The Seducer

by Claudia Moscovici

  “See you at the next session?” Maria asked him after they had readjusted their clothes and stepped out of the restroom.

  She had a beseeching look in her eyes that made Michael feel somewhat uncomfortable. “Maybe.”

  Noting his hesitation, Maria took matters into her own hands. She dug into her purse and took out a pen and a tiny notepad. She tore out a piece of paper and hurriedly scribbled something on it. “Here’s my name and number,” she extended him the note.

  “Thanks,” he slipped it into his coat pocket, fully intending to dispose of it later, as was his habit following such encounters.

  Instead of saying goodbye, however, Maria looked expectantly into his eyes.

  What the hell more does she want from me? Michael wondered, annoyed by her persistence.

  “May I have your number also?” Before he could reply, she ripped another piece of paper from her notepad and offered it to him along with a pen.

  Michael wrote his first name along with his phone number, inverting the last two digits.

  “See you soon!” Maria slipped the note into her purse.

  “Sure thing,” he replied, looking through her, not at her as before.

  Although he had maintained a modicum of civility, Maria could see in his empty glance that Michael was no longer interested in her. His post-coital change of demeanor reminded her of those salespeople who are exceedingly friendly when they think you’re going to buy something, then switch abruptly to cold indifference as soon as you tell them that you’re only window shopping.

  Michael sensed her disappointment but didn’t care. What’s the point of masticating on a piece of chewing gum after the flavor is gone? he asked himself. You spit it out and pop a fresh one into your mouth. But he hadn’t gotten as much flavor out of Maria as he had hoped. Unfortunately, the women at Sexaholics Anonymous didn’t present enough of a challenge. There was no suspense, no resistance whatsoever, which kind of removed the whole thrill of the chase in the first place.

  A rather unpleasant thought occurred to him. Am I like those poor wretches at Sexaholics Anonymous? he wondered, but quickly dismissed the idea. Absolutely not, he decided. How could sex possibly be an addiction if it gives me so much pleasure and makes me happy? He noticed that the other participants appeared troubled by their behavior. But not him! Michael always remained cool as a cucumber. When he managed to pull it off successfully, he enjoyed the whole process of seduction, from beginning to end: the chase, the capture and the sex itself, of course. He even relished the final goodbye, when he looked a woman straight in the eyes and deliberately gave her the wrong phone number with a friendly smile. As they say, all is fair in love and war. Besides, I could stop this behavior anytime I wanted to, Michael told himself, the protective shell of his impenetrable ego blocking out even the tiniest ray of self-doubt.

  Chapter 8

  Michael gazed outside and, despite the religious setting, cursed under his breath when he saw that it was pouring buckets. In just nine months, I’ll leave this wretched Midwest to bask in the sunshine of Arizona, he consoled himself. As he was about to brace himself for the downpour and dash out of the church, his glance was caught by a young woman who stood before a lit candle. Her lips moved slightly, in a quiet murmur that sounded like an incantation in a foreign tongue. He examined her profile. Her wavy black hair reached down to the small of her back and thick bangs covered her forehead. She was dressed in a brown skirt cut just above the knees and a modest white blouse with an old-fashioned rounded collar. Feeling the intensity of his gaze upon her, she turned, her dark eyes quizzing him.

  Uncharacteristically, Michael didn’t utter a word. He just stood there, enthralled. The sight of the young woman made his heart skip a few beats. His throat constricted, making it difficult to breathe. Apnea, a physician might have called it. But as he attempted to regulate his breathing and strike up a conversation, Michael recognized a coup de foudre when he felt it. He was drawn to her not because of her modest attire and feminine grace, but because there was something so tender and expressive in her features. He was struck by the straight, thick line of her bangs, by the paleness of her cheeks against the background of those waves of dark hair and by the rigidity with which she stood holding the candle in her hand, contradicted by the uncontainable drama of her eyes. She reminds me of a Georges De La Tour painting, he thought, captivated by the angelic innocence of her face, illuminated from below by the soft candlelight. It occurred to him to say, “I’ve never seen you in this church before,” but that sounded too much like one of his cheesy pick-up lines. It would be practically a sacrilege to use it in church, Michael thought, momentarily forgetting that he had engaged in far more sinful behavior in that very context only a few moments earlier.

  “Are you looking for someone?” the young woman asked him with a slight foreign accent.

  Under ordinary circumstances, Michael would have volleyed back a clever reply to the effect of, “I sure am. I’ve been looking for you all of my life, Babe.” Yet this time he responded, quite honestly, “No. It’s just that the way your face was lit up by that candle reminded me of a painting by Georges de La Tour I once saw.”

  The young woman felt flattered yet also disconcerted by his powerful gaze, which was so piercing and intense that it made her wonder if anyone had ever really looked at her before. “You’re very kind. I’m relieved you didn’t compare me to a ghost. That might have been more accurate, but far less flattering.” Seeing that his face reflected a mixture of amusement and puzzlement at her reply, she added: “Are you an art lover?”

  Michael was surprised that he didn’t even feel tempted to shoot out his usual response to such an easy overture, “No, but I’ve been told that I’m a pretty good lover.” He said instead, “Not really. I dabble in everything. Art, poetry, literature. I guess you could say I admire all forms of beauty, which makes me a dilettante.”

  “That’s what I am too, I suppose,” she quietly replied.

  “You suppose?”

  “I imagine that one has to love art to create it.”

  “You’re an artist?”

  “Or trying to be.”

  “What do you mean, trying?”

  “Just because you call yourself an artist doesn’t mean that people actually buy your paintings,” she replied with an amused smile.

  “What do you like to paint?” Michael pursued.

  “Scenes that are filled with sadness.”

  “Why sadness?”

  She carefully placed the candle on the table and put her hand upon her heart with a gesture that, despite its theatricality, seemed completely sincere: “Because there’s still so much sorrow in my heart.”

  “Why so?” Michael asked, approaching her slowly. He became once again attuned to the trace of an accent in her voice, which he couldn’t quite place. “Where are you from, originally?” Then it occurred to him that he might look like he was prying into her personal life, which he most certainly was, but there was no point in doing it clumsily. “If you don’t mind my asking,” he added.

  “We all carry with us the weight of our past,” the young woman replied somewhat enigmatically to his first inquiry. “I’m originally from Romania,” she answered directly the easier question.

  “I thought I detected a Slavic accent,” Michael observed.

  “That’s strange, given that Romanian is a Romance language. It’s similar to Italian and Spanish.”

  Ana had corrected him politely. But Michael wanted to make sure she understood that he was a man of the world: “Sure. But, as far as I know, it has some Slavic vocabulary and inflections.”

  The young woman seemed amused by his reply. “Da? Si cine te-a facut expert, domnule?” she challenged him.

  “Pardon?”

  “I said, oh yeah? And who made you an expert, mister?” she translated.

  “I’m no expert in Romanian, but I like to dabble in the Romance languages. I’m fluent in Spanish, Italian and French,” he boasted modestly.<
br />
  “Hmmm ... You seem to dabble in a lot of things.”

  Normally, Michael would have replied “Especially beautiful women.” But clearly, these weren’t ordinary circumstances. The Romanian intrigued him. “I used to. When I was younger, I wanted to become a Renaissance man. But now I just content myself with teaching French,” he shrugged with the air of resignation of a man who has abandoned his own dreams.

  “I see.”

  Silences can be awkward when two people seem to have run out of things to say, after the initial burst of conversation in becoming acquainted. But as the young woman and Michael peered into each other’s eyes, the silence that settled between them was peaceful and pleasant.

  “Where are my manners? My name is Ana,” she said after a few seconds, extending her hand to him.

  Michael took it between his hands, pressing it lightly rather than shaking it. Ana’s hand felt soft and fragile. “Nice to meet you. I’m Michael.”

  “Do you belong to this church? I’ve never seen you here before,” she commented.

  “I only come here occasionally,” Michael replied vaguely, not wishing to delve into details about the meeting he had just attended, which, he surmised, was not likely to impress his new acquaintance.

  “Me too,” Ana replied. “I only come here to pray for my parents. They were both Catholic.”

  “Were?”

  Ana looked pensively into the flickering flame. “They passed away a long time ago. During the revolution of ’89.”

  “In Bucharest?” Michael asked, to show that he knew a thing or two about Eastern European history.

  Ana shook her head. “No, in Timisoara. The spark that started the Romanian revolution. My mother’s of Hungarian origin,” she said elliptically, as if Michael could understand why that fact was of particular importance. “Few people know this, but it’s the ethnic Hungarians who revolted against the Ceausescu regime first,” she elaborated. “You know how it goes. The most oppressed tend to be the most courageous. Maybe because they also have the least to lose.”

  “It doesn’t seem like it was so little for you,” he commented, responding to the sadness in her voice.

  “I was ten, still only a child when I lost my parents. They were my whole world.”

  Michael looked away, feeling slightly awkward under the pressure of this sudden intimacy. “Do you go back to visit Romania?” he shifted the conversation from emotions to events.

  She shook her head. “Returning there would bring back too many painful memories.”

  “Do you still have family there?”

  “Yes, but not close relatives. My real family lives here, in Michigan.” When she said this, her tone seemed lighter.

  “What do you mean your real family?”

  “My husband and two kids,” Ana clarified.

  Michael took a step back, as if he had not expected this response. It had never occurred to him that Ana, who looked so young, might be a married woman with kids. “Oh, I see...”

  Ana noticed his disappointment. She thought that she might have unwittingly given him the wrong impression. “Anyways, I should go now. It’s getting late. It was very nice to meet you, Michael,” she politely concluded their conversation.

  But he didn’t want to let her go on such a final note. “Before you leave, there’s something I meant to ask you. You’ve made me kind of curious about your art. May I take a look at your paintings sometime?” Michael congratulated himself for this burst of inspiration, only to wonder, a moment later, whether he was being too forward. He felt strange about caring about his overtures. Brazenness, along with corny pick-up lines, had never bothered him in his interactions with women before. Failure and success are basically one and the same when the stakes are so low, he thought, retrospectively. But in meeting Ana, Michael became reacquainted with his own timidity, which had been buried so deeply in the cynicism of years of libertine encounters that he had almost forgotten how wonderful it felt to get to know a woman. Few human experiences could compete with that mixture of uncertainty and hope that, when you least expect it, sneaks up on you and takes your breath away. The thought that he might never see Ana again released dozens of butterflies in his stomach. Would she politely excuse herself from seeing him again, the way he, himself, had proceeded with so many women before?

  “Sure,” she replied, without any trace of subterfuge. “Here’s my card,” she handed him a business card, with the address of her art studio and a telephone number.

  Looking at it, Michael noticed that Ana’s last name, Popescu, sounded Romanian: “Your husband’s also Romanian?”

  “No, he’s American. I kept my last name,” she said, then added, by way of explanation, “In memory of my parents.”

  Michael placed the card carefully into his wallet. “Would you like my number also? Just in case you wish to let me know when it would be convenient to drop by your studio?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Michael wrote down his name and number on the other side of the scrap of paper Maria had given him earlier. “Sorry, I don’t have a business card yet,” he extended her the note.

  “Thanks,” she slipped it into her coat pocket.

  This is a bad sign, he nervously followed her movements. That’s where I usually put the numbers I want to get rid of...

  “But I must warn you in advance that my art’s not to everyone’s taste. My paintings aren’t exactly pretty.”

  “Since when does art have to be beautiful?” Michael hoped to show through this rhetorical question that he was automatically on her side and, more importantly, that he intuitively understood her.

  “Oh, but there’s such tragic beauty in human suffering,” Ana replied with a barely detectable tremor in her voice. It was her tone more so than her words, wavering on the permeable boundary between abandon and restraint, which stayed with him for the rest of the evening. It haunted him with the promise of pleasures more subtle, richer and more intense than he had ever tasted in his life before.

  Chapter 9

  Driving home after his encounter with Ana, Michael felt elated. Not so much because he thought that he had made an indelible impression upon the young woman, but because she, herself, had moved him. At the moment of his deepest doubt in his ability to fall in love, Ana had reawakened his faith in his own capacity for human emotion.

  “Whoa! Let’s not put the cart ahead of the horse,” he reminded himself. Once he arrived at his apartment, he flung the keys on the kitchen counter. By association, he fell back upon a play on words, “Let’s not put the heart ahead of the whore,” to take the edge off his euphoria. No point in taking a little crush too seriously, he made a second attempt to bring himself back down to earth.

  Yet the ruse of cynicism proved ineffective. That night, he couldn’t fall asleep. He lay with his head propped up upon two pillows, contemplating his recent encounter with Ana. He went over their conversation, her glances, each gesture she made, his own overtures and reactions. He recalled how when he looked into her eyes, he felt like for the first time he saw a woman in Technicolor, as it were. Everything else he had experienced, every other woman he had met before, now seemed like a faded black and white photograph compared to the kaleidoscope of emotions that had burst within him the instant he saw her.

  She’s the one, Michael told himself. Then, once again, he tried to find a joke or at the very least a pun in his own observation, embarrassed by his premature sense of conviction. This time, however, the joke was on him. There was a freshness and fire about this woman that disarmed him of the artillery of hackneyed phrases he usually deployed in his encounters with women. A vision of Ana appeared before his eyes. He imagined caressing the curves of her breasts over her modestly buttoned-up blouse, incapable of resisting their soft invitation. She had told him about the death of her parents, about her difficult childhood as an orphan. But was she happy now, with her own family? Was her husband good to her? Above all, he wondered, has this woman ever tasted the pleasure of f
alling madly in love?

  In his hubris, Michael felt quite certain that she hadn’t. His heart skipped a beat when he sensed that he could be the first to give Ana that experience. What about her husband? it occurred to him, but then he quickly dismissed the idea. In his own mind, the real litmus test would be Ana’s response. If she welcomed his advances, then they’d have a real chance. The children, however, were a different story. In some respects, Michael calculated, they could be viewed as a bonus. For nearly two years he had longed to be with a more affectionate woman than Karen. He dreamt of becoming a father one day. Granted, he had envisioned achieving that goal in the traditional, biological manner rather than robbing another man’s nest. But, then again, there would be time for that as well. After all, Ana seemed to be in her early twenties. Surely, if they fell in love and married, she wouldn’t deny him their own child together.

  A sobering thought then occurred to him. Have I gone bonkers? Why the hell am I thinking about marriage? For Christ’s sake, I just met the woman, who, incidentally, happens to already have a husband and kids. I must be in dire need of some heavy-duty therapy, or at the very least a decent blowjob. Better take it easy, get some apparently much-needed sleep and allow myself to calm down, he advised himself. This woman’s trouble, Michael concluded. If I pursue her and she goes along, shit! It risks becoming serious. And what would be the point of that? he debated with his own self. Nothing, that’s what, he answered his own rhetorical question. After all, I’ve just gotten out of a serious relationship. Which, technically speaking, means I’m on the rebound. Better give myself some time to heal, he decided, but without any real conviction. Obviously, something’s wrong with my head, otherwise I wouldn’t have fallen for Ana so easily, he concluded. And yet, another part of him rebutted, it’s so exciting to finally feel so excited!