Time's Harlot: The Perils of Attraction, Seduction, and Desire

by Brenda Kuchinsky

  I hate that nubby beige bedspread. She saw herself rolling around on it with Kurt. She couldn’t remember why or where Ada was when they were on there. She shook herself free of her wandering visions.

  “Ma. It’s okay. Rudi’s gone with that silly creature. I’m here,” she said, thinking, as if I’ve ever been a big comfort to her.

  She had improved though. She used to challenge her hysteria, angered by the irrationality. Now she knew better. She’d go with the flow. If Ada became hysterical, she had to accept her in that volatile spot, not fight her.

  “Ma, I heard you screaming outside. I was afraid that scrawny gray woman with the Auschwitz numbers was attacking you.”

  “No, Zophitchka. It was mine own Rudi stabbing me in the back. Throwing a mouse in my face. I could have a heart attack. Feel my heart. It’s hammering hard,” she said, putting Sophia’s hand as close to the vicinity as she could get it, given the mound of bosom obstructing the way.

  Ada’s dark eyes were opaque with trauma, her face wet with tears, and her hair unruly as if it had reared up in sympathetic fright. “The Nazis would let loose white mice at a meeting they wanted to end. It’ll be a hot and humid day in Siberia before he sees my boobies again.”

  “Wash your face and come into the kitchen,” Sophia said, disgusted at the conjured image of Rudi staring at Ada’s bared breasts, or worse, doing something to them. “I’ll make some Swee-Touch-Nee.”

  Ada rose reluctantly, her bulk, like the bed, overshadowing the room. With one long juddering sigh, she headed for the bathroom.

  Once they were seated at the table with the tea bags steeping in the glass mugs, a bowl of snowy white sugar cubes nestled between them, Ada became restless.

  “There’s not enough food on the table. Let me make something,” she said, scornful of the meager plate of raisin pumpernickel toast and butter before her.

  “If the table’s not piled up with mountains of food, looking like the Alps, you act like it’s a vast wasteland. The toast’s enough. Sit down,” Sophia said.

  Ada, ignoring Sophia’s pleas, began pulling cheeses and pickles from the fridge, crackers and tins of sprats from the cupboard, and grapes and plums from the counter. “Ah. That’s better. Ess. Ess.”

  Seventeen

  Hurrying to Maria’s massage studio before she could change her mind, Sophia was still dwelling on Ada’s hysteria and Rudi’s incitement of it. He had to know what he was doing.

  She walked briskly to the west end of Lincoln Road, fairly quiet on a Monday afternoon in off season, and took a right into the alley where Maria’s establishment sat, a squat red brick one- story building with a cheerful picture window, sandwiched between a fragrant incense shop and a tiny Cuban coffee shop. She saw Maria with her distinctive do bent over her oversized desk in the reception room.

  “I didn’t think you were coming for your massage,” a startled Maria said, looking up, when Sophia crossed the threshold.

  “I’m not here for my massage. I’m here to get some answers. I haven’t heard from you since the incident. What happened?”

  “We’re not going to discuss it here and now. If you’ve come for a massage, fine. Otherwise, I can come to your place at six. We can talk there.”

  “Is it wise to come to my place? Besides I can’t break another date with Kurt. I know. I’ll come to your place. I don’t start work until one tomorrow. Can I come by around ten? By the way, I don’t drive. Do you live within walking distance for me?”

  “I just live a few blocks west of here. On the bay. In a cute neglected little house, scrunched in amidst all the high rises. It’s only a matter of time before they knock it down.”

  “Tomorrow morning is good,” Maria said, consulting her appointment book. “You sure you don’t want a massage? You’re already here. I can use the money,” Maria pleaded.

  Sophia thought of her upcoming evening with Kurt and changed her mind. Why not let Maria rock her world? After all, she hadn’t planned on murdering Bernie. It was an accident and she did take care of it. Funny they never thought of calling the police. Neither one of them.

  “Okay. I need the kneading. I just dealt with my hysterical mother. But I didn’t shower after yoga.” Sophia turned and started heading for the massage room, oblivious to Maria’s beatific grin.

  “What’s a little yoga sweat? That’s right. Life’s over too soon. Carpe diem,” she encouraged. “Before you know it, we’ll be six feet under or dust in the wind.”

  The prospect of acquiring a cat was generating a lot more excitement than Sophia had anticipated. Kurt had promised to go with her to a no-kill shelter to help her choose one.

  “You sure you want a messy fur ball around? You’ll be picking up cat hairs and changing stinky litter. And the cat will probably rip my cashmeres with its claws,” Kurt said, being far from encouraging.

  “The dream inspired me. I want a cat. Besides, I’m going to keep it at the…” She bit her tongue. She was about to say bordello.

  “Keep it at the…?” he stared at her. Are you losing it Sophia? You haven’t had any seizures lately, have you?” He sounded put out rather than concerned.

  “No, Mr. Worry Wart,” she said, knowing full well he was not worrying about her, just himself.

  “I want to keep the cat at the office.”

  “That’s not too smart, babe.”

  “For one thing, you’re only there three days a week. You don’t drive. Are you going to drop by the other four days to feed it?”

  “You’re right. I haven’t thought it through. I know I want a cat though. The rest will work itself out. Maybe I can walk it on a leash from place to place. That would be cute.”

  Kurt was preening in the hall mirror, the one he found the most flattering, and he had stopped listening.

  “Let’s get going. We’ve got to get the thing. Bring it back here. Situate it. We probably won’t be eating out. It’s a shame. I had my heart set on that new Japanese place on Lincoln. You know the one. Almost at the bay.”

  Right across the street from Maria’s alley. That proximity brought the steamy afternoon session rushing back. The frisson of fear about Bernie had turned her on even more. She realized Kurt wasn’t annoying her because Maria’s magic had mellowed her out.

  “You look flushed. You’re not coming down with anything again? I can’t afford to get sick. I’ve got a long photo shoot tomorrow.”

  “No, Kurt. I’m the picture of health. That was just a swiftly passing cold. I’m just excited about the cat.”

  “Well, let’s get going. I’m glad I’m wearing a cotton shirt.”

  They found the shelter quickly and Sophia was pleasantly surprised by the ambience. She had anticipated a depressing atmosphere. Must be the no-kill policy. Death wasn’t a constant companion here.

  Sophia wanted the first cat she saw. Not red. No green eyes. Not immense. Not like the dream at all.

  A lithe sinewy Siamese caught her eye, captivating her. Enormous robin’s egg blue eyes, wide and knowing, in a pixie sable face with a bit of beige crowning the head, separating it from the sable ears. Matching brown tail and legs contrasted with a creamy body, made up of multiple subtle shades of beige. What a beauty. She didn’t look like a cat or any other animal for that matter. She was a unique aristocrat, sucking all the air out of the room, dominating it with her cool beauty.

  “I’m in love,” Sophia said, walking towards the majestic creature, as if she had been hypnotized. She was single-minded, oblivious of anyone else in the room, and thoroughly smitten. “Kim Novak playing a modern day witch, had a cat like that in Bell, Book, and Candle, called Pyewacket,” she said, noticing that Kurt was fascinated by the cat.

  “That cat is a goddess. What’s a cat like that doing in a place like this?” Kurt asked the assistant whose name tag pronounced her to be Trudy.

  Trudy had been admiring Kurt’s looks. She tore her besotted gaze from his golden locks, answering him dreamily, “Her owner got too old and is in a body cast
right now. None of the relatives wanted Pixie.”

  “I’m renaming her Nefertiti,” Sophia said possessively. “She looks like an Egyptian queen.”

  “She is a female, isn’t she?” she asked Trudy, whose eyes were glued to Kurt, following his slightest movement. He was flattered. No admirer is too lowly or trivial. He was basking in the glow of Trudy’s infatuation.

  “She is female, isn’t she?” Sophia repeated.

  “Yes.” Trudy gave her the mere crumbs of attention required to affirm that Pixie was female.

  “Then Nefertiti it is. And Titi is her second name. The third is hers alone for her feline meditations.”

  She turned to Kurt, who was sizing up Titi as if she were his competition. Who is more gorgeous? And who will receive more attention?

  “That idea of three names is from T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. That old ant-Semitic genius just loved cats and I think I’m going to be emulating him.”

  She was talking to herself.

  “Okay, Kurt. Let’s take care of business and get Titi home.”

  The practical matter of adopting Titi took no time. Both she and Titi were purring as she sat in the car with the aloof beauty on her lap.

  Eighteen

  Sophia was hustling to Maria’s place. Titi had mesmerized Sophia, causing her to linger. She couldn’t get enough of her. The regal poised creature commanded attention effortlessly.

  Keeping Titi at the bordello was out of the question. Sophia wanted her with her. Sleeping with her. Eating with her. Admiring that stunning face and body. It was unrequited love. Titi was just there to be admired. Her royal presence was enough. She did not have to reciprocate.

  “Maybe I’ll take you to the bordello with me for a visit. If you’ll condescend to walk with me on your leash,” she said, staring into Titi’s impassive crystal blue gaze. “I won’t leave you there. You have to be by Mommy’s side. You belong at home with me.”

  Sophia had already discovered that Titi did not play with toys or indulge in catnip. She preferred leaping up onto impossibly tall surfaces and scrutinizing the scene below from her Olympian heights. Sometimes she scaled curtains like a proficient mountaineer. This reminded her of Ada, who hysterical as she was, was an accomplished climber. Her parents had sent her to a voice training camp in Zakopane, at the foot of the Tatra Mountains, the Polish Alps, where recreational climbing was taught. Ada took to it in spite of herself.

  Sophia arrived at Maria’s salmon colored cottage about fifteen minutes late. A breeze off Biscayne Bay, redolent with Florida damp, giving off that unique bay smell, antediluvian mineral and stone with a hint of aquatic fowl, cooled her flushed cheeks. Breathing in the aqueous air, she felt her lungs expanding. She wanted to go around to the back and look at the bay and keep breathing in the air to calm herself, but Maria flung open the red door, which clashed miserably with the cottage’s salmon exterior.

  Sophia stepped into a universe of clutter. The living room was crammed with mementoes, chatchkes, books and magazines, candles in all shapes and sizes and colors and in all sorts of holders from the classy to the kitsch, and a myriad of silver framed photographs covering the top of an upright piano sitting in front of a picture window on the back wall, much like the one in Maria’s office, beautifully highlighting the unobstructed bay in the backyard. The quaint cottage was designed so that the large living room ran the length of the house, while the other rooms were tacked onto the side as if they were an afterthought.

  Maria hustled her onto a battered red leather love seat, clearing away a handful of animal toys before she sat down. The tiny bar in a corner of the room was overflowing with bottles, glasses, more candles, and a collection of snow globes.

  “Here’s a scotch,” Maria said. She quickly poured two Johnny Walker Double Blacks for them into remarkably handsome crystal cut glass tumblers and set them down on the busy coffee table. The usually unperturbed Maria was surprisingly jittery in her lair, pacing back and forth, looking askance at Sophia, as if she craved her approval, and titivating with the chatchkes jumbled together helter skelter on the mahogany table, before she settled on the couch, uncomfortably close to Sophia.

  “Another thing we have in common besides being old movie buffs. We drink the same scotch. But who’s counting?” She downed her drink in two gulps.

  “It’s awfully early for scotch Maria.” Sophia watched Maria make quick work of hers.

  “Now that it’s poured, just have the one,” Maria urged.

  Sophia inhaled a tiny sip, smelling it more than drinking it, placed the glass carefully on the bit of free surface on the coffee table, and stood up to cross the room to examine the photographs on the piano.

  She was surprised to see they were all of the same woman. A woman, who resembled Sophia to an uncanny degree. They were both voluptuous green-eyed redheads with seriously curly hair and Roman noses.

  “My nose is just a teeny bit longer and my hair a teeny bit darker. Wow.”

  “I told you that you reminded me of my ex.”

  “I know. But this is incredible.”

  “What happened? How did it end? Where is she now?”

  “That’s a long, long story for another time.”

  While she was at the piano, examining several pictures of her doppelganger, she felt a furry body and tail, insinuating itself around her legs.

  Her hand stopped in midair on its way down to stroke the pet when she looked down and discovered Titi’s spitting image entwining itself between her legs.

  “Maria. This is unbelievable,” she called out to Maria, who had left the room. “I adopted a cat, who looks just like yours here at my feet, yesterday. Nefertiti. I call her Titi for short. What are the odds?”

  “That’s a third thing we have in common. A seal point Siamese. But who’s counting?” Maria said, emerging from the kitchen doorway with a triumphant smile, lighting up her face.

  “I used to have three. Ping, Pong, and Pang. From Turandot. One left. Right old girl?” she asked, stooping down to stroke the alluring cat. “Sole survivor. I renamed her Gloria.”

  An overpowering sense of déjà vu swept over Sophia, confusion and disorientation flooding into every nook and cranny of her consciousness. An olfactory aura descended upon her nostrils. Enticing garlic filled the air.

  “Are you cooking Italian?” Sophia asked, gently sliding to the floor, eyes wide open, lying perfectly still, curled up in the fetal position and looking as if she were in a hypnotic trance.

  “Hi Titi,” Sophia said, mistaking the cat draped over a pillow on the strange bed, for her own.

  “It’s Gloria. Remember we both have the same seal point?”

  A concerned Maria was hovering over the prone Sophia, whom she had covered with a light blanket after carrying her to her bed, all the while bending over her in order to deeply drink in her scent.

  “What happened?”

  “You were surprised by the cat, looked at me funny, and asked me if I was cooking Italian before you hit the floor so gracefully it could have been a choreographed ballet number,” Maria said, shaking her head.

  “Oh, I remember the garlic aura, the déjà vu. Yeah,” she said, looking at the cat vacantly. “I’m an epileptic. I haven’t had a seizure in a long time.”

  “Seizure? I thought people jerked and shook with spasms when they had a seizure and you had to make sure they didn’t bite their tongue off,” Maria said.

  “They can. I don’t. The lights just go out for a little while after a garlic aroma invades my atmosphere. There are lots of different types of seizures. I feel light-headed and empty. It’s hard to describe,” she said, brushing her hand across her face as if she were dislodging a cobweb. “Would you do me a favor?”

  “Sure. Name it,” Maria said, smiling benignly at Sophia.

  “I have my appointment book in my big leather bag. Would you fetch it? I’ll give you five numbers and first names and ask you to call and cancel my appointments. Tell them I don�
�t feel well and I’ll see them next week. Would you do that? I’m drained.”

  “Sure thing. Anything you want, doll.”

  “It’s slightly irregular but I don’t really think I’m breaking confidentiality. Maybe just a wee bit, but I don’t think you’ll keep the numbers or retain the names or anything like that. Oh. Use my cell phone. They’re in there.”

  After Maria had dispatched the five patients efficiently, she told Sophia to rest back while she made green tea.

  “Stroke Gloria. It’s reassuring. I’ll be back in a jiffy,” she threw over her shoulder, bustling out of the room.

  Sophia absently stroked Gloria with long slow movements, causing her to purr. She purred like a locomotive.

  “You have a loud mechanical purr, incongruous for such a tiny delicate creature,” Sophia found herself speaking to Gloria. “You look like aristocracy, but you purr like alley cat.”

  She looked around the bedroom. Not much decorative style. Clutter, but not as much as out there. The omnipresent candles all over the place. Books everywhere. Plain brown bedspread. Red Roman shades. No curtains. She liked the shades.

  “No drapes for you to scale. Maybe you don’t do that. Is that purr for real?” she asked Gloria, rubbing her under her chin.

  Sophia realized she was facing an enormous poster of Gloria, dressed as a forties femme fatale. Rita Hayworth in Gilda?

  They must have had that made up. Gloria looked gorgeous. Her straightened shoulder length hair framing her face, verdant eyes wounded and vulnerable, pouty manipulative lips, wearing a long sparkly white halter-top dress, plunging neckline revealing impressive cleavage, clinging to her.

  Maybe her hair was straight and the curly was manufactured. No. Too many photographs covering too much of a time span. The straight was fake.

  “Gloria has a tremendous hold on you,” Sophia observed when Maria emerged with a tray holding two mismatched Japanese tea cups and an exotic teapot. “Smells nice. Like mango or peach.”