A Bigamist's Daughter by Alice McDermott

office. Leather, shining oak, the softest browns. Large ferns by the heavy brown drapes.
    He went to the huge desk at the far end of the room. “I’ll just be a minute,” he said.
    “The climax was a wolf hunt where they became the ones being hunted.”
    She stood by the door. The only light was from a tall lamp beside the leather couch. The light was beige, golden brown.
    He turned from the desk, some kind of portfolio under his arm. He smiled. “That’s all,” he said. “We can go.”
    He walked toward her and she turned to let him open the door. She noticed the gold tie tack in his red-and-blue silk tie, saw his long, tanned fingers reach for the doorknob. Then he turned a little more, slipped the portfolio onto the table behind him. He put his hands on the lapels of her coat and the touch made her stomach flinch, as if it had been kicked from the inside.
    “I would like so much to see you,” he said, his voice soft, suddenly hoarse. She smiled a little, politely.
    “My son, my wife. There’s not much beauty in my life. I promise I won’t touch you. I’d just like to look at you.”
    She knew it was not the type of thing she would do. He worked intently on the buttons of her blouse, biting his lip childishly. She pushed his hands aside and undid them herself. He knelt before her as he took off her shoes and stockings and she could see his skull just under the thin hairs; it seemed soft, painfully bare. She told herself she pitied him.
    When he looked up at her, his eyes were filled with tears. “I won’t touch you,” he assured her again. He stood up and went to his desk, sat stiffly behind it. “Just let me look,” he said. “I just want to look at you.”
    She stepped over her clothes and into the middle of the floor. The carpet was beautifully soft against her feet. She moved around the room, looked at some books on a shelf, brushed her hand along a wall. She felt beautiful. Beautifully white, pure white, bright. She stretched out on the leather couch. Itwas soft glove leather, wonderfully cool. The golden light was all over her skin.
    Later she felt that the incident had been some strangely erotic dream. Perhaps even the beginning of a strange affair. But from then on he had his secretary sign all his letters and make all his phone calls to her. She didn’t speak to him again and she saw him only once, when he’d come to the office after his book was published. He pretended not to notice her.
    Tupper Daniels orders coffee as the waiter clears their plates. “Too macho for today’s market,” he is saying. “You really have to appeal to women these days.” She drains her last bit of wine and he glances at his watch. “Which brings us back to my book,” he says. “I guess I’ve avoided working on it with you after all.”
    She smiles at him. “Are you busy tonight?”
    He smiles, slyly, it seems to her. “Nothing that can’t be canceled if I say I have to see my editor.”
    “Well, why don’t you come over to my apartment tonight, say eight or nine or so? We can talk about the book then.” Some part of her is wondering what she’s doing. Other parts seem to know perfectly well.
    He nods. “Sounds fine,” he says, his voice low. “I can see why you have no problem with power.”
    She shrugs and picks up the check, hands it to him. “Then don’t ask to arm wrestle for the bill.” She can see he likes that: Kate Hepburn to John Wayne.
    She wonders how many poses this “relationship” can inspire.
    It was the Playboy fantasy, although not from the playboy’s point of view. It was the fantasy she had foreseen as a child, sharing a stolen copy of the magazine with her girlfriends, seeing the women—pretty women they thought, beautiful princesses and Miss Americas and Cinderellas—draped over leathercouches and dark beds, glowing white and beautiful in the leather and oak and deep brown nests of men.
    Young as they were (eight? twelve? sixteen?) they studied those pictures,