The Seducer

2

Bradley Cannon was a charming man, and he had been a charming boy. He had been, by all reliable reports, a charming baby. This was undoubtedly true, for one does not change all at once in an instant, and one of Brad’s earliest memories was that of being fussed over by a group of admiring women who had come to play bridge with his mother.

He was very young at the time, possibly three, and he had thick golden hair, later to darken, and large solemn brown eyes that could be made to twinkle in response to proper attention. His manners were enchanting, even then, and since his mother claimed that they had been so from the beginning, as evidenced by a serene and considerate infancy at play and breast, it must be assumed that he learned them as an amiable embryo in the womb.

Moreover, to make almost too much of a good thing, he had a lively intelligence that found expression in an early ability to walk and talk and read from a primer.

These qualities prompted one of the first bits of surly criticism of the type that Brad was to receive frequently later from disgruntled males.

To be precise, however, it was not really criticism of Brad, but of his mother, and it was not so much criticism as slander. A neighboring husband and father was known to have remarked in company that such a paragon of brains and beauty could hardly have been the issue of Cannon, Senior, who had little of the former and none of the latter, and that he must have been, consequently, an outside job.

At any rate, Brad became aware easily and early of his capacity to charm, especially members of the opposite sex, and admiration was part of his basic conditioning. He learned first to expect it, and later he developed a strong compulsion to attract it, at any price, in every instance where he decided for one reason or another that he particularly wanted it.

In his tender years, this excessive need for essential admiration was, of course, a simple sort of thing that was adequately satisfied by little attentions and cooing confirmations of his superior attributes. But as he grew to puberty the need naturally developed glandular complications.

In the ideational readjustment brought on by glands, he discovered that there is, as between male and female, a specific biological consummation of physical attraction if it is thoroughly exercised — a kind of definitive capitulation of the female to the male, or possibly vice versa in cases involving males less dominant than he.

Being intelligent, he had correctly analyzed this quite some time before he was prepared to test it, and if in the initial testing, when it came, the conquest turned out to be somewhat more vice versa than otherwise, there was at least sufficient question about it that he was able with some justification to claim a draw.

His partner in this rather mutual conquest was a young lady, the daughter of a prosperous jeweler, who lived in the next block east of the Cannon’s modest home. Brad was fifteen at the time, but he was in his senior year of high school, thanks to having skipped a couple of years as a result of diligence and ability. The young lady, whose name was Fern, was five years older and two grades higher. A sophomore in college, she was currently at home for the Easter holiday.

Rumor had it that Fern was wild, and observation confirmed that she surely had not lacked opportunities in this direction, if she felt inclined to take advantage of them, for she not only had plenty of enticing features, taken head to toe, but knew exactly how to dress them up for maximum effect.

She and Brad were not wholly unacquainted with each other, having been nearly neighbors for years, but the considerable difference in their ages had kept the acquaintance superficial. Brad had sprouted recently, though, standing about five-ten, and Fern, having seen him pass in front of the house several times in the past couple of days, had felt a decided reaction in certain reactors, some of which are not supposed to function wantonly in young ladies at any time, and only discreetly in the most circumscribed of times.

Anyhow, she was bored by the holiday, therefore susceptible, and when she saw him approaching along the sidewalk on the afternoon of the third day, she just happened to decide to go out into the front yard at that moment, and being there, naturally, to speak to him.

“Hello, there, Brad,” she said.

“Hello, Fern.”

“You’re getting so big I hardly recognized you.”

“Well, I’m growing up, I guess.”

“And good-looking, too. Do you know that you’re very good looking, Brad? You’re just about the best looking boy I’ve seen in ages.”

Brad was in agreement with this judgment, although he would have omitted the qualification, but he didn’t think it would be prudent to say so.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said.

“You are. You really are. What grade are you in now, Brad?”

“I’m a senior. I graduate this spring.”

“Honest to God? I thought you were only a sophomore.”

“I skipped a couple of grades.”

“Well, if that isn’t just too much! Some people have everything, it seems. What does a boy as good-looking as you need with all those brains besides?”

“I don’t know. They’re pretty handy to have.”

“I’ll just bet they are. They make school a breeze, I bet. Are you coming up to my college next year, Brad?”

“I’m not sure about that. It looks like I’ll get several scholarship offers, and I’ll have to look them over before I decide.”

“I hope you come up to mine. It would be nice to have you there.”

“Well, thanks. Maybe I will, after all.”

“Where are you going now, Brad?”

“Home.”

“If you’re not in a hurry, why don’t you come in and have a cup of tea or a coke or something?”

“That would be fine if you’re sure you want me to.”

“Of course I’m sure. It isn’t often I get to talk with a boy as good-looking as you.”

“Oh, come off it. I’ll bet there are plenty of better looking boys up at your college.”

She denied this, as he had expected, and they went up to the house and inside together. In the living room, he sat on a sofa in front of a fireplace in which there was a small wood fire, and she asked him if he wanted a coke or tea.

He wanted a coke, but he had a notion that it would create a better impression if he took tea, and so he did, and she brought it in from the kitchen in a pot with sugar and lemon slices on a tray.

“How would you like some music?” she said. “Don’t you think some music would be nice?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’d like that.”

“What would you like to hear?”

“You choose something.”

“Here are the waltzes from Der Rosenkavalier. Do you care for these?”

He didn’t, knowing nothing about them, never having heard them. He had no appreciation whatever of music, in fact, this being one of his deficiencies that he was never able to correct. But he hated to confess to ignorance about anything, so he lied and said that he cared a great deal for the waltzes. She put them on the phonograph, and they began being played softly, but he was never aware in the slightest of the rare privilege he had that afternoon of executing, or suffering, his first seduction to the accompaniment of Strauss.

Fern sat down on the sofa beside him and poured tea and curled her legs under her, exposing a pair of nylon knees. The knees were quite close to his thigh, and when either of them shifted position a little, knees and thigh would touch lightly, and he began almost at once, in his youthful virility, to have a normal reaction that threatened to become apparent and prove embarrassing.

“In my opinion,” Fern said, “there is nothing quite like a fire and tea and music and good company. Don’t you agree?”

“Especially,” he said, “if half the company is you and the other half is me.”

“Well, what a charming thing to say, Brad. I was just thinking that myself.”

“It’s true. I’d much rather be here with you than with any other girl I know.”

“Do you mind that we’re all alone?” she asked, her eyes holding a bright sheen.

“I wasn’t sure that we were.”

“We are. My mother is at her bridge club and won’t be home until five at least. My father is at his shop, of course, and will be even later. Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“It makes it all the better as far as I’m concerned,” he said, grinning.

“I’ll bet a good-looking boy like you has been alone plenty of times with girls.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Because all the pretty girls with any sense would be trying to arrange it all the time, that’s what.” Fern’s voice was as soft as a caress and her eyes watched him with a warm and alert interest.

“Did you arrange it?” Brad asked.

“Well, I didn’t actually arrange it, because I just happened to be in the yard as you came by, but now that it’s sort of arranged itself, I’m perfectly satisfied.”

“Do you know what I’d like to do?”

“No. What?”

“I’d like to kiss you.”

“Say, you do work fast, don’t you?”

“What would you do if I did?”

“Better be careful. I might kiss you back, and you know what that can lead to.” She laughed lightly, her eyes warming him with their intensity.

“Tell me what.”

“I don’t think I’d better. You’re too young.”

“Come on and tell me. I dare you.”

“Something interesting, that’s all.”

“I’m going to go ahead and kiss you and find out,” he declared.

“Take your own chances, Brad.”

And so he did. His chances and her by the fire to Strauss.

To the magical music of the immortal waltzes, in shaggy pile before the dancing fire, she emerged in salacious three-four time from blouse and skirt and underthings. As nearly a poet at that time as he had ever been or would ever be, he thought that he had exposed, simply by removing her clothes, something wondrous and unique and entirely perfect — a new dimension in beauty that was his particular discovery. He explored the dimension with a kind of dreamy greed, his hands learning the shape and texture and response of small breasts and lean waist and agitated thighs. In the meanwhile, she was busy with his buttons, making her own discoveries, and in the end, locked head to toe, they still sustained, in spite of greed and agitation, the leisurely and lilting and enchanting illusion of having danced a peculiarly intimate waltz.

All this took quite a long and entertaining while, thanks to her superior ingenuity acquired through some experience. He felt for an instant immediately afterward a fearful dread of unpleasant consequences, for he had heard that many girls did this sort of thing in heat and haste and then became stormy vessels of regrets and recriminations.

To his vast relief, Fern did no such thing. She was, more than anything else, like a kitten full of cream. He was certain, in fact, that she literally gave off a soft purring that now and then assumed the intelligible sounds of endearments, and so he was fortunate enough to learn at the very first that there are women in the world who are capable of feeling a proper gratitude.

She continued to lie streatched out in front of the fire without embarrassment in nothing but stockings that had somehow not got removed. This lush lassitude proved, after a while, to be almost a major misfortune, for she was still there in that condition when a car turned suddenly into the drive outside.

Brad, as good luck would have it, was not quite so denuded, and he managed to get himself presentable in record time, while Fern scurried upstairs with her arms full of clothing.

When Mrs. Tillery, Fern’s mother, sailed into the living room a minute or two later, she discovered Brad sitting alone before the fire, neatly arranged and a perfect picture of rectitude.

He stood up, facing her, and flashed his dimples as he made the slightest bow from the waist. Mrs. Tillery, for her part, thought only what a ravishingly handsome boy Brad was, and she was absurdly glad, considering the long gap of time between them, that she was herself still slim and sleek enough to stir a wanton thought.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Tillery,” Brad said.

“Oh, it’s you, Bradley. How are you? Have you been having tea with Fern?”

“Yes, ma’m. She just went upstairs for something. When she comes down, I’ll have to be leaving.”

“Did you have a pleasant time?”

“Oh, yes. It was very nice. We listened to the waltzes from Der Rosenkavalier.”

“Those are nice, aren’t they? I think it’s so important for young people to learn to appreciate fine music.”

“I think so, too,” said Brad, who didn’t and never would.

At that moment Fern came into the room, repaired and composed, and Brad was compelled to admire an attitude of innocence so readily and perfectly assumed that it did not, as innocence must, seem assumed at all.

“Hello, Mother,” she said. “How was bridge?”

“Wonderful, darling. I had the most incredible run of good cards.”

“Brad and I have been having tea. It was fun, wasn’t it, Brad?”

“It surely was,” Brad agreed.

“Well,” Mrs. Tillery said, “I must change clothes and start thinking about dinner. Bradley, you must come for tea again sometime.”

“Thank you,” Braid said. “I’d like to.”

Fern took him to the door and showed him out, at the last moment giving his arm a firm squeeze and pursing her lips into the shape of a silent kiss. Returning after a minute to the living room, she found her mother still there.

“What a charming boy,” Mrs. Tillery said.

“He is, isn’t he?” Fern said.

“What a shame that he’s so much younger than you, darling.”

“He’s much more mature than most boys his age.”

“I could see that. Quite intelligent, too, I understand.”

“Well, he’s very interesting, I’ll say that for him.”

Saying it, however, she did not say precisely what she meant, and Mrs. Tillery, who had in fact been prompted by circumstances to recall a certain memorable episode among tea cups before a fire in her own past, did not, somehow, consider for a moment that anything remotely similar might have happened in the present instance.

Brad, making his way slowly toward his home in the next block, was considering with detachment a remarkable discovery that was later to be confirmed and reconfirmed and accepted as a significant and secret deficiency in the kind of person he was and had to be.

The discovery he had made with the fervent cooperation of Fern was simply that, while the imposition of his personality and the definitive capitulation of a partner in the act of love were enormously exciting and absolutely essential to his special ego, the act itself, for his part, was a flat disappointment. But he did not actually consider this a deficiency.

Eventually, indeed, he came to think of it as a peculiar strength. It helped him, in the end, to avoid becoming all mixed up and messy in a confusion of glands and brains.