At precisely six o'clock there comes a knock at the door. Frank McSweeney stands in the hallway, a bit disheveled, out of breath, his shirt damp with sweat, clinging to his muscular arms and back. He holds the essay out to her.
"Please," she says, "come inside. You look parched. Would you like something to drink? Tea perhaps?"
Her voice trembles when she asks the question. She doesn't want to know how ridiculous she looks right now and is careful to avoid pausing in front of the mirror. In the top desk drawer she finds two dirty mugs and the bottle, all a prelude to the ritual dance men and women have been performing throughout the ages. Only the gun is new to this otherwise ancient rite. Not that she needs it, of course, but these days one can never be too sure. She strokes the handle and closes the drawer before he can see it.
The boy comes into the office, a bit reluctantly, and stands near her desk. He fidgets with his hands, doesn't seem to know what to do with them.
She pours the tea and says, "The great books tell us that intoxicants are beneficial to the soul. They have transformative powers. Nectar of the gods, manna from heaven, nepenthe, opium. Indian tribes once lived in this valley, a forlorn place now. They brewed a tea made from a plant whose scientific name is Pedicularis densiflora. It's not actually a plant at all but a parasite that attaches to the roots of other plants. The Indians claimed it had magical properties and could turn men into birds and coyotes."
"Really? That's kind of cool."
She pushes a mug across the desk toward him. He lifts it to his noise, sniffs.
"During our hikes in the valley, my late husband and I occasionally came across a few specimens growing at the river's edge. We made batches of the tea. It's absolutely sublime. Excellent for one's strength and performance."
He seems skeptical, and she watches him to make sure he swallows it all down, a good little boy taking his medicine.
"My husband was a botanist by training, a college professor by necessity. He taught chemistry for fifteen years. A brilliant man. Misunderstood maybe. The students never cared much for him. Most had their eye on the professor's wife, I think." She laughs.
The boy glances at the clock on her desk. "I better go. There's this party tonight..."
"Oh, then we better drink quickly. I have a party to attend as well. It's Halloween, isn't it? I nearly forgot."
After only one cup, the boy's pupils are big and bright, like two shiny black marbles wobbling around an empty concrete bowl. She pours another cup. This time he gulps it down, and Batya is startled by his rapid transformation. Suddenly the boy won't shut up. He relaxes, leans against her desk, tells her all about his cowardly father who has no ambitions of his own and his overprotective mother who is oblivious to the fact that he wants to do something truly unique with his life. "She thinks I'm a dumb jock. But I'd like to be a writer one day. Maybe I can study journalism, become a sports columnist, give people an athlete's perspective of the game."
Batya pretends to listen with interest, shakes her head with concern. This is the part of the charade she hates most, playing shrink to these misfits who vomit up all of their inconsequential problems and yearn for someone to dissect their souls with the precision of a pathologist, unraveling the tangled threads of character and conflict, one from the other until their lives are nothing more than a heap of nonsense piled on the floor at her feet, words without greater context, bled of their significance. At moments like this Batya truly misses the tactics of a more experienced man—dirty movies flickering on the television screen, lubes, gels, battery-operated toys. Cheap and tawdry, that's how she likes it. Dirty. Vile even. Crudeness turns her on; it always has. Of late the men she has been involved with are excruciatingly polite, overly cautious, terrified of life. The Jesuits have yet to hire a fallen theologian or a mad scientist who yearns to conduct radical and lascivious experiments on a middle-aged female subject.
She's running out of patience. The boy is just standing there, blabbering on and on about nothing at all, another amateur to intimacy unwilling to make the first move. It isn't natural for an eighteen-year old boy to be so timid. But why should this surprise her? Most of these schoolboys are a little too tidy, too polished, their lips delicate, their hands soft and white. Despite their claims to be otherwise, she suspects they are not sexual absolutists. Even the most heterosexual man is capable of buggery, and she often wonders how many of these boys are closeted homosexuals.
Batya decides it's high time to take matters into her own hands. The tea has emboldened her, and once again she finds that she's willing to live with the consequences of her actions. Desperate for intimacy, she must either face the brutal emptiness of another lonely night or seek consolation in the unlikely companionship of her pupil. For her the choice is an easy one. She is no priest, and celibacy has never been an option.
She brushes up against the boy's legs. He doesn't flinch or stammer or turn his eyes away, and this she takes as a good sign. She touches him with her fingertips then begins to massage him through his pants. He presses up against her hand, another good sign, and lets her unbuckle his belt. She sits in the chair and pulls down his zipper.
"There's no work on your part," she assures him, "none whatsoever. Just relax. Relax and enjoy."
"What if someone catches us?"
"No one visits my office. Least of all the Jesuits. It's six flights up."
"I don't know."
"Trust me. Here. Let me help you with that."
"I'm not so sure about this."
"You want to pass my class, don't you..." She can barely hear herself speak the words, her heart is racing so fast now, doesn't really listen to his halting responses. "Wait. Let me take it out. That's no petseleh you have there, gunsel."
"Huh?"
"Nothing, nothing."
"This won't take long, will it?"
"That's all up to you."
She marvels at his size. Like a king cobra charmed from its basket with a few erotic licks on a flute. Initially, he is nervous, wooden, almost cadaverous. With the exception of the rigor mortis that sets in below his waist, the boy remains motionless, his hips frozen, his legs shackled by the pants around his ankles. Even his face has the look of mute absence.
"What the hell was that?" the boy whispers hoarsely.
But she is too consumed in her work to notice anything unusual. After arousing him, she opens her blouse and lets him have a look at those things the sculptors and painters and poets through the ages have either avoided or ignored altogether.
As the first beams of moonlight filter through the window the boy becomes suddenly aggressive. He hoists her effortlessly from the chair and pushes her onto the desktop with more force than she would like. Flashing a crazed grin and with a mouth ravenous and eager and almost dangerous with its snapping jaws and gnashing teeth, he lifts her skirt and starts tasting every inch of her, his wet tongue lapping at her navel and thighs. He turns her around, stretches her across the desk so that her legs are splayed. She shudders with gratitude and remorse, caught up in the thrill and pandemonium of his unrelenting punishment.
"Oh, hurt me!' she cries. "Hurt me!"
Regrettably, as they both near climax, he tarnishes things by calling out her first name. Despite the intimacy of these encounters she prefers to be addressed in a formal manner, and after he's finished and they both collapse glistening on the desk, she makes a point of correcting him on this matter in a voice that is at once stern and breathless.
