The Experiment (10 page)

There were men in the lobby, at the coat check, coming and going into the gift shop, men everywhere, it seemed. She mentally rejected any men that were in groups or with women and any who looked too old or too young. Still there were so many to deal with. Several seemed to be looking her over and that gave her a tense, fluttery feeling.

If she just found a place to sit down and wait would he approach her? Should she wear a sign, “Looking for a man who’s looking to get laid”?

The Doctor had said that he would be waiting for her in the museum, this was just the lobby. The museum itself began up those stairs where the galleries started. There was an admission charge, no doubt it would be less crowded inside. She climbed the stairs, paid her admission and entered the museum proper.

A few steps into the museum and it was like another world. The rooms were dim, the paintings illuminated by spotlights in the ceiling or frame lights. Gallery led to gallery like a hall of mirrors and she could almost see from one end of the museum to the other, see people moving like ghosts from room to room, silently, wrapped in their own thoughts. The noise of the street faded away quickly and was replaced by the curious, reverential silence unique to museums, in which the sound of her steps sounded unusually loud.

She saw men. They looked at her and she looked at them, but never at the same time and there was nothing about them that made her think they might be the one she was looking for. There were women there too and Zoe wondered whether any of them were on a mission like hers, searching for a lover, or perhaps just looking to be picked up. She knew that wasn’t likely, but in the stately procession from gallery to gallery, the idea took on a reality of its own, so that it soon seemed everyone was engaged in a very slow, stylized mating ritual—men discreetly appraising women, women putting themselves on display and subtly checking out men. The pictures on the wall were just a way to avoid eye contact as the two sexes passed each other by, turned to watch someone or glanced over their shoulders to see if anyone were watching them.

It became a compelling game and Zoe was fascinated by this new way of looking at people, especially the women, whose behavior was much more subtle then the men’s. She recognized many of the tricks they used—the pose, the sweep of the hair, the finger against the cheek as they stared thoughtfully at a painting. She saw the way their eyes swept a gallery when they first came in, looking first at the people in it, then at the paintings. The men were less subtle, they didn’t pose. They glanced at the women, lowered their faces and darted their eyes to the side, watched them as they walked away, or just simply looked at them when their backs were turned.

She had to sit down on a bench and collect herself. She was being silly. Some of these people might be looking for love, but certainly not all of them. No doubt most of them were there to see the paintings. She was reading too much into it. She was obsessed.

Meanwhile she had worked herself into a low but steady state of arousal. She was aware of her body, and several times she caught herself idly caressing her own arm or playing with her hair as she observed some man.

By one o’clock the crowd had diminished, but Zoe was still aware of the people playing a kind of cat and mouse game through the maze of galleries. She watched a tall, sandy-haired man who seemed to be following a girl in a poncho who Zoe took to be a
student, and a stout, angry-faced businessman who seemed to with an overdressed blonde woman. Or were they? She couldn’t tell whether they were talking or not, but they did seem to run into each other quite a bit. She lost them in a twentieth-century gallery when she found herself being watched by a young man in a blue turtleneck sweater and black coat.

She’d seen him before, but he’d been in the company of another man. They both seemed young to her, college age probably, so she hadn’t paid them much attention. But now the man in the sweater was alone and he had his eyes on her. The butterflies in her stomach jumped as she strolled among the abstract paintings, not even seeing them, watching him out of the corner of her eye.

She stopped in front of a Klee and he came up beside her. He smelled strongly of some cologne, not unpleasant, but too strong.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” he asked her casually.

She quickly looked him over, darting her eyes up and down as he politely gazed at the painting. He appeared to be very young, possibly still in college, and there was something pasty or immature about his face. His voice was deeper and more adult than she’d expected.

“Yes,” she said cautiously. “I suppose so.”

He smiled at her. It was a bit too forced. “My name’s Byron,” he said. “This is quite a place. It’s my first time here.”

She raised her eyebrows, as if that were interesting. She didn’t feel like giving him her name just yet.

“Do you know the Doctor?” she asked him.

“Doctor?” he asked, smiling still. “I know lots of doctors.”

She nodded and smiled with relief. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought you were someone else. I’m meeting someone here, you see. Please excuse me.”

She walked out of the gallery leaving Byron standing there, glad he wasn’t the one. Her stomach surged with apprehension and she found to her surprise that her legs were trembling slightly.

She found a bench beneath a giant Calder mobile in a brightly lit room and sat down, and for the first time it occurred to her that it didn’t matter who she found here. Men were always horny, always looking for an instant roll in the hay. She could very probably pick up almost any man here and he would be happy to take her to bed. There was nothing special about the man the Doctor had sent out to meet her here. Perhaps he hadn’t sent anyone.

And where was the Doctor? She’d been certain that he’d be somewhere, observing her, or rather, she’d hoped he would be. But she’d really seen no one who matched the few things she knew about his appearance.

Had he sent anyone? Or was this just a new phase of the experiment, to have her pick up a stranger and have sex with him? Up until now the Doctor had never lied to her. Would he lie to her for the sake of the experiment?

She had to find out. She was motivated now not just be her desire for sex, but by curiosity and her desire to outwit him. She walked back into the gallery section, determined to either find the man or know that he was not there. She went quickly through the rooms making a survey, marking each man either as a likely candidate or not, keeping count on her fingers.

It was bewildering. There always seemed to be someone just leaving the room she entered, or coming in after her. Men, men with other men, the confusing variable of the women, muddying her calculations and complicating her equations. She took to unconsciously counting the men on her fingers and giving them names, all the while watching in that nervous, flickering kind of way, then resting her eyes on the paintings, a dubious kind of rest as the paintings only asked her more questions, as if they were looking for people too.

There were just three of them finally. There was a good-looking man in a tie and a long raincoat with delicate hands whom she took to be an artist. There was a powerful-looking man in a turtleneck who strolled through the galleries as if he owned them and who watched her with straightforward boldness when he wasn’t lost in examining a painting. And there was a tall young man with dark glasses, very short hair and more earrings than she would have liked. He was dressed all in black and moved through the galleries with the silence of a ghost, stopping to glare at a painting with an intensity that made Zoe wonder about his sanity.

Together the four of them played a strange and nerve-racking game of hide and seek on the second floor, meeting and parting, encountering one another in various combinations as Zoe got more and more impatient and frustrated. Occasionally another single woman would walk through and Zoe watched their reactions as carefully as she could, trying to discern some clue.

Despite herself and her darkening mood she could not control her imagination, seeing each of them as a lover. She could see herself in the arms of the blond man, her blouse opened as he held her and kissed her breasts, while his artistic fingers did wonderful things at her pussy. She could feel the passion of the man in the turtleneck as he placed his powerful body between her legs and pushed himself into her. Or she could picture herself straddling the hips of the man with the short hair in some dirty room, his long cock sunk into her as he grunted in pleasure while she frantically writhed on top of him.

It was exhausting and very unsettling playing cat and mouse like this, and she thought several times of just taking herself home and the hell with the Doctor and his games. Dealing with the echoing silence, the sudden surges of adrenaline, trying to see without being seen, just the effort of maintaining her sexual radar on high alert quickly tired her out. Before long she had to sit down on a bench again in one of the Modern galleries and make herself relax.

Down at the end was a young man she hadn’t seen before, with longish hair in soft curls, black slacks and a leather jacket. He was dark, and handsome in a magazine-picture kind of way. His face wore a look of expectant intensity as he gazed at a large abstract hung on the wall. He seemed boyish, but not in an unpleasant way.

Zoe knew immediately that it was him. That was the man.

With her heart in her throat she watched him slowly turn his eyes to her, then he smiled slightly and he nodded. She looked away for a moment. She was suddenly very tired, she didn’t know if she wanted this.

Then she looked back at him and she nodded too.

He took his time moving along the gallery, pausing before each painting as if paying his respects.

He must be nervous too
, Zoe thought, and the idea pleased her.

She liked the way he moved, the way he looked at the paintings. He seemed to know what he was looking at and he seemed to be giving her time to look at him, not in a vain way, but out of respect for the awkwardness of the situation.

Finally he walked over to her.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Would you mind if I sat?”

She shook her head and slid over to give him room. He sat down and leaned forward, his forearms on his knees. Close up she saw that he was young, younger than she, and he moved with a studied grace, as if he were used to being looked at. He was perhaps a little bit more taken with himself than she would have liked, but she supposed that was inevitable in one so good-looking.

“Every time I see that painting,” he said, indicating the large abstract on the wall opposite, “I wonder whether they didn’t hang it upside down.”

Zoe glanced at the painting, then back at him. “I wouldn’t know,” she said. “How could you possibly tell?”

He shrugged and smiled. “It’s just a feeling.”

He looked at her and her stomach did something strange in her body. She felt the look of polite diffidence fade from her face. He might be young, but there was something old and knowing in his eyes. This was the man. She was certain this was him.

His gaze slid over her face and he said, “Sometimes you just have to go with your feelings.”

A chill washed over her and she bit her lip and nodded absently. Yes, he was just what she’d expect—young, handsome but with little character in his face. He hadn’t been hurt yet, possibly hadn’t even been in love yet. He would think that meeting a stranger for sex was very romantic. She felt herself slipping away, retreating into herself.

“This is pretty awkward,” he said with a laugh.

“You’re from the Doctor?” she asked.

He nodded and she felt her stomach sink. An unaccountable anger grew in her, a sense of irritation. Perhaps it was for making her go through all these shenanigans, as if he’d been playing hard to get, or maybe it was his age. Or maybe it was because he wasn’t the Doctor.

All the questions she had planned to ask about the experiment just evaporated, and all she could think about was that she was sitting next to a man who had come to this place to find her for just one reason. A nervous excitement grabbed her that made it impossible for her to think of anything except what they both knew. It was pointless to talk about anything else.

“Do you want to go?” she asked him.

Just then two women came into the gallery. Zoe prayed that they would leave quickly, before she came to her senses. The women looked about quickly, consulted their guidebooks, whispered something, and walked out.

She could still back out. She could just say no and go back to the Doctor and say she’d changed her mind, everything he’d arranged for her hadn’t worked out. More
than that, she could just never go back. Just sever all ties with the Doctor and the experiment and get on with her life. After all, how would she feel about herself picking up a stranger in the museum and taking him to a hotel and fucking him? She wasn’t a whore, no matter what the Doctor might think.

Zoe stood up. “All right. Let’s go.”

They walked out of the gallery without a word. Several times he tried to draw her out, but she didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to say anything. It was drizzling and cold, so they moved quickly and when they got to the hotel they went right past the desk and directly to the elevators. He’d already checked in, that’s why he’d been late.

He noticed her attitude as she stood in front of the elevators with her eyes locked stubbornly on the floor indicator. He said, “You know, you don’t have to do this. If you don’t want to, we can just forget the whole thing. I’m not going to force you.”