The Seduction - Art Bourgeau

by Art Bourgeau

  "See you tonight?" It was more a request than a question, and without waiting for any answer she took her hand from his cock, leaned over and brushed her lips lightly on his cheek, quickly got out of the car, waving with her back to him as she proceeded into the medical building.

  Missy Wakefield was smiling to herself as she got on the elevator and rode it to the tenth floor offices of Wakefield and Pollack, urologists specializing in male sterility and sexual dysfunction.

  Kate, the red-haired receptionist, looked up from her work and smiled nervously as Missy pushed open the glass double door. "Welcome back."

  "Thanks." Missy glanced around the waiting room. While most of the doctors were still making rounds at the hospital the place had filled with patients. She recognized several of the faces; others, the nervous ones accompanied by their wives, were new patients. But what especially caught her eye, today even more than when he was alive, was the oil painting of her father. His stern face seemed to command respect and obedience even now.

  She went behind the receptionist's desk and looked over Kate's shoulder to check out the appointment book. Three names immediately stood out, each there for his final consultation before entering the hospital in the afternoon. One was an aging Hollywood sex symbol, a former crooner whose lifelong battle with drugs and the bottle had caused permanent nerve damage. He was there for a surgical implant, a miniature hydraulic system. After the implant he would be able to summon an erection, just press the small bulb in his scrotum and it would pump air into the system and, presto, an erection. Nerve damage would prevent an orgasm, but he would be able to maintain his old reputation as a stud of studs. God, what vanity, she thought. Cocksman of the world using a device to get it up. Well, and she couldn't help smiling, modern science can be wonderful, she thought. And nobody the wiser . . .

  The second name belonged to a gay British rock star whose sexual behavior was notoriously compulsive. His psychiatrist had prescribed a small battery pack similar to a pacemaker implanted in his lower abdomen; when matters got out of control, it would allow him to administer a mild shock to his genitals to cool himself down.

  The third was a Middle Eastern oil nabob who had contracted a case of genital warts from one of his numerous wives. It was rumored that he had had her hacked to death and her parts then spread across the desert.

  Pointing to them, she said to Kate, "I assume you had them brought in by the private entrance."

  "That's right. The office limo has been busy all morning going back and forth to the airport to pick them up."

  "They're back in the examining rooms now?"

  "Right."

  A pause, during which Kate was waiting for her to begin some girl talk, to share confidences of the past month. It didn't come. It was enough that Missy knew Kate was sleeping with one of the younger physicians in the practice and didn't fire her. No reason, she figured, for them to start sharing picnic lunches and lipstick.

  Walking to the linen closet, she thought about how different it was going to be here without her father. The practice had been like an oasis . . . in her mind their Tara—he the master, she the mistress. He'd wanted her to be a doctor, something she couldn't possibly do . . . it meant putting herself on the same level with him, exactly what she didn't want, couldn't and didn't presume to. Besides, it wasn't medicine she cared about, it was him, being near and pleasing him. He, of course, never understood her resistance, and she had never been able to repress it. She wanted them to be a team, to work side by side, which was why she became a nurse and ran the administrative functions of the practice. Yes, here they were a team, father and daughter . . .

  In the linen closet was a stack of her father's lab coats, the name "Wakefield" embroidered in red over the left pocket. She traced the name with her fingertips, then on impulse put it on, turned up the collar and turned to look at herself in the mirror on the back of the door. How long had it been since she'd worn anything of his? Twelve years ago. She had just turned sixteen, and as a birthday present he had taken her to their cabin in the Poconos for a fishing trip. The first day a rainstorm had come up and he'd given her his jacket. What a special feeling that had been, walking back to the cabin all bundled up, his arms around her . . . She thought now of wearing the lab coat, in his memory, but quickly rejected the notion, feeling guilty even considering it. He would never have allowed it . . . nothing like that sort of intimacy had been possible after that trip . . .

  What had happened, she'd told herself again and again over the years, was not her fault. It was that damn Roy Curtis; the seventeen-year-old son of the banker who owned the next cabin. He'd made it happen and she got the blame.

  She only wanted to go fishing with her father, be with him. But everywhere she turned there was Roy, a pup in heat. Actually she'd willingly lost her virginity three years earlier to a twenty-seven-year-old cowboy on a Montana dude ranch and wasn't much interested in sex. Horses and being with her father took precedence. Roy, though, wouldn't back off or even be discouraged. He buzzed around her as though he was a fly and she a honeypot. Finally, to get him off her back by her getting on it, she gave in.

  It happened in the boathouse, and Roy was as inept as she knew he would be. She was doing her best to move with him, help him finish and get him off her when she idly glanced at the window to see her father's face. Their eyes met and held as Roy pumped away on her. She wanted to die, would have welcomed that as an out. And by the time her father turned away she was ill from the terror building in her. When she was finally able to push Roy off and run outside, her father was gone. In more ways than one.

  Hours later, when she gave up hiding and slunk back to the cabin, he was sitting there. The car was packed. Not a word was spoken. She huddled in her corner of the front seat the whole trip, cold and sick. If only he'd wrap her up in his old fishing jacket and tell her that it was all right, that he forgave her. But of course he didn't. Didn't even look at her, didn't speak . . . In the twelve years since that day, no matter what she did, he had not forgiven her. She took off the lab coat, folded it carefully and put it back on the stack with the others. Before she could take a fresh nurse's uniform from the stack the door to the linen closet opened and one of the secretaries stuck her head in.

  "There you are. Dr. Pollack would like to see you before you change."

  "I'll be right there," Missy said.

  Nathan Pollack, her father's partner, was not alone in his office. Waiting with him was his wife Beverly, whose stare was frigid. In Missy's view God had never created a more repellent couple than the Pollacks. Why her father had chosen him as a partner was beyond her. As a couple the Pollacks reminded her of Laurel and Hardy, minus the humor. Nathan Pollack was the straight. She had never heard anyone, including her father, call him "Nate." He was a small man who wore glasses with the kind of mock aviator frames favored by men who carried pockets full of pencils, a man who wore T-shirts under his Izod on the golf course. For Nathan Pollack a spontaneous act was to drive his black BMW into town without an umbrella on the back seat. But Nathan was a regular peach compared to Beverly, who offended Missy's sensibilities with her abundance of facial hair, two hundred and counting pounds and smothering breasts. Nathan rose from behind his desk and indicated a chair for Missy as though he was trying to sell it to her.

  "Sit, sit, please."

  His voice sounded shaky. She wondered why.

  He sat back down. "Let me say again—and I'm sure I speak for everyone in the practice, especially Beverly and myself—how sad we are about Cyrus."

  She instantly resented his using her father's first name, reserved for a few close friends. Nathan might have been a partner but never a friend or confidant.

  "I hope the time off helped some."

  "Yes," she said, holding back to keep from saying it didn't help to see his wife bulling her way through the buffet with a crab claw in one hand and enough food to feed Philly's homeless in the other.

  "Good . . . well, to bring you up to date, while
you were gone we have made a few changes—"

  "What sort of changes?"

  "As you know, your father was a brilliant physician—"

  "Yes, I know. Can we cut to the chase, Nathan?"

  "I beg your pardon."

  "Sorry, just some jargon I picked up."

  "Yes . . . well, as I was about to say, without your father the practice will undoubtedly suffer. And to avoid future financial problems, we dismissed four of the girls in the office."

  This was what he was so tentative about. When her father was alive he generated enough work for at least four girls; with out him there was no need to keep them. It made sense but the way they did it bothered her. She had little doubt firing them while she was away was Beverly's idea.

  "If I remember correctly, you only own twenty-five percent of the practice," she said.

  "Not anymore. When your father died I bought out his share of the practice."

  "What? That doesn't make sense—"

  "I would have thought you knew we had a buy-out agreement. Whichever one died first, the other bought his share."

  His tone was the same pseudo-compassionate one he used in telling testicular cancer patients that their balls had to come off. His bad-news voice. It made her sick.

  "Tell me all about it," she said, trying to sound calm.

  "It's simple. We had an agreement and insurance policies. When Cyrus died the insurance company paid your mother two and a half million dollars, and she signed over to me your father's stock in the practice."

  "What about the other assets, the property?"

  "Your townhouse and car went to your mother. All according to the agreement. The rest—the cabin, the house at the shore, the condo in St. Martin—stays with the practice."

  "And you own it all—"

  "Which brings me to my next point." Oh, he was loving this. The segundo now numero uno. "In the interest of cash flow, our accountant has recommended that Beverly take over running the office and you be in charge of the lab."

  "The lab?"

  "You're a registered nurse. It will work out fine . . . And now I'm afraid we're going to have to cut this short. This morning the police brought in sperm samples from the body of one of those missing South Philly girls. They need the test in a rush."

  Missy shook her head. "Let them wait. I want to hear the rest of this."

  "If you wish. As I mentioned, you'll be in charge of the lab, including the employees who work there and the work done there, subject, of course, to our supervision. With the way the business is growing from our outside work and our city contract I'm sure in a short time you'll pass your old salary."

  "Pass my old salary? What do you mean by that?"

  "I'm afraid your present salary of a thousand a week, along with the benefits your father gave you, no longer justifies itself. But as the lab business grows we will increase your salary until you're back up there and beyond/'

  "And what is my new salary?"

  "We feel twenty-two thousand would be more in keeping with the job. Naturally, as a stockholder you'll also be entitled to any bonuses or shareholder salary increases."

  There but for one word they would have had her. "Shareholder". Nathan didn't get all the stock with his buy-out. He only got her father's shares. With his original twenty-five percent, plus her father's sixty-five percent, there was still ten percent unaccounted for—the ten percent her father had given to her. Don't panic, live to fight another day. She forced a smile. "I guess I'd better get to work."

  She could see they were disappointed in her reaction. Good, that's how she wanted them. She did not go back to the linen closet for a nurse's uniform. Those days were over. Instead, she went straight to the lab.

  The technicians looked up when she walked in. Nobody seemed surprised at her demotion, and while she was gone they had moved her things from her office to a corner desk with two windows. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to spend more time here. Lab work had always been her favorite part of the practice anyway . . .

  "Are you okay?"

  Looking up she saw Gladys, one of the technicians, standing in front of her desk.

  "Of course." And then, changing the subject, "what's happening on that police work Nathan mentioned?"

  "The sperm sample from the dead girl, one of the teenagers missing from South Philly?"

  "Cou1d be," said Missy.

  "Terri DiFranco's her name. They're all done, but Dr. Pollack wants to sign the report himself in case the police should need his testimony."

  Of course, anything to get his name in the paper, she thought but did not say. "What else do we have, Grace?"

  "There's a patient in number two examining room. Dr. Pollack wants you to see him."

  The patient, dressed in work clothes and boots, was reading a copy of the morning edition of the Globe A lunchbox and hardhat were next to him on the examining table. His chart said that his name was Roland Morris and that he was there for a sperm count.

  When he looked up from his newspaper uneasiness and surprise crossed his face. She was accustomed to dealing with patients embarrassed at dealing with a woman. She introduced herself and said, "Mr. Morris, your chart says that you're here for a sperm count. Do you have a sample of your semen?"

  "Uh, yeah, sure."

  He opened his lunchbox and brought out a small jar that contained about a teaspoonful of white liquid. The substantial volume was a possible but not certain indicator of a low sperm count. She held up the jar to the light and noted that the contents were separating.

  "Mr. Morris, when did you do this?"

  "Last night . . . just before I went to bed."

  "And where did you keep the jar last night?"

  "In the refrigerator. The lady I spoke to said it would be all right."

  She didn't ask which lady. That was no longer her job, at least for a while. Instead, she went across the small examining room and took a fresh vial from beside the sink.

  "I'm afraid we're going to need another sample."

  "You mean right now?"

  "I'm afraid so. For us to do an accurate test we need a fresh sample, not more than an hour old, and one that's been kept warm not cold. It's kind of like hatching eggs. Everything's got to be warm or it doesn't work."

  "Where do you want me to do it?" he said, the sound of Waterloo in his voice.

  "Right here. I'll leave the room and when you're finished just bring it back to the lab. I'll do the work and Dr."—she looked down at the chart that listed the name of one of the younger physicians—"Dr. Baker will give you the results."

  Walking back to the lab with the old sample in her hand, she was tempted to take the fresh one and smear it on the toilet seat just before Beverly used it, then listen to her try to explain a black baby to Nathan.

  While she waited for her patient she called her mother. Careful not to say too much with people around, she merely asked if she could come out for a drink in the evening. Her mother said, "Yes, of course," but there was a moment of hesitation, as if she were going to have to rearrange some plans to accommodate her.

  Next, she called Felix, reaching him at his construction site. She told him that she had to see her mother early in the evening, but would he come over for a drink later, around midnight? He agreed, although he seemed a bit distant. Must be because he was on the job, she decided . . .

  Some ten minutes later her patient was back in the lab with a fresh sample. She sent him back to the waiting room and got to work.

  She was humming as she poured the fresh sperm into a small graduated cylinder to measure its volume in cc's, then checked the pH balance to determine if it was acidic or alkaline. It was mildly alkaline. Next she placed a drop on a slide and checked the motility of the sperm under the microscope. Noting that approximately seventy percent were active, she turned her attention to the morphology, the shape of the sperms, which gave the configuration of the heads. Sperm with small heads, pinheads as the technicians called them, tended to be too weak to fertilize an e
gg. Not the case here. She skipped the vicosity test, feeling sure it would properly liquify in an hour but not wanting to spend the time. Then she diluted the sample with five grams of sodium carbonate, one milliliter of Formalin and enough distilled water to bring the liquid to a volume of one hundred cc's, inactivating the sperm so that they could be counted. The count came to slightly over eighty million, which was on the low-normal side. Coupled with the mild alkaline quality, this could explain the family's conception problem. If they were lucky, all that would be necessary for the wife to get pregnant would be to douche with a mild solution of baking soda and water before intercourse.

  Missy was just finishing the report when her phone rang. It was Kate, the receptionist: "There are two policemen out here about some lab work."

  "Oh? Well, have them wait a moment," and she sent Gladys out to bring them back to the lab.

  Both men were in plainclothes—one balding, the other stocky. The balding one introduced himself as Lieutenant Sloan, and the stocky one as Detective Evans.

  "What can I do for you, gentlemen?"

  "We're here for the lab work on Terri DiFranco. We called and were told it was ready," Sloan said.

  "Gladys, has Dr. Pollack signed that report yet?"

  "Yes, here it is."

  Sloan nearly tore it from her grasp in his hurry to see the results. When he saw them a look of disappointment crossed his face.

  "What you hoped for?" said Missy.

  "Not by a long shot," replied Sloan.

  CHAPTER 6

  LAURA COULD not get the sight of that girl's body off her mind long enough even to begin work on the piece about Felix Ducroit. All she could think about was the deserted depot and the room with its candle-encircled pallet. And what went through the girl's mind when Peter's hands closed around her throat.