Emergency Room
A female law student from a wealthy family seduces a married architect.
An excerpt:
He drove around to the back of the house. The blacktopped parking lot covered all traces of the carriage house and stables that must have been there once upon a time. There was room for eight or ten cars, he figured, but only one car was parked there: a shiny blue Mazda Miata convertible roadster.
He was going to walk around to the front door but the back door opened and Mim was there, smiling at him. She was wearing an apron that said, "All This and I Can Cook Too."
"I saw you drive in," she said. "This entrance takes us right into the kitchen." He followed her through the door and up a few steps to another door.
The small table in the kitchen was set for two. "Sit," she said, gesturing toward one of the chairs.
"Can I help with anything?"
"That's sweet of you, but no thanks. There's not that much to do. I already made my salad and the only cooking, if you can call it that, is toasting your bagel. We're having our usual lunch."
As he sat, she said, "Oh wait. you can open the wine. That's the gentleman's job, isn't it?"
Mim set a bottle and a corkscrew on the table. "It's a Chardonnay," she said, "but I think it's a little better than what we got at the Yardarm." The label read "Far Niente," which meant nothing to him but he suspected it should.
He opened the bottle and filled the glasses. Still standing, she lifted hers, clinked it against his, and said, "Here's to a great afternoon together." After a long sip, she said, "Time to toast your bagel."
It seemed to be Mim's turn to talk about herself. There was nothing surprising. He could have guessed the general outline but she filled in the details. Her father had gone to Brown and Harvard Law and had started a law firm with Sam Allison. After a few years, he and Allison had amicably agreed to dissolve the partnership and each had set up his own law office.
Her mother had gone to a nearby junior college which, he knew, had been essentially a high-priced finishing school in those days. Her parents married when her father was thirty-two and her mother was twenty.
Mim had gone to the Winsor School in Boston and then to Wellesley before Harvard Law. She had an older brother, who worked for a major brokerage in New York, and a younger sister, who was a junior at Smith.
"So now you know as much about me as I know about you," she said.
"Yes, I guess we know just about everything about each other."
"There is one important thing I need to know about you."
"What's that?"
"Can you be seduced?"
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