Middle Age (44 page)

Still, he seemed to know she would consent to see him. One day soon.

S’   the Park Avenue Neck and Back Clinic ended at six

.. Lionel arranged to be awaiting her at the curb, on Park, in a hired town car. She was startled to see him, she was disapproving, yes, but surely she was flattered, “Siri, I must talk with you. In private.” “Mr. Hoffmann!

This isn’t allowed.” “ ‘Talk’ isn’t allowed? That can’t be!” Lionel laughed.

An unexpectedly lighthearted lover he was, like Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly of yesteryear. Except for his problematic spine he might have broken into dance right there on the sidewalk. How boyishly eager he was, how seductive his smile. Gaily improvising as he’d never have done in mummy-Salthill—“Under the U.S. Constitution, Siri, we’re guaranteed freedom of speech. You are a U.S. citizen, dear, aren’t you?” This was teasing but pointed. Jocular but urgent. Siri laughed uneasily. Cutting her softly dark exotic eyes at him. Shaking her head in a way he couldn’t interpret. Maybe yes, maybe no. Today Siri wore her lustrous dark hair parted neatly in the center of her head and brushed back in a way that put Lionel in mind of ancient Egyptian female figures, in profile. How beautiful she was! “We can talk in the car. On your way home. You won’t have to take the subway.” “Mr. Hoffmann. If my supervisor should see . . .” “We can have dinner. Drinks and dinner. Then I’ll take you home. We must talk, Siri. You know that.” “But Mr. Hoffmann . . .” The girl appeared genuinely concerned. But who was watching them? Lionel saw no one. He dared to take Siri’s arm, and led her to the waiting car, and she didn’t resist, though seeming not to acquiesce, either; and then they were together, alone together, in the back of the car, and the driver was easing into traffic, and
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dark-tinted glass protected them from prying eyes. Now they were free of the scrutiny of the clinic, and they were free of the protocol of the clinic.

What relief! In the town car in intimate quarters, both rather breathless, but Lionel was in authority. Lionel was the one to assert authority by touching: closing his fingers around Siri’s fingers. Laughing at his own boldness. Siri tried to smile, looking frightened, demurring, “Mr. Hoffmann—” and Lionel simply tightened his grip.

They were moving in a procession of glittering vehicles. Midtown traffic. Lionel Hoffmann was a Salthill citizen and he owned property in Manhattan and he was worth many millions of dollars and Siri Joio, who was no fool, nor perhaps so naive as she appeared, could not help but know.

“Please call me Lionel, Siri. You must know by now that’s my name.”

Now it begins
.
Now, nothing will stop me!
In the town car he kissed her lightly, in an East Side restaurant they sat at a corner table by candlelight, Lionel’s handsome graying head inclined toward Siri’s as he talked. Siri was very quiet through the meal, and Lionel talked. He hadn’t known he was so aggrieved, and so eloquent. A sexually aroused male yet a gentleman. He would see to it that Siri knew: he was a gentleman. Telling her of his life.

Never had he considered his life a story until, that evening, he began to tell it to a beautiful young woman who gazed at him avidly, now and then, always rather shyly, stroking his hand. If Siri had heard the life stories of numerous men of affluent middle age, her clients at the clinic, she certainly gave no sign. If Siri’s mind wandered during Lionel’s quietly impassioned monologues, she certainly gave no sign. She appeared fascinated by Lionel Hoffmann’s life which had been, as he expressed it, a life of deprivation and stoicism and duty—“The Protestant ethic. The theology of quiet desperation.
You
have been spared, Siri, I hope!” It began to seem to Lionel as he told his story that every action of his dating back to his boyhood had been in compliance with others’ wishes; his only private, secret act had happened by accident, the terrifying discovery of the dead hippie couple by the lake in Broom Hills, when he’d been a child. “It was like finding treasure. An appalling treasure. Except I had no idea what it meant.” What could Siri possibly make of this amazing statement? Yet she listened attentively. Her eyes were fixed on his. That glisten to her eyes. Her hypnotic eyes. The scent of nutmeg, of heated skin. Heavy hair at the nape of her neck Lionel was mad

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to unplait, he was mad to press his face against her neck, to bury himself in her. Waiter, another bottle of wine! (Though Siri was drinking only mineral water.) He was compelled to tell her of his life. His life until he’d met her. “Thank God for the pain. The pain that brought me to you. I see now, the purpose. There are no coincidences in the universe, Siri.” As he spoke she murmured
Yes
and
Oh yes?
and showed by the warm intensity of her gaze and a frequent baring of her teeth in a smile how impressed she was with him, and how erotically attracted; how she admired him, yet was rather intimidated by him; for he was telling her in some detail of Hoffmann Publishing, Inc., the preeminent publisher of medical texts in the United States; he was telling her of his family’s pride in his accomplish-ments, and of his own resentment that he’d bartered so much of his life in exchange for “success.” And he’d married too young; he’d married primarily to please his parents; he’d married a sweet girl whom he hadn’t truly loved, but one of whom his parents had approved. “My wife. My children. My life until meeting you. These belong to the past, Siri. I feel as if I’m drowning in happiness. Yet—what a riddle it is!”

After the restaurant. In the apartment on East st. Entering, gripping Siri’s hand, Lionel felt a thrill of panic: what if to surprise him in her blundering way, as once she’d surprised her reticent and easily embarrassed husband with a fortieth birthday party, Camille had come into the city that day, and was waiting for Lionel . . . Thank God, the apartment was empty.

Lionel laughed aloud at the look of childlike awe on Siri’s face. “Yes. I live here. Four nights a week. It is attractive, isn’t it?” The apartment, which the Hoffmanns had owned since , was elegantly if unimaginatively furnished; there were six rooms, with high ceilings, antiquated light fixtures, silk brocade curtains, and thick-piled Oriental rugs. Lionel, who’d scarcely glanced at the apartment in years, took pleasure in seeing it now through this girl’s widened eyes. How he adored her, and desired her! There was something powerfully erotic about a girl-therapist who, removed from the setting of her own authority, must submit to the authority of another. In a hesitant voice she was saying, “Mr. Hoffmann. I shouldn’t be here. I should leave,” and Lionel made no response except to kiss her. She said, breathless, trying to pull away from him, “Mr. Hoffmann! You’re married, this is wrong. You know this is wrong. Oh!” She broke away from him, and ran into another room. He followed, trapping her. Lionel felt tall, looming, threatening, potent. For Siri wasn’t wearing her trademark white nylon, Siri wasn’t his therapist now, Siri was wholly in his power as his children
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had been, years ago. “Don’t be afraid, dear. I won’t hurt you,’’ Lionel said.

“Mr. Hoffmann. Please,
no,
” Siri whispered. They were in Lionel’s study.

On his gleaming mahogany desk were framed photographs of the Hoffmann family. As in a Hollywood film, light seemed to play about these photographs, even to emanate from their miniature smiling faces. Lionel and his pretty young wife, Camille, Marcy and Kevin as smiling young-sters, what an attractive family, what an American family, these figures at whom Lionel hadn’t so much as glanced in memory, that would have been obscured by dust if a cleaning woman didn’t come in to the apartment, and into this room, once a week. “Mr. Hoffmann! This is your—wife? These are your—children?” How sorrowful Siri seemed, in that instant. How vulnerable. Lionel loved her all the more, and desired her. He closed his arms around her, pressed his warm face against the nape of her neck and inhaled the spicy scent, that aroused him almost beyond endurance. “Mr. Hoffmann. This is wrong. I must leave. Oh, please!” She pushed away from him, but Lionel held her; he kissed her, moving his mouth hard against hers, and parting her lips that resisted him initially, then gave in. They staggered together. In a swoon together. Lionel could feel her heart beating against his chest. He could feel her pulses, her panicked rushing thoughts. He’d unloosed her hair, that fell in a cascade of glossy rippling strands. They stumbled against a satin-covered love seat. Lionel began to pull impatiently at Siri’s clothing. As, for weeks, he’d longed to pull at her white nylon smock and trousers. He’d been mad to pull at her white nylon smock and trousers and only his extreme self-restraint had prevented him.

Now Siri laughed, startled. Her laughter was rather wild. Lionel, grunting, was pressing his body against hers. Letting her feel his massive erection. In this place Camille had furnished and decorated, at the bidding of an over-priced interior decorator, that Lionel had never much liked.
Where I’ve been
so physically lonely, and so bored
. “Mr. Hoffmann. This is wrong! Oh—you know this is wrong—” Siri murmured; and Lionel grunted in reply, unable for the moment to speak. It had been years since he’d so much as fantasized holding a woman as he was holding Siri. You didn’t seize your wife in such an embrace, the thought was absurd. Frenzied sexual passion was not an experience between husband and wife but an aberration. Angrily he demanded, “How is it ‘wrong’? How is what we do ‘wrong’? Anything we can possibly do, ‘wrong’? I don’t feel desire for my wife. I will never feel desire for my wife. Am I never to feel desire for the remainder of my life? Am I trapped, am I to die, a captive of my marriage? How can I endure such a

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fate? Why should I?” In his passion Lionel had grown grandiloquent, Siri shrank before him as if abashed. A strange knowledge of him, a dark glistening in her eyes, revealed itself to him. They were in the bedroom now.

Tall narrow windows, filmy white curtains. Cream-colored silk wallpaper with delicate green stripes. Everything was so tasteful, here! Except Lionel’s lurid dreams. Lionel’s male body. Alone in that bed, too many nights. It was a ludicrous king-sized bed with a green satin cover and an ornate mahogany headboard. God knows where Camille and her decorator acquaintance had found such a piece of furniture. The “cervical roll” had been inserted into the pillow on the right, which was the side of the bed Lionel slept on; he felt a stab of masculine embarrassment that the girl he’d brought here should discover it, yet reasoned of course Siri knew of the therapeutic cushion, it was Siri herself who’d urged Lionel to buy it. “Mr.

Hoffmann—Lionel—this is wrong—oh, please—” But she was resisting Lionel with only a fraction of the strength he knew she possessed. His will was dominating hers utterly. How strange it was, and how arousing to Lionel, that this young woman with the deft, trained hands, a therapist with the magical authority to dispel pain, should weaken before Lionel; her resistance to him was dissolving as if he’d blown out a flame. Yet Lionel’s desire for her was whetted by this passivity. For women were hardly passive creatures, any longer. Even Camille, in the earlier, more experimental years of their marriage, inspired by soft-porn articles in women’s magazines and sex manuals, had done her best to “initiate” lovemaking with her bemused and embarrassed husband . . . But here was Siri, gorgeous exotic Siri, so much younger than Camille, and far more sexual than Camille had ever been, who seemed truly frightened of Lionel, the maleness in him. Now that their situations were reversed. Now that he was master, and she was submissive to him. Where was the spinal pain that had held him in check for so long? Had Siri’s ministrations banished it, had Lionel himself willed it away?—had sexual desire dispelled it? Lionel and Siri stumbled against the bed. Her clothes had been tugged open, Lionel’s shirt and trousers were opened, Siri was murmuring his name in a swoon, no longer “Mr.

Hoffmann” but “Lionel”—at last. Her face was very pale, flowerlike. Her eyes were downcast. Lionel might do with her what he wished. He understood that she would not reject him. Never in Lionel’s life had his masculine will so exerted itself, a hot fountain within him. His groin, his penis, his very spine: his entire body was suffused with the triumph of desire.

Now the woman was naked beneath his hands, a strand of her long dark
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loosened hair in his mouth, he knelt above her trembling—his erection was enormous as a club!—and pushed himself into her, he’d ceased thinking, what relief to cease thinking, his brain annihilated as by a searing white light.
I will not die, like Adam
.
I will not die!
Moaning softly the woman moved beneath his weight. Her will had been defeated by his, she lay in trancelike obedience to him. There was no female obstinancy here, no withheld acquiescence, that coyness that so infuriated the male. Lionel was pumping his life into this woman. Into that dark unspeakable place between her thighs. Pumping himself joyously into oblivion. He had but a vague awareness of the woman’s slender, shapely, hard-muscled and milky-pale arms lifting to encircle his neck, and her final soft triumphant murmur—“Lion-el!” The long dark slightly sticky hair in tendrils on the pillow like a spider’s velvety legs, spread out on the dazzling white linen. Her thin-lipped but rather wide, hungry mouth sucked at his. He felt her large, hard teeth. He felt her pelvis, rising to his, bucking and heaving in her own eager rhythm. They were drowning together. In the frenzy of their passion, the hard, tubular cushion inside one of the pillowcases was jarred loose, fell to the floor and rolled for several feet as if desperate to escape. Lionel’s heart, so long unused, was pounding violently. An envelope of stinging briny sweat enveloped him. Never in his life had he felt such—power!

Such energy coursing through his body! He panted, “My darling! My—”

In the cataclysm of orgasm he’d forgotten the woman’s name.