The Agreement (19 page)

"We won't have sex, Drake. I'm not like
that. I don't have sex on a first date."

"I know."

"I'm serious. No sex. I'll think about the
goodnight kiss."

I glanced at my cell phone to see what time it
was.

"Why don't you call Lara and let her know
I'm coming into your apartment. Tell her you'll call her in an hour and if you
don't call, she should take action. That way, you'll feel safe."

I dialed Lara's cell. It rang three times before
she answered.

"Kate, what's up?"

"I'm standing on the front step of my
building with Drake. He wants to come in and just talk, and suggested that I
call you so you know I'm alone with him. That I'll call you in an hour to let
you know things are OK."

"That's good, Kate. By all means, go ahead.
Invite him in. I have complete trust in him to keep his word. Call me in an
hour. If you don't, I'll bring Bruno and come right over. Tell Drake that,
although I know I won't need to."

I turned to Drake. "Lara said if I don't
call in an hour, she'll bring Bruno over."

Drake laughed at that, his eyes merry. He took
my hand and leaned down to the cell. "Oh, you're threatening to use the
heavy artillery. You've never had to use Bruno with me yet and won't have to
tonight."

I pulled the cell back to my ear and heard laughter
on the other end. "Have fun, Kate, and relax. You're in
very
good
hands, and I mean good. You can trust Drake. Call me in an hour."

"Thanks, Lara."

I ended the call and exhaled heavily.
"Who's Bruno?"

"Her Rottweiler."

Even I laughed at that. "Come on up."

As we climbed the stairs, I wondered if I should
let him in. I didn't really believe I would, and adrenaline jolted through me
because this meant it wasn't completely out of the question that we'd have sex.
He promised not to force me, but I knew he'd try to seduce me. He'd seduce me
with his words and with his touch. In the back of my mind, I realized I let him
in because I wanted what happened between us at the concert hall to continue. I
liked his touch. I wanted him to touch me. I just wasn't sure about the sex
part. That was too intimate, and we weren't intimate enough yet for me to let
him in.

He followed me up the stairs to my third floor
apartment, and we stopped at my door while I fumbled in my bag for my keys,
muttering to myself about how big it was and how I always lost my keys at the
bottom. Just nervous chatter. In the time before I found them, Mrs. Kropotkin
opened her door a crack and peered out at us. Drake turned to her and smiled.

"
Zdrastvooyte
."

She closed her door.

"Did you study Russian in college?" I
asked, my voice a bit quivery.

"My father had a cassette tape with Russian
lessons on it and I used to listen as a kid." He cleared his throat
because his own voice was husky.  "I don’t really speak Russian well.
Just enough to order in a restaurant or make a few toasts."

I had to take in a few deep breaths to get
control over myself. Finally, I wrestled the lock open and stepped inside,
turning and blocking the doorway before he could enter.

"You'll keep your promise to just talk? No
sex?"

He held his hands up, palms out as if to signal
surrender. "Kate, it's up to you. You'll be the one to decide what
happens. Whatever
you
want."

"We're
not
having sex. Tell me you
understand."

"I understand."

I stood in the doorway for a moment, deciding,
my hands on the door, Drake outside. I didn't want this night to end. I wanted
him to come in and touch me. I was just afraid.

"Come in," I said and sighed.

He stepped across the threshold, turning around,
staring at my apartment.

"Kate why do you live like this? This
apartment looks like it belongs to a poor kid, not the daughter of a wealthy
judge running for election."

"I don't want his money and I don't earn
enough even with the scholarship to live anywhere else."

He walked around and the way he was looking at
everything and touching all my possessions made me feel as if he were entering
my mind and my body.

While I went to the side table in the entry and
deposited my keys on a tray, he stood in the hallway and took in a deep breath
as if he were smelling me. My apartment had a pleasant scent. With Thanksgiving
approaching, I put a few decorations up, a couple of tiny pumpkins on a dish on
a small round table in the living/dining area. Vanilla and cinnamon were the
main scents from a container of potpourri beside the dish with my keys. 

I took off my coat and hung it on a coat tree by
the door, then went to Drake. "Let me take your coat," I said,
extending my hands. He shrugged off his coat. Then, he unbuttoned his jacket,
loosening his tie as well. He kicked off his boots and watched me hang up his
coat, and I felt awkward under his gaze, trying to hide my nervousness.

"Do you mind if I take a look around?"

I shook my head without responding, worried that
my voice would give away my nerves.

He came to me and tipped up my chin with a
finger. "Its OK. I know you're nervous. A bit excited. You know what? So
am I."  

He sounded a bit nervous, and as if to
demonstrate, he took in a deep breath and smiled.  I glanced away.

He walked down the hallway that led to the back
of the apartment and my bedroom, examining the art on my walls. Stopping at one
long narrow picture that I called 'Lady/Knight', he checked it out more
closely. A pencil drawing of a couple, a man and a woman, the man in full
knight's armor, the woman naked beneath him, her arms outstretched. She
strained to meet his mouth, which was trapped behind the metal grill of his
helmet, his lips just visible through the grating. He lay on top of her,
resting on his elbows, and not one piece of his flesh touched hers.

"You did this?"

I went to stand beside him and tilted my head. I
pointed to my initials at the bottom right hand corner.
KMcD  

"I did it in my Freshman year. I took a
fine arts elective."

"It's good. Actually technically
skilled." He turned to me. "Tell me about this."

"What's to tell?" I said. "It's a
pencil drawing of a knight and his lady love."

"And why is she naked while he's in full
armor?"

I said nothing for a moment, thinking of how I
wanted to explain it. "Our assignment was to show contrasts in textures. I
thought that metal and flesh were opposites – almost mortal enemies
– and contrasting, kind of like male and female, masculine and feminine.
My professor said I took the assignment way too literally."

"Metal and flesh aren't always enemies. I
use steel to cut out tumors, open the skull to let pressure off a swelling
brain."

I frowned. "I never thought of that. I was
thinking more of war."

"It's all in your point of view. Even in
war, metal can save lives. Trauma surgeons like my father worked in hospitals
on the front lines in Vietnam using steel and cutting flesh to save
lives." He turned back to the drawing once more. "Did you at least
get a good grade? This is very good."

Technically, it
was
good.  My prof
said I showed excellent use of shading and perspective.

"I got an A."

"Good. But why a couple? If you wanted to
show contrast between flesh and metal, if you wanted the war theme, why not a
hand holding a sword? Or were you thinking of a different kind of war –
the war between the sexes?"

I was silent for a moment, not wanting to admit
the melodrama surrounding it.

"It was after a boyfriend and I broke up
and I was all upset about it. You know what it's like when you're nineteen.
You'd think it would be the other way around, right? The woman would be covered
in armor while the man would be naked, so willing to have sex."

He studied the drawing for a moment.

"Oh, very deep," he said. "He
can't really touch her even when they have sex because he wears armor to
protect himself. It's symbolic of men's psychological armor. There she is,
naked, open, and he can't really touch her even when he's fucking her." He
turned and looked at me as if for acknowledgement. "Did you study
psychology?"

I kept my eyes firmly on the drawing.
"Yes," I said. "I took a course in my Freshman year."

"So you're implying that despite the fact
that men want to have sex, they're not really touching the women they fuck.
There's always that male armor keeping them from intimacy. Am I right?"

I forced a smile. "You're one of the few to
get it."

"I have a degree in psychology. I was
trained to look for underlying explanations for behavior."

He took a step to the next painting framed and
hanging on the wall. An abstract, all greens and yellows and black lines
– I bought it from a friend who went to art school.

"Research suggests that men fall in love
more easily than women," he said, his voice light. "Do you really
believe that men never let down their armor even during sex?"

"You tell me. You're the expert at keeping
things compartmentalized."

"What could you possibly mean by that, Ms.
Bennet?" he said, as if surprised. "Are you suggesting that I use D/s
as a way to keep my distance from the women I fuck? I assure you, it's quite
the opposite. I get right into their minds."

"But you don't love them. You're not really
intimate
with them, despite controlling them sexually."

"I'm
exceedingly
intimate with
them." He smiled, but I could see a bit of edge in his eyes. "It all
depends on how you define intimacy. Back to you and your difficulty sleeping
with men on the first date." He stepped closer to me so that I was forced
back against the wall. "You can't open your thighs without being intimate
with a man and it bothers you that men can fuck women without being intimate, without
actually caring about her the way you
think
they should. Am I
right?"

I nodded. "My body is private. How can I
get naked with someone I don't care about?"

"My
heart
is private. How can I care
about someone who won't get naked with me?" he said, countering my logic,
stepping even closer to me, lifting up a strand of my hair, running it under
his nose. "What if I was to tell you that your inability to have casual
sex was because of your father's and society's influence on you, not because of
anything inherent in male-female sex differences? We're both animals with
drives, Kate. Society has just controlled women's drives more, redirected them,
couched the control in moral platitudes."

I frowned. "I forgot you wanted to be a
psychoanalyst. I never did like Freud and his focus on fathers."

"He was right, but in the wrong way,"
Drake said. "Your father – the generalized father of patriarchal
authority – made you believe that if you were purely sexual, if you
needed
to be fucked, you were bad. Isn't that right? He and the Church made you
believe you were a bad girl to just want a hard cock inside of you. So you
always held back, using this idea of intimacy as a shield – as
armor
against just feeling pleasure for its own sake. You use the demand for intimacy
as an excuse so you can maintain the façade of being a good girl when really
you're just an animal like me."

I just stood there, turning my face away from
his. I could tell he enjoyed how his physical proximity made me nervous but he
did nothing. Finally, he turned and walked into the living room, the moment
ending but the thought still hanging there.

Was he right? Did I demand intimacy as a way of
pretending I'm a good girl?

Why was it not good for me to just want to fuck
a man?

After taking off his jacket and laying it on the
back of a dining room chair, he removed his tie and unbuttoned the top button
of his shirt. He sat on the couch, right in the middle so that I either had to
sit beside him or pull up a dining room chair. He leaned back, his arms stretched
out on the back of the couch, his feet up on my coffee table.

He caught my eyes. "Am I right?"

"Maybe," I said. "But whose
approach is more satisfying in the end?"

Drake shrugged. "I've tried your approach.
I was married for five years. You haven't tried mine.
Yet
. Why don't you
give it a chance? Then you'll know."

"I can't imagine that meaningless sex can
be rewarding in the long run."

He sighed, as if he was growing impatient with
talking. "It's not. But it's good enough for now."

I stood on the other side of the coffee table
and stared him down. "I only want to fuck someone who loves me," I
said. "Is that so wrong?"

"Someone
will
love you, Kate. Do you
really want to wait until he does? Is masturbating all alone in your room at
night, for what – a year? Is that really good enough for you?"