Teasing 


Three


Meanwhile, the whole time, workmen were coming and going during the
day.  The addition to our house had been under construction and was
now just about done.  Tara's office-to-be.  It had gotten more
grandiose than she'd originally planned, because she'd developed
some new prospects for clients and wanted to be prepared to deal
with them.  The final plans called for a separate entrance toward
the rear, a reception area, and two suites of offices -- one for
her and one to be used by different clients' representatives as
needed, with several rooms in each.  There was another large room
on the second floor, accessed only from her office.  Each floor had
its own powder room, a toilet and sink. I asked Tara why the second
floor room had its own, and she didn't hesitate.

"Why, honey, that's where I'll persuade certain favored clients to
enjoy the advantages of working with me," she said in a low, slow
voice, eying me the whole time.  "So I can show them everything I'm
willing to do for them, all in complete privacy.  All my special
tricks and secrets, and maybe I'll find out some of theirs.  The
same way I now know yours.  Then when we're done, they'll need to
wash up before going back down to my office to sign contracts and
then home to their wives."  

That was more than I wanted to hear.  More agony!  Later I heard
that the upstairs powder room was only an afterthought, the gift of
a plumbing contractor grateful for all the work she'd given him
around the city.  And I overheard talk about shelving and display
cases and so forth she wanted installed in that upper room -- it
was after all only a showroom for different kinds of office and
shop arrangements.  So when she ordered a double overstuffed sofa
for that upper room and told me it was a "persuader," I didn't
worry a whole lot.  She was just playing with me, messing my mind. 


I hoped.

I'd gotten accustomed to seeing workmen tramping around to the rear
of the house, contractors talking to them, the sounds of concrete
mixers grinding and pneumatic hammers banging.  But except for the
noise their work never entered our house -- they planned to break
through to connect up the spaces and hook up the plumbing and
electricity only when the addition was completed.  So I wasn't much
put out.  My own work was going into seasonal hiatus anyhow -- I
didn't have a lot to do.  I had annual retainers, more than I
wanted, so I wasn't worried.  I read and watched TV, and the
workmen and their dirt and noises all did whatever they needed to
do.  The new addition grew and neared completion.  Looked finished
to me, though some details still needed attending.  Office
furniture for it began to arrive.

Then our lives took a new turn.

We were just finishing dinner, a spicy carry-in from a new French
restaurant near us, delicious, when I realized there'd been a long
silence, that neither of us had spoken for a while.  I looked up  
spaces that need radical alteration.  

"What?" I said.

"Astrid's office is closed," she replied.  "We're renovating her
whole suite this week and next.  Her staff is on vacation until
their new work space is ready."

Astrid had been Tara's first client, an old college sorority sister
who'd started "Women's World," a successful business advisory and
accounting firm for women like Tara who wanted to work at home. 
She was unmarried, maybe a latent lesbian but I never asked, and a
good friend who occasionally offered even me excellent advice about
office procedures.  

"You finally talked her into it," I replied.  "So?"

"Well, there's a problem."

I waited.  There are always problems in Tara's line of work, and
she always solves them.

"Astrid's conference room is where I've been seeing my out-of-town
clients, people without their own local offices.  That's where I
invite new prospects to hear my introductory pitch, so I can
convince them they should show me the actual space they mean to
lease, so they can hear what I'll propose for it."

"And?"

"I've got a prospect coming in from out of town tomorrow and I've
no place to talk to him.  Very big."  She hesitated, then went on. 
"All right, this is confidential, Patrick.  Listen and don't say a
word.  Castro Enterprises, the giant conglomerate, they're moving
their entire east coast regional office here.  A huge commission if
I can get it, work for months and months!  Six floors of offices in
that new highrise downtown.  And the prospects are even bigger. 
Castro intends to open branch offices in nearby cities, all of them
with the same trademark decor.  I want to design that decor, and I
want all of that business.  And I'm close to getting them to sign
-- it'll take only one more meeting."

I waited.

"I could ask Givens Associates to let me use their office, down the
hall from Astrid, but then Bob Givens would come on to me for
payment.  He'd expect payment.  You know what he's like.  So I'd
rather not.  You understand." 

I did.  Bob Givens was compulsively horny.  He came on to every
woman he encountered, flattering the older ones with his
flirtations and actually bedding down many of the younger, single
or married, sometimes several in a single night.  He was immune to
the word "No!," and given his charm lots of women couldn't remember
the word anyhow when they were with him.  Single women chatted
cheerfully with each other afterward, comparing their experiences,
and married women maintained stony silences for the sake of their
marriages, torn whether to keep their husbands or now that they
knew better, try for something better.  Apparently he was great in
bed.  

"He hasn't come on to you already?" I asked.  "I hear often enough
that he's God's gift!"  I thought she was teasing me again, warming
me up for another night of just-the-two-of-us infidelities.  So I
provided her an opening.

"Of course he has.  If I ever want to, whenever I want to, I can
wear him out," Tara replied perfunctorily, dismissing my gambit
with a faint smile.  A provocative answer, like so much of her talk
these days, but her heart wasn't in it.  She was genuinely
troubled.

I leaned forward.  "Honey, if you need a place to talk with a
client, bring him here.  You've done that sometimes.  The new
office area isn't quite ready, but people will be coming here in a
few days anyhow.  So use our living room.  If you need complete
privacy I'll go upstairs, or maybe out to a movie."

She didn't pick up on that either.  This really was serious.  "No,
you're sweet to offer, but it's too late for that."

"Too late?"

She shifted uneasily, then she too leaned forward and clasped her
hands in front of her in her decisive 'getting ready to close the
deal' mode.  "The CEO, the man who makes these decisions for
Castro, Bill Bartram, he's very ... aggressive, decisive, one of
those yes, no, then do it kinds of men -- you know them.  Hard to
turn down or turn away.  Can't tolerate working with people who
aren't the same way, who can't make crisp arrangements, who
waffle."

An odd feeling began to grow inside me.

"I've met with him at conventions and on his previous trips here,
and we've talked for long stretches by phone, and I've sent him
sketches, and things have moved faster than I expected.  He's
coming into town tomorrow and he wants to make commitments.  I
think he means to sign with me.  He's asked for a conference and he
asked where we could meet, and I'm afraid I lost the initiative, 
I couldn't tell him right away where, I hadn't lined up a
substitute for Astrid's place.  So he took charge and told me
where.  And that's where we'll meet."  

Here it comes, I thought.  "Where?"

"Honey, whatever you like to fantasize, I never go to men's hotel
rooms.  I know I'm attractive to men!  A hotel room with me in it
would be an aphrodisiac for any high-powered male.  If they were to
get me into one and it was just the two of us and a bed, there'd
always be just one big thing on their minds, and in their pants too
I'm sure.  They'd insist on certain perquisites for signing with
me, and I'd have to refuse them, and then I'd lose their business. 
It's happened more than once already."

I wasn't sure if this was one more elaborate tease.  She never goes
to men's hotel rooms?  "You agreed to go to this man's hotel room?" 


"Not at first.  We'll meet for a drink, then I'll go up with him. 
It's a newly decorated suite, apparently, in the same signature
decor he wants for Castro's offices, a modern variation of French
Provincial.  My estimates are based on that style, but there are a
few more details and options I need to point out.  So yes, I
agreed.  I told him his hotel room would be convenient, given what
I need to do to satisfy him."

"I see." I paused and waited.  There was more she had to tell me,
but she wasn't saying, yet.  "And?"

"Honey, could I refuse?  I certainly wouldn't want him to think I'm
the least bit bothered by ... personal inhibitions.  That wouldn't
be businesslike."  Her face remained solemn.

This was my old wife!  Never goes to hotel rooms.  Proper,
virtuous, always ready to tease me, it was our little game.  But
now seriously worried.

"No fear," I said soothingly.  "It's all probably very innocent. 
"What is he, a paunchy sixty year old widower with five children
and ten grandchildren?"

She smiled at my attempt to console her.  "No, he's in his late
thirties, a hard-driving hunk who's been on the cover of "Career
Girl" as their Catch of the Year.  Women fall all over themselves
to get in his way, and I hear he leaves most of them lying there
smiling and breathing heavily.  Most of them.  He's quite
handsome."  She grinned, but with an edge of uncertainty.

I heard this in silence.  That old stirring in my loins was rising,
this time not at all welcome.  Here was a real threat, apparently. 
Did it mean that this time Tara would actually be going the
distance?  Was she asking my permission in advance?  Was that what
this was about?  Or did she want me somehow to help her resist him?

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.  Then realizing that I
sounded annoyed, curt, and also realizing that I didn't want to
know one possible answer, I deflected the question by asking
another.  "How can I help?"  Then waited.        

She continued to stare at me, her hands folded,  Her face was now
inexpressive, but her thin, arched eyebrows were drawn together,
troubled, anxious.  My heart began to go out to her.

"It's asking a lot," she said mournfully.

What was she saying?  My anxiety was laced with a rising anger. 
Was this it, finally?  Did she want my permission to let him bed
her down?  To fuck Mr. Catch-of-the-Year?  To promise that
afterward I'd never hold her guilty of betraying me?  To forgive
and forget in advance?  She wanted a free pass to get her cunt
lubed by a major stud?  

That would move our little game from play-acting -- if that was
what it was, and I didn't know it wasn't -- into an undeniable
reality!  It would change everything.  I'd finally be a genuine
cuckold, knowingly and with my own full consent.  And she'd know
it.  She'd always know it!  Just as she'd always pretended to know
it about me, but this time for real!  And I'd always know she knew,
every time she looked at me.  Could I endure it, playing the meek
cuckold in fact as well as fantasy?  Would that open the door to
others, would our private fantasy about her endless infidelities
became a fact of our lives?  My stomach sank!  I just stared at
her, my mouth open in shock!    

"My God!" came out of my mouth.

Her eyebrows shot up, and she straightened up in sudden surprise. 
"Oh,no, honey!" she said, as if herself shocked.  "I'm not asking
your permission to go to bed with him!  Never!  I wouldn't ever
want you to know if there's another man, not until you want to
know!  You're my one true love, and I want you to be happy always! 
That's why I want you to stay deliciously, wickedly uncertain!   I
mean, you'd like to think you're the only person you've ever tasted
in me, wouldn't you?  But you don't really know it, do you?"

She was teasing me again!  Even though this time there was a real
threat to deal with!  She certainly could read me like an open book
-- I was altogether transparent to her.  

"No," she continued, "I'm not asking your permission to fuck this
man.  If I meant to, I'd just do it, and decide later what you
needed to know if anything, what's best for you.  Or better, I'd
let you decide whether you should know.  The way we've been doing. 
Let you break down and finally ask me when you can't stand not
knowing any more.  Breach your trust in me.  In that way to free me
to fuck any man I want and then tell you anything you wanted to
know, true or not.  That's the fairest way."

"Then what?  Why are you telling me this?"  I felt drained,
exposed.  Once again, my imagination had betrayed me!

"Because I need you, honey!"  Her solemn face with its huge eyes
stared across the table at me.  I melted.  She saw, and looked
grateful, then pixieish.  Her voice became almost sing-song.  
"Maybe you'll think what I want you to do is just as bad!  Just as
humiliating.  Just as threatening to your manhood.  Maybe even more
threatening.  I don't think it needs to be, really.  I think you
can handle it, even thrive on it the way you thrive on my supposed
affairs with other men.  But many men can't, and you might be one
of them!"

I was baffled, and just stared at her the way she'd been staring at
me, steadily, trying to read her mind.  I gave up.

"What is it you want, then, Tara?" I asked quietly.  I felt a
little tense.

"The honor of your presence, honey.  Just come with me when I meet
with him this last time before we sign."

I suddenly went slack, the wind gone from my sails.  This was
nothing!  "That's all?  Why, sure, honey!"

"No, wait.  Listen.  Just listen.  I need for you to be there with
me so he won't try anything.  So he'll put off any extracurricular
plans for another time.  The way he comes on by phone and when
we've met out-of-town, I don't think there's any doubt at all what
he'll want from me when we're alone up there in his bedroom. 

"Then no problem!" I said as casually as I could. "Of course I'll
come with you!"

"No, you still don't understand, baby," she said.  There was still
uncertainty in her voice.  "It isn't as easy as that.  Or it won't
be.  Not for you!  I don't think so, anyway."

"Why not?"  I was baffled again.

"You can't come as my husband!"

I didn't have to ask 'Why not?' a second time.  I just stared at
her.  She went on.

"Honey, how can I negotiate hundreds of thousands of dollars of
costs with my husband sitting next to me?  How would that look?  As
if I were some dependent, indecisive woman who needs a man's
assistance to help me make up my mind.  As if I needed a crutch! 
Or worse, a chaperone."

That was true enough.  Though that's what she wanted me for.  A
chaperone.

"He'd think we were partners, and if he talked to both of us, when
we started negotiating he'd get the wrong signals from you.  More
than likely he'd start talking to you instead of to me, you know
that's what men do from habit, talk to whoever's wearing the pants! 
Because that's the usual scenario -- men make the deals and
decisions and women take notes and then type them up.  It happens
a lot.  Sometimes it takes time before I can even set up a straight
eye-to-eye relationship with my clients, because I'm a woman and
they don't expect me to be serious!  I always need to let them know
right away that I'm in charge.  No one else."

Also true.  But an idea occurred to me.  "Then call me your
secretary, not your husband.  I'll sit still and take notes for
you.  Or something." 

"That's just what I want you to do," she replied.  "Pretend you're
my secretary."  But her brow remained furrowed.  Apparently that
wasn't the end of it.

"So?"

"Honey, just listen.  Hear me out, because what I'm about to say
may sound like something you don't want to hear, or maybe you won't
mind, because I've been teasing you about your sexuality for quite
a while now, and I know it excites you.  But this time I mean it to
be real.  And reality's a different place from imagination.  A lot
more unpredictable and long-lasting.  But just maybe you won't mind
anyhow."

She was staring straight at me.  Solemnly.  I waited.

"Any other man in that room would cramp his style, because it would
cramp my style!  I do intend to make certain moves on him, subtly
suggestive, tempting.  You know?  This shouldn't surprise you, you
know how I love to flirt, and you certainly know how I've been
working you over.  You know how I can be!  Baby doll, I want to
actually invite him to come on to me, ever so slightly!  Not that
he won't anyway, but I want him to hope I'll give him more than he
expects.  I want him to anticipate all sorts of wonderful things I
can do for him.  I can certainly give him smart interior design and
a functionally intelligent workplace layout, and quickly, too.  But
I want to keep him unsure how much additional I might also give
him, and then keep him just that way.  There are all those branch
office contracts down the pike, remember.  I want those contracts
too."

She looked self-assured now, almost matter-of-fact.  As if
explaining her methods to a partner or a colleague.  This was a
disturbing confession, even though she hadn't yet confessed to
anything.  "You've done this before?" I asked, uncertain how to
respond.  "You habitually ... offer yourself to your clients?  Or
seem to?"

"Of course.  How do you think I got my first contracts, a woman
with no track record?  Some of my appeal has always been me.  Sex
appeal always enters in.  You know the first rule of salesmanship,
sell yourself.  Some of these hard-driving men can't tell the
difference between a deal and a screwing, and you can always hook
them into one by seeming to promise the other.  Ideally I try to
entice new clients by reversing the pitch, trying to get them to
please me, to win me over by accepting all my suggestions and
offering me the most favorable terms available.  That's how it
works!"

I heard the words "sex appeal" and "entice" and realized that my
earlier fears weren't altogether unfounded.  She walked a narrow
line.  How close to the edge did she get?  Did she ever tumble
over?  Did she ever need to deliver on those implied promises?  Was
she teasing me again here?  She seemed to be speaking with great
earnestness.  This was serious, I had to put all thought of teasing
out of my mind.  I did.  But I still didn't know what she wanted me
to do!

"Do you deliver on what you promise?"  It was a bare question, and
I dreaded to hear the answer.

"I give them gracious and functional office space, yes, certainly. 
They never regret hiring me."  

No answer I could cleave to hopefully, nor despairingly.

Tara wasn't done.  "Whenever I take on a project I'm in complete
charge, and the men I deal with like it that way.  But think about
it, Patrick.  If I show up with a male secretary in tow, some
subordinate who takes orders from me, they might get uneasy.  They
might worry that they're next.  That I'm a dominatrix of some kind. 
They might feel their manhood threatened.  It's a small point, but
impressions like that can weigh heavily sometimes."

I nodded.  I could see that, I suppose.  

"Or they might think of you as competition. Someone I already sleep
with.  You're cute-looking, you know that?  A real doll!  That's
one reason why I married you, and why no matter what that's why I
always come back to you and sleep with you."  She smiled sweetly at
me.

Not altogether reassuring, that.  But I was glad to hear it, and I
smiled back.

She went on.  "I know, there're lots of male secretaries out there
in the world and they do good work, and there's no reason I
shouldn't have one.  But they're still an oddity.  In a one on one
situation like this a male secretary would be way too distracting. 
When did you last see one -- I bet you can remember, can't you? 
And have you ever seen a male receptionist?  Men are cute, but they
aren't decorative enough." 

I had to agree.  "So you want to take a woman with you to be
decorative and to divide his attention.  To stand for female
propriety doubled.  It's just as well.  Another woman in the room
would also lower the temperature if your ... sex appeal got too
appealing."

"That's right!" she said.  "Whereas another man in the room might
even encourage him to show off, to come on to me all the stronger. 
You guys can get so terribly competitive!"   And she said nothing
more.  She just looked at me steadily, as if waiting for something
else to sink in. 

Did I see where this was going?  I thought I could, dimly.  "So you
don't want me to come with you after all," I said slowly.  No, that
wasn't it.  What else?  No, that wasn't thinkable!  I grasped at a
straw.  "Why not hire a temp?" I said as casually as I could.  

"We'll be talking lots of confidential plans and figures," she
replied without letting her eyes waver off me.  "I need someone
with me I can trust absolutely.  He'll need to sense that.  The
whole Castro Enterprise move is utterly confidential, and a
premature rumor could keep it from ever happening.  Temps always
talk, and the competition always listens.  In fact the competition
has been known to hire my temps after I use them and pay them to
talk.  I've done that myself now and then with theirs, too."

"How about a trusted friend?  Astrid, maybe?"

"Out of town.  And it's tomorrow, this meeting."  She continued to
stare at me quietly.  As if I were a bug wriggling on the end of a
stick.

"I see."  

"Yes, I think you do," she replied.

I said nothing.

"So, sweetie, that's why I need you.  That's why you'll help me
out," she said with a slight smile.  It was a statement, not a
question.

Was there an alternative?  This was worse than cuckoldry by
consent.  It was voluntary emasculation.  And not just in
imagination.

"You're who I want with me, honey," she added quietly.  "You're
perfect for it."

I sat very still.  Was this something any husband would do for his
wife?