The Craving (3 page)

Simon nodded in acknowledgment but didn’t say anything.

He was looking straight ahead again when Milika said, “You have a beautiful boy.”

Until recently Simon had no idea what beautiful women went through every day, but now he understood exactly how it felt to have his personal space invaded; he just hadn’t learned how to deal with it.

“Thank you,” he said, without looking at her at all.

Still, he knew she was staring at him. He could feel her gaze.

Then he heard, “Can you turn off your music, please?”

“Sorry,” Simon said, “is it bothering you?”

“No,” she said. “I just want to talk to you, that’s all.”

She still had a toothy smile and was giving him that look. He’d seen the look lately from other women around the city. It was the longing, desperate, come-hither look that rock stars get from their groupies.

Simon didn’t know what else to do, so he turned down the volume.

“You know, you’re a very attractive man,” Milika said.

“Thank you.” Simon was a little taken aback. Women had been checking him out lately, but few had actually started conversations.

“I’m from Serbia,” she said. “I’m divorced.”

“I’m from America,” Simon said. “I’m married.”

Just to emphasize that he was very married and very unavailable, Simon placed his left hand on his lap, in an obvious way, so the woman could see his thick gold wedding band.

This apparently had no effect on Milika either. “You know, you have very beautiful, deep voice,” she said.

It was true Simon’s voice had gotten deeper. His voice had always been deepish, but the other day he’d realized he could do a practically dead-on James Earl Jones impression.

She added, “You should be in movies. You know the voice of the man who speaks about movies, in commercials, you know?”

“Oh, voiceovers,” Simon said. “Maybe it’s not such a bad idea. I mean, since I’m unemployed.”

So now he’d told this woman he was married, and he was unemployed. What else could he possibly do to turn her off? Tell her he had syphilis?

“That’s good you’re unemployed,” she said. “It means you have a lot of time to, you know, do things with your son, and maybe with other people too.”

The way she was looking at Simon, she might as well have been screaming,
I want your sexy body right now!

“Look, I’m trying my hardest to be polite,” Simon said. “But there seems to be a very big misunder—”

She shifted closer to him on the bench and said, “I love your eyes. So many people, their eyes say nothing, but your eyes, they tell a story. A story of a very handsome man who meets a pretty woman one day in park. They talk a little bit, get to know each other, and then one day they—”

Simon stood and said, “It was very nice meeting you.”

He wished he hadn’t said that; it would only encourage her.

He went over to Jeremy, who was trying to crawl up the slide, and said, “We have to go now.”

“I don’t want to,” he said.

“We’re going,” Simon said, trying to avoid raising his voice or losing his temper, as he knew how dangerous that could be.

Thankfully Jeremy got the point that Simon was serious and didn’t put up
much of a fuss. He finished crawling up to the top of the slide and slid down on his stomach, and then Simon grabbed his hand and led him toward the stroller near the bench.

Milika’s son had run over to her and—although this conversation was taking place about twenty feet away—Simon could hear him saying to her, “Why did he have to leave?” and Milika said to him, “I don’t know, sweetie.”

Like a snotty, aloof supermodel, Simon purposely didn’t make any eye contact with Milika, pretending she wasn’t there. But he heard her, walking toward him, her heels click-clacking, and her perfume was so strong, it was nearly overwhelming.

Then he heard, “Maybe you want to give me your number, no? We make a play date for the children.”

“I’m sorry, we don’t live in the area,” Simon said.

“Yes, we do,” Jeremy said.

“Okay, time to get into the stroller now, kiddo.”

Leaving the playground, heading toward Riverside Drive, Jeremy asked, “How come we couldn’t stay? I wanted to stay, Daddy.”

“We stayed for as long as we could,” Simon said.

“No, we didn’t. You always make me go home too soon.”

It was true; Simon had left other playgrounds lately when random women had started hitting on him.

“How about some ice cream?” Simon asked.

“Yay, ice cream,” Jeremy said.

Score another point for the ice cream distraction strategy. Simon felt bad for evading Jeremy’s questioning, but what choice did he have? He didn’t want to lie to his son, but the truth was out of the question. After all, how was he supposed to explain to a three-year-old boy that his daddy was a werewolf?

I
f someone had told Simon just last month that he would be hiding his werewolfness, or werewolfosity, or whatever it was called, from his family and the rest of the world, he never would have believed it. The thought of werewolves actually existing had seemed insane, and even now there were times when the reality that he had actually become one seemed impossible to comprehend. He’d wake up in the middle of the night, thinking everything was fine, that he was just a normal Manhattan husband and dad, and then he’d remind himself,
You’re a werewolf now
, and he’d shudder as he relived the horror of everything that had happened to him over the past several weeks, the way his body and perceptions had changed, how it had felt to actually transform, physically and mentally, into a half-man, half-wolf creature, and, most horrific of all, how it had felt to kill with his bare hands. Or, well, bare
claws
.

Simon took Jeremy to the Tasti D-Lite on Broadway and Eighty-sixth. Jeremy had a cone of Nutella and Simon had a double cone of Cookies ‘n’ Cream. Though Simon could have engulfed the ice cream and cone in a couple of bites, he forced himself to eat at a normal pace. Lately it took a lot of discipline not to scarf down his food. Sometimes he slacked off, letting his mind wander, and suddenly his food was gone. Still, he finished the ice cream well before Jeremy finished his. Unfortunately, the carbs didn’t do much for Simon’s appetite. He was dying to get home and cook up some burgers or, better yet, steaks.

When they got back to their apartment on Columbus and Eighty-ninth, Simon parked Jeremy in front of the electronic babysitter to watch
The Wiggles
. Although Jeremy had probably seen the episode dozens of times—even Simon knew most of it verbatim—he was as happy as only a three-year-old could be.
Meanwhile, Simon satisfied his craving by cooking up four hamburgers. Though he preferred his burgers well-done, the smell of the cooking meat was so enticing that he couldn’t resist snatching one from the grill when it was rare, and he polished the others off when they were about medium rare—medium, at best.

Simon was content—for the moment. Lately it had been nearly impossible to satisfy his appetite completely, and even when he was going about his normal daily routine—taking care of Jeremy, doing chores, running in the park—thoughts of his next high-protein meal always seemed prominent.

“Hello.”

Simon was in the kitchen, cleaning the grill, and Alison had startled him.

“Hey,” Simon said, immediately recognizing his wife’s particularly pungent end-of-the-day natural scent, mingling with her perfume and deodorant. She was in a navy work suit, heels, and a nice pearl necklace. She worked as a sales rep for a large pharmaceutical company called Primus, currently working on selling a new oral contraceptive, and she always had to look her best for her meetings with physicians. Meanwhile Simon was in his usual daddy outfit—jeans and an old gray hoodie.

“What a day,” Alison said. “I think I’ve been running around nonstop since seven
A.M.
”

Since Simon had lost his job, Alison had been the financial provider for the family. She worked nine to five, though some days she left earlier and came home later, especially on days she entertained doctor clients—taking them out to fine restaurants, sporting events, and Broadway shows.

Unable to block out the wonderful aroma of her body after a long
workday, Simon said, “I know, I can tell.” He imagined grabbing her, putting her on the countertop, then pulling up her dress and ravishing her. If fantasies of steak and sausage were the main behavioral symptom of Simon’s being a werewolf, thoughts of sex, particularly with Alison, were a close second. If it were up to him, he would be all over her all the time, making love to her multiple times every night. Sounded like the perfect marital situation except for one small problem—the last time he’d tried to seduce her, he’d nearly transformed into a werewolf and mauled her to death, so—at least until he figured out how to control his transformations—actual sex was out of the question.

“What can you tell?” Alison asked.

Simon was lost, distracted.

“How can I tell what?”

“You said you can tell.”

“I did?”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Simon realized he was actually panting. “I guess I, um, didn’t hear you come in, that’s all.”

It was a lame excuse but the best he could come up with. He tried to strike the sexual thoughts from his consciousness, but it was nearly impossible. They say that men think about sex at least once every two minutes—well, for Simon it was probably every thirty seconds. Complicating things, he just couldn’t seem to control his brain the way he used to. Sometimes he felt like a puppet, as if someone had taken control of his behavior and actions and he was just a defenseless observer.

Alison came over and kissed him quickly on the lips—he couldn’t help getting a little aroused—and then her gaze darted around the kitchen and through the pass-through toward the living room and dining room.

“The apartment looks great,” she said. “Thanks for cleaning up.”

“No problem,” he said.

He purposely hadn’t turned toward her and the bulge in his jeans was pressed up against the stove, hidden from her view.

“Hello, sweetie, Mommy’s home,” Alison said to Jeremy as she walked away, into the living room.

Simon knew he couldn’t keep the truth a secret forever, and that this period of calm in his life was a last gasp that wouldn’t,
couldn’t
last forever. The tension was building, like a rubber band pulled to its extreme, and it was only a matter of time until everything went to hell all over again.

A
fter dinner, as per their routine lately, Simon let Alison have some alone time with Jeremy. She’d had mixed emotions about working full-time indefinitely, and though she’d adjusted to her role and claimed she was happy, Simon knew that she still felt bad about the situation, and he didn’t want her to feel like she was missing out.

While Alison played with Jeremy in his room, Simon, feeling pent up, was dying to go for a long run in the park. But he’d been trying to resist his animalistic urges lately, so he did maybe a hundred push-ups to relieve at least some of his bottled-up energy, and then he went online on his laptop and did some job hunting.

Although he knew that finding work was the least of his problems at the moment, and he doubted he was capable of starting a new job what with all the upheaval in his life lately, he still browsed want ads and corresponded with headhunters regularly. The search for work was a habit, but also a fantasy. He wanted to believe that if he could just get a job, everything would be okay, and the rest of his life would miraculously revert to normal. Simon checked Monster and a few
other websites, but he wasn’t particularly hopeful about anything. The job market in advertising was tough, especially for a thirty-nine-year-old at middle management level. After tweaking his LinkedIn profile and sending a couple of follow-up e-mails to headhunters who hadn’t gotten back to him or had simply lost interest, he got frustrated and watched some TV—
The Rachel Maddow Show
, DVR’d—until Alison came into the living room and plopped down on the couch next to him.