Would she get the reference? A professor at Colgate had loved to tell the story. Voltaire had accepted an invitation from a friend to go to a specialized brothel — young boys, something like that. He’d gone and had a good time, and the friend invited him again a few weeks later. Voltaire declined. But you had such a good time, the friend said. Mais oui, said Voltaire. Once, un philosophe. Twice, a pervert.
Flowers and goodbye. That would be nice, the sort of mixed message that might even appeal to the dizzy bitch. Or, to keep it simple, he could skip the flowers and skip the note and just never see her again. She’d get over it, and so would he.
He checked his book, and saw that it was moot. He couldn’t go Friday anyway, he had to speak at a dinner in Connecticut. That would be his second speech of the week — he had to fly to Richmond Tuesday morning to talk at a luncheon.
He spent the weekend at his apartment, letting the machine take his calls. Monday morning he called the lecture bureau and said something had come up, to cancel his appointments for the week. Both of them, the lunch in Richmond and the dinner in Hartford. The woman he spoke to was clearly rattled and obviously wanted him to be more specific about his reasons for canceling, but he didn’t have the energy to invent something, and she evidently couldn’t bring herself to press him for a reason.
Wednesday he was supposed to get together with a writer who came highly recommended. They were just going to have lunch and explore in the most general fashion the possibility of their working together to develop a book proposal. Tuesday he called the writer to cancel. Did he want to reschedule? Not now, he said. He had the writer’s number, he’d call him when things cleared up a little.
Wednesday he had lunch alone at a diner in the neighborhood, then walked in Central Park for hours, pausing now and then to sit on a bench and stare off into space. Thursday he went to the gym, gave up on the treadmill after five minutes, gave up on the weight machines halfway through his cycle. Sat in the steam room for longer than he should have, and was dizzy and dehydrated when he got out of there. Went home, drank a whole bottle of Evian water, and went to bed.
Friday he picked up the phone to call her and tell her he wasn’t coming. He had her number at the gallery and dialed six of the seven digits, then hung up. Picked up the phone again, dialed three digits, quit.
Jesus.
At eight that night he gave his name to her doorman, praying that she wouldn’t be home. The doorman called upstairs, then nodded to him and pointed to the elevator. He knocked on her door and she called out that it was open.
He went in. There was no one in the living room. He walked on through to the bedroom and found her dressed in a black leather garter belt and black mesh stockings and high-heeled black shoes. Nothing else. The outfit should have looked absurd, but didn’t.
“Hi, Franny,” she said, almost gently. And smiled.
“Susan.”
“No, don’t talk. The hood will come later, but for now I don’t want you to speak. Do you understand?”
He nodded. She was crazy, he thought, and he was crazy to be here, he ought to leave right now. And he was getting a hard-on, and who the hell was he kidding? He wasn’t going anyplace.
“I waxed myself, Franny.” She touched herself, showing him. “It was starting to grow back, so I took care of it. You use hot wax, you pour it on and let it cool and rip it off. It’s painful, and very erotic. But it’s pretty.” She held herself open for his inspection, asked him if he didn’t think it was pretty. He nodded, and she told him to get undressed.
“Look at you, Franny, you’re hard as a rock. What’s a sweet little girl like you doing with such a gorgeous cock? One of these times I’m going to wax you. Everything, your chest, your armpits, your cock and balls and ass. Everything. You’ll be so silky smooth everywhere, and you’ll wear silk underwear and you’ll be hard all the time. Get on your knees, Franny. I’m all sensitive from the waxing and I want you to lick me. I want you to make me come.”
When she sent him home later that night he felt at once gloriously alive and determined he would never see her again. He went home and had another night full of unremembered dreams, waking with a furious erection and a strong urge to relieve himself, which he resisted.
Sunday night he had a sandwich and a beer at a good deli, and around eleven he went over to Stelli’s for a drink. He joined some friends at a table but hardly said a word, and didn’t stay long. Early night, Stelli told him on the way out. Big day tomorrow, he said.
But all he did the next day was read the papers and watch TV news. Tuesday after breakfast he called his lecture bureau and told them to cancel all his scheduled engagements and not make any future bookings for him. He wasn’t surprised when the phone rang ten minutes later and it was the head of the bureau, demanding to know what was the matter. Was he disappointed with their service? Was he going with a competitor? And, even if he was, didn’t he realize he had to honor the bookings they’d made for him?
He said it wasn’t that, he’d lost his taste for public speaking, he just couldn’t do it anymore. He fended off further questions, and noted that she didn’t close by telling him to give her a call if he changed his mind.
When he got off the phone he went through his book and canceled everything but a dentist appointment. Then he got out of the house and went for a walk in the park.
Friday he was back at London Towers. This time she hooded him immediately, pinned him on his back on the bed, and kept him on the edge of climax for an eternity. Finally she told him she was going to apply heat, that he might think it was going to burn him, but that it would not do him any damage. Then he felt something red-hot pressed against the base of his scrotum, then jabbed into his rectum. He smelled burning hair and thought he was going to die.
After a long moment the sensation changed, and he realized it wasn’t hot at all, it was cold, and that she’d rubbed him with an ice cube that even now was melting inside him. He lay there while his breathing returned to normal and she gentled him with a hand on his chest and abdomen, stroking him lightly, calming him down.
What he’d smelled, she told him, was a feather from her pillow, held in the flame of a candle. For verisimilitude, she said. Her lips touched the base of his scrotum, where she’d first touched him with the ice cube.
Next time, she said softly, you’ll be expecting ice. And you’ll get fire.
The following afternoon, Saturday, he looked up a number and called a woman he hadn’t seen in several months. Her name was Arlene Szigeti, and she worked at Carnegie Hall, in the Planned Giving division. Her job was to convince rich people of the value of making substantial bequests to the organization in their wills. She would take prospects to dinner and a concert, making them feel like members of an exclusive club. “I go out several nights a week with people a great deal more well off than you,” she’d told him once, “but you’re different. You pick up the check.”
“Fran,” she said. “Well, it’s been a while.”
“Too long,” he said. “Are you free for dinner Wednesday?”
She had plans Wednesday, but Tuesday was open. Maybe a show first, he suggested, and dinner afterward. They agreed on a couple of plays neither of them had seen, and he got good orchestra seats to their first choice. She met him at the theater, looking even lovelier than he remembered. She was in her midforties, with fine-spun blond hair and elegant features. Her father, a Hungarian with ties to the Esterhazy family, had come over after the 1956 revolution, her mother’s parents were Jewish refugees who got out of Germany just in time.