Sebastian Stuart - The Mentor

They got married three months later-at City Hall in Asbury Park, New Jersey, just for the hell of it. The first years were bliss. And it wasn’t just the sex. It was exploring hidden corners of Brooklyn on windy Saturday afternoons, arguing over conceptual art at the Whitney, laughing at each other’s imitations of dull or pompous people they met, spending long winter nights reading on the overstuffed sofas in the living room of their Turtle Bay apartment.

Charles was a red-hot ticket in those days, and he made furthering her career a personal crusade. Lunch with the president of Doubleday; dinner parties to introduce her to editors, photographers, and writers; high-profile literary and cultural events- New York magazine named them one of the city’s Ten Most Glamorous Couples. They got a good laugh out of that one. But it all paid off: within a year Anne had a contract to do the first of her popular coffee table books on the “art” of entertaining.

Anne thought their happiness would last forever. Although the erosion has been slow and steady, she has never looked at another man. Still does not want another man.

After their lovemaking-a fierce, greedy, almost impersonal bout-Anne gets up and walks to their bedroom. She brushes her teeth, being careful not to step on the broken glass. She suddenly feels guilty and ridiculous, almost bends down and sweeps up the shards-but no, she must know; it’s that simple. She lies on the bed and pretends to study a contract. Where is Charles? The apartment is so quiet.

Then he materializes-like a ghost-in the doorway. Anne starts.

“Scare you?” Charles asks. He’s naked and has a drink in his hand.

“You’re so quiet.” Even from across the room Anne can smell him, his after-sex smell, pungent and moist.

“Thinking. Thinking is quiet.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Shhhh.” He puts a finger up to his lips. “Loose lips sink books.”

“Ah.”

“Going to go do some work,” he says.

“Don’t you want to shower?”

“Do I stink?”

“No.”

“Yes, I do. I stink.”

“Well, if you stink, why don’t you shower?”

“Probably because you suggested it.”

Anne glances over to the bathroom. She gets out of bed and goes to him, puts her arms around his neck and kisses him softly on the lips. She presses her body, her hips, against his. “Or we could take one together. Who knows what might develop?”

“Oh, no, I’ve had too much to drink. You’re right, though, I do stink. A nice long shower and I’ll be good as new.”

Anne stops breathing as she watches him walk into the bathroom. His feet cross the black-and-white tiles, he’s heading right for the glass-he misses it. Her breath escapes in a rush.

Then he turns to grab a washcloth.

“Shit.” He turns his foot up and blood is running from the cut.

“What is it, darling?” Anne says, going to him. “Oh, no.” A shard of glass is sticking out of the sole of his foot. “Let me get it.”

She kneels and pulls out the thin shard and then squeezes his foot, watching as large drops of blood fall onto the tiles. “I dropped a glass earlier, I was sure I got it all up. I’m sorry. You get in the shower, I’ll clean this up.”

“ ’Tain’t nothin’,” Charles mutters before stepping into the stall. Anne opens the closet door, ostensibly to reach for a sponge. She leaves the door open, blocking Charles’s view, and retrieves a vial. She gingerly uses a piece of glass to push several drops of blood into the vial, her heart hammering in her chest. She puts the stopper in the vial and quickly wipes up the rest of the blood. Then she walks quickly to the kitchen, opens the refrigerator, takes out her box of Maison du Chocolat chocolates-Charles hates them, eats only Hershey bars-and slips the vial under the top layer. Then she savors a cocoa-dusted truffle.

Anne Turner is murdered-stabbed to death in broad daylight by an escaped mental patient, right on Fifty-seventh Street in front of a crowd of horrified onlookers. The Post prints a front-page photo of her body lying on the sidewalk, blood pooling beside her, the wound on her neck dark and hideous. In the wrenching months that follow, Emma is there for Charles. He comes to depend on her, at first to handle all the prosaic details of his life, but slowly his need becomes emotional. And then one day it goes further-they make love, fall in love. He takes care of her, she nurtures him, his writing regains its former power. They rarely go out; it’s just the two of them in this beautiful apartment. Marriage becomes inevitable. On a perfectly ordinary morning, a Tuesday, they go down to City Hall for the simple, poignant ceremony. She becomes Mrs. Charles Davis-Emma Davis, Emma Davis, Emma Davis…

Emma drags herself back to reality and takes the rubber band from around the thick pile of the day’s mail. Suddenly there’s a jangling beside her ear. She looks up to see Charles standing in the doorway, holding a single key on a metal ring.

“See this key?”

Emma nods.

“I want you to take it and lock me in this room for six hours.”

“Are you serious?”

“I don’t want you to let me out, no matter how hard I scream, pound, or wail. Understood?”

Emma looks from the key to Charles. He actually wants her to do this. “All right,” she says.

She takes the key. Charles walks into his office and turns. They look at each other. There’s something in his eyes, something yielding, teasing, that excites Emma. She slowly closes the door, inserts the key, and turns it. An unfamiliar sense of power pours over her, of having control over another human being. She likes it. She sits down and attacks the mail.

Emma is completely absorbed in making notes to herself on a yellow legal pad when she hears a rapping on the door behind her.

“For Christ’s sake, jailer, have you checked the time?”

Could six hours really have passed? Emma slips the pad into her bag and unlocks the door. Charles stands in the doorway, hands gripping the lintel above him, looking like an athlete who’s just stepped off the field.

“How was it?” Emma asks.

“Excruciating… strange… maybe a little exciting.”

Emma feels a blush rush up her body. She turns away from Charles and busies herself with some papers on her desk. “Your wife called. She won’t be home for dinner.”

“Then you and I will go out.”

“Oh, no, that’s all right, really,” Emma says, making a great show of finding a letter on the desk and taking it to the file cabinet.

“Do you have other plans?”

“Well, not exactly,” she says, searching through the file drawer for the right folder.

“Emma, we’re going out to dinner.”

The way he says it, that tone in his voice, the finality, the command. “I’m not very hungry,” she mumbles, still paging through the drawer.

Charles leans in, forces her to meet his gaze. “Would you feel better if we went Dutch?”

“Probably.”

“Dutch it is, then,” he says, going to get his coat.

Emma closes the file cabinet, crumples up the letter, and drops it in the trash.

About twice a year Charles rides the subway, as much to remind himself that it still exists as to get to his destination. So when Emma insists that they not only eat on her turf but take her means of transportation to reach it, he’s willing. Sitting beside her on the train, Charles feels loose, slightly ecstatic. The six enforced hours were good ones. The truth is, he didn’t spend them writing. He pulled down a first edition of Irreparable Damage — the book that Emma loved so much-and reread it from beginning to end. He was caught up in the book in a way he hadn’t expected to be, and now he feels inspired. But is it by his own words? Or by the young woman sitting beside him on this rocking train?