The Woman in the Fifth

Thirteen

‘I DON’T KNOW what you’re talking about,’ I said.

‘Liar,’ she said with a laugh.

I sipped some whisky and winced again.

‘What’s wrong with your mouth?’

‘I bit my tongue.’

‘Liar.’

‘Haven’t you ever bitten your tongue?’ I asked.

‘What was her name?’

‘I’m telling you—’

‘You are telling me shit. Which is fine by me. I don’t care. Any more than I care if you slept with someone else — which I know you did. So what was her name?’ Pause. Then, ‘Yanna.’

‘Turkish?’

‘Half-French, half-Turkish.’

‘How did you meet her?’

I explained.

‘And how did the fuck happen?’

I explained.

‘Did she did bite you before or after penetration?’

I explained.

‘And when you were finished?’

‘She threw me out.’

‘And let me guess — you didn’t use a condom …’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘But why?’

‘Because now …’

‘Now what?’

‘Now perhaps you won’t want …’

‘To have sex with you?’ She laughed again. ‘Sometimes, Harry, you become infantile.’

I hung my head … and felt infantile.

‘Surely that doctor you consulted …’

I looked up at her.

‘How did you know I consulted … ?’

‘Here we go again. Harry, you are so charmingly predictable. And you are so American when it comes to your need to feel bad about everything to do with sex. So let me guess: the doctor told you there’s nothing to worry about. But you’re still worried — still calculating the million-to-one possibility that you might have contracted—’

‘Stop,’ I said.

‘But why, cheri? You feel guilt about fucking someone else. But instead of properly hiding it, you wear it on your sleeve. And when I call you on it, you admit all — and hand the guilt on to me.’

‘That wasn’t my intention.’

‘I don’t care what you did. I don’t care into which of her orifices you shoved your penis. All I care about is being treated as an adult by an adult. But when you enter my apartment, cowering—’

‘It’s not just the sex,’ I said, cutting her off.

‘Even though the doctor gave you the virtual all-clear?’

‘I am being blackmailed.’

‘By whom exactly?’ she asked

I gave her the complete run-down on Omar, then said, ‘The guy has a certain animal cunning. He thinks he’s got me cornered …’

‘But he does have you cornered.’

‘So what do I do?’

‘You don’t pay him the money.’

‘But he will make good on his threat …’

‘Let him. You can always deny it. And believe me, Madame Teeth Marks will deny it too.’

‘That won’t change his mind. At best, I’ll get my face smashed in.’

‘The thing to play for is time. Tell Omar you will give him the money, but you don’t have the cash right now. Tell him you’ll get it to him in a few weeks. If he pushes you, be firm. What’s he going to do? Go ahead and tell her husband? If he does that he doesn’t get the money. That’s all he’s after — the thousand now and whatever he can bilk from you later. So keep him on the long finger. Meanwhile, I think you should make contact with Madame Teeth Marks and let her know what’s going on. She can definitely help you contain things. Suggest to her that she tells her husband that Omar tried to make a pass at her late one night while he was away burying his uncle. Suggest to her that she gives him graphic details of the pass he made … how he attempted to touch her everywhere. She really needs to make it sound as grubby as possible. Once she’s done that, Omar’s credibility will be zero. He can tell him anything about you, and the husband won’t believe it. Because he’ll think Omar is simply trying to offload blame on you.’

I looked at her, impressed.

‘That’s a very elegant, nasty solution to the problem.’

‘It comes with a price, however.’

‘Which is what?’

‘I want to know what happened to you in the States — what you did that was so shockingly terrible that you had no choice but to flee over here.’

A long pause — I downed the whisky, even though the alcohol burned into the wound and hurt like hell.

‘You owe me this, Harry,’ she said.

‘Because of my transgression?’

‘No — because I’ve told you so much about my past. Whereas you …’

‘You’ll think it such a banal story.’

‘If it destroyed your life, it’s hardly banal. Anyway, you want to tell me.’

‘Could I have another shot of that whisky?’ I asked.

‘Dutch courage?’

‘What other courage is there?’

She poured me out a hefty shot. I downed half of it, my eyes watering up as it went down.

‘On y va, monsieur,’ she said. ‘Get on with it.’

I finished the whisky. I took a deep breath. I started to talk.

‘I suppose I should first tell you about my wife. I met Susan in grad school in Michigan. She was doing drama — and had all these great plans for becoming a professional theater director. I was getting a doctorate in film studies and wanted nothing more than a nice secure tenured job at a nice secure university which wouldn’t be too taxing, would allow me to teach something I genuinely liked, and would also give me plenty of time to write “the novel” — check that: “the novels” — that I knew I was destined to write. From the moment I met her, Susan struck me as the ideal “life partner”. She was attractive … in a very wholesome Midwestern way. She certainly wasn’t chic — that would have been anathema to her. But yes, she was genuinely cute.’

‘A horrible word, cute. And let me guess: she always wore jeans and hiking boots and creme-colored sweaters and a ski parka and …’

‘Do you want to tell this story?’

‘I’m right, am I not?’

‘Yes, you’re right. And yes, we got married before we both got our doctorates. And yes, we both found jobs at the same middle-ranking small college — Crewe, in Ohio. No mean feat that, considering how hard academic jobs are to come by. I was an instant hit with my students… .’

‘And Susan? Was she too a hit in the realm of “student drama”?’

‘Susan — as it turned out — had difficulty fitting in at the college. Everyone saw that she was a very talented director — great creative vision and all that — but she wasn’t the easiest of teachers, and several students complained that she was too demanding on them, that she expected standards far higher than those kids at Crewe College could obtain …’

‘Was she hypercritical of you as well?’

‘Yes, she could be rather finicky around the house. And yes, she did push me very hard professionally — as we both came into the college as assistant professors, and both had to get enough articles and the like published in order to get tenured.’

‘Let me guess what happened next. You got tenured and she was turned down?’

‘That is precisely what happened. The thing that decided it against her wasn’t her lack of professional accomplishment — it was her inability to relate to her students.’

‘So suddenly she was out of a job, and you had the permanent post you wanted, which meant that you were stuck in this little town — which was the original master plan, except that now that your wife had nothing to do …’

‘Well, she did get a few more small directing gigs at some small regional theaters — but again, there would always be some blow-up with the cast, some dispute with the scenic designer, or she would rub management up the wrong way …’

‘An endlessly angry woman?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘So the next obvious plot twist of this story is … like your mother, she gets pregnant?’

‘Bravo.’

‘Well, what else would she do, being now out of work and thirty … ?’

‘Thirty-two to be exact. And yes, within two months of not getting tenured she was pregnant. Though we both adored Megan straight away, it was Susan who was around the house most of the time — and within a year or so, the strain started to show.’

‘Didn’t she try to get other work?’

‘Of course she did. The problem was, with all her regional theater opportunities dried up, the only directing jobs around Eaton, Ohio, were high-school productions. Totally rinky-dink stuff which further played into her growing despair.’

‘And that despair continued to grow for the next … how old is Megan now?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘So for the ensuing thirteen years, she floundered?’

‘Well, she did have our daughter, and she was a very attentive mother. But as Megan got older and entered school, not only was there less and less for Susan to do, but she also hinted from time to time that she resented being a mother and wife … telling me several times during a squabble that, if she wasn’t rooted to Eaton because of her husband and daughter, she’d be having a proper high-flying career in a big city like Chicago where they would naturally appreciate her high professional standards and wouldn’t get offended by her acerbity.’

‘Such a happy woman. How did you deal with all that?’

‘I chose to ignore it … especially as it always came out when she’d had a few glasses of wine.’

‘So she was drinking heavily?’

‘Hey, we were living in a small town with not much to do at night — and she was, for all intents and purposes, depressed. So what else do you do but drink? Like I started to hit the hard stuff a bit as well. Largely because her own negativity was beginning to corrode things between us …’

‘So you decided that the only way to combat this negativity was to have an affair?’

‘It was actually she who had the first affair … though I didn’t know that until some time later.’

‘And who was the lucky man?’

‘Around two years ago, the college got a new Dean of the Faculty — a true smoothie named Gardner Robson.’

‘They actually name people such things in the States?’

‘White Anglo-Saxon Protestants do. This guy was a real Mr Preppie. Ex-Air Force. Ex-management consultancy. Early fifties. Super-fit. Super-straight. Super-corporate — and brought in by the Board of the College to “streamline management”, whatever the fuck that meant. There was a reception for Robson when he became Dean — and, having already met him briefly at some administrative thing, I remember telling Susan on the way over to the party that she was bound to loathe him — as he stood for everything Republican and conservative that she hated about Bush’s America.

‘There were a lot of people swirling around Robson that night, but Susan did manage to spend some time talking with him. Only later did I realize that there was a moment when I saw their eyes meet …’

‘How romantic.’

‘I thought nothing of it at the time. On the way home, Susan’s only comment about him was, “He’s not bad … for a Republican.”’

‘Around a week or so later, she came home and told me she now had a private drama student — some local highschool junior who was trying to get into the Julliard acting program. She said she’d be doing intensive dramatic training with her every Tuesday and Thursday from four to six.’

‘And you didn’t suspect anything?’

‘No. Maybe that was completely naive of me, but there you go. I was simply happy that Susan had something to do with herself.’

‘My, my, you were so trusting.’

‘I just wanted my wife to stop being so bitter and selfloathing and, in turn, critical of me. The thing was, once she started to “teach” this private course, her spirits began to improve. Susan even began to sleep with me again. On the surface, things were better between us. Until something curious happened. Out of nowhere, the woman who replaced Susan in the Drama Department left to take a job offer at another college. Susan was offered a one-year contract to replace her.’

‘Engineered by the Dean of the Faculty.’

‘Once again, I suspected nothing. Susan was naturally thrilled. Once back teaching she seemed to mend her ways. No more of the old aggression or perfectionism toward her students or the other faculty members. Instead, she was a real “team player” …’

‘A transformation also brought about under the tutelage of the Dean of the Faculty.’

‘Well, all tracks were so carefully covered that I still had no knowledge that she had a “jardin secret“. Even the following year, when she was suddenly promoted and actually became a tenured professor, I still didn’t suspect …’

‘Did others?’

‘Being a small college, I’m sure there was a lot of talk about this promotion — because it’s absolutely unprecedented for someone who has been denied tenure to suddenly get a second chance. Still, I heard nothing of this talk — because the rule of gossip is that you don’t tell the person being gossiped about that they are the subject of whisperwhisper talk. But, as I found out from a faculty friend much later on, their liaison didn’t become official until well after my—’

‘Downfall?’ she asked, finishing the sentence.

‘Yes — after my downfall.’

‘And that came about … ?’

‘When I met a student named Shelley. But before I turn to that …’

‘Susan gets her tenured job — and suddenly the domestic balance of power shifts again? She becomes arrogant and very preoccupied and busy, and begins to push you away?’

‘Bull’s-eye. Now that she too was a tenured professor, Susan started playing the arrogance card. As in, telling me that her time was now more important than mine, and that I had to be at home every day at four when Megan got home from school. And she stopped wanting to have sex with me. Or we’d be in the middle of the act and she’d push me away and say something like, “You’re useless.”’

‘Charming.’

‘That was one of the milder things she hurled at me. One night, mid-act, she grabbed my head in both her hands and looked up at me and said, “Do you have any idea how boring this all is?”’

‘Did you think it boring?’

‘Not particularly — but she let it be known that I now turned her off.’

‘So she made you feel unwanted, unloved and all that. And you still didn’t suspect … ?’

‘Of course I suspected something. I even came out one night and asked her if she was having an affair. You know what her response was: “I should be so lucky.”’

‘And you still — still! — didn’t suspect?’

‘I was naive, OK? Or maybe I just didn’t want to really see what was going on.’

‘And then this Shelley student came into your life?’

‘Shelley Sutton. From Cincinnati. Super-bright, superprecocious. A complete film nut and very pretty — if you like the artsy intellectual type.’

‘Long black hair, little Lenin-like glasses, black jeans, a black leather jacket, and a dreadful family background?’

‘And someone who was far too bright to be at Crewe College — but was a self-admitted screw-up in high school …’

‘And she was in one of your lectures and came up to you afterward and started talking about …’

‘Fritz Lang.’

‘How romantic.’

‘Listen, it’s not every day that you meet a very attractive freshman student who knows everything there is to know about Lang’s Hollywood noirs.’

‘So it was a coup de foudre?’

‘Not exactly — especially as all American colleges have insanely strict rules these days not just against student/ professor relationships, but even doing something mild and innocent like having a meal with a student of the opposite sex. At Crewe, we were even sent directives by some faculty committee on “sexual ethics”, informing us that, if we had a student in our office, we had to keep the door open and that we should always maintain at least three feet of physical distance between ourselves and them.’

‘No wonder America is insane.’

‘Anyway, after that first lecture, Shelley and I had coffee in the cafe on campus — and I have to say that there was this absolute instant rapport between us. She might have been nearly thirty years my junior — but within a few meetings it was clear to me that her world view was so considerably more mature than her age.’

‘Isn’t that always the cliche with the significantly younger woman? Yes, she might just have stopped playing with Barbie dolls, but her insights into Dostoevsky are extraordinary.’

‘OK, I do realize I was acting out certain Humbert Humbert fantasies—’

‘But Lolita was only in her early teens.’

‘Still, we had to be fantastically careful. So we started meeting at a coffee shop downtown. When the woman who ran the place noticed we’d been there around three times too often, we arranged that I would pick her up on a backstreet far from the college and then we’d drive to a small shitty city named Toledo—’

‘Like Toledo in Spain?’

‘Like Toledo — the rubber-tire capital of America.’

‘When did you finally have sex with her?’

‘Around two months after—’

‘Two months!’ she said, interrupting me. ‘What took you so damn long?’

‘I was nervous as hell. Naturally I was smitten with her — but I also knew I was playing an insanely dangerous game.’

‘What made you finally decide to sleep with her?’

‘Susan kept pushing me away at home, and Shelley kept telling me how wonderful I was … and how we should “give ourselves to each other” … even if it was just for one time.’

‘And you believed that?’

‘After two months of flirtatious chat, I thought I knew her. The thing was, I kept trying to patch up things at home.’

‘So what triggered you finally sleeping with her?’

‘I came home one night from the college and walked into Susan’s study and put my arms around her and told her how much I loved her and how I wanted things to be put right between us again. Know what her response was? “If you think that’s going to ever make me want to fuck you again, you’re completely deluded.”’

‘Charming.’

‘No — it was anything but that. The next day I saw Shelley again for coffee. She put her hand on mine and told me she wanted me, and that we had to stop being so damn cautious and …’

I fell silent.

‘Where did you go?’ Margit asked. ‘A hotel?’

‘A grim little place called Motel 6 in Toledo. It’s a chain in the States, and only twenty-four ninety-nine if you check out of the room by six p.m. Twenty-four ninety-nine meant I could pay cash, as I didn’t want the motel stay clocking up on my credit card. We really didn’t care about the look of the place, we just wanted—’

‘To fuck each other.’

‘Well, that’s a crude way of putting it, but—’

‘Completely accurate.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘And the sex was wonderful?’

‘I was in love with her. I know that sounds inane — and probably strikes you as yet another example of male midlife stupidity. But it’s the truth. I fell completely for her — and she for me. Truth be told, I’d never been in this sort of realm before … never really felt this sort of … OK, I’ll say it … completeness with another person. She might have been several decades my junior, but there was no sense of gulf between us. She was so damn smart — and not just when it came to movies and books and jazz and all the other things I also loved to talk about. She was just so wise about everything …’

‘Very touching,’ Margit said.

‘Haven’t you ever been so smitten by another person you couldn’t stand being out of their presence?’

‘Once,’ she said quietly.

‘Zoltan?’

‘Someone else.’

‘What happened?’

‘This is your story, remember? So you were madly in love with your “student”. And you kept meeting twice a week at the same autoroute motel?’

‘No — after that first tryst in the Toledo motel, I ended it.’

‘Out of guilt?’

‘Absolutely. As smitten as I was, once we crossed that line I knew it had to stop immediately. Because—’

‘You feared for your job, your career?’

‘Yes, that. But also because I kept telling myself that things with Susan and I would eventually improve … that her disaffection with me was just one of those temporary dips that happen in a long marriage.’

‘Why couldn’t you have simply arranged to see your student discreetly a few times a week? That’s what she wanted, wasn’t it?’

‘Once we finally did the deed, Shelley was head over heels. And she couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t sleep with her again. I tried to explain — many times — that I simply couldn’t continue to be her lover … that as much as I was taken with her, this simply had no future …’

‘She took it badly, of course.’

‘Who could blame her? Especially as I’d been stupid. Wildly stupid — in the way that only a man can be stupid. I’d carried on an ever-escalating two-month flirtation with a very impressionable student, and then — once we finally consummated it — I broke it off.’

‘But why was that stupid? All right, you enjoyed a quasi-platonic relationship with this girl. Then you both decided to become lovers. Then you decided that it was not wise to continue as lovers. Surely, had she been emotionally more mature, she would have accepted your decision—’

‘The thing was, she was eighteen—’

‘There are emotionally mature eighteen-year-olds. She wasn’t.’

‘All during those months of holding hands in cafes, and staring dreamily into each other’s eyes, I knew that if I kept seeing her, it was all going to blow up in my face. But the thing is, I couldn’t bear the thought of not keeping it going.’

‘That’s because you were in love. That’s also why you ended it — because you knew that, once you started sleeping with her regularly, you wouldn’t be able to stop.’

‘Perhaps. But don’t you see how my thinking was so completely contradictory? I so desperately wanted her. Then when I’d finally had her …’

‘Why shouldn’t you have thought that way? And why can’t you accept that, when it comes to matters of the heart, we all do contradictory things? You know that line from Pascal — “The heart has its reasons which reason itself does not know.”’

‘You’re trying to tell me it’s “all right”, when the truth is—’

‘You resisted temptation, you acceded to temptation, then you decided to resist temptation again. End of story. But because Americans equate sex with risk and potential disaster, it wasn’t the end of the story, was it?’

‘No, it wasn’t.’

‘So what happened to the girl, Harry?’

‘The story goes a little haywire here. In the days after that afternoon in the motel, she started sending me love notes all the time — five a day on colored paper in my office mailbox at the college. There were just as many emails. And they all said the same thing: “You are the love of my life … I can’t bear to be apart from you for more than another day … can we go to the motel tomorrow?”

‘I was just a little unnerved by all this instant emotional excess. When we were just meeting over coffee, she was always romantic … but I never got the idea that, once we’d slept together, she’d get so clingy.’

‘You can never predict another person’s emotions … especially the post-coital ones.’

‘Too damn true. When I found Shelley loitering outside one of my classes two days after Toledo, I decided to take immediate action. I suggested we go for a drive out into the country. Once we got to the place by a lake, I quietly explained that, as much as I cared for her, the affair had to end. She was devastated — and told me that she would never have slept with me if she knew it was going to end it straight away. I tried to patiently explain that, as crazy as I was about her—’

‘You were a man with a conscience …’

‘Something like that, yes. It’s amazing, isn’t it, how you agonize over crossing a dangerous threshold. Then, when you finally summon the courage to make that move, you instantly regret it.’

‘Another of those large contradictions, Harry. So did she cry when you broke her the news?’

‘She simply wouldn’t accept it … simply couldn’t believe that I had changed my mind. Again, I tried to explain. Yes, I had feelings for her … yes, I’d loved all our conversations, and thought she was a fantastic person … and yes, if I wasn’t married and wasn’t her professor …

‘She didn’t take the news well — and started to plead with me, telling me she’d do anything to keep it going between us.’

‘Was she a virgin?’

‘No — there had been a big high-school love affair … which ended when she came to college. But as far as she was concerned, we were Tristan and Isolde: destined to be together from here to eternity. Try as I did to persuade her that, in time, she’d just see this as a passing blip in her romantic life, she remained devastated … and determined to somehow keep things going between us. There were constant notes in my mailbox, at least a half-dozen emails every day, and she made a point of hanging around every class I taught.’

‘Surely your colleagues began to realize that one of your students was a bit obsessed about her professor?’

‘Of course. Doug Stanley — my one close friend on the faculty — took me aside and asked me directly if I had been involved with Shelley. Naturally I told him everything — and wondered out loud if I should go to the Dean of the Faculty, Gardner Robson — and make a clean breast of everything. He was adamant that I confess nothing. Because once I did that, I was finished. He also emphasized that, until Shelley went public about the affair, I was in the clear. His hope was that she would soon calm down — and he even offered to speak to her and see if she might agree to seek help from the college psychotherapist.’

‘Knowing you, the guilt must have been massive.’

‘It was nonstop. I wasn’t sleeping and lost about fifteen pounds in less than two weeks. I couldn’t teach, couldn’t concentrate. Even my wife, who was totally ignoring me, noticed that I was in rough shape, and asked me what was wrong. I said I was depressed — and that’s when she told me that, as far as she was concerned, I had been in a gloomy place for years. “And the only time you’d lightened up was during the last few months — when it was clear to me that you were having an affair.” I didn’t deny it, nor did she hint that she knew who my lover might be. But when I came back from the college the next night, I found her in my office, on my computer, reading my email files.’

‘Don’t tell me you hadn’t deleted everything you’d written to your friend — and she to you.’

‘I’d deleted it from my AOL account, but not the Recycle Bin. A bad oversight on my part, as that’s where Susan found them all.’

‘Your wife had the password to your computer?’

‘I’m pretty certain she once heard me tell our daughter that it was her name: Megan123. Whatever way she had managed to get into my files, the fact was, she had managed to get into my files. When I walked in and found her sitting in my desk chair, and staring at an email that Shelley had sent me, she said — in a voice so low and cold it sounded like a frozen whisper — “Pack a bag and leave right now. Otherwise I’ll call the police and tell them you’ve assaulted me.”’

‘And you bowed to this threat … this blackmail?’

‘I thought it best to let the initial shock she was feeling—’

‘Harry, she was fucking some guy before you even hooked up with Shelley—’

‘I still didn’t know that—’

‘But she betrayed your privacy—’

‘True. And she also evidently emailed all this evidence against me to her lover, the Dean. Because, the next day, I had a visit from representatives of the firm that looks after security for the college. Two of their goons showed up at my office around ten that morning, telling me that they were escorting me off the premises and that I was now legally barred from setting foot on the campus again. They brought me downtown to the office of the law firm which handled all the college’s legal stuff. There, some flinty smalltown lawyer — bow tie, blue serge suit, suspenders — read me a document, informing me that, as I had contravened several college codes of professional conduct, I was being summarily dismissed from my tenured position “without pay or any subsidiary benefits”. He also said that if I made trouble, the case would go public and—’

‘You didn’t get a lawyer yourself ?’

‘The college’s legal eagle said that if I signed an agreement he’d prepared, in which I promised not to contest this dismissal, they would announce that I had “resigned” for health reasons. “You might just be able to rebuild your career,” he told me. So I signed the damn document … not knowing that Susan’s lover, the Dean, had another denouement in mind for me. The next day I woke up on the sofa in the house of Doug Stanley, to find I was being laid siege to by assorted regional television stations, not to mention a couple of local newspaper reporters.’

‘All over a brief fling with a student?’

‘Being dismissed for sexual misconduct is a big thing in small-town America. As it turned out, somebody had forwarded to the Ohio press the salient details of my correspondence with Shelley. Doug was certain that Gardner Robson had tipped them off and also told them where I could be found — because Doug had run into Robson on the campus, and the Dean had started spewing this bullshit of how it “genuinely injured” him to have to let me go, and how he wondered if Doug knew of my whereabouts. When Doug made the innocent mistake of telling Robson that he was harboring me, do you know what that sonofabitch told my friend? “I really feel for him right now.”

‘Doug managed to keep the reporters from invading his house — and I essentially took refuge in the rec room in his basement until …’

Pause. I looked away.

‘Until … ?’ Margit asked.

‘Until Shelley killed herself.’