing you. Anyway, it’s a terrific, not very commercial novel by a journalist in Seattle, a reporter. Autobiographical novel about his sister’s nervous breakdown and his attempt to help her through it. Really moving book. I think I can get a contract for it.”

“Great.” Patty studied her. “That’s why we’re so happy.”

“That’s right, nurse. I’ve decided Tony’s life is his problem. I can’t give him what he wants.”

“What does he want? What do any of them want?”

“He wants to be famous. Sometimes I think he wants to be famous without having to do anything.” She brought a hand to her mouth, actually covering it for a moment. “I shouldn’t say that.” She checked with Patty. “That’s a horrible thing to say, isn’t it?”

“Not if it’s true.” This was her friend, she realized. This was the person who had done something for her only because she cared to help. Betty was cowardly, she was too prim, she was often abstracted, but she had given Patty advice, support, and a contract without even asking for a kiss, much less a blow-job. “Let’s get a cup of coffee.”

“Oh, no. I’ve gotta keep going. This is the last day I can shop for two weeks. And everything will be gone by then.”

“I have to talk to you about something.”

“No …” Betty said, looking at Patty with dread. “You’re not having an affair, are you?”

Patty smiled at her, amazed. “How did you know? Am I that transparent?”

“Yeah,” Betty said. “You’ve been acting weird for months. First I thought it was because I was editing you. But I figured it out two weeks ago. You’ve been very hard to pin down for midday dates, and when I called yesterday and got David, he made a joke about how often we’ve been seeing each other. I haven’t seen you that much.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to drag you into it.”

“It’s okay.” She put an arm through Patty’s. “We have to stick together.” Amazing. A year ago Betty would have been disgusted and offended to have been used as part of an adulterous lie. “Who is it?”

“That’s why I haven’t told you. Who. You have to promise you’re not going to be furious—”

Betty looked funny suddenly, her eyes going blank, her jaw slackening, like someone shocked and fearful. “Maybe …” she mumbled.

“Maybe? No, you have to promise.”

She pulled her arm out. “I can’t promise!” she said furiously.

“What’s the matter?”

Betty stopped walking, put her hands in her pockets, and looked composed, though her eyes were dark with challenge. “Who is it?”

“Oh God,” Patty said, convinced she had made a mistake. After all, her affair with Gelb might affect Betty’s career, and Betty had so much prudery in her anyway that the likelihood she would disapprove was great. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“You can’t stop now,” Betty answered. “Tell me.”

“Gelb. You have to understand. He propositioned me the week you were going to the ed board to transfer my contract. He told—”

“Gelb!” Betty finally said, squinting with disbelief. “Gelb?”

“Yeah, I know it’s disgusting. But he told me …” She babbled on about his telling her of his coming move to Garlands, her decision that she couldn’t make the same mistake twice, her conviction that it would help her book. Betty looked baffled and then bemused—unexpected reactions. She seemed relieved. Patty left out of her account that she felt herself becoming emotionally dependent on Gelb, drawn to his evil in spite of her better instincts, fascinated now with what used to disgust her.

“What’s he like?” Betty finally interrupted. . “He’s disgusting. He lords it over me, his power, how he can help the book.”

“No, I …” Betty looked embarrassed, smiling to herself. “I shouldn’t ask.”

“You mean, what’s he like in bed?”

Betty nodded.

“Compulsive workaholic, like everything else. It’s kinda great.”

Betty smiled. “We’re getting old,” she said, looking earnestly into Patty’s eyes.

“I am. I’m having this disgraceful affair with an old man. Not you.”

“No,” Betty said, and put her arm through Patty’s, resuming their walk. “Because I’m thinking while you talk: This is awful. How can I talk Patty into breaking it off—”

“I’ll end it,” Patty pleaded.

But Betty hugged her arm tighter. “No, listen. I’m thinking. She’s got to get out of it. David’s a great guy—she’s gonna ruin her writing by thinking the book’s success is due to the affair, she’s—” Betty stopped and smiled slyly. “And all the time I’m worried about saying anything to you
now,
because I’m also thinking: She’s got to break this off—but not before the paperback auction.”

Patty looked at her, searching for a hint that Betty was kidding. “No,” Patty said tentatively.

Betty nodded. “Oh yeah.” She looked away, up at the rows of glass buildings awash with sunlight, blinking. “I’m old too,” Betty said, and squeezed Patty’s arm as though it were a life preserver. “I’m old too.”

“Make yourself comfortable,” she said, holding a black dog—barking at David, but not ferociously—by its collar and leading it into another room. “Put your clothes on that chair”—she pointed to a small white round table with a single chair.

“Here,” he said, holding out the two fifties he had gotten from the bank.

“Make yourself comfortable first,” she said, and disappeared into the other room with the dog.

He was in a box of a room, the windows cut off by a wooden platform set six and a half feet off the ground. Behind him, facing the front door, was a black leather table with stainless-steel legs that seemed adjustable. Hanging toward the upper half on each side were leather bracelets attached to the table by chains, supposedly for binding the wrists. He got out of his clothes quickly. He was eager for her return. She was dressed, as in the commercial, in a black leather skirt, binding her ass and thighs tight, a row of steel snaps running up to her crotch. Her top was more demure than in the ads: a simple black silk blouse. Her hair was long, and a fierce dark red, her face big, angular, her hands large, her fingernails long and painted crimson. She wore high heels and black net stockings which, combined with the tight skirt, made her walk slow and arrogant.

She appeared from behind the closed door, peering out, seeing him naked, and then entering briskly, taking the two fifties from him. “Sit on the couch,” she said, gesturing toward a small white couch against the rear wall below the windows and underneath the wooden platform.

He moved there dutifully and she disappeared again into the back room with the money. He looked to his left at an extension of the wood platform that came down one wall with wood pegs on which hung a variety of S/M devices— long riding crops, studded leather collars, whips, handcuffs—a complete collection. He took a breath and felt it cool and uneasy in his chest. He was timidly excited, wanting more and fearing it all. Seated nude on the couch he felt like a boy in an examining room, assured that nothing painful would happen, but suspecting everything.

She entered again, her heels slowly and firmly sounding harsh on the floor. “This is our first experience,” she said, barely making it a question.

“Yes.”

“But not your first experience with dominance?”

“Yes.”

She raised an expressively painted eyebrow and smiled. “Oh, a virgin! How delightful!” She gestured to a bottle of brandy on the small white table. “Would you like some brandy?”

“No thanks,” he said. He wanted to make sure he went through this without any other stimulation. Already, from her rapacious approval of his status as a neophyte, he felt a tingle of excitement.

She went to the bottle, opened it, and poured herself a glass. “Do you have any particular fetishes or repulsions?”

David cleared his throat. “I, uh …” He tried to unblock his voice again. “I want to be aroused, and then punished for it. I have a fantasy that I’m being stroked, my penis is being stroked with one hand, and with the other I’m being spanked for enjoying—”

“Oh, that’s hot,” she said, again with a witch’s relish of evil. He assumed she approved of any program a client laid out, that this wasn’t true pleasure, but he was excited anyway, immensely relieved that she would fulfill his desire.