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“Expose?” Mab turned back to Wally and raised her eyebrows. “You make me sound like chicken pox.”
He replied kindly, “You look so easy, and it’s just a facade. Looking at you the first time, anyone would think you’re all sweetness and light, and you’re a shock. Men can be very misled. Chris thinks Joe needs the kind of set-down you’ll give him.”
“I’m a serious woman. I dislike being taken for a dolly.” Then she enunciated her rejection distinctly, “My parents didn’t raise me to educate the male population on the rights of women to be people.”
“Chris would take it as a favor.” Wally’s eyes twinkled. “And I’d love watching it. Joe’s a revolving one. Anyway you look at him, he’s a bastard.”
“It sounds like a thrilling evening. No, thanks.”
“He would be a better man,” Wally coaxed.
She rejected the whole idea. “I couldn’t care less.”
“Then how about Friday? There’ll be just the family. Chris has missed you. And you know I love you, too.”
Mab studied Wally seriously. “You really want this interview, don’t you?”
“How astute!”
* * *
So it was that, like any hack, Mab began to go through the files; and the information, speculation and lies on Sean Morant did collect...along with the pictures. There were all sorts of pictures. Studio or candid. He looked bored. He looked like a man who didn’t give one hoot in hell about anything. The only time he didn’t look bored was in those pictures taken as he performed.
Those made Amabel thoughtful. He was an interesting-looking man. He wasn’t handsome. His face wasn’t that unusual. He was above average in height, and he was well-built, but many men are. His hair was dark, and lashes shadowed his eyes. She had read that his eyes were brown. The pictures of him performing were in vital contrast to those pictures taken of him on the street.
She collected some of his videotapes. She played them at her small, canyon house. The house was perched on a gully. Alone, she played tapes of Sean Morant on her VCR, so that she could listen and watch this person perform.
On stage, Sean did have a presence. His movements were—well—a pleasure to watch. He was a well-made male animal. He exuded maleness as he performed. He used his maleness. Deliberately. With calculation. He was a leader to the male viewers, and a lover to the female ones. He was what everyone wanted. Except Mab, of course. Mab was immune.
She would look at him, performing on the VCR, then lift the candid street shots up to compare his pictures to the screen. Away from music, he looked as if he was ‘on hold,’ uninvolved, disinterested. The pictures taken of him then showed his disinterest even in being photographed. He didn’t turn from the camera or give a big celebrity smile. He simply looked at the lens as one would a post.
The candid pictures fascinated Mab. And it was those which caught her attention. Those with women. A multitude of women. Each picture was remarkably the same. Each showed Sean to the left, full-length, dressed each time in the same type of casual clothes. His hair was carelessly tousled. His sober eyes were on the camera in disinterest. And on his left in each of those pictures was a different woman.
The women were dressed variously, some smiling, some as sober as he. All were tall, lovely and walking in step with Sean.
Mab began to pin the lookalike pictures up on her bulletin board. Her plan board. Row upon row of the almost-identical pictures: Sean walking with another woman.
In viewing the pinned rows, it seemed obvious to Mab that Sean wasn’t indifferent, he was exhausted! All those women! They would take a toll. He was only in his middle thirties. He seemed older. It was probably his life-style, eroding him.
She geared her article to expose Sean Morant, the womanizer. All those women were known. A few had been fans or relatives. Those pictures had been discarded, and Amabel concentrated only on those known personalities who had been pictured walking with Sean Morant. She interviewed each one of them.
It annoyed Amabel Clayton to find she wasn’t the unbiased reporter she’d always been. She wondered if she’d reached burnout at twenty-eight. Why should she feel a hostility to the women who walked with Sean? Why did she feel such a strange...distaste?
The only other time she’d felt such antagonism to another female was in sixth grade when her best friend was caught sending a note across the classroom to Amabel’s boyfriend. He hadn’t known he was her boyfriend but her best friend had. The feeling then was very similar to what Amabel felt now. It was almost as if she felt jealous of those women she was interviewing about Sean Morant.
Wanda Moore was one of Sean’s side-by-side women whom Amabel interviewed. The interview was in Wanda’s bedroom. Wanda was in bed wearing a thin bed jacket. The indication being that that was all she wore under the satin sheet.
In a marked contrast, Amabel was wearing a shirt with a light sweater vest, a matching skirt, hose and flat-heeled loafers. Her hair was under a neatly tied scarf.
Wanda giggled and confided, “My name’s a, uh, play on words, you know?”
Feeling uncomfortably obtuse, Mab asked through thinned lips, “Really?” in a quite indifferent manner. She waited with poised mike.
“It’s like I want—more.” Wanda giggled and squirmed as she rubbed her knees together under the satin sheet.
“More—what?” Mab questioned; by that time she was being deliberately blank.
“You know. Sex.” And she rolled her eyes at the grinning cameraman.
Mab looked out the bedroom window and considered applying to woman a one-person satellite filled with plants to resow the diminished world. It was painfully obvious Sean’s attraction to Wanda was not mental.
One of the more irritating responses was when Mab asked, “Tell me about Sean Morant. What is your opinion of him?”
“Oooh!” Wanda went into spasms of giggles and eye rolling.
“Could you tell us what you mean?” Mab inquired with careful seriousness.
“He’s just delicious!”
Stoically, Mab could not resist, “Did you ever discuss world affairs?”
Wanda lost the giggles as she inquired succinctly, “Are you kidding?”
So Mab asked kindly, “Would you mind our taking your picture? We may use it with the article.”
“What do you think this whole exercise is all about, ice queen!”
* * *
When Mab returned to her office and confronted her boss, Wally said, “But, honey, it’s very lonely out in space.”
“Don’t call me honey.”
“Well, don’t get mad at me if Sean’s choice in female companionship isn’t up to your standards. I’m not guilty! I married Chris before I ever even knew you, and you approve of her.”
Mab commented, “I have this terrible feeling you’d react to Wanda Moore just like the cameramen.”
“How?”
“Flushed and laughing and restless.”
Wally asked with interest, “Are you jealous?”
“My God, Wally!”
“Well...”
On her soapbox, Mab responded, “When women are trying to be taken seriously? And Wanda acts that way? Instead of Hillary Rodham Clinton, men tend to think of the Wandas of the world when they mentally picture ‘women.’ It’s excessively depressing.”
“Are all the women who marched along with our hero like Wanda?” He went over to the bulletin board and viewed along the lines of similar pictures.
“A shuddering number of them. His IQ must range between forty and fifty.”
“He’s a fine musician.”
Mab agreed. “There are many flawed people God compensated with a brilliance in some talent.”
Wally gave up on the pictures on the board to look at Mab. “How many more do you have to see?”
“Three.”
Then he asked, “Have you tried the computer yet?”
“Don’t push.”
“You’re the last holdout.” Wally reminded her. “It will change your life.”
“If God had intended me to fly, he would have given me wings.”
Wally chided, “That’s the argument for planes—this is a computer.”
“Don’t irritate me.”
“You’ve been that way lately, with no help from anybody.” Wally was kind. “If I didn’t know you for a basic man hater, I’d think you had an unrequited passion for Sean Morant.”
“Good grief.” She looked up at Wally with wide eyes of shock.
Wally observed, “You’re paranoid when it comes to machines—and men.”
“I’ll grant the machine half.”
“It’s just that you don’t understand either one.”
Mab gestured. “Of course I understand men. They are simple, basic creatures.”
“We’re human.” Wally admitted that.
“Very.”
Wally inquired thoughtfully, “Did you ever get any help with this problem?”
“I don’t have any problem! I am content to live alone, I don’t need a man to take care of me, I can support myself. The only problem I have with men is they don’t understand why I don’t want to hop into bed with them.”
He grinned. “Again, I’m glad I’m already safely married to Chris.”
“Me, too. If you weren’t you’d probably be depressingly like all the rest.”
“Simon Quint, too?”
“No,” she retorted. “I find our publisher a perfectly rational human being.”
* * *
As Amabel compiled the Sean Morant interviews, she noticed there was one characteristic all the women had mentioned. Sean Morant was kind. Amabel put that into her report, which was very cleverly written. She was subtle. She implied he was a womanizer who kindly spread his attentions as widely as he could.
The rows of pictures from Amabel’s bulletin board were used for the magazine cover. All those row on row, almost identical pictures of Sean Morant walking with different women—except for the last, bottom, right-hand corner. There the picture showed a similar shot of Sean, but next to him was a female shadow and on the feminine outline was written: Who’s next?
With that cover, the article inside the magazine was superfluous. The cover said it all.
* * *
When the time came, Jamie had a preview copy and he called Mab. “Shame on you. Do you think our boy will be pleased?”
“He should have given me the interview.”
Thoughtfully Jamie chided her, “This is a cheap shot, my love—you singled out one small segment of his life, and you exploited him. That’s too bad.” Jamie tsked, enjoying himself.
Mab didn’t laugh. “He can give me the interview, and I will correct any mis...conceptions. I interviewed all those women, and it was a bloody bore, they were that alike, but I wrote exactly what they said. That is an honest report.”
Jamie’s voice was soft. “You are heartless, love, I feel very sad about you. Why don’t you come with me to Big Sur? I believe I can still save you.”
“Lay off.”
“I have to get on before I can lay off.”
“Jamie, you are a bore.”
“Ah, but I’m not vicious.”
Mab retorted, “That article was not vicious. It was only the facts.”
Jamie agreed, “Chosen, and applied with great care and skill. You do know you will now have difficulty in getting interviews? Stars have felt safe with you. Now they will wonder.”
“You are exaggerating and you know it. You enjoy needling people. No one has any cause to worry about an interview with me.” Mab was very serious. “I’m sorry the truth is distasteful to Mr. Morant. He should choose his company more carefully.”
“He will. He will.”
* * *
In the wealth of news constantly being printed, the article and cover picture of Sean Morant was no big deal. It wasn’t received with cries of delight or outrage beyond those intimately concerned. Among those, interested reactions to the article were varied. Her publisher, Simon Quint, called from New York and said in his parsimonious way, “I was surprised by the article. The cover was brilliant. You should have left it at that. But the man is deeper and wider and more complex than you made him appear.”
Wally said it was one of her poorer jobs and she shouldn’t put it in the portfolio.
Her mother wouldn’t speak to her at all.
But her father eyed her solemnly and chided, “You really weren’t very kind to that man. If I didn’t know your professionalism, I’d find myself wondering if you’re fighting a secret, jealous passion for the man.”
“Passion!” All Mab could do was sputter over how ridiculous that was!
