Whatever Comes

“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.”