The Virgin by Thomas J. Hubschman
"Could you tell me," the talk-show host, a middle-age hippie
who made frequent reference to the sexual exploits of her
youth, asked cautiously, "what exactly you do--I mean,
within FCC regulations? On second thought, maybe you'd
better write me a letter."
But the revelation Margo or the pseudo-Margo had already made
was still echoing in the hollows of his mind, his razor
suspended motionless above a patch of unshaven cheek. "You
see," she had murmured in a register that caused the tile
walls of his tiny bathroom to vibrate, "I know how to get a
man, any man, to do whatever I want in bed."
He had heard that same voice, one moment up in the range of
Bohemian Mimi singing her tubercular little lungs out,
abruptly plunge into Mephistofeles' territory in order to
make a point at a staff meeting. And then finish up, just as
the voice on the radio had, with a throaty chuckle as if to
mock you for succumbing to her laryngitic legerdemain. But
never in the three years they had been working on the same
floor had he ever suspected there could be a side to her like
the one that had just been suggested by his Sony portable.
They worked in different departments and, apart from
meetings, only saw each other in the cafeteria or waiting for
the elevator. But of course that morning they managed to
bump into each other twice. The first time was in the narrow
corridor connecting the office's various subdivisions. There
was only time to offer a quick hello, but he did note, as he
would not have bothered to the day before, the dark print
dress she was wearing, barely open at the neck and extending
well below the knee. A tall woman--she towered over most
of her male account executives--she had a high nose, wide
green eyes and astringent mouth. Her long hair seemed
untameable whether she wore it shoulder-length or pinned up
as it was today.
The second encounter was more serious. Just after coffee
break he got a memo from the division chief calling a meeting
in his office at eleven o'clock. Charlie Busenberg was a
pussycat who tried to pretend he was a tiger. He fooled some
of his department heads, but the secretaries all saw through
him and did exactly as they pleased. He hated meetings more
than his staff did and was invariably late even for the ones
he called himself.
"'Morning," Margo said, laying a big coffee mug on the low
round table around which these gatherings were convened. The
steam from it called to mind elixirs that witches brewed to
turn men into beasts. Her long ringless fingers--she was a
widow, he recalled--seemed impervious to the heat. As she
raised the heavy cup to her mouth she asked, "How's tricks in
Marketing?"
He assumed the boiler-plate expression he put on for
prospective clients, the one that suggested they were both
too grown-up to take any of this money-talk seriously. "Win
some, lose some . . ."
". . . some get rained out. Any idea what Boozie wants?" she
said, opening a big cloth handbag that looked as if it should
contain knitting, or bones. She fished out a pack of king-
size cigarettes and inserted one in the corner of her mouth.
"Not a clue."
She exhaled absentmindedly, staring toward the big window
behind the division chief's desk--department heads had to
make do with glass cubicles. Her profile had a craggy,
fisherman's look. He wondered if her ancestors went down to
the sea in ships and if she got that expression from standing
on promontories trying to spot their returning crafts. But
then he remembered what he had heard on the radio that
morning and wondered if it was lust, not mackerel, she was
contemplating.
"This won't take long," Charlie said, entering his own office
as tentatively as if it were a woman's toilet. "Just more of
the usual B.S. from the twenty-third floor."
"That's what you always say," Margo replied, drawing hard on
her cigarette, "and we always end up having to call out for
sandwiches."
Charlie blushed, the wind already knocked out of his meager
sails. He plopped down into his big swivel chair, a flag of
white shirt hanging from his belt.
"What is it this time?" she persisted. "More sanitary
napkins in the WCs?"
"Slattery has a bug up his butt about our projections for the
fourth quarter."
"I had a cousin named Slattery. We called him the Kerry
Weasel."
One of the other department heads mercifully asked for
details about the discrepancy.
He tried to keep one eye on the sales projections and the
other on Margo as she crossed and re-crossed her long legs,
making faces at the columns of numbers on her lap. His own
ancestors were Mediterranean. If a French or Italian woman
wanted to get a man's attention, she did so in the obvious
ways. But what did he know of Celtic sensuality? The very
words seemed to cancel each other out. He tried to picture
her in bed with a man--say, Charlie Busenberg.
"Did I say something funny?" the boss said, trying to look
annoyed at his subordinate's amusement.
"Sorry."
But Margo was grinning at him conspiratorially. And then she
winked, a sudden expert gesture that made his ears feel hot.
After that when they met at the water cooler they exchanged
more than the usual pleasantries and even occasionally
stopped by each other's cubicle. But he sensed that her
interest was speculative, as if he were a zoological freak
that had somehow escaped her notice. He liked small, quiet
women whose shape was less angular than her own. But the
secret life she--if it was she--had revealed to thousands
of listeners over their morning cornflakes had peaked more
than his own scientific curiosity.
One afternoon when the phones unaccountably went dead, they
got into a conversation about movies. A love-triangle murder
mystery was all the rage and he was planning to see it that
night alone. As he watched her bite into the bloody center
of a jelly doughnut, it occurred to him that this might be
his opportunity. He decided to ask her to dinner as well.
They ate not far from where the movie was playing. It wasn't
his favorite restaurant, but he went there a lot because of
its proximity to the theater which he frequented at least
once a week. After a childless marriage that lasted scarcely
three years, he had discovered in himself an unexpected
talent for bachelorhood. His mother worried that she would
die without a grandchild, but he didn't feel in the least
troubled by that prospect.
"Is this where you take all your dates?" Margo asked when
they were halfway through a bottle of Chianti. Her question
seemed to imply that she herself was not a "date."
"'Don't go out much, actually," he said, forking in some
pasta prima vera.
She raised a thin but heavily penciled eyebrow, drawing
attention to her predatory nose and high cheekbones. One
corner of her mouth remained bent sardonically as she chewed
her scallopini. But even allowing for the mischievous appeal
of those big green eyes, he still could not see her as the
irresistible object of a man's lust, no matter how many
tricks she might know.
"Bit of a momma's boy, are we?"
"I'm not queer, if that's what you mean. I just don't feel
an overwhelming need for female companionship."
"Never been married?"
"Briefly. I wouldn't care to repeat the experience."
"So," she said, resting her chin on an arch of long pink
fingers and regarding him as if he were a kitten in a shop
window, "un mari manque. That's almost as bad as a spoiled
priest."
"I wouldn't know about that," he said, pretending to be
concerned with his spaghetti.
"I was married for a while. He died in an auto accident."
"I'm sorry."
"His own bloody fault. He drove professionally."
"A cabbie?"
"Racing cars. His hobby. Or perhaps I should say
'passion,'" she said, leaving out the "h" in the double-"s",
the same way she pronounced "issue." "But it did bring in
the odd quid. He fancied he could make a career of it--
they all do. He pretended he was only risking his neck until
we had enough put away for a thatched cottage in County
Down."
"He was Irish?"
"Italian."
He tried to see her oversize bones as the substructure of a
woman addicted to fast cars and hard-rutting men, her
monastic mouth habituated to God-knew what excesses of the
flesh. But the image of this new, fast-living Margo seemed
to make no more sense than did that of Margo-as-Sorceress,
calling radio talk shows to brag about her erotic witchery at
a time of day when most people were still too groggy to
distinguish one sex from the other. Could she, after all, be
a fraud? A pathological liar? Or was she just a lonely
woman with an over-stimulated imagination?
"We'll be late for the movie."
The film was a loosely connected set of scenes showing two
implausibly beautiful lovers embracing on black satin sheets,
in empty ballfields and in the hallways of office buildings
after hours. During a sequence in which the characters were
supposed to be coupling in a meat locker, he ventured a
sidelong glance at Margo. Her eyes were sparkling in the
reflected light of the images on the screen, her big nostrils
widening and contracting rhythmically, drawing in oxygen like
a bellows to feed the eager combustion of her lungs. Her
hand lay on the armrest between them, a perfect but inanimate
object that seemed oddly disconnected from the fiery
processes occurring in the rest of the organism. He dared
not touch that marbled appendage, but its white repose spoke
to a vital part of him, and those hard-flaring nostrils
caused him to feel the beginnings of something he hadn't
experienced since he was much younger, and then only when
unconscious.
Finally noticing his gaze, she smiled with difficulty.
"Steamy stuff, what?"
They became lovers that night. During the walk home from the
theater they seemed to retreat into the cordial but
impersonal facades they wore at work. Then suddenly they
were grappling with each other's unfamiliar anatomies,
pulling off their clothes with the abandon of the criminal
lovers in the film they had just seen.
He cried out several times and at his climax seemed to have
an out-of-body experience. Nothing in his prior love-making
had prepared him for this, with the possible exception of
those pubescent dreams. Of all the things that had gone
wrong with his marriage, he had never thought to include sex
high up on the list. But as he lay trying to catch his
breath, he felt as if until that moment he had been a virgin.
But Margo had seemed unmoved by their lovemaking. She did
experience something like an orgasm, a gradual tensing of her
muscles followed by a deep sigh and general relaxation of the
flesh. But it hardly compared with the cataclysm he had
felt. He recalled the woman who had called that talk show.
Did her pleasure consist solely in conquering the wills of
reluctant males? Was she some kind of psychic rapist,
herself incapable of the passion she inspired in others?
"Thinking deep thoughts, are we?" she said, drawing smoke
through her nose. He had given up smoking years ago, but the
aroma recalled the forbidden cigarettes of his youth when the
sin and the pleasure were so intimately connected.
"Just wondering what was in it for you."
She turned her stony profile toward him. At this range it
seemed less intimidating, her eyes slightly crossed from the
effort of focusing at such close range, though he had never
seen her put on a pair of glasses to read. She was naked
except for a pastel sheet tangled around one leg.
"I beg your pardon?" she said.
"It just seemed kind of underwhelming for you, considering
. . ."
". . . that it was me who did the seducing?"
"I didn't say that."
"It's what you meant," she said staring up at the ceiling and
filling her lungs with smoke.
"It all happened so . . . suddenly."
The knob of her large but perfectly formed shoulder rose
slightly off the pillow. "These things generally do. I'm
sorry if it didn't live up to your expectations."
Her sea-green eyes were still slightly crossed. But the rest
of her face was a study in considered defiance, as if she had
anticipated the way things would turn out and was steeling
herself for the worst. But in her state of undress the
effect was of vulnerability, as if some fearsome denizen of
the jungle had suddenly confessed to a deep insecurity about
itself. Staring up at the blank plaster, she looked like a
weepy cockeyed giraffe.
He kissed her moist eyelids with a reverence he hadn't felt
since his altar-boy days.
When they made love a second time the roles of their initial
coupling were reversed. The spectacle of someone revealing
herself so unequivocally filled him with awe, as if she had
suddenly thrown open all the rooms of her soul, the messy
bedroom and cluttered attic equally with the tidy, more
public areas of ordinary life. It might, he realized as they
lay panting beside one another, be a once-only tour. But he
found himself fervently hoping it would not.
It wasn't until two months later that he worked up the nerve
to satisfy his curiosity about the woman who had called the
talk show.
They were putting together a salad in the tiny kitchen of his
mid-town apartment which they now shared. He was doing the
chopping and slicing, she the more subtle work of concocting
a dressing, the complete ingredients of which she would not
divulge to him.
"Call a talk show? I don't even listen to them. They sound
like a bunch of cretins, don't they. What made you think I
might have?"
"I heard someone who sounded like you."
"Like me?" She seemed shocked, insulted even. "What did
she say?"
He sliced some cucumber and shrugged. "Something political, I
think. In any case," he went on, planting an apologetic kiss
on her cheek, "it doesn't matter anymore."
"'Anymore'? Whatever is that supposed to mean? What was
she, some kind of pinko?"
"Actually, she was right wing. Neo-fascist."
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph! And you thought it was me?"
"Not really. I just noticed the accents were similar."
"Of course, it could have been my cousin Maria. She's two
steps to the right of Mussolini."
"Does she call talk shows?"
"Hardly," she said, collecting the slicings he had been
working on. "She grew up in the boonies where they scarcely
know what a radio looks like. In any case," she added, "if I
did call a radio station it wouldn't be about politics."
"What would it be about?"
"Sex," she growled, grabbing his buttock and squeezing
painfully. "I'd tell them how good it is with my dago lover.
I'd tell them what a fantastic love-slave you are," she said,
nipping the tender flesh of his earlobe. "Say, you'd better
mind what you're doing or we'll be having sliced-finger
salad. And we wouldn't," she concluded with a wink that
would make him wonder for the rest of his days if she had
told him the truth or not, "want that, would we?"
He had traveled a bit and believed he could distinguish a
Cork accent from a Dublin and either of those from the
shrunken vowels of the North. But he also knew that two
foreigners from the same town could sound very much alike.
Even so, he had never heard any woman go from soprano to bass
the way Margo Donnelly could. And the gruff giggle with
which she punctuated any wry or confidential remark was
uniquely her own.
...................... 
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