“My family is Muslim,” she says, “But I practice nothing. If religion is about morality and ethics, you can certainly have that without any ritual. Do you agree?”
He nods. His slight unease withdraws into a corner and all but disappears. Yet he is reluctant to let the matter rest.
“Why did you ask if I was Jewish?”
“Oh, there are so many Jewish doctors at the hospital, and you are somehow like them—friendly, certainly intelligent, but also a bit reserved and cautious. They often talk about Jewish guilt. Is that something all Jewish men feel?” She smiles at her own words, almost daring him to explain.
Perhaps she is now the psychiatrist playing games, he thinks. He shrugs, yet feels the onset of guilt as she speaks. The woman is flirting with him, but he knows that no matter how appealing, he could never sleep with her, even kiss her, without torment. She is right—he has become cautious.
“How often do the buses go back to New York?” she asks. The segue releases him for a moment from thoughts about guilt. The question doesn’t surprise him. They have only been together a bit more than thirty minutes. He is likely boring her. It’s time for him to get home. A part of him feels relief. He checks his watch.
“There’ll be one in about forty minutes. They have them all the time.”
“I like that,” she says. “Do you have the time to give me a short tour of the area?”
He feels trapped. “I guess I could do that,” he answers with a tug of regret, as if he should have feigned some imaginary appointment, a technique years of business deception had ingrained.
“Oh, that would be very nice,” she says in her clipped, very correct English.
“So I guess you speak Farsi and German as well as English?” he asks.
“What do you know about Farsi?” She raises one brown eyebrow.
“I’ve done business in Iran. I’ve been to Tehran, I think at least three times. And once to Khoramshahr to check on a cargo of steel pipes we sold. Business with NIOC, the National Iranian Oil Company.”
“While the shah was still there?” she asks.
He nods.
“All the senior people there were tied to the shah’s family. Everyone had a chance to make money.”
“Except the traders who sold to them,” he answers, but it is a throwaway line. Everyone made money then. Still, he has an urge to verbalize one of his memories of those days. “Every time we had a contract they would keep coming back and ask us to adjust our terms so there would be more graft to share. I remember one time when they said our sales price was actually too low. Can you imagine a state company telling a supplier to raise its price?”
She doesn’t answer. He wants to ask her what her father did in Iran, but he says nothing. Obviously her family has some money. Vienna is an expensive city and she’s gone to medical school. Perhaps her family was even one of the many he assisted in illegally transferring assets out of the country. There were strict rules against cash transfers, but Posner and his associates devised a scheme that enabled rich Iranians to buy commodities for export—copper, aluminum or steel scrap, it didn’t matter. As soon as the export left an Iranian port, the title documents were negotiable and the traders in Rotterdam were more than happy to pay slightly below market price, which Posner passed on to the Iranian family’s European bank account, less a reasonable commission. Maybe she’s even somehow related to the shah’s family. So many of the prosperous Iranians he worked with claimed such a connection.
“Look to your right,” he says as they pass a large house that straddles more than a hundred feet of beachfront. He pulls to a stop and they absorb the tall twin cedar turrets that flank the extensive floor-to-ceiling glass windows.
“It’s magnificent,” she says. “Do you live near here?”
The question should not have been a surprise, but it is.
“Around the corner,” he answers. His pulse quickens. She is pushing too far, but her flattery disarms him.
“Can I see it?” she asks.
She is over the line now. He has only to answer, “No,” and everything will be formal and polite, but he quickly says, “Oh, sure.”
He moves the car less than a hundred feet and turns the corner. He wonders, almost absurdly, whether she hears the sudden rush of blood that moves through his body, sees the nervous minispasms in his fingers as they clutch the wheel, or the fine line of moisture that settles above his upper lip, but all she says is, “Oh, what a pretty street.”
He directs the car up his driveway and stops. He lets the engine idle, and they sit for a moment. The ocean beats a cadence against the sand and there is the odd, shrill cackle of birds, but the air is otherwise quiet. He sighs, ready to move the Lexus into reverse, but she interrupts his idea of escape and asks, “Can I see the inside?”
Even before he thinks of an answer, she is pulling the door handle open.
“Take care on the steps,” he says. “They’ve just been refinished.”
He slips his loafers off in the entrance and watches as she slides off her white sandals as well. He notices for the first time that her toes are coated with deep burgundy polish.
“I like to do what the host does.”
Her words drip with unvarnished innuendo. At the top of the stairs she turns and surveys the area.
“The view is great.”
Then she surprises him by ignoring the view as she walks around the room, touching small sculptures, and analyzing a succession of wood-block prints and lithographs on the wall farthest from the windows.
“Do you live here alone?” she asks
“Most of the time,” he answers truthfully. “I’m married, but my wife spends most of her time in Manhattan.”
She shrugs. He believes she doesn’t care. The more she speaks, the more he comes to believe she is a latent free spirit, a throwback to the sixties, someone who would have rolled naked in the mud at Woodstock, screwed her brains out for a week, and only then went off to medical school. She continues to survey the room. There is a tightening in his chest as he thinks of her naked in Woodstock or here on the forest-green couch. An intense urge begins to grip his body. He has to think of something else. Now. He turns away and imagines the ocean two hundred feet beyond the window. He thinks of the last big storm that blew shingles off his roof. He considers these things until the urge passes. He realizes more fully that this is a mistake. She shouldn’t be here.
“Where is this from? It looks like this house.”
He needs to turn his head to see her standing in front of the pen-and-ink sketch of this very house. A rough design he made over twenty years ago and showed to an architect who liked the idea. He bought the land only after the architect agreed to design plans to fit the sketch. The drawing hangs on the wall leading to the master bedroom.
“It’s my design,” he says. “It’s this house.”
“Ach, fantastish,” she says. He is happy to show off something that is his alone. He ignores the fact that she speaks German.
She walks toward him and asks if she could have something to drink. “Perhaps some red wine,” she suggests.
“I guess I can do that,” he says, but there is edginess in his answer. He feels as if he is sliding into a deep pit without a handhold.
“Very nice, thank you,” she answers, “but can I first use your bathroom?”
He points to the end of a short corridor. “The door on your left.” She picks up her bag and moves in the direction he points. He hears the water running and the toilet flush. She is there for several minutes, but he gives it little thought. He spends the interval choosing a wine.
When she returns, he tells her about the sketch he made years ago as he pulls the cork from a bottle of Merlot. He pours a modest serving into a single glass. He has no intention of joining her. He holds the glass in his left hand and walks to where she has stopped, in front of the deep-green couch.