even somehow related to the shah’s family. So many of the prosperous Iranians he worked with claimed such a connection.
“Look to your right,” he says as they pass a large house that straddles more than a hundred feet of beachfront. He pulls to a stop and they absorb the tall twin cedar turrets that flank the extensive floor-to-ceiling glass windows.
“It’s magnificent,” she says. “Do you live near here?”
The question should not have been a surprise, but it is.
“Around the corner,” he answers. His pulse quickens. She is pushing too far, but her flattery disarms him.
“Can I see it?” she asks.
She is over the line now. He has only to answer, “No,” and everything will be formal and polite, but he quickly says, “Oh, sure.”
He moves the car less than a hundred feet and turns the corner. He wonders, almost absurdly, whether she hears the sudden rush of blood that moves through his body, sees the nervous minispasms in his fingers as they clutch the wheel, or the fine line of moisture that settles above his upper lip, but all she says is, “Oh, what a pretty street.”
He directs the car up his driveway and stops. He lets the engine idle, and they sit for a moment. The ocean beats a cadence against the sand and there is the odd, shrill cackle of birds, but the air is otherwise quiet. He sighs, ready to move the Lexus into reverse, but she interrupts his idea of escape and asks, “Can I see the inside?”
Even before he thinks of an answer, she is pulling the door handle open.
“Take care on the steps,” he says. “They’ve just been refinished.”
He slips his loafers off in the entrance and watches as she slides off her white sandals as well. He notices for the first time that her toes are coated with deep burgundy polish.
“I like to do what the host does.”
Her words drip with unvarnished innuendo. At the top of the stairs she turns and surveys the area.
“The view is great.”
Then she surprises him by ignoring the view as she walks around the room, touching small sculptures, and analyzing a succession of wood-block prints and lithographs on the wall farthest from the windows.
“Do you live here alone?” she asks
“Most of the time,” he answers truthfully. “I’m married, but my wife spends most of her time in Manhattan.”
She shrugs. He believes she doesn’t care. The more she speaks, the more he comes to believe she is a latent free spirit, a throwback to the sixties, someone who would have rolled naked in the mud at Woodstock, screwed her brains out for a week, and only then went off to medical school. She continues to survey the room. There is a tightening in his chest as he thinks of her naked in Woodstock or here on the forest-green couch. An intense urge begins to grip his body. He has to think of something else. Now. He turns away and imagines the ocean two hundred feet beyond the window. He thinks of the last big storm that blew shingles off his roof. He considers these things until the urge passes. He realizes more fully that this is a mistake. She shouldn’t be here.
“Where is this from? It looks like this house.”
He needs to turn his head to see her standing in front of the pen-and-ink sketch of this very house. A rough design he made over twenty years ago and showed to an architect who liked the idea. He bought the land only after the architect agreed to design plans to fit the sketch. The drawing hangs on the wall leading to the master bedroom.
“It’s my design,” he says. “It’s this house.”
She walks toward him and asks if she could have something to drink. “Perhaps some red wine,” she suggests.
“I guess I can do that,” he says, but there is edginess in his answer. He feels as if he is sliding into a deep pit without a handhold.
“Very nice, thank you,” she answers, “but can I first use your bathroom?”
He points to the end of a short corridor. “The door on your left.” She picks up her bag and moves in the direction he points. He hears the water running and the toilet flush. She is there for several minutes, but he gives it little thought. He spends the interval choosing a wine.
When she returns, he tells her about the sketch he made years ago as he pulls the cork from a bottle of Merlot. He pours a modest serving into a single glass. He has no intention of joining her. He holds the glass in his left hand and walks to where she has stopped, in front of the deep-green couch.
“Please sit,” he says as she takes the glass. She takes a large sip, almost emptying the glass. He sits on the opposite couch and looks straight ahead through the large window at the ocean.
“Please sit over here,” she says. “You seem so far away.”
Posner moves to the other couch, just as she asks, “Can I rest my feet here?”
He waves his arm to the side in a universal gesture. She raises her hips and both legs spring forward onto the couch. She crosses one leg over the other and he faces ten polished toes. Then she shifts her legs back in parallel. She reallocates her skirt so that he has a clear view of her browned upper thigh. She spreads her legs more than slightly. The invitation is clear.
They talk aimlessly. She sits on the couch, ignoring the view, chatting about her hospital duties, her parents in Vienna, and why she doesn’t want to stay in New York. He becomes edgy. He wants her to leave.
“Do you like my polish?” she asks, sliding her body down and raising one foot, barely inches from his face. The temptation is there, but he abruptly stands before she makes contact.
“I think we should go,” he says.
She rises and follows him slowly to the top of the stairs. He feels her stare, but his eyes are fixated on her painted toes.
“Can I see you again?” she asks.
She smiles, doesn’t wait for an answer, and searches her large straw bag, until she withdraws a card printed with her name and a New York number. Then she offers her hand, a puny gesture, he thinks, but he takes it anyway.
“I’d like to see you again,” she repeats. “Whenever you want. Whatever you want to do.”
Whatever is the only way something could happen, he thinks, but while there is more than a flicker of interest, he isn’t crazy enough to start. He knows that a fuck in the room not twenty feet away from where they stand is where it would end. That’s what whatever means. She was right about guilt, though. He feels it squeezing him like a fog that has crept into the room, filling every available space and daring, even mocking him to try to touch her. He wants to release her hand, but she holds his with even more pressure.
He sees from the quickening in the rise and fall of her chest that her breath comes in shorter increments. The pink dress fabric strains forward and he feels his cock swell. He looks away, out through the window, across the pine-coated dunes, as he’s done only minutes before. Anything to forget the surge that has gripped him. He knows that she only has to brush against his groin and he would be lost, but then she eases the pressure on his hand and the rush begins to ebb.
“I have a boyfriend,” she says. “His name is Henry, but I do like to meet other men.”
Posner wants to hear none of this. Not the fact that there is a boyfriend who must surely suck on her painted toes. He had a second cousin named Henry, a gangling, acne-faced teenager when he last saw him more than forty years ago. The name merges with his memory’s image of his cousin.
“Henry gave me this.” She absently fingers a gold chain necklace from which hangs a small capital letter
“And what does Henry do?” he asks as if he might find some positive trait in the man sufficient to move her down the stairs and farther away from the bedroom.
“He’s a resident in radiology. Also at Mt. Sinai.”
Posner has regained his composure and has a sarcastic urge to say that Henry’s balls were already probably burned away by radiation and that his sexual future was at best iffy, which is probably why she is here, but he says nothing. He feels her fingers slip away from his hand as she turns toward the steps.
