Requiem for Moses by William X. Kienzle

Morris can go to hell.
    “But I let her off the hook. I could have kept to the status quo and arrived at about the same goal. A bit more troublesome, but workable nonetheless.
    “So, since I gave up a very livable option to make this agreement, I have the advantage.
    “Look,” he said soothingly, “it may never happen. Maybe I never need a big favor. All I’m saying is: I got the option. You owe me, Judith. Maybe I never collect. But you owe me.”
    How could he? Margie thought, and not for the first time. How could he use his own daughter, make a pawn out of her? And now he says she owes him! What sort of a man treats his daughter like … like a defeated enemy … or a slave child? Was there anything he wouldn’t do, any way he wouldn’t use anyone, even his own daughter, to get what he wanted?
    Weird! What a crazy way to handle family affairs! Like bitterly separated opponents, thought Margie, fighting always to stay one step ahead.
    From the start she had known this would be a loveless marriage. She knew she was marrying greed incarnate. So she had entered the marriage with open eyes.
    Her ultimate hope now was that one day she would live to see him dead. Then everything would be hers to do with as she wished. Then she would make it up to Judy.
    Meanwhile, she did not at all like this. Not for a moment was she fooled by Moe’s disclaimer that he might never collect a debt that he made up out of whole cloth. No, he would collect; she knew that. When and what would be involved she couldn’t yet know.
    All she knew was that when Moe Green declared, “You owe me,” he would inevitably collect.

Chapter Seven
     
    And so, for Judith, teenage life settled down to a predictable normalcy.
    She dated whomever she wished. She did not wish to date anyone vaguely reminiscent of Morris. She was a gifted, natural, athletic dancer. Her training extended from classic ballet to modern expressionism. She grew more beautiful by the year.
    She excelled in academics, was consistently on the honor roll and popular in extracurricular activities. Nothing seemed beyond her potential. Having experienced the limitations of Morris and the horror of having him thrust upon her socially, she especially appreciated the present freedom to act her age and enjoy this maturing period.
    She was almost sixteen years old and a junior in high school when her father called in her marker.
    His demand was simple enough: Seduce Jake Cameron.
    She’d never even met the man. And all she had to do was surrender her virginity and self-respect.
    She was devastated.
    Dr. Green couldn’t comprehend her concern. It was a simple matter of seduction. That sort of thing had been going on since animals inhabited earth. It was no big deal; what was all the fuss about?
    In a last-ditch effort, Judith appealed to her mother. But in the explosion of this particular and peculiar nuclear family, there was little that Margie could do. She’d been through this many times before: When Moe called in a marker, the bottom line was that he would get what was owed to him. Opposing arguments were no more than a delaying action at best.
    That it was his own daughter, young and vulnerable, whom he was sending as a virgin sacrifice into the volcano concerned him not a bit. “She owes me” was his response. Judith wept; Margie ranted, raved, and threatened. Moe remained unmoved.
    So accustomed were mother and daughter to Green’s ruthless tyranny, that like the proverbial abused spouse neither of them seriously considered any type of significant opposition, legal recourse, or even departure. Judith was too young and Margie was too unwilling to give up what she had achieved as the wife of the wealthy and well-placed Dr. Moses Green.
    Finally, Margie, in an attempt to put the best possible light on things, threw herself into coaching her daughter toward the least disgusting and compromising scenario.
    In this, Margie’s one distinct advantage lay in her intimate knowledge of the