Privileged Conversation

by Ed McBain

  What David now hears is that Alex J has in recent weeks developed an alarming new symptom that could land him behind bars for a very long time. Perhaps because he is afraid that his antisocial underground behavior will indeed lead to arrest and incarceration should he one day mistakenly rub up against a female detective third grade in a gossamer summer frock, he has taken to following women he feels certain are not cops and who, he feels equally certain, will not resist his advances when he makes his desires known. In short, he is on the edge of committing rape.

  This is what he begins talking about ten minutes before his hour ends on this Thursday before David leaves for the entire month of August. This is how he has captured David’s full and complete attention. He is no longer talking about subterranean ladies in flimsy provocative dresses. With the clock ticking rapidly to meltdown, he is talking about the provocative aboveground ladies he’s been following home from work, one of them all the way to a Spanish section of Queens.

  “She knows I’ve got my eye on her. She knows I’ll make my move soon. She wants me to,” he says, and nods contentedly.

  David carefully advises him not to do anything stupid—he actually uses that word—until they have a chance to discuss this more fully in September.

  “Oh, sure, Doc,” Alex J says cheerfully. “Have a nice summer.”

  That night, when David rings the bell outside her apartment, she opens the door a crack, stands out of sight behind it, and whispers, “Close your eyes.”

  He hopes she hasn’t assembled a cast of characters who will yell “Surprise!” the moment he steps into the apartment. Dutifully, but feeling utterly foolish, he closes his eyes.

  “Are they closed?” she whispers from behind the door.

  “They’re closed,” he whispers back.

  He hears the door opening.

  “Come in,” she says.

  He steps inside, and smells at once the pungent scent of incense burning, mingled with the scent of her own heady perfume, subtler than the incense, underscoring it like a leitmotif. His eyes are still closed. He hears the sound of the door easing shut behind him, the familiar oiled click of tumblers falling as she bolts both locks. There is music coming from across the room where he knows her audio equipment is stacked against the wall. The music sounds vaguely familiar, a symphonic swelling of strings and woodwinds, surely he knows what it is, surely he has heard this poignant melody before. Something lush and sensual, it oozes softly from the speakers, an insinuating strain that murmurs of distant exotic places, faraway caravans, shifting sands …

  “You can open your eyes now,” she says.

  She is standing some four feet back from him, entirely naked under sheer black harem pants that flare to her ankles, where she is wearing thick golden bands that look like restraining cuffs. An ornately brocaded red silk vest threaded with gold is open over her naked breasts. She is wearing red high-heeled pumps that match the vest and add at least two inches to her height. She stands before him shyly, her gaze averted, her wrists and neck festooned with golden bangles and chains, the fingers of both hands encircled with thick heavy rings set with bright colored stones. Her hair is piled upon her head in shimmering copper masses held by a metallic gold ribbon that glimmers in the pale light. She is an Occidental slave girl transported here to the sybaritic East—for now he sees what she has done to the apartment and recognizes the motif.

  The lamps have been dimmed but they are also draped with gossamer silken scarves, black and red and gold to complement her costume. Thick candles in the same colors flicker in brass holders everywhere around the room, and scrolled brass pots of incense smolder on the coffee table. The door to the bedroom is open just a crack. Red light suffuses the wedge and spills like blood onto the living room carpet. The music swells. It is Rimsky-Korsakov, and she is his birthday Scheherazade, here to tell him rapturous tales of perfumed ecstasy.

  “Do you like it?” she asks.

  “Very much.”

  “Give me your glasses. I’m going to blindfold you.”

  She takes his glasses, steps behind him, loops over his head a black silk strip of fabric—a scarf, a piece of lingerie? He cannot tell because he is instantly sightless. With his eyes closed, and the blindfold knotted at the back of his head, what had earlier been merely semidarkness now assumes the magnitude of utter blackness.

  “Give me your hand,” she says.

  He feels her hand taking his, her ringed fingers closing gently around his. He cannot recall her ever wearing a ring before.

  “Can you see anything?” she asks.

  “No,” he says.

  “Promise?”

  “Yes.”

  Not a suggestion of light filters around the blindfold. She leads him in absolute darkness around obstacles he knows are there, the coffee table in front of the couch, an ottoman, remembered pieces of furniture she avoids as she guides him across the room to what he surmises is the bedroom door now spilling unseen red light. He hears the door swinging gently open before them. She leads him into the room.

  “Stand right here,” she says.

  There is the smell of incense burning here, too.

  He hears the door closing behind him.

  The sound of Scheherazade is gone.

  There is only silence now.

  “I’m going to kiss you now,” she whispers. “Keep your hands at your sides, I don’t want you to touch me.”

  He feels her moving closer to him, leaning into him. Her lips find his. She kisses him openmouthed, her tongue searching. In the dark, her mouth is wet and demanding, her lips thick with lust. He feels himself responding at once. She removes her mouth from his instantly, takes a quick step back. Her voice whispers out of the darkness again.

  “Did you like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you like me to kiss you again?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bet you’d like to touch me, too, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, but you can’t.”

  Her voice retreats. Her lips suddenly find his again. Her hand glides lightly over the front of his trousers, lingers there, begins stroking him through the fabric while her tongue insistently probes. He feels his zipper being lowered. She slides her lips from his, and steps back again, out of reach.

  “What would you like me to do?” she whispers. “Say.”

  “Whatever you want to do.”

  “Kiss you again?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh yes. Take that thing out of your pants?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, I’ll bet.”

  He waits in the expectant dark. There is movement. She is kneeling before him, her hands seeking, and suddenly he is free, and her mouth claims him, wet and determined. Each time he tries to touch her face, her hair, she pulls away, only to return inexorably a moment later. And then, as if sensing he is dangerously close, she vanishes entirely. Her voice floats from somewhere out of the darkness.

  “Did you like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you like more?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course,” she says and her voice fades, and all at once she is upon him again, ravenously drawing him into her mouth. His hands reach for her face, but she quickly moves away from his touch, and he hears her voice hanging disembodied someplace, “No, baby, not yet,” and in the silence that follows, there is only the rustle of silk and the faint metallic clink of bracelets and chains and the mixed aroma of incense and a thousand perfumes. He stands waiting, trembling. Where is she?

  “Would you like me to take off the blindfold now?” she whispers.

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe I will. Let you see what I’m doing to you.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “I would.”

  “I’ll bet you would,” she says, and steps behind him.

  He feels her fingers at the back of his head, struggling with the knot.
The black silk falls free. He opens his eyes.

  “This is Gloria,” Kate says.

  Gloria is black and Gloria is long and supple and Gloria has sloe eyes and a voluptuous mouth and Gloria is wearing nothing but high-heeled shoes and a gold chain that is wrapped around her waist several times.

  “Happy birthday,” she says, and smiles.

  “She’s your present,” Kate says.

  He remembers all at once the soft thick lips that possessed him while he was blindfolded. A red lamp is burning on the bedside table. It tints the room red. It tints Gloria’s full-breasted body red. It tints Kate’s nipples red in the open red vest.

  “Did you enjoy it?” she asks.

  David is trembling again.

  “Say.”

  “Yes,” he says. “I enjoyed it.”

  “Then come to me, baby,” Gloria says, and extends her hands to him.

  He takes them.

  In the hallucinatory movie that plays that night—for surely this is a waking dream, this scene can’t really be unreeling here in Kate’s bedroom on Kate’s familiar bed—he learns that the long-legged black woman with the sloe eyes and voluptuous mouth is a dancer like Kate …

  “We met during Les Miz …”

  … although this is the first time they’ve ever done anything like this together.

  “Right, Gloria?”

  “Umm,” Gloria murmurs, her mouth tirelessly working, Kate simultaneously smothering David’s lips with kisses and whispering words of encouragement to her dear old friend.

  This is surely a film he saw on Times Square, a film he is starring in on Times Square, for without question he is the leading man in this vehicle titled , the object of all this rampant, sweaty passion here on Kate’s bed in Kate’s room, where now Gloria’s lips are on his, claiming his mouth again, tongue flicking his tongue while Kate’s own tongue teases and tempts below, refusing to let go of him, the red light beside the bed casting tall dark shadows on the ceiling and walls.

  Gloria swings one long leg over his face, and lowers herself onto him. Amazingly, he accepts her without hesitation, this woman he has met for the first time tonight, albeit intimately, this passionate creature with whom he is now starring in a multimillion-dollar production titled while below Kate is starring in her own intensely intimate and private film tentatively titled , ad-libbing lines the screenwriter never wrote but which the director, herself, likes to encourage among her actors and actresses. David and Gloria, the only other performers in this double feature—or perhaps triple feature, it is difficult to know who is in charge here anymore—seem to have had their earlier speaking roles reduced to a series of sighs, cries, moans and groans while Kate, speaking directly from either the heart or the id, keeps murmuring an incessant litany of cocks and cunts and gutter fucking, and then suddenly abandons both improvisational dialogue and glistening anticipatory flute to slide up onto the pillows, roll over on her back, and open herself wide to Gloria, red light washing with a redder glow her crisp pubic hair and pink interior. Long naked legs spread, she says “Do me now, Glo,” which gentle suggestion Gloria obeys with amazing alacrity, demonstrating a versatility that had not been immediately apparent in the rushes.

  It is as if they have been doing this forever, the three of them. It is as if the movie formerly titled has been given an expanded budget and cast and retitled , starring the inimitable threesome that brought you …

  But, no, the stars here are neither the Andrews Sisters nor the Three Stooges nor the Nairobi Trio nor even Athos, Portos and Aramis, however dexterous and accomplished they may seem, however well they work together in triplicate. For despite the fact that Gloria has her head buried between Kate’s spread legs, and despite the fact that David has mounted Gloria and is plunging repeatedly into her from behind, it is Kate who is the conduit here, Kate through whom their separate energies and passions flow. The true star here, the only star here, the ringmaster who urges and cajoles this inverted Oreo performance is Kate alone, encouraging, commanding, and finally deciding upon the exact moment of their concerted release, screaming “Oh Jesus, I’m coming!” just as Gloria shouts, “Oh Jesus, me too!” and David closes his eyes and silently, seemingly, empties himself into both women quaking beneath him.

  As they lie side by side afterward, sweaty and spent on tangled sheets and sodden pillows stained red by the bedside lamp, David between them, Gloria and Kate holding hands across his wet belly, Kate sighs contentedly and whispers, “When you marry me, we can do this all the time.”

  “Let’s do it again now,” Gloria suggests.

  He has set the alarm for seven A.M.

  He showers and shaves and then goes back to where the two women are sleeping side by side in each other’s arms. He gently nudges Gloria awake.

  “What time is it?” she asks at once.

  “Seven-thirty.”

  “Okay,” she says, and swings her long legs over the side of the bed and rushes into the bathroom. He hears her showering as he dresses in the early morning light sifting around the edges of the blinds. Kate is still dead asleep.

  Gloria comes out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel.

  “What time is your plane?” she whispers.

  “I don’t go till this afternoon. But I have patients to see first.”

  “Where do you fly from?”

  “Newark this time.”

  She goes to the dresser, picks up her watch, squints at it in the light spilling through the open bathroom door.

  “Malik’s supposed to be here at eight,” she says, and straps on the watch.

  David does not know who Malik is. Nor does he ask. He does not know where Gloria and this man might be going at seven in the morning. He does not ask that, either. He recognizes all at once that he knows virtually nothing about her. She stubs her toe on something in the dim light. “Shit,” she says. She sits on the edge of the bed, pulls on a pair of panties, stands, leans into a bra, cups herself, clasps herself. He watches her dress. Skirt and blouse. Sandals. She is beginning to look like a person. I don’t even know her, he thinks. She goes back into the bathroom, begins applying lipstick. He watches her, fascinated. He doesn’t even know her. She catches him in the mirror, winks.

  “That was good last night, wasn’t it?” she whispers.

  “Yes.”

  “When are you coming down again?”

  “On the fifteenth.”

  This is the Tuesday night he and Stanley have chosen for the start of the imaginary lectures.

  “Will I see you?” Gloria asks.

  “Oh sure.”

  “Good,” she says.

  He is wondering if he will ever see her again.

  “Would you like some orange juice?” he asks.

  “Mmm, yes,” she says, and turns from the mirror. “How do I look?”

  “Good,” he says.

  “Only good?”

  “Beautiful,” he says.

  “Better,” she says, and snaps out the bathroom light.

  In the kitchen, they stand at the kitchen counter together, drinking orange juice. The sun is up. Light spills around the drawn shade over the air-shaft window.

  “Malik drives a Jag,” Gloria says, “he’ll be downstairs at eight sharp.” She looks at her watch again. “What time will you be leaving?”

  “Little after that.”

  “For your office?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d better get out of here,” she says, and goes into the bedroom for her bag. When she comes back, she says, “I kissed her goodbye, but she’s asleep.” She raises one eyebrow. “How about you?” she asks. “You asleep, baby?”

  She steps up close to him. Tilts her crotch gently into him. Touches her glossy lips to his, lightly.

  “Again later,” she says, and moves away from him.

  He hears the apartment door opening and then closing behind her. The apartment is utterly still.

  He looks at his watch.

  Three minutes to eight.
>
  In the bedroom, Kate is still asleep. He touches her shoulder. She stirs beneath his hand.

  “Kate?” he says.

  “Mmmm?”

  “Kate, I have to go now.”

  “Are you leaving?”

  “In a few minutes. Sleep, honey.”

  “Honey, yes,” she says.

  She closes her eyes. He sits on the edge of the bed, watching her.

  Her eyes open again.

  She looks up into his face.

  “You know, don’t you?” she says.

  “Know what?”

  “You know.”

  “I don’t.”

  “A shrink,” she says, “you probably know,” and closes her eyes again. She is silent for a moment. Then, in a very small voice, she asks, “Are you leaving me?”

  “Yes, I …”

  “I mean leaving me,” she says.

  “No. I’m not leaving you.”

  “Come back, David.”

  “I will.”

  “Do you love me, David?”

  “I love you, Kate.”

  “I know you do.”

  “Goodbye, Kate,” he says, and kisses her.

  “I’ll see you on the fifteenth,” she says.

  He kisses her again.

  Her mouth is so goddamn sweet.

  Susan M has come to her last session with a list of clothing changes that will take her through Labor Day. As she explains to David in great detail, the problem is she doesn’t have enough clothes to accommodate a change every day for thirty-nine days, which is exactly how many days it will be between today and September fifth when she’ll see him again.

  “That is when I’ll see you again, right?” she asks. “September fifth?”

  “Yes,” David says.

  “Same time, right?”

  “Same time,” he says.

  “Let me tell you how I’ve figured this out,” she says, and takes from her tote bag her Month-At-A-Glance calendar. “Tomorrow’s Saturday,” she says, flipping rapidly to the facing pages for July, “so I’ll be wearing something simple but sexy, you remember we went over that two weeks ago. The white A-line mini and a cropped mesh top, but I’ll be wearing it with a white bra, the top, because otherwise hoo boy! Strapless, though. And white sandals and panties, of course. On Sunday, I’m having brunch with my friend from Omaha when I used to live out there, she’s here in town and we’ll be going to the Plaza, so I thought I’d wear … I know I told you I’d be wearing the boxy wheat jacket and cream-colored pants with the white suspenders, remember? But that was before I knew Marcy was flying in, so I thought for the Plaza the shaped jacket and pleated skirt in the windowpane plaid, with the white tank and black shoes and that little black hat with the gray feather. White panties and bra. Then on Monday …”