Sebastian Stuart - The Mentor

“I hope this is organic mayonnaise,” he says, accepting the tray. “How’s it going out here?”

“Steadily. How’s it going in there?” Something in the way she asks, her serious curiosity, pleases him. He glances at the small V of flesh her open shirt affords.

“I’m trying to have faith in the process,” he says. She nods that grave, simpatico nod of hers that he finds so touching somehow. She has such lively brown hair. Why the hell does she keep it pulled back like that, and with a tacky red elastic band? She really is determined to downplay her charms. He wonders suddenly, Is she a virgin?

“Join me?” he asks.

“I won’t interrupt your world”

“I wouldn’t have asked.”

Emma picks up her salad and follows Charles into his office. He pulls up a chair for her. She bites her lower lip in exaggerated concentration as she squeezes orange dressing out of a small plastic packet. There’s something so submissive about her, so yielding.

“That looks disgusting,” he says about the Day-Glo dressing.

Emma looks over at his tray, brimming with grease and fat and hot dogs made of who-knows-what, and smiles slyly. When she smiles like that she becomes someone different-a mischievous little girl who cuts school to sneak into the movies. Maybe she isn’t a virgin after all. Maybe she could teach him a trick or two. Not that he makes a habit of being unfaithful to Anne. In the twelve years of their marriage, there’ve been maybe half a dozen times, all when he was on the road and the opportunity was just too ripe to pass up-Charles flashes on that grad student in San Antonio who knocked on his door at two in the morning with a bottle of wine in one hand and a gram of coke in the other. Christ, she was hot. In awe of him. Like Emma. Like Anne.

“Did I get any interesting mail today?” he asks.

“There was one, from a woman in Colorado.”

“Yes?”

“She wants to have your baby. She asked if you could send a specimen for in vitro fertilization.”

“Believe it or not, I’ve had requests like that before. What did I tell her?”

“You told her you couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

That wily smile plays at the corners of her mouth again, and a flattering blush rises in her cheeks.

“Because… because you had a vasectomy five years ago.”

“I beg your pardon?!”

“You told me to use my discretion. I figured she couldn’t argue with… that.”

He chuckles. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”

Emma takes too big a bite of her salad. She sits with her back straight and her legs pressed together-a strange hybrid of re-pressed librarian and runaway street kid. Would she make love like a librarian-or like a street kid?

“Who are you? Tell me a secret,” Charles says.

Emma reaches for a piece of bread, opens a tiny tub of butter, and methodically butters the bread. “I don’t have any. I’m not exactly the stuff of great fiction,” she says without looking up from her task.

“Let me see… Grew up in a suburb of Chicago. Father a geology professor, mother a second grade teacher… only child… testing yourself in Manhattan before you go back for your degree in psychiatric social work.”

Emma laughs. It sounds forced. She’s so easy for him to rattle. He must remember that and be gentle with her. He imagines opening her blouse, lifting it off her shoulders.

“Well, I am an only child,” she says.

“And the rest?”

“I had an uneventful childhood.”

“There’s no such thing as an uneventful childhood.”

“I grew up in western Pennsylvania. Nothing but cows and coal mines. I suppose you could say I’m here in New York to test myself. I’ve always been fascinated by the city. And here I am.”

“Mom and Dad?”

“Just Mom and Dad.”

She pushes at her salad with her fork. Her shy evasions only increase his interest. They could knock off early one afternoon, have a few glasses of wine. He’d go slowly, never putting his pleasure before hers. Afterward she’d nestle her small body against his and they’d talk, share a sweet and tenuous intimacy. It could well develop into an affair. Just for a month or so, a month of sex and longing and solace.

“I’ll tell you one thing, Mom never served mayonnaise with our french fries,” Emma says.

“She didn’t know what she was missing.” He holds out the tray and she nibbles at a single fry.

“I still prefer tartar sauce,” she says dryly.

Charles smiles at her and she returns his smile. There’s a moment of silence, their eyes remain locked, and then she looks away.

Suddenly Charles wonders about her stability. She seems almost to be trying on different aspects of her personality as if they’re hats and she isn’t sure which ones fit. And something in the tightness that sometimes creeps into her voice hints at a well-concealed rage. This girl could be trouble, might do something inappropriate. He could see her, strung out and pathetic, accosting Anne in front of the building. Bad news. Emma is terrific as a secretary, but potentially disastrous as a lover. It’s not worth the risk, not now. Just another distraction.

Emma reaches up and slowly traces her fingers down her neck. Is it an unconscious gesture? There’s something undeniably erotic about it, and in spite of his admonition to himself, Charles feels his cock grow hard.

Anne is sitting at her office desk leafing through the physicians listings in the Queens Yellow Pages. She comes across a women’s health center-Dr. Milton Halpern, gynecologist-obstetrician, director.

There’s a tap on the door. Anne quickly shuts the phone book and pushes it aside. “Yes.”

Trent pokes his head in. “I’m off to lunch. Can I get you anything?”

“I’m fine, thank you, Trent.”

When he’s gone she calls the state medical board to see if Dr. Halpern has had any complaints lodged against him. None. She dials his office and requests an appointment.

“Have you seen the doctor before?”

“No.”

“How is next Tuesday at ten-thirty?”

“Could he possibly fit me in this afternoon?”

“The doctor is fully booked.”

“It’s something of an emergency.”

“All right, I’ll book you in at the end of the day. Five-thirty.”

“Thank you.”

“Your name?”

“Kathleen Brody.”

“Your phone number?”

Christ! Anne forgot they’d be asking for a phone number. Her mind races. She considers hanging up, then looks down at her phone. She reads the number aloud, transposing the last two digits.

“All right, we’ll see you this afternoon. Do you know how to get here?”

“I’ll find it.”

Anne leaves the office at four, telling Trent she’s getting a facial. She stops at an ATM and withdraws five hundred dollars and then walks briskly down Sixth Avenue to Thirty-fourth Street. Wedged between an electronics store and a McDonald’s is a tiny wig shop. The interior is poorly lit and crowded with wigs on Styrofoam stands. The owner is an East Indian with a bored, leering manner. Anne points to a short brown wig cut in a pixie-ish Shirley MacLaine bob.

“Very nice wig,” he says.

“May I try it on?”

“No. New York State law.”

“Well, do you think it will fit me?”

“Okay, try it on.”

Anne hastily pins up her hair and pulls on the tight cap and looks in the mirror. For a moment she doesn’t recognize herself

“Beautiful,” the man says.

Anne pays for the wig and leaves the store with it on. She hails a cab and gives the driver the Queens address. As the car makes its way across the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, Anne takes out her compact and with deft strokes applies foundation to her face. Then she darkens her eyebrows and puts on deep red lipstick.