The Accidental Virgin (4 page)

The “Dark Lady” (the staff’s nickname for her) took a sharp right into the samples closet, where each peekaboo bra, G-string, and half-slip was tested by the in-house design staff of five (none was in yet). Garments hung on racks, spilled out of drawers, and lay in lacy, pastel piles on counters. Shelves were packed with Lucite boxes of pearls, bows, buttons, snaps, hooks, and straps. Bolts of lush fabrics were stacked in a pyramid on the floor. Avoiding Fiona’s vaguely creepy gaze, Stacy stared at herself in the floor-to-ceiling wall mirror. She was also wearing a red sheath dress — no hose (or shoes), but her Candy Apple Red toenail polish was a perfect match for Fiona’s. The two women were almost the same height. Stacy wore a size 8. Fiona, a slender 4, still seemed larger. Larger than life.

Hoping to steer the conversation her way, Stacy said, “Have you seen Agent Provocateur this week?” Their rival lingerie website, agentprovocateur.com, had added mini-soft-core pornographic film clips to showcase their new styles, all artfully done. Stacy hoped to move thongs.com in that direction and away from their mass-market underwear supermarket catalog presentation. “At the very least,” Stacy continued, “we should talk about our models.” At present, thongs.com used low-rent human mannequins, girls with perfect bodies and dog faces. The cropping of photos (no heads) disturbed Stacy politically and aesthetically.

Fiona picked through a rack of bustiers and said, “Mesh.”

“Mesh?” asked Stacy.

“It’s going to be big.”

Stacy’s stomach tightened. Of course, Fiona hadn’t heard a word she’d said, nor would she give her the courtesy of pretending to. Dutifully, Stacy asked, “A line of mesh lingerie?”

“Bras, panties, camisoles, girdles,” Fiona confirmed. “I want a mesh petticoat. Mesh peignoir! You can have your precious corselette, in mesh, if you want. All tightly woven. All metallic colors, shiny fabrics. Very futuristic.”

“I see,” she replied.

“What do you see?” asked Fiona, her attention complete.

“I see what you mean?” Stacy replied tentatively.

“
I see
mesh on the bare ass of every American woman — and it looks good,” said her boss. “If we work ten percent harder, we’ll have product by September.”

“
This
September?” That seemed wildly optimistic. It usually took five months to design, produce and market a new line. Fiona wanted to do this one in two and a half.

“We can do it,” Fiona insisted. “It’ll be huge. Print and TV advertising, direct e-marketing to millions. I want you to handle it.”

Stacy gulped. In the mirror, she could see the swallow travel down the white skin of her neck and disappear under the collar of her dress.

“Meshwear 2001,” Fiona announced. “Do you love it?”

Stacy said, “I’m not sure.”

“You don’t like mesh?” she asked. “I do. End of discussion.”

Stacy shook her head. “No, mesh really, uh, breathes. But we can’t pull it together for September. We’ll have to work around the clock…”

Fiona interrupted. “Every employee at this or any dot-com company puts in the time, Stacy. It’s a requirement of the job — the job that could make you a millionaire.”

The boss truly believed. Stacy doubted the stock price would ever climb back to its peak price. But, in this economy, anything
was
possible. With a cash infusion and a great idea (was mesh a great idea?), thongs.com could reclaim their once-strong position as the number-one intimates retailer on the web. The thought of putting in 18-hour days, the thousands of details to keep track of, the misery of it…she could not do it. She would not.

“Mesh is more for spring, don’t you think?” Stacy ventured.

Fiona stared at her for a beat of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. With each beat, Stacy’s pulse doubled.

“If you need more personal time,” said the boss, “you can have it — full time.” The Dark Lady turned on her stiletto heel and teetered out of the samples room. Even as the breath exited her lungs, Stacy couldn’t help admire Fiona’s ass — like a squirrel’s nest, round and tight.

Alone now among the ribbons and pearls, Stacy studied her reflection in the mirror — slim body, long hair and stricken expression. Had she just lost her job? And was that such a horrible prospect? Allegedly, 13 years separated Stacy and Fiona. What would Stacy’s next decade turn her into? Fiona had never married. She was a multi-millionaire (even after the stock drop), lived in a 3,000-square-foot loft in TriBeCa. She had famous friends, was a psuedo-celebrity herself. Taylor believed Fiona was miserable in her luxurious aloneness. Stacy wished Taylor would keep her beliefs, naïve, wrongheaded and self-inflating, to herself. The obvious truth to Stacy: Fiona was happy. She had everything she’d ever wanted. If she showed any distress, it was merely a touch of fear that her dream life would be dashed by the whims of Wall Street (witness this private meeting). Besides which, Fiona made every effort to spread her happiness, and her wealth, around, showering her staff with gifts (bribes), expensive lunches, trips to Paris, Milan, and London for the seasonal fashion shows. She was a difficult, impetuous woman, but generous. Inspired. Stacy was glad to know her. Thongs.com was a good job. Was.

Sullenly, Stacy padded back to her office. The message light blinked on her phone. She punched in her password and listened. The first and only message was from Fiona, recorded seconds earlier. She said, “I might have been a little too hard on you. I apologize. I’ve put my life into this company. When I ask you to head a project, I’m trusting you with my life. As long as I’m here, you’ll be my number three. Take an hour. We’ll start the Meshwear 2001 meeting at ten — I sent a staff e-mail. And call this number: 555-6969.”

Stacy couldn’t help feeling relieved. She still had her job, and she had an hour to collect herself before she’d have to say “whatever you want, Fiona” again. Meanwhile, curious, Stacy dialed the phone number Fiona gave her.

A deep masculine voice on the other end answered. “Executive Escorts. Justin speaking,” he said.

A sex service. Fiona’d meant it when she said she used male escorts. Stacy inhaled her office’s oxygen. Fiona actually believed that Stacy would hire a professional date. Was that an insult or a gesture of camaraderie? Either possibility horrified Stacy (and titillated her — emotions clearly in a tangle).

“Hello?” asked the man on the line. Fumbling and shaky, Stacy hung up.

“Stacy, got a second?” Janice Strumph (“The Doll” to Fiona’s Dark Lady) leaned into her underling’s office doorway.

Stacy swiveled to face Janice, petite and smooth, except for the crow’s feet. She wore her trademark tan slacks and blazer. What she must go through to find the same ensemble in winter-, spring- and summer-weight fabrics marveled Stacy.

“I’d like you to meet someone,” said Janice, pulling a young man into Stacy’s view. Where Janice occupied a tiny portion of the doorway, this boy dominated the space. His extra-large physique blocked the light from the hallway. He towered over Janice, an endlessly long arm around her narrow shoulders. Despite their extreme size discrepancy, the boy shared Janice’s blonde curls, her oval-shaped face and creamy complexion. They had identical cheek moles. Janice beamed up at him, madly in love with the boy. Stacy could see why. Jeans were made for 20-year-old male bodies.

“This is my son,” announced Janice, as if presenting the president of the United States. “My younger son. Tommy.”

“Tom,” he said, holding out his hand for Stacy to shake.

“Hello.” Stacy smiled sweetly. She stood (he wasn’t
that
tall, actually, just looked that way standing next to his mom), and gave his hand a proper pump. Soft skin with scratchy fingertip calluses. “You must be a guitar player,” she said.

The boy (Stacy knew he was a junior in college at — where was it — she tried to recall) said, “I play in a band at Northwestern.”

Northwestern, of course, she thought. “Home for summer break. How nice for you, Janice.”

The Doll pouted and said, “He’s leaving me tomorrow for England, and I can’t even have lunch with him. This meeting will last for hours.”

Just as Stacy feared. It would be an endless round of mediocre notions, brainstomping and energy-sucking logistics. Back on the seesaw (“I hate my job, I love my job, I hate my job,” etc.), Stacy had to get off. She’d cried once today already, and that was her limit. Fiona would never let her go, especially after what had happened in the samples room. Maybe Janice would excuse her. A risky venture: Fiona and Janice’s delicate balance of power was precarious. Toes would be trampled. But here stood — loomed — a way out of the meeting and, quite possibly, her sexual conundrum.

“No time for lunch?” said Stacy. “That’s horrible, Janice. You can’t have a young man wandering the streets of New York by himself for hours upon hours.”

Tom laughed. “I grew up in Manhattan, Stacy.”

She attempted mirthful flirtation. “Things have changed since you went off to college. Madmen throw bricks at people’s heads now. Stick them with syringes on street corners. The mayor is a Republican, you know. This town is frightening.”

Tom set his blue eyes on Stacy in a way that filled her with confidence and daring. “I may need protection after all,” he said.

“I will take you to lunch,” Stacy announced. She noticed a slight blush in Tom’s curved cheek, and a grin to go with it.

Had Janice been a casual observer of this volley, she would have seen what had really been exchanged between the two young, attractive people. But since Janice was mother to Tom and boss (
in loco parentis
) to Stacy, her mind couldn’t fathom the potential incest of their stolen hour together. But something else gave her pause. Janice said, “I’m not sure we can do without you today, Stacy. Even for a quickie.”

Stacy nearly fell. “A quick lunch.”

“That’s what I said.”

“I won’t keep her long, Mom,” said Tom with the big eyes and unction of a favorite son. “I promise, we’ll talk about you the entire time.”

Tuesday afternoon

“M
y mother is a slut,” said Tom Strumph. “I respect her for it. If there were more sluts in the world, rape statistics would do down. Date rape wouldn’t exist. And, I’d even make the quantum leap that pornography sales would take a nosedive.”

Stacy and the college boy sat at her favorite restaurant, Genki Sushi, in midtown on 43rd Street and 5th Avenue. It took only two minutes of convincing for Janice, Tom’s mother (the slut) to agree to excuse Stacy from one hour of a thongs.com daylong planning meeting. In exchange, all Stacy had to do was entertain her youngest son.

“I’m a big advocate of women’s rights,” continued Tom. “And by heralding a call to sluts doesn’t mean women should put themselves at the disposal of men. That they should open their legs whenever a man shows the slightest interest in sex. Did you ever read
Clan of the Cave Bear?
The cave women were required by prehistoric law to drop to their knees — doggie style — whenever a caveman grunted and pointed at the ground. That’s barbaric! I would never want women to act like that. Any man who would is a pig.
Clan
is really an amazing book, though. You should check it out.”

“I will. It sounds fascinating,” Stacy said. How had the conversation arrived at the subject of casual sex? Stacy wasn’t sure, but she was pleased to get there. Engaging in casual sex with this man/boy had been locked on her mind since she’d invited him to lunch. Perhaps Tom could read her thoughts.

Thinking was not doing, however. Since taking their seats at the restaurant’s serpentine counter, Stacy had been debating whether she could actually go through with another seduction attempt. An afternooner with a guy she’d met only a couple hours earlier? Certainly, Stacy had had anonymous sex. Lots of it. But Tom wasn’t exactly zipless. Or faceless. There were consequences. He was her boss’s son. Then again, Tom was leaving the country tomorrow for six months (a lifetime in the eyes of a 20-year-old). She should be able to get in and out (as it were) risk free.

Tom sermonized some more. “The fact of the matter is,” he said, “any woman can get laid from any guy at any second of any day. You could go up to any guy and say, ‘Fuck me,’ and he’d drop whatever he was doing and fuck you. I hear women complain about not having sex or not being able to find a guy to be with. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If a woman doesn’t get enough sex, it’s her own fault. Her standards are too high, or she doesn’t know that she’s a repressed lesbian.”

A conveyor belt ran above the top of the counter, carrying tiny plates of sushi. The plates were color coded for price. The bill for a meal was tallied by counting how many plates of each color one collected. Tom had already had three yellow ($4), four white ($6), five green ($3) and one red ($7). He’d tasted nearly every kind of sushi available that day — fatty tuna, soft-shell crab, eel, salmon skin, yellow tail, urchin, and roe, among others — as well as popping California rolls as if they were edamame. Stacy, demure and ladylike, had a stack of just four plates. She hadn’t secured it with Janice, but she planned on expensing this lunch. The total would be over $100 by now, Tom showing no sign of slowing.

Stacy ventured, “Isn’t it possible that a woman could put sex on a shelf? That she’d just forget about it for the time being?”

“If this woman had a libido at all, I don’t see how she could forget about it. That’s like forgetting about food, or sleep, or breathing. Sex is a biological imperative. Our bodies are programmed to want sex and think about sex all the time.” Tom, lover of pronouncements, made another one. “If a woman can forget about sex, she is frigid.”

Stacy stirred the ice in her water with her finger. “Your theory, about how easy it is for a woman to get sex, assumes that she has the courage, lack of discretion and willingness to ask outright for it. For example, if a woman —”

“You?” he asked. “I’m only insisting on specifics because it
is
relevant if the woman is a hottie. And you are the hottest woman over thirty I’ve seen in a long time. Ever. Even under thirty.”

“Glad to hear it,” Stacy said. “So then, what you’re saying, is that I, Stacy Temple” — a frigid closet lesbian? — “could walk right up to Tony McGuinty —”

“Who?”

“Tony McGuinty. The actor from
The Hail Storm
?
Gorgeousville
?
Wonder Dogs
?”

“Never heard of him.”

“Well, he is very handsome.”

“It would be helpful for me, in envisioning this scenario, if you could pick a man I’m familiar with. How about Derek Jeter?”

Stacy had no passion for the Yankee shortstop. She was sure he was a nice kid, and he was very young, rich and talented. But he did nothing for her. “I could never ask Derek Jeter for sex.”

“That’s the whole point. You can’t be intimidated. He’d say yes. Any guy would take one look at you and say yes to anything. He’d say yes to signing over his life savings. He’d say yes to murder. And all you’d be asking him for is a bit of nookie.”

She was quite certain that she’d never ask for
that
. “Last night, a man said no to me.”

Tom reeled back, nearly fell off his stool, in shock. “He’s gay.”

“It had crossed my mind.”

“So he’s a fag,” he said. “But at least you tried. That’s a step in the right direction for all women. If I may be so bold as to take a woman’s sexual empowerment to a higher, political level —”

“You may.”

“Women would rule the world if they had more casual sex.”

“Sounds like an excellent dissertation topic,” said Stacy.

“If women were willing to sleep with men just because they wanted to — not worrying about whether the guy would respect her, or if he’s up to her standards or had enough money — they’d be in complete control of men, and would therefore rule the Earth.

“Plus,” added Tom, “they’d be happier. My mom sleeps with a different guy every month. She gets more action than half of my friends at college. I hope I have as much fun when I’m forty-nine.”

Stacy didn’t believe Janice was having fun. In fact, she was quite positive her boss was lonely and depressed. But Tom’s poor insight about his mom wasn’t Stacy’s business. For all she knew, Janice shielded her children from her pain. Maybe that was the right and proper thing to do. In any case, Stacy wouldn’t correct Tom on his misunderstanding of Janice. Her only aim, on that Tuesday in July, was to take full advantage of the situation, and of this boy. His theories about women asking for sex sounded swell in thin air. She wondered how deeply she’d embarrass him if she thickened it.

“Are all college men as concerned with a woman’s rightful place in the universe?” she asked.

“Gender equality is pretty high on my fix-it list,” he said.

As he plucked another white plate (octopus and scallion hand roll) from the conveyor belt, Stacy said, “I don’t meet too many men who love sushi.”

“I love it. I could eat fish every day,” he said and winked at her.

“Casual sex and raw fish for everyone,” said Stacy, interpreting the gospel of Tom.

“Amen to that,” he said, holding aloft a neat package of rice, tentacle and seaweed before shoveling it into his mouth. Stacy watched him chew, his lips slightly parted. Sex for sex’s sake. That’s what she was thinking herself into. God knows, she’d done it plenty of times before without qualms. It was a worthy task, a mundane yet noble act. She would have no guilt or hesitation. Stacy still had thirty minutes left on her hour off, and could stretch it by another fifteen if she had to. Best not to think about his dim bulb of a brain, intolerance or piggy table manners, she thought. Focus on his splendid availability.

“You are cute, Tom,” she announced. “And I couldn’t agree more that women should have as much casual sex as possible. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, women should grab, with both hands, any opportunity presented to her.”

He paused and then swallowed hard. “You agree with me?”

She nodded. “Oh, yes. And, dare I repeat myself, I find you very attractive.”

“The feminists on campus don’t agree,” he said. “They think my theories are offensive. And some women” — he glanced at Stacy — “think my commitment to equality between the sexes is just a rap I use to get laid.”

Did she need to hit this boy on the head with a maki roll? Stacy put her hand on Tom’s forearm. “I want you, Tom. I want you so badly it hurts. I am in physical pain from the gigantic amount of desire that I feel for you, Tom, at this moment in time.”

He stared at Stacy’s heart-shaped face in shock (and, it seemed, horror), before yelling “Check, please!” to the woman taking drink orders. To Stacy he said, “Let’s go to my place,” and gulped down the last of his carafe of sake.

“Your mother’s place downtown?” she asked, calculating the traveling time of going all the way to the Village and back.

“I’m staying at the Regalton Hotel,” he said.

Stacy paid the bill (careful to keep the receipt), and they walked the three blocks to East 44th Street.

The Regalton Hotel opened in 1992, the same year Bill Clinton became president. In Democratic spirit, the lobby was generously lit with amber-hued torch sconces that made anyone look stylish, slim and sepia. Legend had it that a certain superstar singer, in her club-crawling, pre-pregnancy days, would regularly burst through the unmarked black leather doors with two or three Latin men, disappear into the mirrored elevators and hit the stop button between floors. Hotel management would discreetly cordon off the occupied elevator and direct hotel guests to the unoccupied ones. After an hour or so, the elevator car would arrive in the lobby, ejecting the men into a funnel of flattering light with coupons for a free meal at the hotel’s four-star French restaurant, the Velveteen Lapin. The pop star, meanwhile, would return to her penthouse suite alone, until she emerged from the mirrored elevators herself in the early hours of the morning — rested, scrubbed and ready to run ten miles around the Central Park Reservoir, flanked by bodyguards and trainers (one of whom became the father of her daughter).

Stacy had long thought that the lobby — all black walls set off by bright red-, orange- and yellow-framed mirrors, plush black velvet settees with purple and blue pillows and black inches-deep carpeting that leveled high heels — would be the perfect place to meet a lover for a clandestine lunch hour. And here she was, doing exactly that. How tickled she was. How pleased. Not only would she rid herself of the threat of revirginization, but she’d be doing it in style.

Tom led her to an elevator on the left. Once the doors closed, the ghostly black light bounced off the mirrored walls. Brave Tom put his hands on Stacy’s shoulders and leaned in for what would be her first kiss in nearly a year. Tom was a tall boy, and Stacy, in her heels, was the ideal number of feet and inches to tilt her neck only slightly to greet his lips.

Her heart, her pulse. The dampening of the space between her upper lip and her nose. Stacy hadn’t felt these corporal changes — the excitement — in so long, the effect was uncomfortable, like she’d had one bite too much to eat. As Tom’s mouth approached, like a black hole closing in on a small, uncharted planet, Stacy shut her eyes. She couldn’t watch. It could be a sloppy, wet assault. It could go horribly, horribly wrong. The nanoseconds passed like microseconds, and then contact. She was being kissed by a man. His lips were squashed dryly against her own, and she felt the great relief of a thousand pounds of pressure breaking through a dam of matchsticks.

Stacy emitted a sound, a groan that she wished she could hurry back into her throat. Tom said, “You have a gorgeous ass,” and moved his hands from the safety of her shoulders to said bottom. She wriggled a bit from his grip, momentarily unconvinced that she knew him well enough to be groped in this brutish fashion.

Saved by the ding. The elevator doors opened, and Tom detached his lips from her face and his hands from her hips. She opened her eyes and looked at her new acquaintance, who was smiling sweetly at her as if she’d given him the toy he’d always wanted at Christmas. He was harmless, she realized. Nothing to fear. She could see this through. She was a sophisticated, self-actualized woman with a problem that had a clear and present solution. Courage would not be needed, she reasoned. Determination would be enough.

They walked down the long, dark hallway hand in hand. Tom floated at her side. Despite a 20-year-old’s unlimited capacity to fantasize, Stacy was positive that he couldn’t have imagined a midday screw would be the result of accompanying his mother to her office. She glanced at her watch. They had a comfortable 25 minutes before Janice and Fiona sent out a search-and-rescue squad.

Tom said, “This is my suite.” He waved his plastic key at the lock and the black door popped open. Tom put his hand on her back to steer her into the room. The stench kept her in the hallway. Tom noticed it too, and apologized. “It didn’t smell like this when I left this morning.”

She breathed through her mouth and they walked in. On the floor, Stacy stepped over the remains of last night’s room service (hamburgers and taco salad, she guessed). On the tables, full ashtrays overflowed with cigar and cigarette butts. Half-empty beer bottles everywhere. On the room’s three couches lay the bodies of six young men, some sleeping upright with their feet on the table, all shirtless or in clothing stained with sweat, ketchup, and ash.

“Some friends staying over?” she asked.

Tom said, “I thought they’d be gone by now. And that housekeeping would have cleaned up. Maybe we should go. Can we take a cab to your place?”

Stacy rechecked her watch. Not nearly enough time. Fiona would spit bile if she were that late. Just thinking of work and her boss started to squelch her confidence. Tom, embarrassed by the mess, seemed to perceive her distraction. He had a cute pout.

“Is there a bedroom?” she asked.

He nodded. “I’m not sure what we’ll find in there.”

They picked their way toward the back of the suite. Stacy had to step over slices of pickle and mushed french fries on the carpet. Tom peeked into the bedroom and quickly closed the door.