Rafael Yglesias - Hot Properties

They got into the elevator and everybody fell into the typical post-screening silence, no one daring to make a remark lest it offend someone whose connections or power were unknown to him. Lear, Fred noticed admiringly, made sure he stayed near Reynolds without seeming to. Once out on the street, the three of them broke off from the crowd, Reynolds glancing at the avenue and commenting, “Terrible time for a cab.”

“I think if we head over to Sixth …” Lear pointed, and, to Fred’s surprise, given Reynolds’ aloof attitude, he marched with them. “We’re headed uptown,” Lear said while they walked. “Can we drop you?”

“I’m all the way east on Seventy-second. East River Drive. It’s probably out of your way—”

“No, not at all,” Tom said.

“Oh good,” Reynolds mumbled, and glanced at Fred as though he were an obligation. “Did you like the movie?”

Now Fred wished he had listened more carefully at the elevator bank. He didn’t know what their opinion was. “I can’t say why,” Fred said, “but somehow I didn’t really get involved.”

“Yes,” Reynolds agreed. “I didn’t care whether they were together or not. I feel as though I’ve seen movies like that all my life. Guess I’m tired of them too. Are you in the movie business?”

Here it comes, Fred thought, and swallowed. “No, I’m a …” He wanted to say “novelist,” but in this situation somehow it seemed so bold as to be almost be rude. “… a writer.”

“Journalist?” Reynolds asked.

“I was …” And Fred paused, unable to admit his condition, afraid of how obvious it would then become that he wanted Reynolds to know and remember him.

Tom broke in, his voice tense. “Fred’s publishing his first novel in the fall.”

“Oh,” Reynolds said, utterly without self-consciousness. “Congratulations. Who’s your publisher?”

“Garlands.”

“Good house,” the critic said with a nod, a personnel man checking off items on a résumé. “What’s the title?”

“The Locker Room.”

“About sports?”

“No …” This, more than anything, was the moment he had dreaded. He would now describe the idea and if Reynolds made fun of it, life might simply become too terrible to face. “It’s kind of a response to The Women’s Room.”

“Well,” Reynolds said, smiling, “certainly time for that, isn’t it?”

Fred guffawed, laughing harder than he meant to because of the relief. He noticed that Reynolds glanced at him quizzically, and he cut off the amusement. They had reached Sixth, and to cover the awkwardness, Fred, without looking, stepped out with his hand up, signaling for a cab.

He heard Tom laugh behind him and say, “There are no cars, Fred.”

Now that he really looked at the avenue, he saw that for at least five blocks the avenue was empty. He pulled his hand in. “Gotta start early in this town,” he said, and guffawed again.

Reynolds smiled at him gently, almost mercifully. “That’s true enough.” He turned to Lear and began to question him about his current book. Lear answered the questions effortlessly, joking about his mixed reviews, bitching about his publisher, his manner natural and at ease, speaking no differently than he would to an intimate.

His performance made Fred conscious of how badly he had handled his interrogation. He took out a cigarette to calm himself, but in the curious swirling wind of the city, his first three matches all went out. Reynolds, out of the corner of his eyes, noticed his trouble and brought out a lighter, flicking it on and offering the flame.

“Thanks,” Fred said, humiliated. He brought the end of his cigarette into the fire, inhaling, and in an effort to loosen up, swept his arm away from the light.

For a brief, brief second the gesture had just the right dash and casualness …

… but then, like a victim in a fatal crash, he watched in slow horror as his hand and cigarette went directly into the left sleeve of Harold Reynolds’ pin-striped jacket, the bright red embers scattering in brilliant firefly sparks as they burned a small but quite irrevocable hole into the clothes of one of the country’s most powerful and influential book critics.

Patty looked down at Gelb. He had his hands on her breasts, reaching up for them like a baby wanting succor, his eyes closed in blind, pleading ecstasy.

“I love you,” he said almost in a shout.

She held herself up, supporting herself by pressing down with her palms on his hips, clinging to the tip of his penis. He yearned upward, pathetically raising his buttocks, begging for more of her warmth: “I love you I love you I love you.”

Her arms trembled from the effort and she let herself down on his shaft, to his relieved groans, feeling him fill her, the penetration soothing but not exciting. She felt above both him and the experience, the pleasure coming from her possession of his genitals. She vacuumed him up, nothing touching but the most intimate parts of their bodies. She loved watching him from this distance. Looking down at that usually self-absorbed face and seeing him at her mercy, rolling in a blissful dream, seemed a perfect metaphor for their relationship. She had dominated this man with what had always seemed to be her weakness: sex.

He opened his eyes and saw the smirk of satisfaction on her face. He looked glazed, delirious. He moved a hand to her trimmed bush and searched inside with his finger for her magic button of instant orgasm.

“Don’t bother,” she said contemptuously but gently: not with anger, with knowing patience.

“You bitch,” he said weakly, and his eyes rolled in their sockets. “Ohhhh,” he moaned as she moved up, his butt bucking to stay completely inside.

“Lie still,” she suggested.

“I can’t I can’t,” he said, and then, from his stomach, loud groaning. She felt his penis swell suddenly and then jerk. “No no no no,” he sang, writhing so violently that she had to drop all the way down to prevent being thrown off. She bent forward, running her hands up his hairy, big chest while she felt herself get wet inside from him. The publisher of Garlands squeezed her right nipple hard and whispered over and over: “I love you I love you I love you,” while she, his former assistant, said back in a seductive whisper: “No you don’t no you don’t no you don’t.”

David dialed the numbers. They had become as familiar to him as his own. He must have telephoned her a hundred times, although they had had only two real conversations.

She always answered the same way: “Yes …?” as though irritated by the interruption.

“Hello, I’ve called you before—”

“Age and occupation?”

“I’m thirty-one. I’m an executive.”

“Name?”

“Bill,” he said quickly, having decided to tell this lie, though he really didn’t see what safety it provided.

“Do you want to make an appointment?”

“Yes,” he said. This time there was no rush of panic, of coursing adrenaline.

“It’s important for you to understand that I offer dominance and submission. There’s no sex.”

“I understand,” he said.

He could hear a smile in her voice. “My sessions are on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I don’t have anything open until next week unless you can come today at eleven o’clock.”

Now the pressure began, powerfully present in his system. “Okay,” he said dully, automatically, unable to cry out his fear, his dreadful fear of giving in to this obsession.

“Come to Twenty-third Street and Eighth Avenue. There are phone booths on the corner. Call this number from there at eleven. I’ll give you the address then. I’m a minute away. All right, Bill?”