The Seducer (10 page)

Yet the ruse of cynicism proved ineffective. That night, he couldn't fall asleep. He lay with his head propped up upon two pillows, contemplating his recent encounter with Ana. He went over their conversation, her glances, each gesture she made, his own overtures and reactions. He recalled how when he looked into her eyes, he felt like for the first time he saw a woman in Technicolor, as it were. Everything else he had experienced, every other woman he had met before, now seemed like a faded black and white photograph compared to the kaleidoscope of emotions that had burst within him the instant he saw her.

She's the one, Michael told himself. Then, once again, he tried to find a joke or at the very least a pun in his own observation, embarrassed by his premature sense of conviction. This time, however, the joke was on him. There was a freshness and fire about this woman that disarmed him of the artillery of hackneyed phrases he usually deployed in his encounters with women. A vision of Ana appeared before his eyes. He imagined caressing the curves of her breasts over her modestly buttoned-up blouse, incapable of resisting their soft invitation. She had told him about the death of her parents, about her difficult childhood as an orphan. But was she happy now, with her own family? Was her husband good to her? Above all, he wondered, has this woman ever tasted the pleasure of falling madly in love?

In his hubris, Michael felt quite certain that she hadn't. His heart skipped a beat when he sensed that he could be the first to give Ana that experience. What about her husband? it occurred to him, but then he quickly dismissed the idea. In his own mind, the real litmus test would be Ana's response. If she welcomed his advances, then they'd have a real chance. The children, however, were a different story. In some respects, Michael calculated, they could be viewed as a bonus. For nearly two years he had longed to be with a more affectionate woman than Karen. He dreamt of becoming a father one day. Granted, he had envisioned achieving that goal in the traditional, biological manner rather than robbing another man's nest. But, then again, there would be time for that as well. After all, Ana seemed to be in her early twenties. Surely, if they fell in love and married, she wouldn't deny him their own child together.

A sobering thought then occurred to him. Have I gone bonkers? Why the hell am I thinking about marriage? For Christ's sake, I just met the woman, who, incidentally, happens to already have a husband and kids. I must be in dire need of some heavy-duty therapy, or at the very least a decent blowjob. Better take it easy, get some apparently much-needed sleep and allow myself to calm down, he advised himself. This woman's trouble, Michael concluded. If I pursue her and she goes along, shit! It risks becoming serious. And what would be the point of that? he debated with his own self. Nothing, that's what, he answered his own rhetorical question. After all, I've just gotten out of a serious relationship. Which, technically speaking, means I'm on the rebound. Better give myself some time to heal, he decided, but without any real conviction. Obviously, something's wrong with my head, otherwise I wouldn't have fallen for Ana so easily, he concluded. And yet, another part of him rebutted, it's so exciting to finally feel so excited!

Michael glanced at the alarm clock. Holy crap! It was past 3:00 a.m. and he had to teach in the morning. As he removed one of the pillows and changed position in bed to make himself more comfortable, he heard a hesitant rap on the door. He listened carefully. Hearing nothing more, he thought that he must have imagined the noise. It was confirmed, however, only a few seconds later by an even louder knock. Could it be Ana? Michael wondered with the irrationality of a man woken up from a dream that he couldn't yet distinguish from reality. Feeling rather than seeing his way down the hallway, he turned on the light and opened the front door.

“Karen?” She was the last person Michael expected to see.

“Sorry to come by so late,” she excused herself. Even in the dim hallway light, Michael noticed that Karen looked different. For one thing, she wasn't wearing glasses. She also seemed to have lost some weight. Uncharacteristically, she was wearing a skirt that fell well above the knees, practically a miniskirt. He stared at her, trying to adjust her new image to his former recollections. “Where are your glasses?” was all he could think of saying.

Karen smiled with a visible sense of satisfaction. “I got contacts,” she replied, hoping that he'd also notice that she had lost seven pounds, her biggest achievement during their separation.

“Where are my manners? Please come in,” he invited her with an air of formality that he generally reserved for older acquaintances.

Karen walked in with a deliberate sway of her hips. Has she been taking walking lessons? Michael wondered, following her movements. In the past, he had teased her that she walked in a flatfooted swaggering manner, like a man. His attention was diverted by the colorful package Karen was carrying in her right hand. “Gone Christmas shopping in September?”

“Not exactly,” she turned to him and handed him the bag. “It's my birthday present for you.”

“But my birthday's not ‘till December.”

“It's an early gift.”

Michael peered inside, then looked up at her blankly: “A cactus?”

“It's for our new apartment,” Karen clarified. This response left him even more baffled.

“What apartment?”

“The one we'll move into this summer in Phoenix,” she said with a complicit smile that dissolved into slight quivers of emotion at the corners of her mouth. He tried to focus upon the meaning of her words. What in the world is she trying to tell me?

Michael must have looked as puzzled as he felt, since Karen felt compelled to add, “I've been doing a lot of soul-searching lately and have found the strength to forgive you,” she delivered the line that she had been rehearsing in her own mind during the past few weeks.

He didn't react.

“To prove to you my commitment to making our relationship work, I quit my job. I'm ready to move with you to Phoenix, like you asked me earlier,” she elaborated.

“You quit your job? Just like that?”

Karen nodded. “I gave them three weeks' notice. Starting this Monday will be my last week.”

Michael felt unprepared for this news. “What about your family? Did you tell them you want to move to Arizona?”

“Not yet. I thought you might want to be informed first,” Karen replied with a smile.

“And you still want to marry me? After everything I did to you?” Michael looked incredulous.

By way of response, Karen reached over to kiss him on the mouth: little pecks with puckered closed lips that, it occurred to him, she mistook for sensual abandon, punctuated by tearful, ecstatic affirmations: “Yes... yes... yes!” Then, fearing that Michael might not be as enthusiastic as she had hoped, she pulled back to examine his reaction. His perplexed look didn't say enough. “Don't you want to marry me?” she asked him, suddenly overcome by self-doubt.

“I'm just a little surprised, that's all,” Michael struggled to regain his composure. This ambiguous reply sufficed to reassure Karen. He was obviously as moved as she was by her generosity, willingness to improve herself and self­sacrifice for the sake of their relationship. Whatever was left of her emotional barriers crumbled. “If you only knew how much I missed you. These past few weeks without you have been such,” Karen wanted to say “hell,” but thought it might sound too dramatic and, at any rate, she preferred to avoid using sacrilegious language, “so difficult,” she said instead, wrapping her arms around her fiancé. Michael reciprocated her embrace, crossing his arms around her back, still slightly dazed by the impact of her unexpected visit.

Ana rushed to her car in the pouring rain, placing her purse above her head in lieu of an umbrella. She braced herself for the traffic she'd have to face on her way back to Ann Arbor. As she ran to the parking lot, she had the strange feeling that she was running away from something rather than towards it. She kept seeing Michael's warm brown eyes gazing at her furtively, with shyness. She recalled noticing that, at some point during their conversation, the lower lobes of his ears had turned crimson and he looked away. That small gesture of disavowed attraction had sent a shiver of desire up and down her spine. “Thank God I'm going back to my kids and my nice quiet life,” Ana told herself as she fished for the car keys in her coat pocket. Her fingers grazed a slip of paper. It was the one upon which Michael had jotted down his name and number with rounded, almost calligraphic letters. By reflex, an image of her kids flashed before her eyes. Michelle was delicate and high-strung. Though only nine, in some ways she was as mature and independent as a teenager. By way of contrast, Allen, who was a year younger than his sister, constantly sought the warmth and protection of his mother's love.

Ana pressed the button to unlock her car. On impulse, she crumpled up the note Michael had given her and tossed it into the trash bin. Traffic was slow, but her mind raced. Lulled by the regular, back-and-forth movements of the windshield wipers, Ana thought of her husband. She could anticipate Rob's every move. He would arrive home from work at about 7:30 p.m., feeling stressed and tired. By that time, she and the kids would have already eaten dinner. He'd remove his suit jacket. Then, without saying a word to her, he'd warm up his supper. At some point, Michelle would greet her father. She'd deluge him with reports about her day. Sometimes, in a honey-sweet voice that she reserved especially for such occasions, she'd ask her father's permission for future play dates or sleepovers with her friends. Out of expediency and affection, he'd grant her wishes without even thinking twice about it. Then they'd retreat to different rooms, in a symmetrical division of labor. Rob would help Michelle with her homework while Ana would help Allen with his. After the kids went to bed, Rob would lock himself up in his office. He'd read political blogs to unwind, while Ana would take out a sketchpad to map out some of her paintings. Hardly a word, other than matters related to their children, would be exchanged between husband and wife.

The night didn't bring them any closer. Ever since Allen was born, the couple got used to sleeping in separate bedrooms. With one notable exception, Ana recalled. About twice a week, when the kids were asleep or otherwise occupied, Rob would rap lightly on Ana's bedroom door and peep in with an ingratiating smile. Ana knew what that meant. Since she hardly ever refused, her biweekly wifely duty would be wordlessly concluded within a matter of minutes. She'd be left feeling sad and empty as Rob, more satiated than satisfied, closed the door behind him. Aside from their children, whom they both loved, Ana felt like they had little left to bind them together anymore.

When did our marriage turn into such a sham? she wondered. It wasn't like this from the start. In the beginning, Ana recalled, Rob also looked at her with admiration and desire, the way Michael had. When they met back in college at Michigan University, she was studying at the School of Art and Design and Rob was enrolled in the Carter School of Business. Their interests were worlds apart, yet they still managed to find common ground. They engaged in heated conversations about everything under the sun: art, religion, philosophy, and politics, even quantum physics. When they walked together, Ana recalled, Rob used to hold her hand. Now, she thought with regret, whenever they went out, her husband walked hurriedly a few steps ahead of her and the kids, like the head of a pack rather than of a family. Before, when they drove, Ana remembered, she used to place her hand upon his so affectionately that he got used to driving with only one hand. Now they hardly held hands anymore. Before, when they used to make love, she'd wrap her arms and her legs around him, grateful for the gift of his desire. Now she'd close her eyes and wait for the whole ordeal to be over. Piece by piece, so gradually that they barely noticed it, they had shed like so much dead skin each protective layer of their love.

Ana arrived at the kids' school in rather low spirits. But she was quickly jolted out of her bad mood by Michelle, who ran to the door to greet her. “Mama, guess what?” she asked, her delicate face radiating excitement. “You know that drawing I made, of the two spiders?”

Ana tried to recall which drawing her daughter was referring to, since Michelle was even more prolific than herself when it came to artistic production. “You mean the one of the two spiders in love?” she asked her, alluding to a drawing where the spiders in question were lying practically on top of each other.

The girl's pale blue eyes seemed to shoot daggers at her mother: “They weren't in love, Mama!” Michelle objected to all matters related to love or, worse yet, boys, whom she considered immature and dorky. “They were just building a web together.”

Ana nodded, thinking to herself, kind of like your father and I. “Sorry, I didn't mean to insinuate anything.”

“What's
insinuate
?”

“It means to suggest.”

Michelle's level of enthusiasm rose again: “Well, anyways. My art teacher, Mrs. Posner, entered that drawing in the state art fair! Isn't it great? I'm the only one she chose out of the whole class!”

Ana beamed with pride at her daughter's accomplishment. “Congratulations! I'm so proud of you. Didn't I tell you that you have real talent? Who knows? Maybe one day you'll become an artist.”

“Mama, you know how hard it is to make money from art. I only want to do it for fun.”

Ana couldn't help but feel a little stung by her daughter's comment. It sounded too close for comfort to something her pragmatic husband would say. When the art sales went well a couple of years ago and she was able to bring in roughly 50,000 dollars annual income from her paintings, their marriage felt more balanced, if not actually warmer. Ana had more say in the way they spent their money, in their vacation plans and even in decisions regarding the children. But once the recession took a turn for the worse, art was the first luxury people dispensed with and Ana could only bring a half of her usual salary. Along with the diminished income, she sensed the power balance shift in their family. “Why don't you get a real job? One that actually makes money rather than wasting it on art supplies,” her husband had suggested in the middle of a dispute over finances. “Because I want to devote my time to art. I never misled you about that,” Ana had replied. “Well, I'd love to devote my life to napping, but unfortunately I don't have that luxury,” Rob rebutted. “Art isn't exactly the same thing as sleep,” she objected. “The point is that I do things I hate so that I can make a living and support our family. Meanwhile, you sit around in your studio all day doing whatever you please!” he had snapped back. The fact that Ana enjoyed painting while Rob, a manager at Ford Motor Company, disliked his job was another source of contention between them. She's been indoctrinated by her father, Ana concluded, still contemplating her daughter's remark. “That's a good idea,” she responded to Michelle's comment attempting to sound unfazed. “But there's plenty of time to think about what you want to do with your life. The important thing is that you like it.”