Programmed for Peril

haircut. I know a guy.”
    The guy turned out to be the Hairy Krishna of Beverly Hills. He personally cut and combed bangs about down to her brows and stacked the back—her friend’s chosen style. Hairy told her she was charmante, madame. In fact she thought she looked like a sheep dog after a tough night forming the flock. Her new friend, though, seemed pleased.
    Curious how, deep down, she wanted to please him.
    She couldn’t look Father Juan in the eye when she started with the pleasing, the sex part. She had to talk about it. It was the primary source of her fright. She started with Leonard again; somehow comparisons made it easier. She had once been a good girl. In her life she had been intimate with only two men before Leonard. Leonard had seemed a skillful lover who paid plenty of attention to her needs. Wonderful, she thought. Now she understood that her ex had lacked imagination and, beyond that, insights into the darker side of her eroticism. Did the core of every female heart contain that urge to please? Or was it just hers? To please, though doing so meant physical discomfort, even pain? To agree, to comply, against the grain of intuition?
    She fell silent amid her evasive ramblings. Striking in a thunderbolt of vivid memory was a scene only a week into their history. The one that triggered the recent events that had brought her here today. Begin with the music, the numbing African drumming from her new friend’s trunksized boom box. His explanation: “This is music raised one level above the most primal—our own heartbeat. Love raised one level above common copulation.” Her memory clearly presented him naked, burly, strutting around with hairy truncheon outthrust. And herself. Oh, her naked self! She understood only then the function of the wide, high mirror on the wall of the flashy motel room. She saw Dr. Charlotte Wigman—as she was intended to—standing gagged, her hands bound behind her with golden tasseled ropes joined by what he called his Gordian knot. Under the wretched, sweat-matted bangs bloomed blue eyes wide in—oh, Charl-good-buddy, was that really surprise? Or desire? Say anticipation!
    “You must go on,” the priest urged.
    In the end she did a botched job of narration. She tried with limited success to communicate her crosstides of desire and fear, and the dread of her next encounter with her friend. And the one after that. What would it lead to? Where would it end? She ran on and on, trying to cover all her hesitancies. Finally, before the priest’s accepting gaze, she burst into tears, finding God mixed up in it after all. She fell to her knees before Him.
    Father Juan took her hands in his and encouraged her to rise. She expected words then about the evils to be overcome in the contemporary world and the need for strength in the face of temptation. Instead he turned a frank gaze on her and said only, “I recommend you do not see this man again, doctor...
    On the drive to the day care center she found her face in the rearview decorated with its brightest smile. She had banished it since the first concerns about her new friend crept forth. Now it was back. Glad to see you again!
    Swinging into the parking lot, she craned her neck in search of Suzi. Where are you, my reason for living? There! On the swings, swooping and gliding, long blond pigtail stirring in her airy wake.
    Closer to home her glee faded. Making a decision was one thing. Acting on it was more difficult.
    She would have to call her friend and tell him her decision.
    She waited until Suzi was in bed and she had fortified herself with three fingers of Finlandia mixed with a splash of grenadine. The phone lay like a mine on her bedside table. She absolutely had to make the call. She picked up the receiver, looked into the mouthpiece grid. She found it as appealing as a wasp nest.
    She touched the keys. She hoped his answering machine would kick in. Please, please don’t be home!
    At that moment she realized how truly frightened of him she was.
    He answered. They spoke commonplaces. In a rushed voice she said, “I don’t want to see you again. Don’t call me. Don’t come by. Please. It’s all over!”
    She hung up.
    Sweat emerged beneath the bangs to slide like oil down her forehead.
     

2
     
    TODAY CHAMP chose TAPE Seven of the ten. IT LAY two thirds of the way between her innocence and sweet, total corruption. Each of the ten was a chrome oxide Scheherazade. Each told an irresistible Tale of Sultan