Private Pleasures Read online

  "Oh, no, " I told her, "nothing like that. As a matter of fact, I was engaged once. The date hadn't yet been set, but I was looking forward to marriage. Lucy was a marvelous woman. She was beautiful and she had a great sense of humor. I was happy with the idea of spending the rest of my life with her. She knew all my moods, and I don't think we ever had a serious disagreement.

  Then one day she was driving home from work and some drunken asshole in a pickup plowed into her car. That was the end of Lucy and the end of my dream of marriage."

  "Oh, Chas," Cherry said softly, "I'm so sorry. What a shocking thing to happen."

  What was really shocking was that the whole story was bullshit. There was never any Lucy. I was never engaged to be married. I just made up the whole thing on the spur of the moment. Don't ask me why. And Dr.

  Noble believed me because she later referred to it a few times. I think that's what helped me finally decide to try my hand at writing children's books. I figured if I could con a professional like Cherry with an impromptu fantasy, I should be able to spin believable yarns for kids.

  And that's the way it worked out. I wasn't getting rich turning out kiddie shit-the illustrators made more money than I did-but my stuff sold well and didn't take long to write. It gave me a profession and kept me from crawling into a bottle of sour mash. That's what happened to my father. He died a lush from cirrhosis. Herman and I were both heavy drinkers, but neither of us was an alky. Not yet at least.

  Now here's the cream of the jest, After writing children's books for a couple of years, my stories began to Seem more real to me, truer, than my own life and the world around me. I started out scamming Dr. Noble with my Lucy fiction and succeeded in swindling myself. How's that for an ending?

  I stopped racing around the studio in my wheelchair and pulled up in front of my word processor. I switched it on and retrieved the few pages of a new book I had started. It seemed flat and lifeless, and I erased everything. Then I sat back and tried to dream up a fresh approach. But I couldn't concentrate.

  All I could think of was Cherry Noble in her short pink dress.

  Once I asked her, "Why aren't you married?"

  "I was," she said. "I'm divorced."

  "Oh?" I said. "What happened?"

  "It just didn't work out."

  "Was he a shrink, too?"

  "Yes," she said.

  I didn't want to pry further. "Well, you don't act like a divorced woman," I told her.

  She was amused. "How does a divorced woman act? " "You know," I said.

  "Eager."

  She considered that quite seriously. "I don't believe I'm eager, Chas," she said finally. "If you mean eager to marry again. It really doesn't seem all that important to me. Perhaps one day it will, but not now."

  "So there's nothing doing in the romance department?

  She smiled. "I didn't say that."

  Recalling that conversation gave me an idea for my new book.

  My New York editor had loved The Adventures of Tommy Termite.

  She had written, "You've made Tommy so real! How about a sequel?"

  Now it occurred to me that I could do something with The Romance of Tommy Termite. I could create a girl termite called, say, Lucy. Tommy could be injured-maybe a shingle he's been gnawing falls on him or something like that. And Lucy comes along and nurses him back to health.

  I liked it, a real "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl" story. I'd have to work out the details, but I thought the basic idea was a winner. There would be misunderstandings, of course, perhaps even arguments, but eventually Tommy and Lucy would get together and live happily ever after.

  But that finish, I realized, didn't have to be the end of Tommy Termite. He and Lucy could marry, have children, and future books could be about the termite family, their tribulations and victories. I began to see it as a Termite Saga that went on for generations.

  "No children?" I had once asked Cherry Noble.

  "No," she said stiffly. "Not yet."

  "You have time," I assured her.

  She looked at me strangely. "Do I?" she said.

  It was a wasted weekend, Gertrude insisted on visiting her dull family in West Palm Beach. Those people are antiques, and all they talk about are friends who fell and broke their hips and how slow Medicare payments are. It was enough to drive a man to drink which it did.

  But the new week brought a lovely spring morning. After I made a few phone calls and dictated a few letters, I went outside to the private practice putting green I had installed behind the laboratory. I spent an hour there and didn't do too badly. I sunk one 18-footer that was a lulu.

  I went back inside, and Mrs. Collins told me Gregory Barrow had asked if he could see me for a few minutes.

  I glanced at my watch. "Tell Barrow to come up now," I said.

  "If he stays more than ten minutes, you barge in and remind me of some appointment I'm supposed to have."

  "Yes, Mr. McWhortle," she said.

  I settled down behind my desk and lighted my first cigar.

  The company doctor wants to limit me to two a day, and I rarely smoke more than four.

  Barrow came in, and I knew immediately he had a problem.

  The man is a world-class chemist but a real worrywart. He gets these two vertical lines between his eyebrows, and that means something is bothering him.

  "Mr. McWhortle," he started, "it's about this ZAP project for the government."

  "I'm glad you reminded me, Greg," I said. "I had a phone call from Colonel Knacker. He said from now on ZAP should not be called a diet additive but always referred to as a diet enrichment."

  "Yes, sir," Greg said, "but what I wanted to speak to you about were the moral and ethical implications of the project.

  I've been doing a lot of thinking about it, and it seems to me we're treading on dangerous ground here."

  "How so.

  "First of all, Colonel Knacker never explicitly stated that the combat soldiers will be told they're receiving a drug to make them more aggressive. I think informed consent is absolutely necessary if the government wants to avoid a scandal if ZAP becomes a matter of public knowledge."

  "I see what you mean, I said, "and you're probably right. I think the best solution would be to announce the existence of ZAP, if it proves successful. Then put on a big public relations campaign to sell it to the enlisted men and women and to the American people as a harmless diet enrichment that will give our soldiers an edge in combat."

  I could see he was not totally convinced.

  "No one is going to be fed a drug without his or her knowledge, Greg,"

  I said softly. "I'd never allow that to happen.

  But, believe me, when soldiers are told about the aggressive spirit ZAP will give them, they'll be happy to gulp it down because it will increase their chances of survival."

  "I guess you're right, Mr. McWhortle," he said finally.

  "Was that all you wanted to talk about?" I asked him, knowing it wasn't.

  "One other thing," he said. "If soldiers are fed testosterone before going into battle, isn't there a danger that in addition to attacking the enemy they may also turn to slaughter, mutilation, rape, and other excessive forms of violent behavior?"

  "Why, Greg," I said gently, "that depends on the strength of the dosage, does it not? And that's your job. The product you develop must be strong enough to achieve the result we want but not so powerful that it results in those horrendous acts of savage brutality you mentioned. If I didn't think you could do it, I wouldn't have handed you the assignment. You're the best chemist in the house, Greg. I know that, and I'm depending on you."

  "Yes, sir," he said, standing. "Thank you, Mr. McWhortle."

  Those worry lines were gone from his face. He was such an innocent.

  "And remember, I cautioned him, "absolute secrecy is a must. Not a word of this to anyone."

  The moment he was out of the office, I looked at my watch again and picked up my private phone.

&
nbsp; The line doesn't go through our switchboard. I called Jessica Fiddler.

  She picked up on the second ring.

  "Hello, Jess honey," I said. "It's Mac. Got time for me?"

  "Oh, daddy," she said huskily, "I was hoping you'd call.

  I'm out at the pool in my new bikini. Bright red! You'll love it.

  Can you come over now?"

  "On my way," I said, and hung up.

  "Got a golf date, Mrs. Collins," I told my secretary. "If anything important comes up, you can leave a message at the club."

  "Yes, Mr. McWhortle," she said.

  Life can be beautiful.

  I had bought the house for Jessica. It was in her name, the best investment I ever made. it wasn't a mansion, but it was a comfortable two-bedroom ranch with a patio and pool that faced south. Jess kept the fridge filled with my favorite snacks and the wet bar supplied with potions I preferred. Jess was twenty-one, looked sixteen, and was on the McWhortle Laboratory payroll as a consultant. I consulted her frequently.

  I sat on the patio in the shade, sipping a Michelob Dark, while Jessica lolled in a chaise in the sunlight, her top off.

  Her body was the stuff of dreams. She had an apricot suntan, and she just gleamed. I loved everything about her. And if I was three times as old as she, so what?

  "Have you been working hard?" she asked lazily.

  "Too hard," I said. "But I've got to make a lot of money.

  Baby needs new shoes."

  "You better believe it," she said, laughing. "What are you working on now?"

  I enjoyed discussing business with Jessica. My wife couldn't care less. Gertrude wants to talk about her garden and when are we going to buy a summer place in North Carolina. But Jess was really interested in the work being done at the lab. I had warned her never to repeat what I told her, and I figured she was smart enough to know that her income depended on her discretion.

  "We landed a big government research contract," I told her, and explained how we hoped to develop a testosterone pill that would increase a soldier's aggressiveness.

  She listened, fascinated. "You think it will really work?

  "It may or it may not. But we get paid either way so how can we lose?"

  She rose and came over to stand close to me. I put an arm about her and leaned close to kiss her flat stomach. She ran a palm over my bald head.

  "Well, if that ZAP pill works," she said, "I don't want you trying it.

  You're powerful enough for me just the way you are."

  "Let's go inside," I said.

  I was a deca-millionaire, I lived in a nineteen-room beachfront home, I drove a white Mercedes-Benz 560SEL, but nothing I owned gave me as much pleasure as Jessica Fiddler.

  Holding that young, springy body in my arms made me young again, I could forget my hairless scalp, dentures, a ticker that keeps acting up. Making love to Jess was turning back the clock, to a time when I thought I'd live forever.

  I liked to think I gave her something, too. I don't mean just the house, the salary, the gifts. I mean understanding companionship, a real interest in her health, her feelings, her hurts and her dreams. I also liked to think she enjoyed my lovemaking. She continually said she did and if actions speak louder than words, she was telling the truth, she would do anything I asked her to do.

  If you want to believe it was more obsession than love on my part, you may be right. But love is an obsession, is it not? All I knew was that if I could no longer hold that tight, fervid body in my arms, feel it, kiss it, I would suddenly become an old man. uddle seemed to me a cornball name for a new C perfume, but the client pays the piper and calls the tune. So when I saw that article, "The Cuddle Hormone, " naturally I was interested and read it again on Monday morning to make certain I fully understood what the author was writing about.

  Briefly, his subject was oxytocin, a hormone secreted by the pituitary gland, which stimulates uterine contractions during childbirth. It has been synthesized and for years women in labor have been given the synthetic form to ease pains and speed up birth.

  But recent research indicated a more important role for oxytocin. It was found that it aided sexual arousal and, after intercourse, contributed to a feeling of satisfied relaxation.

  More curiously, in animal tests it seemed to result in increased affection, including stroking, grooming, and nuzzling.

  Although for a long time oxytocin was studied for its physiological effects on women, it had now been discovered that heightened levels of the hormone were present in a man's blood during copulation and ejaculation. In fact, experiments were underway to see if added doses of oxytocin might help impotent men.

  But it was the hormone's ability to foster feelings of pleasure and satisfaction that interested me, especially after I read that an aerosolized form of synthetic oxytocin had been developed. It seemed possible that such a spray might be used in a dilute amount in the new perfume.

  If it succeeded, the hormone-enhanced fragrance would give women who wore it a desire for close affection and warm intimacy, and would arouse the same feelings in men who sniffed the scent.

  The effects of oxytocin on human behavior mentioned in the article seemed to indicate "love" rather than ilpassion"-exactly what the proposal from Darcy amp; Sons had stated was to be the leitmotiv of Cuddle.

  Mulling all this, I wandered to my office window, looked down and saw morning sunlight glinting off the bald pate of Mr. McWhortle. He was practicing on his putting green, and even as I watched, he missed a shot that couldn't have been more than six inches. I laughed and went back to my desk. I wrote out a requisition to the supply department asking them to obtain what I estimated would be an ample supply of the aerosolized form of synthetic oxytocin.

  It was quite possible, of course, that the addition of a hormone would have no effect whatsoever on the new perfume. So I spent the remainder of the morning jotting down several combinations of conventional scents I thought might serve for Cuddle if oxytocin proved a failure.

  I like to lunch early in the employees' cafeteria, and so does Greg.

  We usually sit together at a table in a far corner, where we are away from the crush and have a small measure of privacy.

  Greg was already seated when I filled my tray. We had both selected the same items, chef's salad, iced tea, key lime pie.

  He helped me unload my tray and gave me one of his buttered rolls because I had neglected to pick up my own at the serving counter.

  "I don't know how I could have forgotten," I said.

  "Probably too much on your mind," he said. "How is the new perfume coming along?"

  "Slowly," I said. "And your project?"

  "Even more slowly," he said, and we both smiled. Greg is notorious for his meticulous research. Then, not looking at me, he asked in a low voice, "And how are things at home?"

  I hesitated a long moment before I replied. "Greg, I'm going to tell you something, and I know you won't repeat it to anyone.

  I'm thinking seriously of divorce.

  Then he looked at me but said nothing.

  "I want to avoid it," I said. "Because of Tania. But now I wonder which is worse for her, being a child of divorced parents or living in a home where all she sees and feels is coldness between Herman and me.

  It's such an unhappy situation for her."

  "Marriage counselor?" he suggested quietly.

  I shook my head. "I mentioned it, and Herman became absolutely livid.

  He refuses to discuss it. I think he's deliberately trying to make my life so miserable that I'll walk out on him. Then he'll be the aggrieved party, and if there's a divorce, he'll hold all the cards."

  "Oh, Marleen," Greg said sorrowfully. He glanced around.

  The cafeteria was filling up. "Let's talk more about it on the drive home. This isn't the place."

  I nodded, and we finished our lunch without saying anything more.

  I went back to my office wondering if I had done the right thing to confide in Greg. But then I realized
I had no other option. My parents are deceased, I'm an only child, and I have no close women friends. I had to talk to someone, and Greg is a thoughtful, serious man. And I knew he'd be understanding, his married life is as wretched as mine.

  The ride home that I was driving that week, and on t g Greg and I resumed our luncheon discussion. evenin I recited the whole sad litany about Herman's heavy drinking, his constant philandering.

  "I thought he was a diamond in the rough when I married him," I said ruefully. "He turned out to be a zircon in the rough, and he's getting progressively worse.

  "You've spoken to him about how you feel?"

  "Many, many times. All he does is laugh and then give his awful imitation of John Wayne, A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do." But what am I going to do, Greg? " "It's such a perHe was silent a long time. Then, sonal decision, Marleen, and so difficult that I hesitate to offer advice."

  "You're not offering," I said, "I'm asking. I value your opinion.

  What do you think?"

  "It seems to me," he said carefully, "that if you find your situation completely unendurable, then you must take steps to change it."

  "That means divorce, " I said determinedly. "There's no other way.

  "Would you consider a trial separation?"

  "For what purpose?" I demanded. "He's not going to change."

  "Perhaps he might. After he's been away from you awhile and misses you and Tania."

  "Never!" I said. "Herman is a self-centered oaf who thinks only of his own pleasures, which, in his case, mean whiskey and women. I blame myself. Marrying him was the worst mistake I've ever made in my life.

  I just didn't recognize him for the lout he is. Greg moved uncomfortably in the passenger seat, and I realized my confession was embarrassing him.

  "I'm sorry to dump all this on you, Greg," I said, "but you're really the only one I can talk to."

  "I wish I could suggest some solution," he said despairingly.

  "But I'm no good at personal relations. Human behavior just mystifies me. I suppose that's why I turned to science."