The Delilah Complex (6 page)

What would it be like to know that the fact of being in charge—no matter what I looked like or said or thought or did—was enough to make me desirable?

The tape was still running, but I shut it off and picked up the confidentiality agreement and read through it, looking at the blank space that was waiting for my signature. The first time I’d looked at it, I’d been furious that my professionalism had been questioned. Now I wasn’t sure how I felt. And I didn’t have any idea what to do.

P
aul Lessor was sitting in his apartment staring at the news on the television with the sound turned off, the light from the monitor the only illumination in the pigsty that used to be his living room. On the coffee table in front of him were piles of newspapers and plates of untouched food. Dried-out English muffins, butter congealed on the plate. Three-quarters of a banana now brown and rotting.

He had no appetite. That was one of the side effects of the medication, and was the least of his problems with the drugs.

What a fucking mess his life was. He was thirty-three. One of the most talented art directors at any publishing house in New York City, with more award-winning covers to his name than anyone else in the business. He’d gotten scholarships to Cooper Union and then the Yale School of Art. He’d had his photographic collages in four group shows. He got offers every year to jump ship from Pigeonhole Press, the small but prestigious publishing company where he worked, and move to the bigger houses, but he didn’t go. He couldn’t go. His boss, Maria Diezen, the fifty-two-year-old editor in chief, had told him that he
couldn’t. She told him often. He loved Maria. He loved how strong she was and how tough she was and how angry she could get at him when he didn’t get it right.

And so he listened to her.

She’d been through twenty-four senior art directors in a dozen years when he’d started working for her three years ago. Now he held a record that other graphic designers in the city were in awe of. Everyone at Pigeonhole knew that Maria was a bitch: aggressive, demanding and crazy half the time. But Paul loved her. Worshipped her. Would do anything that she asked of him. Because when a woman like that, with that kind of temper and those kinds of standards, smiles on you, it’s like the whole fucking world is yours.

There was nothing better than their lunch hours, when together they’d walk into the big, noisy, crowded Barnes & Noble superstore on Fifth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street, near the office, to look at one of his covers on the new fiction table. Nothing like getting a report back from the head of sales that the big buyers at B & N, Borders, Amazon and all the independents had upped their orders because “with a cover like that, there’s no question the book is going to walk itself out of the store.”

And more times than not, it had.

But as good as his work was, as much as he loved what he did and lived off the high that he got from it, he was fucking falling apart.

He’d gone to the psychiatrist six months ago for the crazy things that were happening in his head: manic mood swings—elation, depression, the sense that he could do anything, the realization that he was powerless.

They’d tried cocktail after cocktail of drugs to get him into some kind of chemical balance. The only thing that
worked at all was Thorazine. Except for one little side effect.

He wanted to be able to live with it. Wanted to not care. Anxious to rise above the problem, he told himself that soon he’d get chemically balanced and then the doctor would be able to change the medication and find one that didn’t make him impotent. He had to trust that.

Paul looked at the clock before closing his eyes. A year ago he would not have been home on a Tuesday night at eight o’clock, sitting on his couch, bored out of his brain by television. He would have been naked and fucking some Amazon who shouted out orders, telling him exactly where to put his cock and how to move his hands and what to do with his tongue.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

Not even reliving any of those incredible nights gave him half a hard-on. Not with the Thorazine coursing through his blood, softening his mind and his equipment.

No matter how hard he concentrated on remembering the high points of those months after he’d first been accepted into the Scarlet Society, it was the memories of his last two weeks there that tormented him.

It was depressing.

In its own twisted way, any depression was actually a relief tonight, because if he really was depressed, then the Thorazine wasn’t working and they might be able to try something else. And if they did, then maybe, just maybe, he’d get his sexual energy back.

Now all he had was sexual shame.

The first night it had happened, no big deal. The woman he’d been with—a blonde named Anne—had tried her damnedest, shouting at him and roughing him up a little to get him hard again. But nothing worked.

It wasn’t how the women had treated him, once word started getting around within the society that he couldn’t get it up, that bothered him the most. There were plenty of them who didn’t care that much about penetration and were perfectly happy to have him eat them or stroke their pussies. He thought he’d be able to ride out the soft-cock syndrome, at least until he and his doctor could figure out if the Thorazine was working and whether it was the best solution.

But it was how the men dealt with him that made it so fucking impossible. He was aware of every snicker and sidelong glance at his flaccid penis. He was nothing to them anymore. He was no one. He was back in high school, the skinny guy who wanted to paint and take photographs and be an artist. Who everyone called a fag. In New York City, Paul’s artistic flair might have made him a totally acceptable kid. But in a public school in the suburbs of Detroit, it made him a wimp.

He felt the stare of every guy who watched him walk around the room with absolutely nothing happening between his legs, and knew he was the fag again. It was masochistic to keep going, but he couldn’t stop. He kept hoping that he’d be okay, that the erotic stimulation would overpower the drugs.

He’d get back at them, he’d thought as he walked home from those embarrassing last nights of Scarlet Society visits. He planned what he might do to them to get his revenge. He was nothing if not creative. Hadn’t everything that had ever happened to him been because of how creative he was?

He imagined all sorts of ways of retaliation, from the violent and absurd—literally slicing off the guys’ dicks with a kitchen knife so they could experience what he was
going through—to the ridiculous—slipping into the club with a camera phone and taking snapshots of them at their most embarrassing moments and posting the shots on the Internet.

Finally, a few weeks ago, he’d gotten so sick and tired of the guys’ attitudes that he quit. For the first few days he was okay about it, even happy that he was finished with the society. But that didn’t mean that he wasn’t still the one they were laughing at.

To them, he was still the man who couldn’t get it up. Who was soft and helpless. Like a baby. A wimp. They were probably still laughing about him when they got together.

Paul pulled the paper off the coffee table. He didn’t have to search for the headline. His eye went directly to the upper right-hand corner, where the story and photo had been every time he had looked at it.

Every few hours for the last few days.

Philip Maur was dead.

Now they were starting to get theirs, weren’t they?

“W
orking with the Scarlet Society could dovetail perfectly with the paper you’re working on,” Nina Butterfield said the next afternoon as she pulled books off shelves. Three of the walls in her office were lined with bookshelves that had been built in the 1930s. The art deco theme continued with the large walnut desk, two Ruhlmann elephant chairs and a deep, overstuffed couch. A Chinese carpet from the same era covered the floor—brilliant blues and greens depicting a sailing ship. I always thought it was a great metaphor for what went on in her office.

That afternoon, the rug was covered with piles of books; by the time Nina was done, there would be more than a hundred ready for adoption by the staff of the Institute. This book cleansing was a twice-yearly ritual. No one devoured more literature about therapy, psychopharmacology and medicine than Nina did.

“You’ll blow everyone out of the water when you make your presentation if you have a clinical case study like this backing it up. Women acting out in a sexual group situation! You’ll be learning about sexual aggression. Role reversal.
Female sexual power. Subjects that almost no one in the therapeutic community knows very much about. And you’re not sure you should accept these clients? Morgan, what you will learn from this group will get you the attention you deserve. Finally.”

“I’m not so sure I want attention, much less deserve it,” I said, and then added what I hadn’t said since she’d started on her crusade, but had wanted to. “Ever since the Magdalene Murders, you’ve been pushing me like crazy. Like suggesting me to that producer from the
Today
show. What’s up?”

She turned, arched her reddish-brown eyebrows, and stared at me as if she were seeing me for the first time. But Nina had known me my whole life. She’d been my mother’s best friend. They’d met when they were students at NYU and lived next door to each other in their Greenwich Village dorm. My mom only stayed in school for a year—she couldn’t balance college and her acting—but she and Nina had formed a bond that lasted.

After my mother died, Nina had stepped in to help my father take care of me. Even after my father remarried, Nina remained the most important woman in my life.

“Don’t deserve the attention? Why would you say that? You’ve done an incredible job with client after client. You saved a patient’s life using nothing but your skill and your chutzpah. If you really don’t understand how good you are, this might be an issue we need to work out. Is it?”

Nina believed that therapists and psychiatrists should periodically return to therapy for what she called tune-ups. Especially when they went through life crises. My four-month-old divorce and involvement with a serial killer definitely put me in the running, but I hadn’t felt the need for counseling.

“Do you think I need therapy?”

“That’s the question I asked
you
.”

“No.” I said, annoyed that she was playing therapist by answering my question with her own. Oh, I knew she was just trying to look out for me, like she always did, but this time it bothered me. I had a fleeting feeling that there was something I did need to talk about, deal with, but I didn’t dwell on it. I was better at denial than any patient I’d ever had. I knew how to insulate myself from my feelings. “I’m fine, Nina. Sleeping. Eating. Not experiencing any overwhelming anxiety.”

“Do you feel lonely?”

“Aren’t most recently divorced women lonely?”

She nodded. “What about feeling apprehensive about Dulcie?”

“Nina, she’s thirteen. What mother of a thirteen-year-old girl isn’t somewhat apprehensive? This is about what it’s about. No undercurrents. No hidden agendas. I’m just not sure that I want the kind of attention you think I should have.”

“I’d prefer you did have a hidden agenda rather than be so self-effacing. Not every therapist should have a public persona, but damn, Morgan, you should. I want you to get attention because you are that good at what you do and deserve more credit than you get.”

From the way she pursed her lips, I knew there was something she wasn’t saying. The one thing I especially wanted to hear. “And?”

She gave me a knowing smile. “And I want it because you would be a good face for the institute.”

“If I’d wanted to have a public face, I would have gone on the stage. I would have—”

“Morgan, I’m not talking about you being an actress—
God forbid,” she said with mock theatrics and a laugh. Whenever Nina’s face lit up like that, it was easy to forget that she was sixty-two years old. Everything she’d lived through—two divorces, a scandal with the institute in the late nineties, being widowed by her third husband, Sam Butterfield—fell away, and she was just a sexy, incredibly smart and energetic woman with a great sense of humor who was enjoying herself and the people around her.

“Can we get back to the question at hand?”

“Yes, sweetheart. Sit down and tell me more about the Scarlet Society.”

She put down the last three books she’d pulled off the shelf, stretched, ran her hands through her shoulder-length, copper-colored hair, and sat down on the couch. I sat on the chair opposite her, and described the part of the tape I’d seen.

Nina was all warm tones. She had tawny skin and bright amber eyes. Dressed in a pair of chestnut pants and a toffee-colored sweater, with a rope of amber beads doubled around her neck, she looked professional but easygoing and kind. And she was. Despite being so maternal, so caring, Nina had never had children. Because of my daughter and me, she claimed she never regretted it. We were her family, she always said, but she was also my boss, and it was important for us to keep our roles separate in and out of the office. We didn’t always succeed.

Once I finished describing the tape, I handed her the confidentiality agreement. She read it. Leaning forward, she focused on me. “I believe, even more than I did before, that the Scarlet Society sounds like a perfect group for you to work with. I know you, so I know that nothing will be as satisfying to you as helping these women. And if in the process you wind up identifying a new trend, a syndrome,
or a complex that no other therapist has noticed yet, it will give you even more gratification. This is what gets your blood moving.”

I nodded. She did know me best. “But what about the confidentiality agreement? Isn’t it insulting?”

“No, it’s just naive.”

“But they’re going into this not trusting me.”

“Do you blame them? If this organization is as you’ve described, what you learn could be explosive. Of course they are worried about confidentiality. Besides, Rush is a lawyer.” She looked back at the piles of books. “Do you want to go through these? See if there is anything you want?”

I shook my head. “No, I have my own stack of books waiting to be read. Too many books, not enough time.”

Nina scooted forward so she could put her hands on my knees. I could smell the spicy, Oriental scent she always wore. To me it was familiar and comforting, even if to everyone else it was sexy.

“Are you scared of working with these women, Morgan?”

I nodded. “But I don’t know why.” I was surprised that it came out as a whisper.

“You don’t need to know why. Not yet. You do your best work when you are scared. Sign the paper,” Nina advised.