The Magician by Sol Stein

don’t you like it?”
    He wished she would stop talking now.
    “You and your guys think you know something when you know that I do it. That’s like thinking the President doesn’t do it. It’s stupid.”
    He was so touchy. She hadn’t meant to get him angry. She unbuttoned her blouse. He watched her.
    “You know something?” she said, as she unhooked her bra. “You never once kissed me.”
    “You mean on them?”
    “On the mouth, stupid.”
    He had never kissed any girl on the mouth.
    When he didn’t move, she moved to him, and put her arms around his neck and brought his face down to her and held her lips against his tightly closed lips.
    “Do that again,” she said, “only relax.”
    His head was in a roar. He could feel the needling in his groin, the signal, but couldn’t connect the idea of kissing lips and a feeling half his body away.
    “Do it to me,” she said.
    He looked blank.
    “What I’m doing to you.”
    Their mouths met, and despite the slaver and terrified thoughts in his head, he felt himself stiffening with an urgency, the need to rush.
    She slipped off her shoes, unwrapped her skirt, let it drop, and stepped out of it. She took her half-slip off.
    “You don’t have to take everything off,” said Urek.
    She took her socks off, and then stepped out of her white panties; the hair where her legs met was dark, not blonde like her long hair.
    “Arencha going to turn the light off?” he said.
    She shrugged her shoulders and turned the switch. It merely dimmed the light, one of those three-way bulbs now at its lowest setting. Then, completely naked, she sat down in front of her dressing table again, and again combed her hair. He could have killed her.
    “You afraid of catching cold?” she said, turning. “Take your clothes off.”
    He got down to his shorts and socks, then stood adamant.
    “Take your socks off.”
    He took off first one, then the other.
    “The rest, too,” she said. “Want some help?”
    He wasn’t going to have any girl undressing him. He let his shorts drop to the floor, the hairiness of his body now wholly exposed to her view.
    “Well,” she said at his preparedness.
    He gestured toward the bed.
    “What’s your hurry?”
    She came closer to him, and he gestured toward the bed again.
    Her hands were on him, stroking, and he tried now with force at her shoulders, to push her to the bed, but it was suddenly too late, and like an idiot he stood there, coming in spasms.
    The kraut was frightened at his anger. He didn’t say anything. She put her arms around him, it seemed to him tenderly, and sat him down on the edge of the bed. She kissed the side of his neck, then his cheek, and then his closed mouth.
    He motioned for her to turn the light completely off, which she did, so that she would not see him, but when he lay down, his face in the pillow, she could hear him smothering the shame of his sobs.

Chapter 12
    On the open road in daylight, when Thomassy was relaxed, he drove with his left elbow on the window or on the armrest, his right hand lightly on the wheel, feeling the responsiveness of the car as he had once the controls of a light plane when he took a few flying lessons. But when tense, he clutched the wheel with both hands, apprehensive about oncoming traffic, each car a new threat, worrying about the brakes’ sudden failure or a tie rod going, the auto out of control and veering him, trapped in his seat belt, toward a yard-wide tree. Tonight Thomassy drove through the night with both perspiring palms on the wheel, all the way to the Urek house.
    His most frequent fantasy while driving was of himself cross-examining a witness. Other lawyers he knew dreamed of being admitted to practice before the Supreme Court—perhaps just once. That was not Thomassy’s aim, though he didn’t doubt for a moment that he could get there if he wanted to. In front of the high court he couldn’t cross-examine in the way that intoxicated him, setting up the witness for a