The Adam & Eve Trilogy

by Paul Preston

  Williamson took a deep breath and began.

  “It’s quite simple really. Your father left you here so we could privately to discuss a job offer. He has conveyed to me your outstanding academic success in Stanford University’s School of Social Work. I’d like to hire you, Ms. Mauricio, on a one week contract, as my personal assistant. You could think of it as a trial internship, which will be over in the blink of an eye. Due to the success of my business enterprises, I find myself laden by an embarrassment of riches. For tax purposes, my lawyers have created what they’re calling, “The Williamson Charitable Foundation”. The endowment is described in the document you see on the table before you. There’s also a computer in your bedroom where you can also read more about it at williamsoninvestmentandrealestateservices.com, my apologies to your pretty little fingers in advance for having to type in my company’s abnormally long email address. I want to give away around Ten Million dollars or so to some worthy non-profit organizations. I thought with your particular expertise, you would know how best to distribute the endowment. Frankly, I get literally hundreds of fundraising requests, through my voice mail, snail mail, and I can’t delete them fast enough from my email. It’s all rather annoying to me, so I thought perhaps you’d have a better temperament to deal with it. Also, if you like the job and you choose to stay on as my permanent paid employee, you’d serve as my buffer between the Foundation and the recipients of the money. I can think of nothing more tedious than serving on the Board of another organization. You could go in my place, representing the Foundation, while I could stay focused on what I do best, making money. If you chose to stay on, your starting annual salary would be 100,000 dollars, you’d receive a very good medical and dental plan, and 4 weeks a year paid vacation. If you’d care to put a little something away for your future, my company will match up to three and a half percent of whatever you contribute to a pension plan of conservative income generating investments with a safe, fixed interest rate. Of course, the pension plan is totally optional. What do you think of my proposal, Ms. Mauricio?”

  Bella Lisa listened to him with lips slightly parted, her chin in her hand.

  I’ve got to give the guy credit. That’s the most original and elaborate seduction speech I ever heard.

  “I’m not sure what to say – it’s a very generous and intriguing offer, but…”

  “But what?”

  “I’m sorry, but I simply do not trust you, Mr. Williamson.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well for one thing, you look at me like some kind of ravenous beast, one that has not recently been fed. Obviously, that makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. Also something’s telling me you haven’t been all together forthright with me here, Mr. Williamson. I have the feeling there’s a few more job requirements I would need to know about that you’ve cleverly chosen not to share with me.”

  “You are most direct, aren’t you, Ms. Mauricio? It’s true; I haven’t put all my cards on the table. I suppose it is time for me to be honest with you. Completely honest. Perhaps then I could win some of that coveted trust of yours. Would you like me to be honest?”

  “For a start.”

  Williamson took a long drink of sparkling water, removed a white handkerchief embroidered with the initials P.W from his suit pocket, dabbed the sides of his mouth and folded it up neatly, returning it to his pocket.

  “I don’t know about my being a beast, which may of course be true. But what I do know is… I confess to being hopelessly attracted to you, Ms. Mauricio. I have been since the moment I first saw you, in that darkened theater nearly four years ago now. Do you recall making eye contact with me at the performance of your father’s play? I sat in the row directly behind you. Do you recall?”

  “I do…”

  “It was a most enchanted, yet painful night for me.”

  “Painful?” Bella Lisa asked.

  “Allow me to explain. Yes, I am swept away by your extraordinary physical beauty as is, I’m sure, every red blooded male who has ever laid eyes on you. Upon first seeing you, I experienced the deepest desire to possess you, body and soul. Despite how inappropriate it is, I knew I wanted you. Despite our age difference, I knew I wanted to make you mine. But this passion I feel is accompanied by this painful ache…”

  Out of the corner of her eyes Bella Lisa saw Williamson wince, shut his eyes, lean back in his chair and rub his pelvis area with his large hands. He didn’t seem the slightest bit uncomfortable touching himself in front of her in such an intimate area. It seemed to Bella Lisa that the pain was authentic, or else Williamson was not only a successful businessman but a very gifted actor as well. She didn’t know if she should feel pity or repulsion for him at this moment.

  He opened his eyes when the stab of pain receded.

  “A painful ache that has never left me in the four long years since you’ve been away.”

  “When did you first experience this pain, Mr. Williamson?” Bella Lisa asked, looking down at her hands, unsure if she really wanted to hear the answer.

  “The first moment I looked into your pretty eyes…”

  Bella Lisa breathed in and slowly lifted her chin, making direct eye contact with Williamson for the first time.

  “You literally stung me that night, you enchantress, and I’ve never been the same since…”

  “I’m sorry,” Bella Lisa uttered, not knowing what else to say.

  “There’s no need to apologize for being such an exquisite beauty.”

  Bella Lisa was secretly flattered. She looked downward and hid her slight smile from him. Williamson watched her shyly pass a finger through her hair.

  “You may recall I left the opening night party of your father’s play early and went home, due to the discomfort I felt. The next day the pain had not gone away. I set up an appointment with my physician who said I probably pulled a muscle down there while exercising and to call for a follow-up exam in a month. After the pain had not gone away or lessened in a month, he referred me to an internal medicine physician who ordered an MRI test to check for a disease she thought I might have, Deep Vein Thrombosis. Though I wasn’t the over 60, overweight, out of shape smoker she usually treated for this disease, she said she wanted to rule it out anyway, just in case. She thought I might have a blood clot in a vein on my pelvis, interfering with circulation and causing the swelling. She injected a fluid into my veins to enhance the images of the blood vessels, and put me through the machine, but didn’t find anything abnormal… Usually when a person talks about one’s own state of health, it’s immensely fascinating to that person, but dreadfully boring to everyone else. Am I boring you, Ms. Mauricio?

  “No, not at all.”

  “Then you are attractive as well as kind, a lethal combination.”

  “What happened next?” she asked, the kindness in her eyes finally beginning to show.

  “She referred me to another specialist, a urologist, who diagnosed my condition as possibly a severe case of priapism. He asked me if I had ever had an erection that lasted more than four hours. Feeling slightly uncomfortable, I made a bit of a joke in response.

  “Do erections ever last less than four hours, Doctor?” I asked.

  “The elderly doctor didn’t really get the joke. He looked at me severely, explaining when some men get aroused, as blood flows into the penis, it becomes painfully engorged and the blood doesn’t drain properly. He told me to return to him when I had an erection lasting more than four hours and he would inject a needle on the side of my penis and drain out the excess blood. Of course, I had my normal four hour erection later that night.”

  Bella Lisa blushed.

  “Did you return to the physician?” she asked.

  “No, Ms. Mauricio. I decided I’d rather deal with a painful erection than get my private parts stabbed with a needle and have all the blood drained out.”

  Bella Lisa couldn’t help but smile at the joke.

  “He recommended surgery to ‘prevent long-term and permanent dama
ge to the penis’. Cutting open my penis would prevent damage to it? Obviously, I didn’t go back to that specialist…”

  Bella Lisa smiled again, biting her lip to stop herself from laughing.

  “Ah, it’s good to see you smile, Ms. Mauricio. What do all those woman’s magazines say, ‘The way to a win a woman’s heart is through your sense of humor?’ Anyway, after all the tests and humiliating exams, no one quite knows exactly what’s wrong with me. It comes and goes, sometimes leaving me at peace, other times building in intensity to such a searing pain that it makes me want to scream. It is a curse, Ms. Mauricio, I assure you. Perhaps I was cursed by the Gods for not being generous enough to my fellow man. For not giving shelter from the cold to the old homeless woman who asked for my help one winter’s night many years ago. Do you think 10 million would be enough to buy my release from this? It’s as if this alien creature lives inside me, a beast that seeks a satisfaction and release, a satisfaction and release that… that only you can give, Ms. Mauricio.”

  Bella Lisa’s smile disappeared. She instantly stood up and walked over to the elevator doors. Williamson followed her at a distance.

  “Now I’ve made you uncomfortable. That should teach me never to be honest with anyone.”

  At the elevator, Bella Lisa turned to him.

  “I cannot help you with your… condition. I respectfully decline your job offer, Mr. Williamson. I’d like to leave now. Please tell me the code to be able to operate the elevator…”

  Williamson turned his palms outward, gesturing to the elevator door.

  “Why, you already know the code, Ms. Mauricio.”

  “Stop playing games with me, Mr. Williamson.”

  “The code is 08,14,2008. The day we met. Four years ago.”

  Bella Lisa turned back to the elevator, punched in the numbers in the key pad, pressed the down arrow and the arrow lit up. She spoke to him over her shoulder as she waited for the elevator to arrive.

  “Perhaps you are a sex and love addict.”

  “Perhaps I am.”

  “There are meetings you could go to, so I’ve heard, that are similar to Alcoholics Anonymous. Perhaps talking about it to others as you’ve done with me might help your affliction.”

  “I suppose you were right, back then.”

  “Right about what, Mr. Williamson?”

  “About your initial assessment of me, in the dark of the theater, four years ago. The first word you said to me, remember, Ms. Mauricio? Pervert. You called me a pervert.”

  “Well. I do apologize if I offended you in any way back then, sir. I am sorry.”

  “No need to ever apologize for speaking the truth, Ms. Mauricio. I can’t change what I am. I am a pervert. I know that I am. I had only wished you could help break this curse upon me.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You are not cursed.”

  The elevator arrived with a ping and swooshed open and before Bella Lisa took her first step into the open door, Williamson spoke out firmly and clearly.

  “Your father owes me $350,000…”

  Hearing this, Bella Lisa seemed frozen in place. The elevator doors quietly shut.

  She turned around to face Williamson.

  “About a year after you left for college, something happened that wiped him out financially. I assume he never told you. He held a very large stake in a company called Gaston Pharmaceuticals. I’ve seen this happen before when an individual investor gets taken in by the marketing of one particular company. Rather than diversifying his stock portfolio as I advised him to do, and spreading out the risk between several companies, he put all his money behind this one stock. Gaston was a blowhard research scientist who claimed to have discovered an effective treatment for end-stage liver cancer.”

  “His mother died of liver cancer.”

  Bella Lisa slowly walked away from the elevator to the glass windows on the other side of the room and stared out, looking down to the sea. Williamson followed her at a comfortable distance behind as he talked.

  “Your grandmother. I’m sorry to hear that, Ms. Mauricio. Perhaps that’s the reason he was investing so heavily in that one particular company. According to the glossy annual reports, the company’s flagship drug was approved for sale in 22 countries in Asia mostly and was profitable, rare for a start-up drug company, especially one that had just a single drug in their pipeline. The company spent a fortune setting up clinical trials in the US and Europe and had reached Phase 3 to get the drug approved by the FDA. 70-90 percent of drugs that reach this stage get approved. Your father invested every penny of savings, as well as his residual checks on this stock. He even set up a margin account with Fidelity Investments and gambled money he didn’t have on it.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Your father is a talented actor, but a very bad investor. One afternoon a little over two years ago now the corporate directors of the company all started dumping their shares before the market closed. If I was managing his portfolio, I would have advised him to immediately sell his entire holding in the company and he could’ve got out in time, broken even or just taken a small loss. After the closing bell the news was announced that the results of the Phase 3 Trial proved inconclusive and the FDA was not approving the sale of their cancer drug in the United States. The stock dropped 65 percent in after-hours trading before the market even opened. Instead of biting the bullet and selling, your father kept dumping the money from his margin account back into the stock, buying it during the free fall, thinking he was getting it at a bargain price. When the additional bad news of the lawsuit against the company broke later that day, that the company’s pharmaceutical sales reps were illegally paying doctors a fee each time they prescribed the drug, the stock was hit hard, dropping another 25 percent and the company was eventually forced to file bankruptcy. Fidelity is now collecting his residual checks to pay off what he owes in the margin account and he, of course, was unable to make his monthly mortgage payments on the condo. Apparently he called your mom to borrow money, but she was either unwilling or unable to help. He called me, desperate to sell the condo, but he owes more on the property than its current market value. I helped him renegotiate the loan and I’ve been paying off the mortgage myself.”

  “Mr. Williamson…”

  “If the property goes through foreclosure and sells at a distressed price, it will bring down the value of the entire building.”

  “Are you planning on selling?”

  “No. You see I’m not just worried about the declining value of my individual home; I’m worried about the entire investment. I own it…”

  “You own… the entire building?”

  “Yes. I bought it and had it renovated about ten years ago and have been selling the units ever since. I assure you I gave your father a very fair price on the condo when he purchased it four years ago and it is still in his name. Since I’ve made a living as a problem solver, Ms. Mauricio, I came up with a plan to rent it out and send him the checks to his post office box to give him some income to live on until he gets back on his feet, while I’ve been covering the entire mortgage payments myself.”

  Bella Lisa looked up at Williamson and wanted to thank him for his generosity, but quickly stifled the impulse within her.

  “In about two months, after he’s finished paying off his obligations to Fidelity Investments, both of you can move back into your home. Then, with your help in managing his financial affairs, a portion of his residual checks can be directly deposited to Bank of America to cover the mortgage while the rest could be deposited into an account that only you would have access to. I’m sure we can get him to sign off on the plan. He will have avoided the public scandal of a bankruptcy that would have been disastrous for his acting career and we would have saved your home and inheritance from foreclosure…”

  “Mr. Williamson, I don’t know what to say. It’s very kind of you to save us from losing our home.”

  “It was my pleasure.”

  “What about the $350,000 we owe y
ou?”

  “He was hoping to land a lucrative acting job to settle the debt, but nothing has panned out for him so far… Ms. Mauricio, I’ve made no secret today of my affection for you. As an older man, I know I would have had little to no chance to be able to get to know you. I’m sure if I tried in the conventional way, arranging a meeting, asking you out on a date, etcetera, you would have taken one look at our age difference and politely declined. I could think of no other way to be close to you, at least for one week. After a week, I promise to wipe your Father’s debt off the books and as I mentioned, if you like the job, you can stay on and continue working for my company…”

  “I see.”

  “Look, I know this is a lot for you to take in, my attraction to you, your father’s financial ruin and debt. All I’m asking for is one short week out of your life, to get to know you, to have you near me—”

  Bella Lisa turned to face Williamson, her arms knotted across her chest.

  Williamson tried the keep his eyes from drifting down to her breasts.

  “So let’s see if I understand the situation. Due to my father’s stupidity, he has agreed to pimp his daughter out to you in repayment—”

  “I wouldn’t exactly put it in those—”

  “Do you view my body as an object, like a stock that can be bought or sold at your whim?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I assure you, Mr. Williamson; my honor cannot be purchased at any price.”

  “And I assure you, Ms. Mauricio, it is against my honor to force or coerce a woman to have sexual relations with me. That is something that I have never done, nor will I ever do. There are several women among my acquaintances that would enjoy the pleasure of my company. Unfortunately, ever since I’ve developed this unhealthy and painful obsession for you, I’ve lost interest in all other female companionship. If you would please read the section on page 3 of the contract in front of you that I have highlighted, it explicitly states that under no circumstances are you required during the week of your employment to touch me in an intimate way.”

  “I don’t need a contract to tell me who I can or cannot have sex with. Oh my God, I didn’t think it was possible, but you’re worse than my last boyfriend!