She crossed her legs, then realized she needed her brake foot. She was so deep in thought that as she was about to pull into the right lane for her exit, she didn’t see the blue Maxima to her side. She swerved, got back into the exit lane, and reminded herself to keep her eyes on the road, even if her thoughts were “in the gutter,” as her stepmom used to say. As she stopped at the off-ramp light, she thought again of Jon and winced at the idea of leaving him completely unprepared. It wasn’t fair to him, or to women. And then there was the question of the real sexual politics: where you slept, whether you slept over, condoms and creams and all the rest. God, she hoped he didn’t need help with that, too! She could just imagine having to take him into a pharmacy and asking for ribbed Trojans for him.
As she turned onto the main road, she smiled. She remembered the days back in Encino when she herself was so embarrassed that she couldn’t buy tampons if there was a guy anywhere near the pharmacy counter. Instead, she’d have to go into a supermarket and buy Clorox, Ritz crackers, some Oreos, a carton of 2 percent milk, Rice Krispies, a few Lean Cuisines, Wonder bread, and then a box of tampons, which would, oh-so-casually, be sandwiched between the sandwich cookies and sandwich bread.
Those days were long gone. She could walk up to any clerk at any convenience store and ask for a dozen lubricated, spermicidal Ramses with reinforced tips. If the guy even raised his eyebrows, she was capable of smiling sweetly and telling him, “Make it two dozen. I’m having a gang bang.” As she pulled into the parking lot of Mom’s, she smiled at the thought.
A very full belly later, Tracie looked down at the second plate of meat loaf she had to face that day and then glanced up at Jon. “It’s not as good as Mom’s,” she said, gesturing with her fork at the pallid slice.
“It’s better,” he told her.
What a lie! “Have you ever had Mom’s?” she asked, whispering so Molly couldn’t hear.
“No,” he admitted. “But it couldn’t be better than this.”
“Oh, how would you know anyway?” she asked. “You’re a vegan.”
“No I’m not,” he said. “You remember? Vegans eat—”
“Caught you!” she said, jumping at the chance. “You’re not supposed to be talking about your dietary laws to any woman.”
“I didn’t know this counted,” he said, defending himself.
“Everything counts. That’s the whole point of what I’m trying to teach you.” She steeled herself for another bite of meat loaf and an opening for her little planned discussion about the birds and the bees. She needed an opening, but she couldn’t really think of one. “Look, we have to talk about . . . seduction,” she said, and swallowed hard.
Just then, Molly came over to the table. “Is everything okay ’ere?” she asked, perhaps too sweetly.
Tracie actually had to look up from her plate just to be sure it was really Molly. “Everything’s fine. Why do you ask?”
“Just doing my job,” Molly said, and refilled their water glasses. Tracie looked at Jon to see if he was curious about this new behavior. But nothing registered on his face. God, now she’d probably hang around, and Tracie could not talk about sex with Molly listening. “If you need anything, don’t ’esitate to ask,” Molly said, and left them their table.
That didn’t add up. “You told her didn’t you?” Tracie said accusingly.
“Told her what?” Jon asked.
“About my meat loaf assignment! She’s never filled our water glasses in all the time we’ve been coming here. I don’t even think she’s served us water until today. You rat!”
Jon, his mug at his lips, choked a little bit of coffee back into it. “What do you mean?”
“Well, there are . . . rules. I’m supposed to be treated like an average customer.” She felt herself flushing.
“So what if I tipped her off? She’s always treated you worse than average. Look at it this way: Molly’s finally being nice to you.”
“Jon, you aren’t allowed to—”
“Hey, it’s not a Micro/Con tech breakthrough. It’s just meat loaf. Anyway, get back to the seduction. What do you mean by that?”
“Just that there are certain ways you should . . . do things. And certain things you should . . . avoid.”
“What do you mean, things?”
God, he wasn’t making this easy. “ ‘What do you mean, things?’ ” she imitated. “What I mean is that you need to have a way to get women hot for you.” She thought of her afternoon’s sexual review, the one that almost made her run off the road. “And the best way is to . . .” She just couldn’t get right to the nitty-gritty. She would have to segue into it. “Look, sex is like a dance,” she told him. “You know those Fred Astaire movies?”
“Is he another bad boy? Tracie, I don’t think I have time for any more videos. I’m getting way behind at work as it is.”
“You don’t have to watch him. It’s just that he was that skinny bald dancer, but he had some kind of sex appeal, because in every movie he’d do this dance with Ginger Rogers or some other woman, but it was always best with Ginger. She’d be angry with him, but when they started to dance, she’d pull away and he would pull her back. Then the moment he let her go, she’d pull away again.” Tracie, still sitting, gestered with her arms and shoulders to demonstrate. “But then he’d grasp her hand or her wrist and pull her to him again. And in the end, his persistence and his grace would win her over. And then you’d feel her give in, when her body would melt into his. It was a conquest, sexier than sex.”
Tracie felt herself heating up again. She paused, recovering herself. “Anyway, the whole thing about a seduction is that you have to be strong enough, magnetic enough to pull the woman toward you. But then you have to abandon her so that you can replay the seduction. It’s that conquest thing that makes women crazy for you.”
“They want me to conquer them?” he asked. “Didn’t that go out with Tarzan? Anyway, that’s not what James Dean does.”
“Right. James Dean’s characters were oblique. They never admitted that they wanted someone, though they yearned. You have to be like that, too. Act like you don’t care, but let women imagine the yearning. If you actually yearn and they see it, it’s kind of a pucker.”
“Tracie, I think this is too complicated for me,” Jon said, putting down his fork and wiping off his mouth with the napkin.
“Oh, come on. You are the guy who is figuring out Parsifal. You can do anything.” She took a deep breath. “Look, it’s best if they see you as a tragic figure. And if they feel that they can help you and heal you, that’s cool.”
“But my life isn’t a tragedy,” Jon protested.
“No, it’s a travesty. That’s the problem.” She paused. How could she get him to understand? “You have to try and find some secret to tell them and be sure that you tell them you never told anyone. Make them feel as if they’re the only ones that could ever understand you. Because you’re so complex and they are so sensitive. That will make them feel special and important.”
“What kind of secret? I never told anyone that I wet my bed until I was about twelve, but I don’t think that’s what you have in mind.”
“Good thinking, Sherlock.” Tracie didn’t even want to know if what he’d admitted was true or not. As she leaned back to think for a moment, Molly swooped down on them again and silently collected Jon’s plate, wiped up the crumbs off the table, and brought him a fresh napkin and the dessert list.
“Are you still working on yours?” she asked kindly. Tracie couldn’t take this sort of treatment. Now she’d be forced to say something good about Molly’s meat loaf. She wished she could have her plate taken away. She couldn’t eat another bite. Not that it wasn’t good, but she was sick to death of meat loaf.
“I’m still working on it,” she told the lying limey waitress. As soon as the hypocrite left with the dirty tray, Tracie was ready to continue. “Jon, just make something up. Tell them that you saw your father shoot your mother. Or that you saw you
r mother shoot your father. Or they both shot each other and you’ve inherited millions but that you’d never touch the blood money.”
“They’d like that?” he asked.
“Only if they believed you. And if you said you never trusted anyone else enough to share that. Then they’ll trust you enough to sleep with you.” Jon just shook his head.
“Now listen.” Tracie continued. “When you do sleep with them, it’s important that you don’t sleep over. No matter how tired you are, or how late it is, you have to get out of bed and go home. Rule Number Five, and the most important: Don’t sleep over.”
“Never? But Phil sleeps over all the time,” he protested.
“Well, he never did at first,” Tracie admitted. “The point is, it leaves her wanting more. It’s best if you can sneak out while she’s sleeping.”
“Without even saying good-bye?”
“Leave an elliptical note.”
“Like what?”
“Like . . . like . . . ‘You made me go.’ And don’t sign it ‘love.’ And don’t leave your phone number.” Jon’s mouth was hanging open in disbelief.
“They make me come and then I write a note to tell them they made me go? Come on! Am I supposed to seduce masochists exclusively?”
“Look, this is just about hooking ’em. After you’re together, you can do whatever you like. But in the beginning, they need to feel that you are special, that they are special, and that they have to be very special to get you. That’s why you’re not going to call them back.”
Jon’s eyes almost popped out of his head. “After I finally get someone to sleep with me? What are you talking about? If I don’t call them back, how will I get to sleep with them again?”
“You don’t need to sleep with them again. Sleep with someone else. Right now, for you, it’s about wide experience.”
“So I’m supposed to behave like a bastard?” he asked. “That’s what women want? Bastards with the right pants?”
“No. Do you think we’re stupid? We’re complex. What we want is someone who behaves like a bastard but we can tame, or at least we think we can tame. We want someone who’s tough—but who has a deeply tender heart we can conquer. A panther who obeys our commands. It’s sort of the female equivalent of that old-fashioned guy thing.”
“What? Mental illness?”
“No. You know, the thing where men didn’t want girls who are easy, ’cause then anyone had them.” She paused. “I once liked this guy Earl—”
“You’d like Earl Grey tea?” Molly asked sweetly, coming up behind Tracie. “I’ll brew some up fresh.” What was with this woman? Tracie actually preferred her as a bitch.
“No, I don’t want any tea,” Tracie said, and gripped the edge of the table to restrain herself from slapping Molly. “I’ll let you know if I want something else.” Molly nodded and left them again. Tracie shot Jon a look.
“Oh, let her be,” he said. “She just wants you to say something good about this place. Now, who’s Earl? I don’t remember him.”
“That’s because it was before I met you. And because he didn’t last very long,” Tracie said. “Earl was smart, and nice-looking. But he kept telling me how beautiful I was. That I was as beautiful as his ex-fiancée. The fascinating woman who broke his heart.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So, after hearing about her and being really jealous, I’m over at his place, and on a bookshelf, lying facedown, is this picture of a fat, ugly girl. I ask him if it’s his sister or cousin or something, and he tells me it’s Jennifer, his ex-fiancée. If he thought she was beautiful, then whatever he thought about me wasn’t valid. I broke up with him.”
“Tracie, you are crazy. I always suspected it, but now I’m sure.”
“Jon, I am imparting secrets to you that men would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to know. These are the things women discuss in ladies’ rooms when they go off together. These are the things that will help you to seduce and abandon beautiful girls all over the country. Maybe all over the world,” Tracie told him.
“So you’re asking me to hurt women on purpose.”
“Oh, Jon, it’s just part of the bigger picture,” she explained. “It’s what they’re looking for. Then someday a woman grows up and realizes she wants a man who knows how to treat her well.”
Tracie wondered when that time would come for her. Then she thought again about her planned discussion of oral sex and other sensitive things, but she just couldn’t go there. This had been enough for her. Who knows? Maybe Jon could be okay in bed. At least he was a sensitive guy. The problem was that he probably hadn’t lost his virginity until a few years ago. Maybe she should just ask about that. She took the last forkful of meat loaf. “Umm” she paused, chewed, and swallowed a final time—“let me ask you something,” she said. “Who was your first girlfriend?”
“You mean a real lover or the first girl I liked?”
“A real lover,” she explained.
“Myra Fisher.”
Now she echoed him. “Myra Fisher? I don’t remember any Myra Fisher.”
“Well, you didn’t know me then. Myra was back in eighth grade.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Eighth grade!” He must have misunderstood. “No, I mean the first girl you actually slept with.”
“Well, I didn’t get to sleep with Myra until the ninth-grade class trip. But we were having sex at her house all through eighth grade. And in the summer between eighth and ninth.”
“You never told me about that!”
“Well, I don’t think it’s appropriate to talk about what you might call ‘my conquests,’ ” he said. “It’s very personal. I just don’t really talk about it.”
“Not with anyone?” she asked.
“Not really. I mean, you don’t, do you?”
“Uh, not really.” She hoped her nose wasn’t growing. She looked at Jon and began to wonder about him in a whole new way. “Wait a minute,” she said. “That really tall girl back in college, the one with the really long hair . . .”
“Hazel,” he said. “Hazel Flagler.”
“Yeah. Did you and she . . .”
“Of course,” he said.
“You never told me!” Now Tracie was truly shocked.
“Well, what do you think I was doing with her? She wasn’t a chess player!” Jon said.
“You never told me,” she repeated. Tracie wondered what other relationships he’d had that he’d never spoken to her about.
“Tracie, I grew up listening to women complaining about how badly men behave. I watched my father do it. Do you think after all that I was going to kiss and tell?”
“Kiss and tell? Jon, this isn’t some Victorian novel. This is the twenty-first century. Don’t you watch Friends? Or reruns of Seinfeld? People on Jerry Springer talk about sleeping with their brothers!”
“I have never been on Jerry Springer,” Jon said with dignity. And for the first time, Tracie looked at him and imagined that there might be a lot of water running deep under the stillness of his dark brown eyes.
Chapter 19
The next week, Wednesday, Jon met Tracie for the much-discussed haircut. They swung open the salon door, the music blasted from inside, and instinctively Jon stepped back. “Come on,” Tracie told him. “Avant-garde hair care is not for the fainthearted.” She took his hand and pulled him through the portal. “Don’t worry,” she said blithely. “Stefan will take care of you.”
For the first time in his life, Jon really doubted her. He didn’t think so, unless she was implying the mafioso meaning of “taking care of.” Well, what the hell. He felt half-dead already.
Was all of this really necessary to get a girl? It took so much time, thought, and energy. Wasn’t the relationship supposed to require maintenance, not his wardrobe and hairline? As he was dragged through the reception area—a room filled with bright lights, incredibly loud technorock, and something that seemed like the decor from a very bad gameshow set—he felt himself flinch
. There was a point at which a man had to put his foot down, and he figured this was it . . . until the woman with endless legs and silvery gold hair down to her waist walked by. She nodded to Tracie and smiled—actually smiled—at him. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. “Hi, Ellen,” Tracie said casually, as if the goddess of love had not just walked among them.
“Who is that?” he whispered.
“What?” Tracie asked at higher than full volume, continuing to pull him along.
“Who is that?” he asked, this time shouting. He had fallen deeply in love. She was a dream. She was paradise. If not for the hellish music, he could imagine paradise with her. “Who?” he shouted.
“Ellen? That’s Ellen,” Tracie repeated, as if that clarified anything.
They’d crossed the reception area, walked through a bustling room of chairs and mirrors, and now Tracie led him down a much emptier hallway, though the music continued full blast. All the walking was taking him farther away from his goddess. Two other women walked by. Neither one was quite up to Ellen’s standard, but both were truly, deeply beautiful. Wow! They nodded at either Tracie or him, and on the blind chance that he had been included, he nodded back. Neither one giggled or pointed. It seemed he was expected to nod back, just as they were expected to nod at him. Maybe, he thought, maybe Tracie did know something about all this after all. But he would not let Ellen drop. “Who is Ellen?” he repeated once the other two nymphs were safely gone.
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