Small Town

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.

After the play they had a light supper down the street at Joe Allen’s, then walked to her apartment on Fifty-fifth Street, five minutes away from her office. It was a foregone conclusion that they would go to bed — they always did — and that the relationship would not lead to anything. They enjoyed each other’s company, in and out of bed, but the emotional chemistry wasn’t there.

In her apartment she offered drinks and he said he was fine, and she came into his arms and they kissed.

He still hadn’t kissed Susan.

In bed, his passion for her was stronger than it had ever been, and she was an apt and eager partner. At the end she lay with her head in the crook of his arm and her hand cupping his groin.

“Whew,” she said. “If I knew you were that hot, we could have skipped dinner.”

“Just so we had our dessert at home.”

Friday night he was at Susan’s again, naked, bound. “Now,” she said, “tell me all about your date.”

The previous week, just before he left, she’d asked him if he was sleeping with anyone else besides her. He said, “Sleeping? When did we ever sleep together?” Fucking, she said. Was he fucking anybody?

Not lately, he’d said, and she said that was no good. She was fucking other people, and he should do the same. During the coming week, she said, she wanted him to call some woman and go to bed with her. She expected a full report on Friday.

“But not on Thursday,” she’d told him at the door. “I want you fully recovered.”