Hot Properties (46 page)

“What do your friends think of Fred?” the doctor asked.

Marion stared at him, blinked her eyes, and swallowed hard.

“She doesn’t have any friends,” Fred said with a triumphant guffaw, a mean sibling tattling to the parents.

“That’s not true!” Marion snapped at him, really stung by the remark, her brows scrunching up in pain, her furious tone barely covering the hurt.

“Why do you think Fred says that?” Feldman said with his mild, abstracted voice, a slightly bored questioner.

“Because he likes to hurt me, that’s why,” she said, and then dissolved. Fred was amazed. Tears flowed down her face, her chest heaved, her hands covered her eyes. Feldman looked at him. Fred felt reproved by the doctor’s glance.

“It’s just the truth!” Fred squeaked. “I’m just telling the truth.” He leaned toward Marion, almost pleading for help. “Name one friend.” She sobbed louder, turning from him with horror and loathing. “I don’t know one! That’s all! Name one!” he cried, an innocent man being sentenced unjustly.

“You don’t let me …” she choked out between the sobs.

“What!” Fred spread his arms out in incredulous outrage, looking at Feldman for rescue. “Come on,” he said to the doctor with weary disgust, crying for the referee to stop these low blows.

“You don’t let me have any. All my old girlfriends were stupid. The people we used to know from college, losers.”

“This is fuckin’ ridiculous!” Fred said, turning to the wall, in the absence of a sensible person to look at.

Marion cried for a while, Feldman looked impassive, Fred stared off. When she quieted, Fred grumbled, “I don’t know what this is accomplishing.”

Feldman immediately spoke to Marion, almost squashing Fred’s words: “Why do you let Fred decide who your friends are?”

“She doesn’t! It’s bullshit!” Fred said.

“Is there anything Marion has said that you think is true?” Feldman asked, without his tone containing the challenge inherent in the sentence.

“About this?” Fred said, scrambling, knowing he was in trouble, caught in the backfield without a receiver to throw to.

“About anything,” Feldman said. “Do any of her criticisms ring true?”

“I don’t know—I can’t remember them all. There are so many! Everything that’s wrong with her life is my fault. Nothing is her fault! Her fucking job, our sex life, every fucking thing is my fault!”

Feldman looked at his clock and then back at Fred, somewhat balefully. “We have five more minutes and I want to talk a little about what we’re doing.” Marion and Fred both looked at him, surprised, so used to his role as questioner that declarative sentences were a shock. “This has been helpful, both of you coming in as a couple. But I think it’s getting …” He struggled for a word.

“Stupid,” Marion said, and laughed happily, wiping away the tears from her cheek.

“No,” Feldman said, but there was a trace of a smile that quickly disappeared. “ ‘Bogged down,’ I was going to say. A lot of the problems in any relationship really begin with the individual and can only be resolved through individual therapy. I’d like to suggest that you both start coming separately.”

Marion looked at Fred. She seemed to be asking a question. He had no idea what it was. He could think of only one thing. “You mean,” he said to the doctor, “we each take a separate hour?”

“Yes,” Feldman said with a puzzled tone.

“But that’s …” Fred couldn’t say it.

“That’s gonna get expensive,” Marion said.

“Right,” Fred agreed. Who said they weren’t a team?

Feldman seemed unfazed. “These joint sessions have made some progress, but I think from now on they’ll be unproductive. However, if you wish to continue them, that’s fine.”

Again Marion looked to Fred, as though he had the power to make a decision. Fred’s leg began to hop impatiently. “But … but … excuse me, doctor, that’s bullshit, isn’t it? I mean, you say the sessions aren’t going to work, and then say continue them?”

“I could be wrong,” Feldman said, as though right and wrong were both somewhat boring and unimportant distinctions. “We could experiment. Marion could come in alone next week, and you the following week. That wouldn’t increase your costs.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea,” Marion said cheerfully. Fred noticed that in these sessions she seemed to go from despair to gaiety at supersonic speed. He always felt the same: nervous. disgruntled, bored, and harassed, much like sitting with an accountant and doing taxes.

“But then that means we never see each other,” Fred said to Marion.

“I think that seeing each other outside of this office it something you should be doing,” Feldman said.

They both looked at him openmouthed. The judge had blurted out to the jury in mid-trial that he thought the defendant was innocent. The umpire had been caught wearing a partisan T-shirt under his neutral uniform.

“So?” Feldman said after several moments of their astonishment had passed. He looked at Marion. “You’ll come in next week?” He glanced at the clock. “Because I’m afraid our time is up.”

Marion agreed in a daze and they walked out to the elevator and looked at each other with amazement. Six months had passed since she tossed him out, and these weekly sessions were all that was left of their marriage—apart from its history, which had come alive for them during the intervening days, their minds casting back for fish to fry on Dr. Feldman’s stove. “Well!” she said, smiling at Fred.

“Heavy shit,” he answered. “You wanna go on a date?”

She cocked her head at him, her eyes, which only minutes before had been manufacturing tears, now clear and sparkling. “Sure,” she said with a smile.

The rumors flounced down
Newstime’s
halls, an ingénue seducing everyone from his work, peeking in doors to mock the dull with laughter, the quick with worrisome teasing. David was often asked to confirm, deny, or amplify the various stories. But he couldn’t enjoy his position, since he knew the truth. He was obliged to be silent, and knowing the reality, he couldn’t enjoy speculation.

Chico told him that Rounder was out of favor with the queen about a week before the news buzzed in the lower honeycombs of the hive. The focus of the complaints were the cost overruns due to the editor in chief’s indecisiveness and his penchant for running “soft-news” covers during hot-news weeks. It only added to Chico’s and David’s amusement that the latter grievance of Mrs. Thorn’s— Rounder’s love of features—was the reason she hired him in the first place, preferring a man with commercial instincts rather than Chico, whose background was in hard news.

“It won’t be long now,” Chico told him. “One more fuck-up and he’s gone.” Chico’s strategy during the last six months had been to do nothing to restrain Rounder’s desire to run soft stories, and to put no pressure on the editor in chief to make decisions quickly. Chico credited David with the conception of this plan, and praised him repeatedly for it. “I would’ve kept doing his job for him,” Chico said gratefully, “if it weren’t for your advice.”

Although David was encouraged by these words, he also noticed, now that the moment of Chico’s mating flight, alone—in joyous ecstasy above the hive with the queen—was imminent, that the promises earlier made about promoting David to Marx Brotherhood weren’t repeated.

Whether it was tension over this or the wait for the expected great event. David felt irritable all the time, scratching against the stubbly surface of the unkempt world. It was obvious to everyone at the magazine, David felt sure, that Chico deserved to be Groucho, and that he would also be elevated. Yet it had not happened—they were still stuck in this temporary and unsatisfactory universe.

And then one Wednesday morning the buzz grew fierce with the news that Mrs. Thorn had flown in from Washington unannounced and was headed upstairs for a conference with Chico and Rounder. It was confirmed moments later over the phone when David picked up his line, to be greeted by Chico saying without a hello, “This is it! This is it!”

“You think?”

“Definitely. Gotta go.”

David closed his door to keep out gossips, knowing he couldn’t successfully pretend he wasn’t excited, and somehow feeling that to reveal his expectations would jinx them. He tried to imagine the scene taking place above him. He couldn’t. The real face of power at
Newstime,
despite his intimacy with Chico, despite his presence at all the cover and run-through meetings, remained in shadow, as difficult to picture as what Mrs. Thorn was like undressed in bed.

For a few unbearable minutes he sat and waited. Then he flipped to the back of his appointment book where the telephone number he had called so often was scribbled. He gently lifted the receiver and got an outside line, pausing, a man at the edge of cold water, wanting its refreshment but squeamish at its first shock. He pressed the numbers and let it ring. She answered, as always, in an angry tone:

“Yes?”

“Is this the mistress?” he asked, surprised at his husky voice, so choked the words were barely escaping the constriction of his throat.

“Yes?” Even more irritated and impatient.

“I saw your ad,” he said, and felt a burst of sweat release from his underarms. At last he had done it! He hadn’t hung up in a panic like all the other times.

“Your age and occupation?” she snapped instantly.

He hadn’t been ready for this. It panicked him. “What?” he said, flabbergasted.

“Your age and occupation,” she repeated, bored.

“Uh, I’m thirty-one. I, uh, I’m an executive.”

“I offer dominance and submission. I have a completely equipped dungeon located in Chelsea. It’s a hundred for the hour and it’s a full hour. Do you want to make an appointment?”

“Uh …” He swallowed hard. His breath was so short, his heart’s percussion resounding so frighteningly throughout his body that he almost felt too weak to remain conscious. “I’ve never done this … can I ask some questions?”

“You’ll have a consultation with the mistress to discuss your limitations before the session begins. It’s important you understand, however, that this is dominance and submission. There’s no sex.”

“What does that mean?” he asked, his surprise at this statement overcoming his shy terror.

For the first time, she sounded startled, surprised by his return of serve. “Well, it means slavery, basically.” She recovered her stern tone and went on: “Do you have a particular fetish?”

“Uh, I don’t know. I thought I might like to be forced to …” Overwhelming embarrassment flooded his consciousness, followed by incredulity at the fact that he was actually having this conversation. He cleared his throat. “To worship you.”

“You mean body worship?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Anal worship is permitted. Pussy worship is not.”

He loved her saying that—the flat tone, so matter-of-fact that she could have been someone ordering a large orange juice with the breakfast special. Now he wanted to provoke more discussion of her rules. “Uh … can I worship your breasts?”

“No!” Now she was furious, speaking rapidly, the words clipped. “That’s not dominance. That’s sex. You go to a prostitute for that!” And she hung up.

David stared at the phone, abashed. And amazed. Could she really mean it? She wasn’t a prostitute? She could afford to turn down someone willing to pay a hundred dollars an hour just to lick her breasts?

He imagined kneeling behind her as she lowered her ass onto his mouth, and felt hard. He replayed in his mind her controlled dull voice: “Anal worship is permitted. Pussy worship is not.” He rubbed himself through the pants, his penis straining against his underpants, and wanted desperately to speak to her again.

He picked up the phone to call back—without noticing that the line light was on. Through the receiver he heard the media writer Charlie Huddleston saying to his secretary:

“You mean
Little
Chico isn’t up there with them for the beheading?”

His secretary was laughing, which covered the sound of David picking up the receiver.

“Do you think he’ll take you up to Animal Crackers with him?” Huddleston went on.

“God forbid,” she said, still giggling.

“Is he really bad to work for?” Huddleston said.

“No. But he’s no fun. Spends most of the time in there with the door closed. I don’t know what he’s doing.”

“Probably drinking,” Huddleston said. “He’s bombed every Friday night. I guess its tough being a prodigy. Well, you better buzz me through.”

“Okay,” she said, and instantly David’s intercom rasped.

He felt no rage. He flipped the button.

“Charlie Huddleston on two,” she said.

“Okay,” he said, and got on again. He noticed with interest that Huddleston’s tone with him had the same casualness and ease, maintaining a respectful friendliness with no effort. “Hi! I’m hearing wild rumors. Should I be preparing a transfer-of-power story?”

“Gee, Charlie, I don’t know. Hey, you know there was something I wanted to ask you. Get confirmation.”

“What’s that?” Huddleston said.

“I heard from somebody that I’ve got a nickname at the magazine.”

“Oh,” Charlie said, nervousness creeping in.

Let’s make him wonder, David thought. “Yeah. Have you heard it? Little Chico.”

“No kidding,” Charlie said, now definitely shaky and confused. “I haven’t heard that.”

“Oh, good. It’s kind of insulting.”

“Yeah, it is. Oh, there’s my other phone. I’d better—”

“Sure.” David said with a smile. “Bye.” He hung up, feeling good. Feeling lucky. In control.

Tony stretched forward in his chair to relieve the dull ache in his back. The last lines were being said. He noticed with pleasure that they had the right tone of finality. The audience at this reading of his new play—the other members of the Uptown Theater and. especially important, its artistic director. Hilary Bright—were rapt, their expressions concentrated. There had been a lot of laughs, not quite as many as he had hoped, a few sounded automatic, polite, but the “heavy” scenes had played even better than he had expected. The success of this reading was important: Hilary Bright had arranged it to help her determine whether his play was ready for the Uptown Theater to do a production of it this fall.