The Seducer Page 2

  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 e
ven 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 ...”

  Michael’s dark eyes shifted languorously from underneath their long lashes towards the alarm clock. “8:31 a.m.” it announced in bright red neon, reinforcing his fiancée’s message. “Okay,” he relented. He swung his lean, muscular legs out of bed, to gather enough momentum for a quick shower. But then he changed his mind, noticing that Karen had removed her pajamas and was sliding on a pair of underwear. He swiftly grabbed her from behind.

  Her spine straightened defensively. “Geesh! You startled me. Aren’t you going to shower already?”

  “I prefer to spot wash like Chairman Mao.” He had read a recent biography that claimed that the Chinese dictator only “washed” himself in women: a practice that may have been somewhat unhygienic, but that had other health benefits. “You’re so sexy in those granny panties. Grrrr, you turn me on, Baby,” Michael growled, simultaneously making light of his own desire and of his fiancée’s need to de-eroticize her body.

  Stung, Karen clamed up. “Well, if you don’t find me attractive, then go take a cold shower!” This time her pride was at stake. But even then, only momentarily. Whenever she felt that Michael eluded her grasp, she became sweet and clingy again. Sometimes he hoped that his fiancée would stay mad at him a bit longer. At least that would give him a few extra hours of fun with other chicks. But no such luck ... Oh well, you can’t win them all, he sighed, regretting that he couldn’t even flirt with his own fiancée. In the beginning, Karen’s seriousness had made him feel like she was more mature than him. But at deflating times like these, he thought that she should loosen up a bit.

  The thought of looseness reminded him of Lisa, his student in first period French 102. Lisa was everything that Karen was not and then some. Michael released his fiancée without too much regret. In fact, he was suddenly in a hurry to get to class on time. He looked forward to explaining the distinction between the imparfait and the passé composé while scoping out Lisa’s double D boobs. The way she emphasized her chest in low-cut blouses—those protruding mounds of flesh that lengthened like ripe bananas whenever she leaned down to pick up a pen that she had deliberately dropped on the floor—made him tingle with the desire to scale those natural twin peaks with his hands, tongue and lips.

  Karen had had a few moments to recover from his jab. She started to have second thoughts, feeling uncomfortable about letting Michael out of the house in such a dangerous condition. “You don’t give up, do you?” she smiled sheepishly at him. “Maybe we have time for a little quickie,” she relented. On the one hand, she’d starve herself the rest of the day to lose those stubborn extra pounds. And, on the other, no matter what Catholic reservations she may have had about premarital sex, Karen considered it her womanly duty to satisfy her man.

  But Michael could sense that, in her heart of hearts, she still felt guilty about it. Her pangs of conscience generally coincided with the times she spent with her family and Sunday mornings at church. She even stopped going to confession once she actually had something to confess. But Michael’s needs usually swayed her, playing upon her preemptive jealousy. Karen noticed the way other women looked at her fiancé. Why give another woman the opportunity to take care of a problem that she could, when hard-pressed, efficiently handle herself? Karen emboldened herself and firmly grasped his member. Despite his hurry, Michael wasn’t one to miss an opportunity. In a race against the clock, he hastily propped Karen up against the sink. He wrapped her legs around his waist, then glided in between her lips, which, despite their intimidating dryness, quickly pushed him to the brink. Michael knew that he could rest easy on that score since, fortunately for him though somewhat less fortunately for her, Karen had been on the pill since the age of twelve to alleviate the symptoms of endometriosis. He then kissed his fiancée quickly on the cheek, said “I love you” and wiped himself clean with a piece of toilet tissue.

  “I love you too,” she replied. But the sense of postcoital guilt was already imprinted upon her features. “You’re thirty years old. You can decide for yourself and do whatever the hell you want! You don’t need a goddamn preacher to tell you what to do,” he’d exclaim whenever she made him lose his temper over what he perceived as her outdated prudishness.

  “Please leave my priest out of it. He’s got nothing to do it with it.”

  Bullshit! Michael thought whenever he became fed up with frustration. “Don’t you think it’s a bit strange that you still live with your parents at your age?”

  Although Karen fell head over heals in love with Michael practically from the moment that she laid eyes on him, she didn’t want to rush into a serious relationship. She’d been burned by men before. This time she wanted to play it safe. Yet no matter how much she tried to protect herself, as far as Michael was concerned, Karen’s heart led the way far ahead of her head. The only thing she could control was when she actually moved in with him. On this issue alone she put her foot down. Like a good Catholic girl, she told him they’d live together only after they got married. “It would kill my folks,” Karen tried to explain the situation to Michael more diplomatically. She wanted him to understand the disappointment her parents would feel if she openly lived with a man, as opposed to doing what she was doing now: which is to say, sneak into his apartment in the mornings and afternoons and return home in the evenings, feeling ashamed and impure.

  But Michael refused to be alone. Though completely untouched by the suffering of others, a sense of painful emptiness overcame him late at night, when he went to sleep without holding a woman—and not just any woman, but his woman—in his arms. What the hell! If she won’t commit to me, then I won’t commit to her either. He made a conscious decision to continue his philandering ways while giving Karen the distinct impression that they were dating exclusively. “You’re the woman of my life,” he’d declare looking dreamingly into his fiancée’s eyes, right after he had been with one or two women on that day. Which was only fair, Michael thought, savoring the duplicity. Because in his mind, Karen’s choice was telling. Her parents and their antiquated morals were far more important to her than he was. In which case, he felt, rationalizing the worst of his behavior for the smallest of her infractions, he was also entitled to pursue other priorities. At the moment, he had three of them to be exact: not counting, that is, the scores of flings and one-night stands.

  Chapter 2

  Michael walked briskly towards the Department of French and Italian. Since he was running late, he rushed into his office without stopping to banter, as usual, with fellow graduate students. As soon as he opened the door, Mireille, the officemate who had provided him with pleasant companionship for the past two years, greeted him. She lunged into his arms and plastered her lips upon his.

  “I’m late to class!” Michael announced as soon as he managed to regain his breath. “Which, incidentally, starts in about 30 seconds,” he added, glancing at his watch.

  At the moment, however, Mireille had a more pressing concern than his class. “Double D dropped by earlier this morning looking for you,” she said with an ambiguous look in her eyes, half-taunting, half-reproachful. “Double D” was their code name for Lisa, his well-endowed student from French 101. Michael preferred to avoid, as much as possible, crossing wires among his women. But Double D came by his office so frequently during the past few weeks that Mireille would have to be blind not to get the picture. Not that he felt that bad about it. After all, Mireille was no saint either. She was engaged to Jack, an all­American blond, tall law school student, through whom she hoped to obtain U.S. citizenship.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I love my fiancé,” Mireille had said to Michael when she first informed him that she was engaged. But this exchange of factual information didn’t prevent either of them from taking every possible opportunity to lock the office door and do whatever it took to make sure the desk wou
ld need cleaning up with plenty of Kleenex tissues dabbed in Evian water afterwards.

  Although Michael never erred on the side of caution in his actions, he was usually pretty careful with his words. “That girl’s so huge, she’s a freak show!” he tried to make Mireille feel more at ease with the whole situation.

  Fortunately, Mireille wasn’t one to hold a grudge for long. “See you at lunch,” she confirmed. “Tu me manques,” she added sweetly in her native tongue.

  In moments like these, Michael felt that it might be wrong to lead on the poor girl into believing that he loved her. But what else could a man do when, after having carnal relations with a woman on a regular basis for two years, she whispered je t’aime into his ear with such genuine ardor several times a week? Could he afford to say nothing in response? Michael was clever enough to realize that when you mess around with a chick for that long, you’ve got to have the decency to tell her “I love you” once in awhile.

  Besides, truth be told, he was genuinely fond of Mireille. He hated to sound superficial, but what got in the way of a deeper commitment was the gap between her two front teeth and her excessively lanky body, which looked downright skeletal at the shoulders and hips. Which is why he preferred to view her from behind: say, bent over a desk. If he positioned her like a master photographer and the light seeped through the blinds at just the right angle, one could plausibly claim that Mireille looked like a model, at least one of those anorexic, Twiggy types.

  Once in class, Michael found it difficult to focus on explaining the difference between l’imparfait and le passé compose. As usual, Lisa made goo-goo eyes at him from the front row. She occasionally passed her tongue over her lips and snickered into her hand, amused by his frazzled reaction. Though certainly no prude, Michael was somewhat disconcerted by Lisa’s behavior. He was quite sure that the other students must have noticed that she received what could be easily misconstrued as “preferential treatment” from the teacher. Of course, in class, Michael tried his best to be friendly and fair to everyone. He joked around and bantered with the boys and was as avuncular as an exceedingly horny twenty-something male could be to barely legal girls.