The Seduction - Art Bourgeau

  The Seduction

  Art Bourgeau

  1988

  To my wife Patricia J MacDonald...

  We met under the Biltmore clock,

  and it was love at first sight.

  "....Thou shalt not pass by me,

  lest I some out against thee with the sword."

  Numbers 20:18

  The Seduction

  SEPTEMBER

  CHAPTER 1

  TERRI DiFRANCO closed the front door of the rowhouse and hurried down the steps. Usually when she went out she thought about the black silhouette carriage scene on the storm door, and how her father always teased her mother about it, saying it had been a long time since anyone had seen a carriage in South Philly unless it was at a Mafia funeral, but this time her thoughts were elsewhere.

  She paused at the bottom of the steps long enough to adjust the shoulder strap of her purse and to turn up the collar of her jacket to keep out the cool September breeze. The breeze was from the south, carrying on it a hint of the pungent smell of the oil refineries near the airport and bringing a mist that had already encircled the blue-white streetlights in a halo, foretelling the rain soon to come.

  Two doors up, Louise Pipari was walking her dog, Willie. Terri waved as Louise bent over and used a discarded potato chip bag to clean up Willie's nightly offering.

  When she saw Terri she smiled and sang out, "Thanks for taking in that package for us yesterday. It was a birthday present from Henry's brother in California."

  "Anytime," replied Terri with a smile as she turned to go.

  At the corner of Second and Morris she stopped at the candy store to get cigarettes. Like most of her friends, Terri had started smoking when she was twelve, but although it had long ago ceased to be a secret, her parents were firm in their resolve not to let her smoke at home. A resolve she found weird since both of them smoked, too.

  George Luongo, a longshoreman who worked with her father at the nearby docks, was the only other customer. He had a cassette from Second Street Video Palace tucked under his arm. As she shoved the pack of Marlboros into her purse she caught a glimpse of the title. It was Mad Max.

  George saw her looking and flashed her a smile which was missing a tooth on the left side. "Hey, Terri, you're looking good tonight. Got a hot date?" he said.

  "Naw, not tonight," she said with a smile and hurried out of the store before he could follow up with his usual line about how if he only weren't married he'd be knocking on her door every night.

  Sometimes George would catch her in the wrong mood and his teasing would embarrass her, but not tonight. The compliment made her feel good, for she had tried so hard to look good tonight, carefully choosing from the mishmash of her teenage wardrobe those things that would show her to best advantage, from her high heels and tight Capri jeans to her soft, bright blue sweater, which everyone said made her look cuddly. But that wasn't what made her look good. It was more basic than clothes. Petite in stature and Mediterranean dark, with ebony eyes beneath storm-cloud brows, and full, pouting lips over teeth with a slight gap in the front, she was, some said, a pocket Venus who, at this early, blossoming stage, had not yet come to know her own powers.

  Despite what passed for surface sophistication in clothes and manner Terri, at fifteen, was an innocent. Which was not to say that she was without knowledge in the affairs of men and women. She had read her mother's well-worn copies of Fanny Hill and Lady Chatterly's Lover several times. She knew when to laugh at a dirty joke, basically how couples made love, and had brushed up against what she hoped were male erections several times at school dances. But that was it. Everything she had learned was second hand—until just before Labor Day when all that changed.

  Terri quickened her pace. Her destination, near some Water Street warehouses, was at least six blocks away. She was running late, but she considered herself lucky to get out at all. It wasn't so much that her parents didn't trust her. Mostly it was because they were afraid. Over the past few years, teenage girls had been disappearing one by one, without a trace from the neighborhood. Disappearances in a city the size of Philadelphia were, of course, nothing new, and they occurred at intervals infrequent enough that the police chalked them up to runaways who weren't worth the trouble they made. But a growing number of the neighbors, including Terri's parents, thought differently. They feared the girls had been murdered, and because of their fear it was getting increasingly difficult for Terri to get out at night even for a couple of hours.

  Tonight had taken a lot of work. She had had to lay the groundwork early in the day, telling her mother that she was going to meet Marie, her best friend, and even then, right up to the last minute, it had looked as if they weren't going to let her go.

  But Marie was not the reason she was rushing now—and for the past month. The reason was Peter.

  As she hurried past Second and Tasker, with Rachubinski's Funeral Home on one corner and the headquarters of the Avalon String Band on the other, her thoughts went back to that first muggy Saturday night. She had been with Marie at Costello's Cheese Steaks, one of the few places her parents would let her go to any longer, waiting for Joey, a boy she thought she cared about. Only Joey was a no-show. At first she treated it lightly, but as the evening wore on, the other girls goaded her until she was anxiously sipping soda, smoking, biting her nails and asking arriving kids if they had seen him.

  It did not take long for the pieces to fall into place for her. Joey was with her rival, Lisa, in the backseat of a friend's car. Several people had seen them in the parking lot of the shopping center on Oregon Avenue.

  For weeks, in his cute, fumbling way he had been after more than a goodnight kiss, but since his inexperience had matched hers, she had had no trouble keeping him at bay. She thought he had respected her for it, but she was wrong. Now he was with another woman, and everyone knew it. Completely humiliated but determined not to cry in public, she lit a cigarette and started for home. Marie followed, but Terri sent her back and continued up Morris Street alone.

  Before she could reach the well-lighted Moyamensing Avenue a sleek, silver Datsun 300ZX overtook her and stopped just ahead. Terri was not alarmed. South Philly was a safe place, and she had seen the car cruising the neighborhood several times recently, so she thought nothing of it.

  As she drew abreast of the car, from inside its darkened cock-pit a voice asked her for a light. It was a sophisticated, sexy voice full of come-hither, not like the rough, raucous voices of men from the neighborhood.

  Had Joey not stood her up, perhaps she would have kept walking, and the past month—the most emotion-filled month of her life—would not have happened. But he had, and she didn't. Instead, she approached the car and offered the driver her matches. As he lit his cigarette she saw he was a real living dream, incredibly handsome, with short, dark hair, a beard, darkly tinted aviator glasses and fine bones that bordered on the delicate.

  He wore Italian driver's gloves with holes over the knuckles and, oddly for a muggy late August night, he was wearing a dark leather jacket that looked as soft as butter. Carelessly draped around his neck was a white silk aviator scarf. "Thanks," he said as he handed her matches back.

  She felt him looking at her and, as much to get even with the absent Joey as to please the handsome stranger, she struck a slight pose to give him a better look.

  He kept her close to the car by turning up the tape deck so she could hear the opening drum and organ notes to "The Celebration of the Lizard."

  "Do you like the Doors?" he asked.

  "Sure," she replied with a shrug, but he had scored a point. Music was her language, and even though Jim Morrison had been dead for almost her whole life, the Doors were still a big South Phill
y favorite on the suitcase-sized ghetto blasters her friends lugged around.

  "What's your favorite of their songs?" he asked . . .

  Now almost a month later, as she once again rushed to meet him, the thought of the humiliation of that moment when she had been unable to think of the title of a single Doors hit still rankled her.

  "'Roadhouse Blues'," she had finally blurted out after what had seemed like a tongue-tied hour.

  He laughed and said, "'Roadhouse Blues,' I would never have guessed that was your favorite. That's a pretty rough song for a young girl."

  There was a challenge in his voice when he said the words "young girl," and she bristled at it. One humiliation in an evening was bad enough, and he wasn't going to make it two. She dropped her cigarette on the street and ground it out. Returning the challenge she said, "All right, which one would you have picked for me?"

  ”You look like someone who would like 'When the Music's Over."'

  He had been right she remembered now, but she couldn't let him see it. It was too embarrassing to be that predictable, so she played what she thought was the bitch but what later he had laughingly called her "ingénue role."

  Gradually they had exchanged personal information. She told him her name, and where she lived. In return she learned that his name was Peter. He offered no last name. Finally, he invited her to get in the car, where it was cool, and to go for a ride with him.

  "Maybe it wouldn't be so hot if you didn't go around in that leather jacket," she bantered back.

  "It's one of the problems of the job," he replied. "Goes with the territory."

  When she asked what job, he produced a badge.

  The news that Peter was a cop, especially a handsome cop in a sports car, just like on her favorite television show, was enough to get her in the car, but he refused to give her any more details except to say that he mainly worked undercover.

  She watched him with fascination as they turned onto Second Street and for the next half hour drove the same pattern over and over—Second to Snyder, to Front, to Washington, and back to Second. He kept the air conditioning on frigid and the Doors tape loud.

  Finally they parked in a dark spot amid the concrete pilings that supported an overhead secton of I-95 near Front and Snyder. He changed the tape from the Doors to a more romantic one by Ray Charles, an old guy who was one of her mother's favorites. It was a misstep on his part. Her system always responded best to the thud-and-thunder of hard rock. It was music you could lose yourself in and words with real meaning. The old Ray Charles stuff made her feel uneasy, like she was sitting in a dark room and suddenly heard a floorboard creak. It was an itchy feeling that made her want to fold her arms in front of her.

  Their first contact was even worse. Accustomed to Joey's rougher handling, the gentle way Peter brushed her hair back and the soft whisper of breath in her ear set her teeth on edge. His soft, sensual kisses were almost unbearable on nerves not yet familiar with such pleasure as he sucked and nibbled on her lips until they felt swollen.

  She sat perfectly still, wishing that either he would stop or the strange itchiness would go away, but neither happened. Instead, the feeling intensified as he opened her blouse and began to touch her breasts. Before this, Joey was the only one she had ever let touch them, at least bare, but this was different. As with his kisses, before long the pleasure bordered on pain. She felt shame at how easily he took control of her, dominating her until all she seemed able to do was occasionally mutter the expected, "Please don't." Later, when he put his gloved hand between her thighs, she knew she should protest more strongly or even push him away, but it seemed so useless.

  After a while he took her back to Morris Street where he gave her a good-bye kiss and said, "Meet me again next Saturday. About eight at the warehouses on Water Street. Know where I mean?"

  Suddenly her evening turned to roses. All the liberties he had taken were worthwhile because in the end he had asked her for an actual, honest-to-God date.

  Throughout the week her every thought, waking and sleeping, was of Peter. By midweek he had assumed larger-than-life dimensions, and Marie had threatened to kill her if she didn't stop talking about "Peter, Peter, Peter" all the time.

  Their second date took a strange turn. She arrived with a thousand questions, none of which he would answer, except to say that he lived in Society Hill. Even this was not news, for she had already decided that there was no other place a romantic undercover cop could live but the most romantic section of Philadelphia. When she pressed him for details he said, "Look, Terri, in my line of work I make a lot of enemies. People that would go out of their way to get at me or, if they knew about you, to get at me through you. I couldn't stand for that to happen, so you'll just have to trust me and believe it's better if nobody knows about us, and right now you don't know anything about me. That way nothing can happen to you. Do you understand what I'm saying? You're too important to me to put at risk."

  Then he had hurt her. Not badly, but enough to make her breasts ache. She could not understand why he was doing it, unless it was to punish her for being too curious, like the way her father had spanked her when she was a little girl, but she sat there unmoving, feeling a closeness and sense of pride, as if he had shown her a new part of being a woman.

  When he made her raise herself off the seat so he could pull down her jeans and panties, her hand brushed the front of his trousers and she felt his large erection. It was then that she realized he was feeling the same sort of pleasurable ache that she did, and she knew she was in love.

  After he dropped her off she stood on weak and wobbly legs, watching the silver shark with the Bruce Springsteen bumper sticker disappear into the night.

  During the week she saw visions of herself dying, lying on the ground with the hard eyes of strangers looking down at her, and she, in a faint voice, saying to bring Peter, and Peter rushing to her side. She cried often and was so moody that her mother let her go out for pizza with Marie on Wednesday.

  They had walked almost to Broad Street and then cut over to Passyunk Avenue, leisurely window-shopping and talking: Terri about Peter, Marie about wanting to be thin enough to wear the clothes in the store windows. They stopped at the Metropole K Pizzeria in a block filled with Italian restaurants near Ninth. It was crowded with kids from South Philly and couples from uptown, but a short wait got them a table by the window. Being in love and unconcerned with the petty social details of the world around her, she gave Marie the seat where she could see the other customers and took the one facing the window for herself. As she idly glanced out the window, her heart jumped. Parked across the street near Fiorelli's, an upscale Italian restaurant, was a silver Datsun exactly like Peter's. She shifted her chair to get a better look and caught sight of the familiar Springsteen bumper sticker. It was Peter's car. He was having dinner right across the street from her.

  Her first thought was to tell Marie, but she stopped herself. Marie had been so mean with her teasing. Well, now was her chance to get even. Playing the scene out in her mind, she would just happen to look up and see Peter when he came out of the restaurant. They would nonchantly stroll across the street. His eyes would light up at the sight of her, and they would passionately kiss—right in front of Marie.

  But it didn't work that way. Terri was saying, ". . . and I went through all these recipe books because I want to find just the right thing to make him for dinner when he takes me to his apartment. I want him to know I can cook, and not just pasta and stuff like we have at home. I want to make him something nice, like veal, maybe veal marsala. It's not too hard, and my father likes it. What do you think?"

  Marie's reply fell on very deaf ears, for at that moment Terri saw two stunning women come out of Fiorelli's and approach the car. One was dark-haired, the other blonde. The dark-haired one got in on the driver's side and reached across to open the door for the blonde. Terri's world ended as she watched the car drive away.

  Marie noticed the change immediately and said,
"Terri, what's wrong?"

  Behind her owlish glasses Marie's eyes had the concerned look of a true friend. Terri wanted to tell all, to pour out her heart, but she couldn't.

  "Nothing," she mumbled as she stood up from the table and started for the ladies room.

  There was no way she could tell Marie that Peter was married.

  Not after all the personal things she had told her over the past week or so. Not only would it make her look dumb for having gone out with a married man, but it would make it look even worse for having let him do all those things to her. It was one thing to let him do them when he loved her, but not when he was married and playing her for a fool.

  Marie followed her into the ladies room. "Terri, what's wrong?"

  "Nothing, I just got my period, that's all."

  That explained all. To Marie periods were emotional, sort of sexual, almost voodoo rites of uncleanness to be suffered behind closed doors and preferably in the dark.

  The rest of the evening and the rest of the week Terri was torn between standing Peter up for their Saturday night date or showing up for a showdown. In the end she chose the showdown . . .

  As soon as she was in the car she lashed out. "You bastard, how could you? Why didn't you tell me you were married? And after all the things I let you do—"

  She wanted to hurt him in any way she could—as long as it was publicly and badly. She was unique and alone in the world, feeling an acute and, to her, unique sense of embarrassment, betrayal, disillusionment.

  There was surprise on Peter's face as she recounted every detail of what she and Marie had seen from the pizza parlor, but he said nothing until the storm passed.

  "It wasn't my wife. It was my sister. I was on duty and loaned her my car. Hers was in the shop."

  Terri couldn't believe her ears. It was like he had given her a diamond.

  Her dream man wasn't married after all. Relief flooded her and she needed to be held, to be reassured over and over until it finally sank in, but when she leaned over to kiss him he coldly told her to get out of the car.