The Seducer (2 page)

“What do you want me to say?” he'd object when put on the defensive about his apparent lack of interest in their conversation.

“If I have to tell you what to say, that defeats the whole purpose of talking in the first place. I might as well deliver a monologue,” Karen retorted. And often, she did. As far as communication was concerned, she presented herself as a role model since, in point of fact, she did open up to him—and only to him. To everyone else, Karen presented a cool, unflappable exterior. Even her own parents viewed her as a pillar of strength. Only Michael knew that this pillar had deep emotional fissures, like a ruin. “The reason I go on these eating binges is because I feel so insecure about my self-image,” Karen had commented earlier that week, when they were having lunch together at
Panera
. She had looked up at him from her oriental salad, scooting with some regret the unopened package of peppercorn dressing towards his side of the table. “Here. You can have it.”

To spare her the extra calories, Michael gallantly poured the dressing over his own salad. After saturating each leaf, he looked up at his fiancée and thought of a defense strategy, before the conversation headed towards another meltdown. At worst, she's about fifteen pounds overweight, he estimated. But they hang pretty well on her tall frame. “You look mighty fine to me,” he observed, thinking that massaging her ego would pacify her.

This prediction, however, proved a bit too optimistic. “I don't understand how other women stay so thin,” Karen responded with a sigh, looking around at her competition in the restaurant. “After all, I watch what I eat and I'm as tall as a skyscraper. It must be my mother's genes.” She blamed her slow metabolism on her mother, a two hundred pound diabetes patient. That weighed less on her conscience than acknowledging the periodic binges on gallons of ice cream, atoned by brief semi-starvation periods, when she survived solely on herbal tea and salad. And that was part of their underlying problem. Karen recalled how often people would look at her and her fiancé with a gaze that measured them up and determined that they were a mismatched couple. Michael was shorter, only 5'9” compared to her towering 5'11.” But what struck the eye most was not the slight difference in their heights but the big discrepancy in their physical appearance.

“Your son's so cute,” a little girl once said to Karen during a shopping trip at
Filenes's Basement
. Michael had emerged out of the changing room in a brand new gray suit he intended to purchase for future job interviews. He looked striking, standing proud, his jet-black hair set off by the paleness of the gray suit. His bright brown eyes, mischievous yet angelic, beamed with an inflated awareness of his own good looks. “So is yours,” Michael replied, looking at the stuffed animal that the little girl held in her hand. Ostensibly, he tried to diffuse the tension, being painfully aware of his fiancée's insecurity about her appearance. Tall, plain, with long legs and stringy brown hair, Karen thought that her best feature was her deep brown eyes. But even in that domain, she couldn't compare to him.

Michael's eyes had an amazing ability to fix your gaze, seize your attention, then glide all over you slowly, covering you in a visual syrup. After being anointed with such sweetness, you felt blessed that this angel looked in your direction and you were instantly his. The problem was, however, that Michael's wondering eyes glazed every pretty woman they encountered, lingering over her features with a feral hunger that simultaneously intimidated and flattered. Karen feared that she'd never be able to fulfill her fiancée's constant need for sexual stimulation. This thought deeply concerned her, no matter how hard she tried to dismiss physical attraction as merely superficial. If you can't fix a big problem all at once, start by taking smaller steps, she had read something to this effect in an advice column. And that was precisely what she decided to do by focusing most of her energies on losing the extra weight.

Given that Karen had avoided putting any dressing on her salad, Michael took this opportunity to expound upon his own, more liberal, theory of dieting. “Being on a diet is the wrong way of going about losing weight. In France, people eat whatever the hell they please. But they do it in moderation. Plus they walk a lot. That's how most Europeans stay so thin,” he proposed the only strategy he thought worked. It was modeled after his favorite culture, which he happened to teach as a graduate student in the Department of French and Italian at Michigan University. For as long as the magnifying glass wasn't placed directly on him, Michael's ostensible emotional generosity expanded. He did his best to coach his fiancée into improving her self-image, which only fueled her dependency on him.

“Yeah, well, maybe that works for those skeletal French waifs. But I come from peasant Irish stock,” Karen shot his argument clear out of the water.

“What you have to remember is that image isn't just about how you look,” Michael altered his approach.

“That only goes to show how little you know about women,” she countered.

As a matter of fact, Michael had done more empirical research on the subject than he cared to admit. Since that argument wouldn't have impressed his fiancée, however, he contented himself with nuancing his point. “Well, I realize that looks are important to women, since they're often judged by their physical appearance. But it's the inside that counts.” That's the kind of crap women like to hear, he thought.

“Oh, yeah?” Karen challenged him. “Then why is it that when we're at the mall you start drooling over those bimbos in miniskirts? I have yet to see your tongue hanging out over their intelligence!”

“That's only because I don't know any of them. Our contact's strictly visual. But once you get to know a person, the inside matters far more,” Michael countered philosophically. I wriggled my way pretty good out of that hole, he observed, pleased with the double entendre.

Indeed, those proved to be the magic words. They confirmed Karen's innermost conviction that she had depth while other women—particularly the sexy ones—were just plain surface. Which is why Michael worked hard to veer the “us conversations” away from sexual matters towards the higher spheres of human existence where his fiancée preferred to dwell.

“Well, how much do you tell me about yourself?” Michael had turned the tables on her during one of their infamous “us conversations.”

“What do you mean?” Karen acted surprised. “I told you about how Mary's leaving the office. And about how Maxine got a bonus of one and a half pay even though she only works for us part-time. And about how I suspect that she's having an affair with Dr. Tolbe. I tell you everything that's going on in my life.”

“Yeah, but that only tells me about what other people
do
. It doesn't say anything about who you
are
,” Michael objected, with a meaningful arch of the eyebrow.

Karen looked perplexed. “We've been together for over two years. You know me.”

“Do you even know yourself?” Michael, a self-proclaimed hedonist, suddenly turned Socratic.

“You sound like a fortune cookie,” Karen observed, becoming skeptical of this line of inquiry.

“Not at all. Fortune cookies predict your future in a generic fashion. I'm asking you to tell me who you are as an
individual
,” he emphasized. “Like, for instance, what do you like to do in life?”

Karen shifted nervously in her seat. “You already know what I do. I go to work. I help others. I give to charity.”

“But you don't really like doing any of those things. You do them mostly out of duty,” Michael pointed out.

“That's not fair. I enjoy helping others,” she retorted. After all, every Christmas she donated ten percent of her annual income to
Amnesty International
and
Doctors without borders
.

“Fair enough,” Michael conceded, taking note of his fiancée's agitation. “But it takes you a few minutes to write those checks. What do you enjoy doing the rest of the time? I mean, when you're not working?”

“Now that's a silly question!” Karen's face lit up. “I like to be with you.”

Michael rapped the table with impatience with the tip of his fingers. “Sure, but aside from that? Who are you as a person? What makes you tick?” he insisted on keeping the ball in her court. The only sound he heard in answer to this question was the ticking of the mechanical watch his maternal grandfather had given him on his sixteenth birthday.

After considering the matter for a few moments, Karen replied: “Well, for instance, this week I read an interesting book. It was about this woman whose dream had always been to live in Japan,” she picked up momentum. “Then she had kids really young, so she got stuck in the States and became really depressed. Her therapist explained to her that when you have small kids, accomplishing your goals could be done gradually, by taking baby steps.”

“No pun intended,” Michael interrupted, glad to have spotted a
jeux-demots
in what he considered to be an otherwise uninspiring narrative.

“Yeah,” Karen ignored the joke. “And then she started taking Japanese language classes. The next summer, she took a short vacation to Japan with her family. So in the end she felt happier. At least she partially accomplished her goal.”

“So she sold out?” Michael drew his own conclusion.

“What? No. That's not what I meant to suggest at all.”

He shook his head. “I don't see how taking a vacation with one's family in Japan constitutes moving there. Nor what any of this has to do with my original question.”

“Which was?”

“What do you want to do with your life? Once you figure that out, we'll see about taking baby steps or having babies or whatever.”

Karen stared at him as if the answer were transparently obvious. “I want to be your wife,” she replied with disarming honesty. “But I don't want any kids,” she added. Which was another point of contention between them.

Her answer doubly discouraged Michael. First of all because, someday, he wanted to have children. And not just the imaginary kids they made up, by way of compensation. On their first Valentine's Day, Michael had given Karen a stuffed stingray. They named it “Ray,” for short. They concocted stories about it, as if Ray were their real adopted child. Henceforth, whenever they ran out of things to say, they slipped into the momentary complicity of make-believe. Gradually, they expanded their imaginary menagerie. Next came a horse named Stallion, which Michael gave Karen on her birthday. On the anniversary of their first date, they adopted Peanut, an elephant. Each stuffed animal had its own personality. The stallion was wild and stubborn. Peanut was large and clumsy, with dependency issues. Ray was sweet but spoiled, since, after all, he was their first child.

More importantly, even before seriously contemplating starting a family together, Michael wished that his fiancée would get a life. Granted, in the beginning, he had fostered Karen's dependency. He had enjoyed the thrill of seduction. He had basked in the sense of being needed by a woman to the point of becoming her whole existence. But Karen's complete focus on him, though flattering, soon got in the way of his numerous other conquests. It also placed the burden of her happiness upon his shoulders. Michael preferred not to carry that weight by himself. Perhaps others could help. He kindly encouraged Karen to meet more frequently with her acquaintances from work. Unfortunately, this request only aroused her suspicions: “You want me to see Susan? Why? Did you make plans with anyone else?” she'd ask, narrowing her oblique eyes.

The very insecurities that made Karen appear too possessive and cramped his style, however, also made her seem appealing in Michael's eyes. Unlike most of the other women he had been with, his fiancée could be trusted one hundred percent. Karen had no sexual desire worth mentioning, so Michael felt quite confident that she'd never cheat on him. She was hardworking, putting in overtime at work to compensate for his modest graduate student scholarship. She had no interests to speak of, except perhaps for the growing obsession with her vacillating weight and self-esteem. If he ever needed her support, he knew Karen would be there for him. She listened to him almost to a fault, so much so that he felt compelled to fabricate facts to satisfy her appetite for meaningful communication. She managed their money responsibly and was almost as averse to spending it as he was. They shopped together for groceries, armed with a handful of coupons. They bought most of their clothes at
Goodwill
, despite their decent joint income. In short, Karen was dependable, devoted, virtuous, frugal and hardworking. Weren't those the qualities of a model wife? What more could a man want? After all, Michael thought, for pleasure and entertainment, he would always have flings, affairs and one-night stands. Following this logic, after nearly one year of dating, he decided to propose to her. After pretending to consider the matter for a few days, to appear hard to get, Karen gladly accepted.

Now, a year into their engagement, Michael went over his fiancée's qualities, to remind himself that the reasons for marrying her remained valid. He examined Karen's towering frame as she stepped out of the bathroom. She stood two inches taller than him, covered almost from head to toe by loose-fitting flannel pajamas. He peered into her eyes, in which he hopelessly sought a come­hither look. His gaze then fixed upon her square jaw, which reflected the locally strong will of a desperately dependent woman. Her thin mouth was still caked with a white pasty liquid, which he would have preferred to furnish himself. Unfortunately, she rarely gave him that opportunity. Still, Michael thought, feeling his midsection harden at the possibility of a quickie, it never hurts to try.

Karen saw his hand slip underneath the covers. His familiar “I'm up to no good” grin made her feel viscerally uncomfortable. Michael's prospects were grim. Unfortunately for him, earlier that morning, Karen had weighed herself. She had made the tragic discovery that instead of losing weight, she had gained two pounds. No more sex until I lose it, she had resolved. “Don't even think about it!” Karen preempted his move. She then pointed sternly to the alarm clock as her alibi: “It's 8:30 and you teach at 9:00. It takes you twenty minutes to get ready. You do the math ...”