Lass Small - Whatever Comes

She collected some of his videotapes. She played them at her small, canyon house. The house was perched on a gully. Alone, she played tapes of Sean Morant on her VCR, so that she could listen and watch this person perform.

On stage, Sean did have a presence. His movements were—well—a pleasure to watch. He was a well-made male animal. He exuded maleness as he performed. He used his maleness. Deliberately. With calculation. He was a leader to the male viewers, and a lover to the female ones. He was what everyone wanted. Except Mab, of course. Mab was immune.

She would look at him, performing on the VCR, then lift the candid street shots up to compare his pictures to the screen. Away from music, he looked as if he was ‘on hold,’ uninvolved, disinterested. The pictures taken of him then showed his disinterest even in being photographed. He didn’t turn from the camera or give a big celebrity smile. He simply looked at the lens as one would a post.

The candid pictures fascinated Mab. And it was those which caught her attention. Those with women. A multitude of women. Each picture was remarkably the same. Each showed Sean to the left, full-length, dressed each time in the same type of casual clothes. His hair was carelessly tousled. His sober eyes were on the camera in disinterest. And on his left in each of those pictures was a different woman.

The women were dressed variously, some smiling, some as sober as he. All were tall, lovely and walking in step with Sean.

Mab began to pin the lookalike pictures up on her bulletin board. Her plan board. Row upon row of the almost-identical pictures: Sean walking with another woman.

In viewing the pinned rows, it seemed obvious to Mab that Sean wasn’t indifferent, he was exhausted! All those women! They would take a toll. He was only in his middle thirties. He seemed older. It was probably his life-style, eroding him.

She geared her article to expose Sean Morant, the womanizer. All those women were known. A few had been fans or relatives. Those pictures had been discarded, and Amabel concentrated only on those known personalities who had been pictured walking with Sean Morant. She interviewed each one of them.

It annoyed Amabel Clayton to find she wasn’t the unbiased reporter she’d always been. She wondered if she’d reached burnout at twenty-eight. Why should she feel a hostility to the women who walked with Sean? Why did she feel such a strange...distaste?

The only other time she’d felt such antagonism to another female was in sixth grade when her best friend was caught sending a note across the classroom to Amabel’s boyfriend. He hadn’t known he was her boyfriend but her best friend had. The feeling then was very similar to what Amabel felt now. It was almost as if she felt jealous of those women she was interviewing about Sean Morant.

Wanda Moore was one of Sean’s side-by-side women whom Amabel interviewed. The interview was in Wanda’s bedroom. Wanda was in bed wearing a thin bed jacket. The indication being that that was all she wore under the satin sheet.

In a marked contrast, Amabel was wearing a shirt with a light sweater vest, a matching skirt, hose and flat-heeled loafers. Her hair was under a neatly tied scarf.

Wanda giggled and confided, “My name’s a, uh, play on words, you know?”

Feeling uncomfortably obtuse, Mab asked through thinned lips, “Really?” in a quite indifferent manner. She waited with poised mike.

“It’s like I want—more.” Wanda giggled and squirmed as she rubbed her knees together under the satin sheet.

“More—what?” Mab questioned; by that time she was being deliberately blank.

“You know. Sex.” And she rolled her eyes at the grinning cameraman.

Mab looked out the bedroom window and considered applying to woman a one-person satellite filled with plants to resow the diminished world. It was painfully obvious Sean’s attraction to Wanda was not mental.

One of the more irritating responses was when Mab asked, “Tell me about Sean Morant. What is your opinion of him?”

“Oooh!” Wanda went into spasms of giggles and eye rolling.

“Could you tell us what you mean?” Mab inquired with careful seriousness.

“He’s just delicious! ”

Stoically, Mab could not resist, “Did you ever discuss world affairs?”

Wanda lost the giggles as she inquired succinctly, “Are you kidding?”

So Mab asked kindly, “Would you mind our taking your picture? We may use it with the article.”

“What do you think this whole exercise is all about, ice queen!”

* * *

When Mab returned to her office and confronted her boss, Wally said, “But, honey, it’s very lonely out in space.”

“Don’t call me honey.”

“Well, don’t get mad at me if Sean’s choice in female companionship isn’t up to your standards. I’m not guilty! I married Chris before I ever even knew you, and you approve of her.”

Mab commented, “I have this terrible feeling you’d react to Wanda Moore just like the cameramen.”

“How?”

“Flushed and laughing and restless.”

Wally asked with interest, “Are you jealous?”

“My God, Wally!”

“Well...”

On her soapbox, Mab responded, “When women are trying to be taken seriously? And Wanda acts that way? Instead of Hillary Rodham Clinton, men tend to think of the Wandas of the world when they mentally picture ‘women.’ It’s excessively depressing.”

“Are all the women who marched along with our hero like Wanda?” He went over to the bulletin board and viewed along the lines of similar pictures.

“A shuddering number of them. His IQ must range between forty and fifty.”

“He’s a fine musician.”

Mab agreed. “There are many flawed people God compensated with a brilliance in some talent.”

Wally gave up on the pictures on the board to look at Mab. “How many more do you have to see?”

“Three.”

Then he asked, “Have you tried the computer yet?”

“Don’t push.”

“You’re the last holdout.” Wally reminded her. “It will change your life.”

“If God had intended me to fly, he would have given me wings.”

Wally chided, “That’s the argument for planes—this is a computer.”

“Don’t irritate me.”

“You’ve been that way lately, with no help from anybody.” Wally was kind. “If I didn’t know you for a basic man hater, I’d think you had an unrequited passion for Sean Morant.”

“Good grief.” She looked up at Wally with wide eyes of shock.

Wally observed, “You’re paranoid when it comes to machines—and men.”

“I’ll grant the machine half.”

“It’s just that you don’t understand either one.”

Mab gestured. “Of course I understand men. They are simple, basic creatures.”

“We’re human.” Wally admitted that.

“Very.”

Wally inquired thoughtfully, “Did you ever get any help with this problem?”

“I don’t have any problem! I am content to live alone, I don’t need a man to take care of me, I can support myself. The only problem I have with men is they don’t understand why I don’t want to hop into bed with them.”

He grinned. “Again, I’m glad I’m already safely married to Chris.”

“Me, too. If you weren’t you’d probably be depressingly like all the rest.”

“Simon Quint, too?”

“No,” she retorted. “I find our publisher a perfectly rational human being.”

* * *

As Amabel compiled the Sean Morant interviews, she noticed there was one characteristic all the women had mentioned. Sean Morant was kind. Amabel put that into her report, which was very cleverly written. She was subtle. She implied he was a womanizer who kindly spread his attentions as widely as he could.