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Fiction
R. Parker McVey

The Common Heritage of Common Fear

Paul Elder led an isolated life. Over the years he had chased his few friends away with mean-spirited attacks on their shortcomings. He did not much like his wife either, but she was his anchor. Paul knew that, and he pretended to care for her.

It was a thin pretense, however, and his wife bought none of it. But they had children now, and her life revolved closely around them, so much so that it offended Paul. She saw that, and used the children ever more often as a means of diminishing and controlling him.

At work, as an attorney, he often procrastinated during the day. Then he stayed late at his office, late enough so that his wife would be in bed when he got home. In the mornings he was out of the house before she was up.

She did not care, but it was a terrific wound for her to pick at. The children felt abandoned, she told him. Work was taking precedence over home. She deeply resented it, she said, even though it was his presence around her children that truly bothered her.

Paul was none too popular at his law firm, either. He had the habit of standing over staff workers and looking down at them, causing discomfort. He drew an odd pleasure from this. If someone seemed immune, Paul would pose questions, prying cleverly into the staffer's life until he felt the presence of something embarrassing. Then he would go after that and draw it out. Once he had what he wanted, he would put on a cheap, strangely excited smile and say, "Oh, that's awful. I'm sorry."

He never tired of this, as though the infliction of small hurts and the effects of his insincerity nourished him. People quickly caught on to him, however, and then withdrew their respect and avoided him. Paul relished this as an accomplishment. He did not want their respect or their familiarity. They were small people, who ought to know their station.

With his superiors, the firm's senior partners, Paul applied a different strategy. In their presence he was a lap dog. He spoke softly at meetings, in round sentences that offered no offense and little else. The senior partners liked that, but they did not like him.

Among the other attorneys, Mack Peters was the one with whom Paul shared confidences. Although clouded by their mutual affection for psychological manipulation, their relationship had flowered over the years. It was sustained by cruel jokes aimed at others and by sexual fantasies over the young female secretaries. Paul and Mack frequently let loose these fantasies on their lunch-hour walks.

On a blistering day late in August, Paul and Mack went off on a walk up Park Avenue. Mack made his confession.
"You remember the temp I took for a drink?"

"Uh-huh. Did she want it?" Paul asked.

"She more than wanted it. She got it, and," Mack bragged, "she put the hotel room on her card."

"Were you right about her?"

"Yes, yes," Mack howled, "I was. She wanted to be smacked."

"And you are full of shit," Paul said. "It never happened."

"It did, I tell you. She craved humiliation. How else can I say it?"

"She should have had enough humiliation just by agreeing to a drink with you."

"And fuck you," Mack said, "You don't hear the rest of the story."

"Go ahead," Paul said, a look of blank cruelty shadowing his face.

"It's going to be a regular thing, and she wants it rougher. You should have seen her. She eats it up."

"Good," was all Paul said.

Mack's story, true or not, left Paul in a miserable mood. While the tale disgusted him, as did most all expressive behavior by others, he wanted more than anything to escape into an adventure of this sort. He had no specific craving for a sexual entanglement. It was nothing so simple as that. Nor did he wish to have the kind of tryst that would allow outright physical expression of his sadistic urges. His needs were of a different kind.

That weekend, at home in Connecticut, Paul followed his usual ritual. He took his three-year-old son out with him on a round of errands. His wife stayed at home with their daughter. Paul's use of his son as a prop made him feel much more comfortable in public. He liked to carry the boy. He would puff out his chest and, very important, maintain an expressionless face. This prideful and pompous ceremony told the world exactly what it needed to know. Paul was among its betters, and people ought recognize it.

This particular Saturday, Paul had plans to anger his wife and lure her into a fight. The goal was to create such alienation that he would have the room he needed to work very late the next few weeks, without any need for the usual explanations and apologies. He would prompt the fight by staying out with his son well beyond the normal time and then fail to call home. This would stimulate his wife's excessive protectiveness of the boy and an argument would ensue.

Paul had practiced this type of emotional extortion throughout the marriage, and he did so with a satisfying sense of precision. When he arrived home late in the afternoon with a hungry and cranky child, his wife greeted him with the chilly silence he anticipated. That evening, after the children were put to bed, she initiated a bitter discussion of how irresponsible it had been to keep the boy out beyond the point of exhaustion. He fanned the flames.

"He needs to be out of this house," Paul said in a dead voice, "and away from you for a few hours."

She was predictably infuriated and hurled belittlements at him, dragging out past wrongs, beating dead horses. He sat expressionless, save for a thin smile, little more than a contemptuous curl of his lips. If his wife seemed to be calming down, he would throw out another ambiguous insult in the same flat, dead voice, and her fury was renewed.

They spoke barely a word to one another for the rest of the weekend. He knew that for the next few weeks there would be no demands that he leave work in time to see the children before their bedtime. On Monday he began his quest for an experience that would top Mack's.

There was a young receptionist, a part-time college student who clearly spent every penny she earned on childishly provocative clothes. She flirted with many of the male attorneys at the firm, but her obvious instability scared off would be takers. She was, however, the object of much speculation and man talk behind closed doors.

Paul liked her instability and her childishness, and he decided to seduce her or, as he would have it, allow her to seduce him. This was a dangerous aim. Infidelity was one of two offenses for which his wife would leave him without hesitation. The other was a return to drinking. Only a few drinks caused Paul to shed all pretense that he had respect for others and fall into a mode of verbal abuse that had cleared crowded rooms.

This inability to drink would not be an obstacle to having the receptionist, however. Paul had no inhibitions that he needed to lower, no fear of rejection. He would push all the fear, all the responsibility for the affair and all the eventual hurt onto her. His only worry was being caught.

Late Monday afternoon he approached Brandon, the young receptionist, and exchanged work complaints with her. He had too much on his plate and had to work late too often. Her job bored her and paid too little.

"So do you work out after you leave here?" he asked.

"Oh, god no," she said, "I just go home and lie in front of the fan and eat ice cream."

"No air conditioner?"

"They're so expensive to run. If I'm home it's much cheaper just to take my clothes off." Her words and smiles and preening gestures raced toward him like images from a pornographic cartoon.

He looked at her and thought, a box of candy.

"Listen," he said, "if you have no place to rush off to why don't you have dinner with me. I get tired of eating alone."

"Great. That would be nice. I know what you mean; I'm sick of microwave in front of the TV."

"Come by my office after five and get me. Do you like Indian?"

"Never had it. What's it like?"

"Hot, very hot," he said looking at her eyes, but not in them.

As dumb as Brandon pretended to be, she was not without an understanding of the rules of association with attorneys. Flirtation was one thing, open familiarity another. A casual invitation to dinner called for restraint. It was nothing to flaunt around the office. Brandon waited until five-thirty, when all but a few of the day staff had left, before showing up at Paul's office.

Paul had changed his mind about Indian food. They went to a Japanese restaurant instead. He had it in his head that eating raw fish would act as a sexual stimulant on her. As was his habit from childhood, he ate rapidly, without saying a word. She talked incessantly about clothes and her apartment, her shoulders thrusting forward at him. Her eyes glittered with excitement on the topics of shopping, closet space, CDs, her new rug and all the objects that she possessed or hoped to possess. She failed to notice that Paul's expression had not changed since the beginning of the meal.

He ordered more sake for her after she finished her food. Then he began to question her, each inquiry crafted to demonstrate his concern for her. When it came time to leave, she had just confessed to a terribly unhappy home life. She said that getting her own apartment had been her greatest experience. Even so, she said, living alone also had its drawbacks.

"Do you live in a safe neighborhood?" he asked as they left the restaurant.

"No," she said, "it's very dangerous. The drug dealers practically live in my doorway."

"Then I'll drop you off in a cab."

"No, don't do that. I'll be okay."

"I insist. It's getting dark."

She thought this noble, and began to insist that he come up to see her apartment. He played coy at first, saying he should probably get back to the office. But he had no intention of refusing the invitation.

As soon as the cab stopped in front of her building she was pulling at his sleeve. He waited for her enthusiasm to peak before he agreed to come up. Then he could not get out of the cab fast enough. He stood on the sidewalk and looked around at her patently safe and modestly charming block as though it were an open sewer.

Her apartment was up three flights. He followed her silently, his eyes fixed blankly on her perfect little rear end and his ears absolutely deaf to her chatter. The apartment was a studio, a large room with a kitchenette at one end and a living area at the other. As small as Brandon's apartment was, it was easily more comfortable than any room in Paul's sparse, coldly decorated home in Connecticut.

It was hot though, and her fans gave little relief. She disappeared into the bathroom and reappeared several minutes later with her make-up freshly done. She had changed into a bikini top and a pair of cut-off shorts that did not quite cover her buttocks. He looked at her as though she were wearing a dirty overcoat.

When she got no reaction to this outfit, he thought, she would commit herself further. If they were to engage in sex, he would have no part in initiating it. The burden was hers.

"Do you have any cold mineral water?" he asked.

"Just diet soda."

"Fine," he said in a tone of voice he had perfected that could drain self-confidence from a weak person and all patience from someone strong.

It was not long before she humiliated herself. After she made crude and desperate advances, he moved on her in a cold, affectionless manner, with no thought but that he had achieved his goal without accruing responsibility.

The next morning Paul was in the office at his normal time, half-past seven. Aside from getting him out of the house without having to speak to his wife, the habit of arriving early at work was Paul's gesture to reliability, a symbol of his desire to affiliate with the old way of doing things. If only once or twice a year a senior partner happened to be there to see him come in at that hour, Paul felt the practice justified itself.

He usually dreaded the arrival of staff and other attorneys at nine, but this morning he was anxious to see Mack. Paul did not try to work. He drank coffee and leaned back in his chair. He imagined the look on Mack's face when he told him about the previous evening.

When Mack strolled in a while after nine, Paul followed him into his office and closed the door. Paul's face was red with excitement. His smile was so broad and sinister that Mack was not happy to be looking at him so early in the day.

"Guess what?" Paul asked.

"I give up." Mack arranged his desk.

"I bagged the bimbo."

Mack cocked his head. His eyes grew wide.

"Come again," he said.

"I bagged the bimbo."

"Brandon?"

Paul gleamed with delight. He was overjoyed. He nodded slowly.

"I don't believe you. Is this the truth?"

"Yes."

"Holy shit," Mack said. He laughed uproariously. "You're not kidding. How was she?"

"Stupid," Paul said.

"I mean how was she in bed?"

"Awful."

"You're kidding," Mack said, sucking back more laughter, catching his breath. "She looks like she would know how to do it."

"She doesn't."

"Are you going to do it again?"

Paul thought for a second. "It's mine if I want it."

"I still don't believe you. You are such a fucking liar."

"You'll see," Paul said, "she'll be around for a pat on the head before the end of the day."

Brandon came by after lunch. Paul was very friendly to her at first, but it was a setup. Mack had seen her walk by, and after a few minutes he went into Paul's office.

"Say hello to Brandon, Mack," Paul said in a syrupy, childishly sarcastic voice.

Mack said hello and Brandon smiled at him, her flirtatiousness in place and up a notch.

"You would like Brandon's apartment. She has lots of nice things," Paul said.

Mack was embarrassed, even as Brandon was thrilled that an attorney had been to her place. It was a small taste of celebrity for her. Hearing Paul tell Mack about it in front of her sent a refreshing chill through her limbs. Mack couldn't take any more and left.

Alone with Brandon, Paul's expression turned cold. She continued to smile, her eyes glassy with excitement.

"Look," she said, pulling her skirt up and turning the side of her thigh toward Paul, "I got a run in my pantyhose on the train this morning."

"Very nice," Paul said without inflection.

"God," she said, "pantyhose are so expensive. I mean the kind I like. Does your wife pay a lot for hers?"

"I'm coming over to your place after work. I'll meet you there," Paul said.

"I have a class tonight," she said apologetically.

"Cut it."

"I can't, it's a three-hour class. It's once a week."

"Listen, does this mean anything to you or not?"

"Oh, no, it does. I'll cut the class. For you."

"Very good," he said.

The encounter that night and the others that followed over the next ten days wore progressively on Brandon's illusions. Paul's monosyllabic responses to her, the flat, toneless voice, his expressionless face, all fed on her thin spirit. Their sex was mean, gray and dull. Paul observed it all as if from some great distance, enjoying his handiwork.

On a Thursday night, before the weekend on which he intended to make up with his wife, Paul told Brandon it was over.

She had already begun to turn on him, but she did not want it to stop. She was hurt and wanted to get into position to hurt him back.

"You can't do this to me," she said, her eyes no longer glittering. He had plundered her body, and she was ready to fix a price on it.

"I can't be concerned with this. My family is all that's important to me. They come first."

"Why did you even start then?" she demanded.

"I didn't start it. You did. I came up to see your apartment and you came on to me. It was embarrassing, really, to see a young woman act like that. But you are attractive and I slipped."

By the time Paul left, Brandon was filled with rage. But she felt powerless. There was nothing she could do that would not harm her more than it would him. The only power she knew was the power of her body to attract and to hold. Paul had not succumbed to that power, was not held by it.

Paul was in his office early as usual on Friday morning. He busied himself tidying his desk and shelves, carefully rearranging the photographs of his wife and children.

Mack arrived after nine and stopped in Paul's office, coffee in hand, for a progress report.

"Close the door," Paul said softly.

"What's going on?"

"I blew her off."

"No. Already?"

Paul's face was flush red, a wicked smile pasted across it. He nodded.

"How'd she take it?"

"Very upset."

"Were you easy on her?"

"Of course, but she's bent out of shape. I really think she is going to need someone to console her, Mack!"

Mack's lights came on. He leaned back in the chair and sipped his coffee, nodding continuously, as though a long echo of affirmation was needed to propel him toward the role as a shoulder to lean on.

"So you think it will work?" Mack asked.

"That's up to you. Go for it."

Mack saw Brandon later that morning, and she was in a dismal mood. He clowned with her and got her to smile. Soon he had her laughing with him.

"You're funny," she said.

"Well, you looked as though you had lost your best friend. I didn't like seeing you like that."

"Thanks for cheering me up."

"Why don't you come to lunch with me? My treat?"

"Okay," she said, her eyes twinkling.

After returning from his lunch with Brandon, Mack went directly into Paul's office and closed the door behind him.

"I'm in for tonight," he said.

"Fast work."

"She cried at lunch. I was incredibly sympathetic. We're going to have a few drinks after work down in her neighborhood."

"What are you going to tell Wendy?" Paul asked, referring to Mack's wife.

"She's easy. I'll think of something by the end of the day."

They low-fived each other and laughed riotously. It was a perfect hand-off.

Late Saturday morning, Paul sat in the family room of his house. He watched his son play with another boy the same age. The boy's mother was visiting with Paul's wife; they were chatting in the kitchen. Paul was back on civil terms with his wife, playing to her good side. He had given her an expensive necklace to win her indulgence.

The phone rang and Paul's wife answered it in the kitchen. She called down to Paul that Mack was on the line. Paul picked up the phone.

"I've got it honey." He waited for her to hang up. "What?" he asked coldly.

"I'm in big, big trouble," Mack said.

"What happened?"

"That little bitch set me up. After I did her, I went home and Wendy's brother was there watching the kids. Wendy comes in after me and tells me that Brandon called her and told her where I'd be. Wendy was parked down the block. She saw me when I came out of the girl's building. This bitch Brandon is nuts."

"I know," Paul said.

"Then why didn't you warn me?"

"I tried to," Paul said flatly.

"You didn't say a fucking word to me."

"It was implied. I thought you would pick up on it."

"Wendy booted me out of the apartment last night. I've got to go back over there and talk to her. What should I do?"

"I don't know," Paul said.

"I've got to tell her something."

"Tell her a big lie. They work best. Listen, I can't stay on. Good luck."

Paul hung up the phone. The boy playing with his son was down on his hands and knees pushing a toy truck around, making a motor sound. Paul's son stood back, his arms hanging limply at his sides. The other boy steered the truck to his feet, revving the motor, trying to get Paul's son to take it for a spin. Paul's son just stood there, expressionless, looking down at the other boy.

Paul liked what he saw, liked it very much, thought it just neat.

© R. Parker McVey and Union Square Journal 2000
All rights reserved

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A Professional Daughter by R. Parker McVey