Succubus in the City (32 page)

At least the cool air woke me up. At least I was familiar enough with Herzog’s work to wander into a random conversation. Once I’d tried this after a discussion of Pop Art that I hadn’t attended and felt like a fool. Worse, being found out as a fake had scared off my prey, so I went home alone.

No chance of that tonight. I was going to deliver and prove myself the most loving of Martha’s minions, one of those who showed real dedication to Her, not simply one of the demons who do the absolute minimum. I was one of the Chosen, and tonight I felt like I had to prove it.

As expected, when I arrived the street was full of people who had just left the lecture. Many of them were lined up at the bus stops in front of the museum, mostly for the crosstown bus to get over to the West Side. I hardly ever went over to the Upper West Side myself. It’s all Columbia professors or intellectual wannabes, most of whom dress terribly and are more likely to debate the existence of the immortal soul than give it up. I generally find the type wearying and unattractive, and more time consuming than my usual quick pickup boys in the bars.

And wasn’t Nathan an intellectual, writing a dissertation for a Ph.D. at Yale? That had to be at least as bad as the Columbia crowd.

I put Nathan firmly out of my mind and perused the crowd for a likely target. I noticed a knot of three young men, all of them talking with great animation and wearing the requisite leather jackets, jeans, and boots that comprised the standard university uniform the world over. There were no women with them. I sidled up to the three of them and caught snatches of their conversation.

“Herzog’s fascination with the outsider can be seen as an extension of Nietzsche’s notion of the superman,” one of them was saying as he puffed on a cigarette. He was probably no more than twenty-five, though he assumed a professorial air. Grad student? No, Nietzsche is the intellectual armor of the semi-informed who want to impress. Wannabe? Likely. Columbia literature? NYU film program? Or someone who didn’t make the cut but liked to talk. A likely victim in any event. He belonged in Hell—probably he made most of the people he hung around with feel like they were already there.

I joined the group on the edge and noticed that none of the others could quite get a word in. “Yes, it is always about the superman, a particularly Germanic construction, you would have to agree.” Mr. Sententious hammered his point, and us, into the pavement. “Since you are most likely unaware of the supporting literature—”

“Let’s get into this some other time, Lou. It’s really fucking cold out here, in case you hadn’t noticed,” one of the other young men spoke up. “Later.”

The other two muttered “later” as well and all three of them turned. Lou looked rather bereft as his audience melted into the night. Then he saw me.

“I’m not entirely convinced that Herzog is supporting the philosophical position of the superman,” I spoke up. “Herzog’s outsiders are often freaks; he is interested in what is repulsive to society, not the outsider so much as the outcast. There is a difference.”

Lou was clearly taken aback. I smiled—I knew I had him. These types can’t stand for anyone to contradict them, and for a woman to speak up and question their wisdom, that was tantamount to first evil. He would not be able to let it go, and all I had to do was play along. He would believe so easily that I was swayed to crave sex with him because of his towering intellect.

Many women are attracted to brilliant men. But Lou was not brilliant, he just wanted everyone to think he was. And since the worship-my-brains boys usually stuck to coffee, they couldn’t even blame alcohol for their poor performance in bed. Not that they ever thought their performance was poor. How could it be? They were so overwhelmingly smart that they were doing women a huge favor to have sex with any of us. Because while we couldn’t understand the reaches of their uberintellects, we could serve their little brains.

Or so they thought.

Lou, you’re in for one interesting evening. And you’re so smart you don’t realize that I could be every bit as capable, and that you’re my prey and not the other way around.

During the time I’d been thinking he’d been yammering on about the Enlightenment, German philosophy, and literature of the late nineteenth century, and his own remarkable achievements.

Good thing I hadn’t been paying attention.

“It is cold out here,” I said. “Why don’t we continue this in that coffee shop across the street?”

They can never resist the lure of the coffee shop. Never.

“Not Starbucks,” he specified. “I don’t support corporate America and their stranglehold on the rest of the world.”

So much for fair trade beans and a fast-food chain that offers health insurance to employees. He selected a Seattle’s Best Coffee instead. Satan adores hypocrites. And Starbucks, one of Her favorite enterprises.

He got a double shot mochaccino and I got a small latte and we found a table where he could lecture me at length about everything the
Village Voice
had published an editorial about in the last two issues. I shrugged out of my coat and let him take a good look at my very delectable curves, subtly enhanced by Italian design. His eyes caressed my shoulders and breasts as he continued to mouth opinions that I’d read in last month’s
New Yorker.

I let him talk. That was what he wanted to do anyway. Talk at me and stare at me. Probably he had never been to coffee with a woman who looked as good as I did who wasn’t ready to toss her latte in his face. I was certainly tempted and he really did deserve it. But since I had bigger plans for him, I resisted.

After half an hour I was getting tired. He walked me back to my building and was shocked when I said this was it. “You live here? In this neighborhood?” his scorn was so heavy it would have made a good winter coat for a Canadian.

I shrugged. “House-sitting gig,” I improvised. “Some Fordham prof is on sabbatical, so I get paid to live here and take care of the houseplants. Want to come up and see it?”

“Oh, you’re at Fordham?” he asked, his voice dripping condescension. I noticed that he hadn’t said where he was, if he really was anywhere.

I didn’t deign to answer, but let Vincent open the door for both of us and ring for the elevator. I noticed Lou observing the lobby critically, taking in Vincent, the marble floor and walls, the thick brass fittings on the elevator, the Art Deco styling. Probably totaling up how much it would cost to live in this kind of building.

Nor did my apartment disappoint him. There were plenty of bookcases, there was a fabulous view, and there were Art Deco antiques in burled wood and blue glass. By Manhattan standards my place is huge, with a nonworking (but very ornamental) fireplace in the dining area with a black marble mantelpiece, a kitchen that two people could almost squeeze into, and the bathroom with my glorious claw-foot tub.

Sometimes I really resent bringing these men back to my place. I love my apartment. I love the art on the walls, the fresh lilies on the mantel, my clean Frette sheets with the blue embroidered edging, and my Aubusson carpet. I love the fact that my place smells fresh and clean, like flowers and Comet with a little hint of coffee. I don’t like having men I despise like Lou up here, even though I know how it ends.

So I let him gawk as I hung both of our coats in the hall closet and made certain that my dress and boots were accenting just the right bits of my anatomy.

“Would you like to see the rest of it?” I purred.

Lou looked at me with wide eyes, as if it had never occurred to him that I might actually be willing. He probably had imagined this scenario a million times, the beautiful woman seduced by his superior intellect. But it had never happened and he had never really believed that it might. Lou knew that he was only third- or fourth-rate at best when it came to brains, and way below that on looks. Oh, he wasn’t disgusting, hugely fat, or unkempt (though plenty of his ilk were), but his hair was thinning and he had the beginnings of a potbelly and a scholar’s slouch. Which could be overlooked in someone who might pay attention to the person he was speaking to, but Lou’s most unattractive feature was his opinion that his was the only voice worth speaking.

He talked. I led him to the bedroom by the hand, and in one motion (perfected by many years of this precise seduction) pulled the zipper down the back of my dress and let it fall in a puddle around me. There I was, dressed only in sea-green lingerie and knee-high stiletto boots.

That shut Lou up in a hurry.

I tugged lightly at his sweater, which smelled faintly of mothballs that I bet his mother sent him. The sweater lay on the carpet and he fumbled at the buttons of his oxford cloth shirt. Already I could tell he was ready, eager, not thinking about anything other than what was coming next.

I don’t know why they all believe that I would throw myself at their feet. Thousands and thousands of losers, thousands of years of losers, and not one, ever, had paused to wonder “What does she see in me?” or “Isn’t this going a little fast? Doesn’t she want a date or something first?”

But they never think that. They think that they are so irresistible that a woman who looks like I do is just all hot and horny because they’re so fill-in-the-blank. Smart. Rich. Handsome. Witty. Charming. Athletic. Masculine. Drunk. Whatever.

Only the ones who really are smart, rich, handsome, witty, charming, or athletic don’t usually take me or their luck for granted.

So, in a funny way, being willing to just have sex with me without wondering why I was there and what was going on was the final test of prey.

Lou flunked. In spades.

He practically tackled me on the bed, and didn’t take his socks off. Yuck. At least he was easy. He didn’t even try to satisfy me. After all, wasn’t all the foreplay the brilliant display of his dazzling mind? Guess I was supposed to be all hot and gushy because he could say Nietzsche and Herzog, and at least three other German intellectuals all in the time it took to down one coffee.

He touched my breasts, but only to fill his hands and enjoy their size and weight. He didn’t stimulate my nipples, didn’t bend down to even lick them. No, he was doing me a big favor by having sex with me. So far as he was concerned, I was his reward for his achievements.

And I was. Only not in the way he thought.

He didn’t even notice that I wasn’t all that excited. He was ready, which meant that surely I must be, too. And—even bigger yuck—he didn’t use a condom.

If I’d been a mortal woman, I’d have insisted, but I’m immortal and don’t have to worry about STDs or pregnancy. He should have worried, though.

Fortunately, he had a lot more to worry about than the clap. He pumped a few times, grunted something like, “yeah, baby, take it all,” when it really wasn’t much, and turned to ash as soon as he came.

So much for that. I hoped Satan would be satisfied. I certainly wasn’t.

Much as I wanted to just roll over and fall asleep, I felt skuzzy after the encounter and wanted to remove all traces of Lou from my bedroom. So I got up, changed the sheets, removed his wallet and valuables from his pockets and bundled up his clothes and stuck them in a Barney’s shopping bag.

His wallet yielded only fifty dollars, a subway card, and a City College Staff ID. Staff, not faculty or even student. Creep.

I lay the wallet on top of the clothes. Vincent would take care of them in the morning. And that would be that. No trail to follow, last seen at the museum, just disappeared. Fine with me.

I took a quick shower to rinse the smell of him from my skin. Deliciously enveloped in the scent of honey, I felt clean and decent enough to go to sleep.

chapter
TWENTY-SIX

I slept through the alarm on Wednesday. By the time I actually woke up it was ten past nine, and I was already late for the office. At least, at a run, I would make the editorial meeting on time. So I threw on my reliable pink and olive tweed Prada suit and ran out, barely nodding to Vincent, who had a cab waiting for me. I didn’t even break stride as I dashed from under the awning into the taxi.

I did my makeup on the way to the office and headed directly for the meeting, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred. But I wasn’t late and I wasn’t even the last person to arrive. And Amanda Freemark, our editor in chief, looked so pleased with something that she hardly noticed when Danielle and I slipped into our seats.

When we had all assembled, Amanda beamed at us. “Before we begin our usual discussion of the issue, I have a wonderful announcement for us all. I’m certain that you are all aware of Lawrence Carroll, the top fashion editor at
Vogue
’s London office. Well, Mr. Carroll has accepted our offer and will be joining us here as the head of the Fashion division. So let us all welcome Lawrence Carroll.”

Whereupon the door to the conference room opened and Lawrence Carroll entered. He was at least six-four and weighed maybe one hundred and ninety pounds, including his floor-length cashmere coat. Something about the smug satisfaction in his face reminded me of Lou the night before.

“Thank you,” he said, nodding at Amanda. “I am of course honored and pleased to be here and expect we shall have a wonderful working relationship. Etcetera, etcetera.” Then he sat and sighed and stared out the window.

We managed a splatter of polite applause before Amanda took over again, leading the discussion on the two big spreads on American designers and one on the new styles of pants. Then the Features editor spoke about the major article already in the works on breakthroughs in breast cancer treatments. Throughout it all, our new colleague looked bored and leafed through Amanda’s notes.

Before we left, he rapped the table. “I want our October issue to be dedicated to the white blouse,” he announced. “We will have to arrange the incoming shoots and articles, but the white shirt will be the most important article of clothing this fall, and I want us to be on top of it.”

We all looked at each other around the table, but he said nothing more for at least three minutes.
“The White Shirt!”
he shrieked. “Every one of you should think about it. Every one of you should think about nothing else. I want
The White Shirt
, and I want it to be daring, new, perfect, and exciting. And I expect exciting at our next meeting.” Then he yawned and strode out.