Ecstasy

by Gwynne Forster

  “Who did you want to see?” That voice. A faint odor of sandalwood cologne reached her nostrils, but she knew at once that he wasn’t wearing it. I’ve got to handle this like a pro, she told herself.

  “I want to see Mr. Mason Fenwick,” she answered, and made herself turn around and look at him. Her left hand flew to her chest as he stood smiling down at her. She couldn’t shift her gaze from the blackish-green eyes that held her captive, entrapped. His smile evaporated and the deep, sensuous voice became crisp and businesslike.

  “I’m Fenwick.”

  She had to be certain. “Mason Fenwick?”

  His eyebrows arched sharply in a look of surprise. “Yes. I’m Mason Fenwick. And you are?”

  “I thought I heard your voice,” a woman who must have been his secretary said as she stepped into the little hallway. “Your coffee’s ready.” He told her he’d take it into his office, then gestured toward Jeannetta.

  “She’s here to see me. Get her a cup, would you?”

  Jeannetta stepped into Mason’s office, her poise intact. She removed the sunglasses she’d worn to deflect the glare from the snow and took the chair that he offered her. It wasn’t his physical appearance that unsettled her. He stood before her, tall—around six feet, four inches, she surmised—very dark, and, by any measure, handsome. No, it wasn’t that. He had an aura, a mystique, an appeal that sucked her in as though he were quicksand. She got hold of herself.

  “I’m Jeannetta Rollins.”

  He extended his hand, a bit reluctantly, she thought, though the possibility perplexed her. Why wouldn’t he want to shake her hand? Without her sunglasses, his strange eyes had an even more compelling effect, reaching inside of her, warming her, soothing her. She couldn’t tear her gaze from them.

  The buzzer on his desk went unanswered.

  “Telephone, Mr. Fenwick.”

  If he heard, he gave no indication. Jeannetta watched, mesmerized, as his eyes darkened, losing their blackish cast, and seemed to radiate warmth in a change so drastic and so sudden that she hadn’t time to hide her reaction. She gasped aloud, drawing him out of his trance.

  “Who are you?”

  In control once more, she repeated her name. He waved the words aside with a quick movement of his hand. “I mean, who are you?”

  “A prospective tourist,” she told him, though she cringed inwardly at the deceptive white lie. He picked up the black folder on his desk, read her name and opened it.

  “You haven’t filled in this form.”

  Noticing that it included, among other questions, two on the condition of her health, she told him she’d mail it.

  “Better make it snappy. I have only four places left and fourteen applicants.”

  Unwilling to risk missing the tour, she took the form and completed it.

  “You write sketches for stand-up comedians?” His voice held a note of awe.

  “Among other things, yes. It’s amazing what people will find comical.”

  He stared at her and shook his head as though disbelieving his ears. “Care to offer a sample?”

  He didn’t smile, so she couldn’t know whether the request was a part of the interview or fodder for his curiosity. Well, she’d play it by ear.

  “My samples are expensive,” she told him, deciding that she wouldn’t smile either.

  “I’ll settle for one of your cheaper ones.” Not an expression on his face. Was he playing with her? She wondered what her demeanor conveyed to him when his peculiarly magnetic eyes became brownish and he leaned forward in an air of expectancy.

  “Okay, here goes. Esther Ruth Hankin’s good-for-nothing husband hadn’t worked a full day in the twelve years since she’d married him, but Esther Ruth thought he was wonderful. Her hardworking, redneck father disagreed and threatened to stop supporting them. ‘It’s time you left that bum,’ he told her. ‘The man’s an absolute failure.’ ‘He ain’t a failure, daddy,’ she pleaded. ‘He just started at the bottom and got comfortable down there.’ The old man then turned to his other daughter, who crocheted happily nearby, and complained that her husband was too stupid to keep a job and that he was also going to stop taking care of them. Janie Dixon looked her father in the eye and asked him, ‘Who’s smarter, the man who can own a Cadillac without ever doing a lick of work, or the man who works his tail off to give it to him?’”

  Mason Fenwick continued to stare at Jeannetta until she wanted the floor to open up and swallow her. Then his wonderful eyes gleamed with mirth; laughter rumbled in his chest and spilled out of him. He leaned back in his chair and gave his amusement full rein. Astonished at the change in him, intuition told her that this man could only be reached at a primal level with gut-rending overtures, that he could intellectualize as irrelevant any other kind of approach.

  “That’s pretty good.” He scanned the form, his face again solemn and unreadable.

  “It had to be better than pretty good,” she told him, not bothering to hide her annoyance, “otherwise you wouldn’t have laughed your head off.” His long brown fingers strummed his desk, and he leaned back and watched her intently, like a cat eyeing a mouse.

  “You’re right,” he said, after seeming to weigh the effect of yielding to her. He scanned the form that she’d completed. “This looks okay, but I’ll have to check your references. You should hear from us within a week.”

  They both stood. He walked around the desk and extended his hand and she felt her face throb with the rush of warm blood when she touched it. Did he grasp it longer than necessary? She didn’t know, so caught up was she in his gaze, his whole aura. She never knew how she got out of his office.

  * * *

  He didn’t move until the door closed behind her. He walked over to the window overlooking Forty-sixth Street and braced himself with both hands resting on the windowsill. What had happened in there? The churning in him couldn’t have been more violent nor more enervating if he had just encountered a Martian. He couldn’t help smiling inwardly; maybe he had. But he was master of his fate and he’d proved it. Starting over at age thirty-four in what, for him, had been uncharted waters, hadn’t been without pitfalls, but he’d done it and it had given him a sense of accomplishment and a measure of inner peace. Now, this stranger had bolted into his life and nailed him with a wallop such as he hadn’t known he could experience. She’d looked up at him, her eyes sparkling with some kind of gut-searing, almost sad appeal, and he’d had a time steadying himself. If she had set out deliberately to pulverize his resistance to her, she had succeeded admirably.

  “Well, what do you think, Mr. Mason?” He whirled around, strode quickly to his desk and punched the intercom.

  “I haven’t decided, Viv. What was your assessment?”

  “I didn’t see much of her, but I think she probably isn’t demanding and won’t be a troublemaker, since she didn’t ask me a lot of questions about the other tourists, sleeping accommodations, that sort of thing—and nothing at all about you. Most single women under forty-five ask if you’re married. She’ll be okay.”

  “Hmm. Maybe.” He hung up. Anybody as intelligent as that woman obviously was definitely should have asked some questions. He’d have to think about it. The buzzer rang again.

  “She must be interesting, too, Mr. Mason. She’s a writer, and she’s got three books published. On top of that, she teaches writing at SUNY. Maybe she’ll put the tour in one of her books, and you’ll be famous again.” He opened Jeannetta’s file. Any writer had a perfect reason for taking a world tour, but she had stated “personal” in answer to the question. He recalled that he’d sensed an aura of mystery around her when they’d talked on the phone earlier; now he was sure of it. Well, he didn’t have to take her. He had a peculiar feeling about her. Yet, she met his written criteria, and he prided himself in being fair. He’d sleep on it.

  * * *


  After that evening, Jeannetta sat on a hassock in Laura’s tiny, cluttered office while her sister planned menus for the next week.

  “Well, how’d it go with Fenwick?”

  “You sure you want to know? That man’s a keg of powder.”

  “Oh, Lord, don’t tell me. I thought you were ready to move in with him just from talking with him on the phone. What happened?”

  “What happened was I looked at him and felt as if he’d slugged me with a sledgehammer. Laura, I’ve never been a pushover for any man, but that man! Honey, he was all around me, everywhere. I could feel him before he touched my hand. Just talking about him makes me want to... Gosh, I shouldn’t be speaking to you like this.”

  “Shoot, honey,” Laura said with her usual diffidence about such things, “at least let me live vicariously.”

  “He’s a fantastic specimen, but it’s more...I...I was practically traumatized, and he hadn’t done anything but ask my name...and gaze at me. His eyes change from a blackish-green to brown when he smiles, and he... Laura, what if he’s blunted my brain to the point where I can’t persuade him to do what I want? Five minutes with him and I was a bowl of mush.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Well, maybe I’ve overstated it a bit, but not by much. Trust me.”

  “What was his reaction?”

  Jeannetta hadn’t thought much about that but, upon recollection, decided that he’d at least noticed her. She described their encounter.

  “Sounds to me like he wasn’t exactly immune to you,” Laura said. “You watch it.”

  “Don’t worry. This has to be business. If sex gets into it, I’ll lose everything.”

  “I’d like to have that problem with him,” Laura said dryly. “You always did have what it takes with men, and you never used it. I’m thirty-five years old and still waiting for the first man to tell me he admires something about me other than my business smarts and my cherry pies. I’d give anything to be tall and slim with your long legs and hourglass figure. I’d even exchange my straight hair for your wooly stuff. A lot of men look right past short, plump women.”

  “You don’t want to exchange places with me, Laura. Maybe this is fate’s way of evening things out. I look like Dad and you look like Mother. When I was little, you got the roles in school plays, because you’re fair. Nobody up here ever heard of a black fairy queen.”

  “And I never saw a fat drum majorette. You were the toast of the Pilgrim football team.” She turned off the computer and rested her chin on the heel of her right hand. “Sex or not, what choice do you have? You need him, and if you two fall for each other, you’ll just have to deal with that. Just you make sure he doesn’t turn out to be another Jethro. That man chased you right to the day he married Alma.”

  “I know,” Jeannetta replied, shaking her head in wonder, “and he’s still at it. He must be a masochist. I detest him, and I let him know it. How could he possibly think I’d give him a second look after he slept with my best friend, when he was engaged to me? They both got what they deserve—she tricked him into marrying her, and he’s still trailing after me.”

  Laura waved her hand in a gesture of dismissal. “Alma never was your friend. Biggest actress ever to walk these streets. Forget about them, and be sure that, if you fall for Mason Fenwick, he feels the same way about you.”

  * * *

  Mason telephoned his older brother, Steve, the person who had been his spiritual, psychological and economic anchor since they’d been orphaned at the ages of seven and twelve.

  “I’ll bring over some Chinese food and we can have supper together, if you’re not busy.”

  “I’m free this evening,” Steve assured him. “Why don’t I make a salad and chill a couple of beers?”

  Mason arrived at his brother’s co-op apartment at about seven-thirty. The refined old building was situated on the south side of the dividing line between Harlem and the rest of mankind, as Steve liked to say, and was the only substantial gift he’d been willing to accept from his younger brother. Steve put the food in the microwave oven to be warmed later, divided a bottle of Heineken between two glasses and took them into his living room.

  “What’s on your mind, Mason?”

  He told his brother of his encounter with Jeannetta, by phone and in person. “I never felt so unsettled, as if I were in total disarray, unravelled, as I did when she left my office. I have a premonition that nothing good will come of it if I admit her to that tour.”

  Steve set his glass on the leather coaster and looked at Mason. “If she meets your criteria, and you said she does, you have no legal right or moral basis by which to exclude her. And since when did you base your actions on hunches and premonitions? It wasn’t a premonition that led you to quit medicine, was it?”

  Mason expelled a long, labored breath. He’d hoped that his leaving medicine wouldn’t arise, but it nearly always crept into their conservations.

  “Steve, I know you’re disappointed in me, and that you’ll probably always be, but I can’t go back into that operating room. It warped me as a human being.”

  “You mean you let it warp you.”

  “Whatever. You worked most of your life to send me to school because I wanted to be a doctor, and you dedicated yourself to helping me realize my dream. I think of it all the time. You’re forty-two, and you don’t have a family, but you would have had if you hadn’t cared so much for me.” He covered Steve’s hand with his own, in an attempt to convey the depth of his feelings.

  “You weren’t there, Steve. Everyone in that operating room saw it. For some reason, call it Divine Providence if you want to, I wasn’t holding that scalpel right. If I had been, and my finger hadn’t been as close as it was to the tip of that blade, Bianca Norris would be dead. She’s in perfect health, and I don’t plan to tempt fate ever again. I know it hurts you, and I lose more sleep over it than you can imagine, but that’s the way it is.”

  “You’ll go back. You’ll have to. People need you. But you didn’t come here to talk about that. You’re here because of that woman.”

  Mason got up and walked the length of the long living room, stopped at a Shaker-style rocker and propped his right foot on its bottom rung, rocking it.

  “I don’t want to take her along.”

  “Why? Seems to me you’d be glad to have someone your age on that two-month-long tour. When were you ever scared of a woman?”

  “I’m not afraid of her, for Pete’s sake.” How would you feel about a strange woman strolling into your life and dulling your senses without uttering a word? he wanted to ask.

  “Then take her.” His wicked laugh seemed to carry immense satisfaction, Mason decided.

  “Get down on your knees, brother,” Steve continued jovially, “and see what it’s like. We’ve all been there.” Sobering, he asked, “What are you planning to do about Betty?”

  Mason shrugged elaborately and ran his long fingers over his hair. “That’s history.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Steve said. “And at the risk of pontificating, I have to tell you it never should have started. She wasn’t for you, but I suspect you know that. Any doctor taller than she is would have sufficed. When are you leaving?”

  “May twenty-second. I have to ask you to go with Skip to his school program June first. He graduates from elementary school, and I can’t leave him stranded. He needs support.”

  “Tell him to call me.” He paused as though reluctant to raise an issue. “Mason, that boy’s become so attached to you that, if you wanted to cut him loose, you couldn’t.”

  Mason kicked at the carpet, as he frequently did when aggravated. “I have no idea why Skip began to tag along behind me. When my office was a couple of blocks from the Upper East Side branch library, Skip used to sit on the steps and, when I passed there every aftern
oon, he’d speak. I’d give him a thumbs-up sign and walk on. Seems he studied there to avoid the boys who were his neighbors in the projects. After a while he began waving at me when he spoke and I couldn’t help noticing him. Neat. Always alone and with an armful of books. Then, he began to walk along with me without saying anything, unless I asked him a question. One day, he rushed to greet me as though I were an old friend, even used my first name. I talked with him that day and, from then on, he waited for me. I didn’t think to tell him I was moving my office down to East Forty-six Street but, after a couple of weeks, he found me and actually gave me a tongue lashing for not having told him I intended to move. I’d missed him, too, and told him so. He got to know my coming and going better than I did. He trailed along with me for months before he got around to asking me if we could be brothers, since his only family was a sick aunt who’d raised him almost from birth.