"Herr Profesor Abercrombie!"
The husky female voice didn't startle Ian Abercrombie. It only yanked his mind off the essays he slogged through. He glanced up. Marianne Witmerhaus' casual couture blocked his office door.
She hadn't been a surprise, having alerted him weeks earlier of her visit. Ostensibly she traveled to attend "the tennis." Engage in some of "the shopping" as well.
Marianne had grown up in Hamburg, West Germany. Although she spoke passable enough American English, she nonetheless leaned hard against the German crutch of placing definite articles before proper nouns.
Abercrombie made Marianne's acquaintance when her bluffing skills far surpassed any fluency in English. That was 18 years ago.
He rose from his seat and circled his desk. The slight expectancy across Marianne's face eased into whimsy. Nearly as tall as Abercrombie, especially in heels, it was unnecessary for either to maneuver and compensate for kissing.
Her arms were strong. He'd never known Marianne's embraces to be lax. Nor simply for show. Abercrombie wondered whether she'd reached that point with her husband. Those hollow examples of public reassurance.
Chance passersby, his students particularly, might've been astounded to see him in such an open exchange. Likely none would've known what to have thought of the rough goosing that pressed Marianne's hips harder against his own.
A little joke between them carried over from their first night together. As a literature professor at this small liberal arts college set in the Hudson Valley, Abercrombie was highly regarded. Therefore students couldn't possibly imagine him getting down, could they? And should the urge merge with opportunity, he couldn't express it, right? No. It would've been easier for his students to envision their parents doing the dirty. That vanilla kind.
Abercrombie released Marianne. He stepped back and appraised her.
She wore an outfit which complimented her womanly figure. Frequent spa attendance, an active lifestyle, tanned, a lifetime nonsmoker, moderate imbibing and sensible eating not only gave her shape, these rigorously maintained habits also made her more attractive than at 19.
Truthfully, there were few women who through marriage, giving birth, after 18 years of knowing, one could state that about.
If anything, the blue eyes dotting Marianne's foxy features saw matters less attentively. She'd learned to relax. With age and experience she knew when to reserve suspicions. And now with money she found it easier to dismiss the same. At least beside him in America. Perhaps back in Germany that trait first encountered then endured in 1989 fully resurfaced.
He hadn't visited unified Germany since the earliest 90s. From the mid 90s-on Marianne was a biennial visitor to the States.
Abercrombie considered telling Marianne of her voluptuousness. Even adding the comparison between present and past. He decided against it. Not that Marianne suffered easy embarrassment, but he believed she would've found such favorable portrayal effusive.
Or asked, "Was I fat before?"
An honest question for which he lacked a suitable response. Then she wasn't. That was gauged by yesterday's standards.
Abercrombie saw that Marianne quite succulent. Of course when he first eyed her she stood tall, straight, sturdy, curvy and matter-of-factly naked. A vulnerability she reversed into intimidation.
On a gentlemen's club stage, a foot or so above the audience, looming in low heels really, she surveyed all down her long sly nose. Angle and distance, foreshortened as they were, blackened her eyes. Cool cruel lips came the next night, when he knew her better.
Blue and white key lights raised her cheekbones, sharpened her muscle masses. Slick black leaves of hair bound her head and refracted light.
If he had chanced upon the same person sometime in the 90s, maybe she would've chosen a breast augmentation. Or two. Fortunately, he thought, that mania was years off before overwhelming good sense and natural-born assets. Marianne always had the right handful of proportionally sized tits. And Abercrombie had big mitts.
Even before proper introduction, the professor saw himself lapping at those pink nubs serving as nipples.
No washboard midriff for Marianne. Rather a rim of tender flesh circled her belly button. A dense pubic wedge stamped her hips from which flared long legs.
After their initial sighting, Abercrombie assumed she'd never have anything to hide. Marianne proved him wrong twice.
Inspection and recollection indulged, the professor offered his visitor a seat. She sauntered into his office. Another admirable attribute, her gait. Marianne even sauntered barefoot.
While making herself comfortable, Abercrombie cleared his desk of papers. He slid sheaves into his briefcase. Concerned, Marianne asked whether she'd interrupted him.
No-no!" Abercrombie said. "You came at just the right time. I was getting discouraged by these essays."
Taking genuine interest in his profession as she always did, Marianne prompted him.
The reading assignment had been "McTeague," a Gilded Age novel. He'd instructed this particular class to interpret the protagonists' behavior. "McTeague" had been a craven Barbary Coast tale underlined by ignorant moralistic admonishments.
"Unfortunately," Abercrombie said, "none of my students grasped the book's wages of sin aspect. Each has been upset that all the thieving and killing produced nothing but emptiness."
"So they missed the point of the book," she said.
Abercrombie nodded. "Theirs is a 'fulfillment by any means' generation. They don't even have a glancing acquaintance with propriety. Like McTeague himself, all they want is gold. Regardless."
"And, say, at 20, in your own 20s, presented a choice of halo or gold rings, you'd automatically choose virtue over value?"
"At 20," Abercrombie answered, "I likely would've snatched the loot. But I surely ought have wrestled with my conscience beforehand."
Marianne chuckled. "Talk of noble sentiment is an American quality, isn't it?" Abercrombie tired of golden dreams ending in greed's rueful borax desert. After all, reachable treasure sat living and breathing across from him. He asked Marianne where she preferred dining tonight.
As ever when Abercrombie offered to spend money on her behalf, Marianne pulled a face. Somehow she'd gotten into her head that he'd been completely responsible for her current enrichment.
Their friendship had certainly led to one of his closets being full of bespoke suits and handmade shoes. All gifts from her.
If being big and having his countenance mistaken as menacing, yes, he'd done plenty. If his size scared then coerced certain people to react in manners beneficial to Marianne, perhaps those frightened had acted imaginably worse than he could ever know.
Guilt, as he taught, produced powerful magnification.
"Tonight I cook dinner for you, Herr Profesor. Tomorrow maybe we go out and eat."
Her second statement was to mollify him. In truth when she visited they never dined out. Marianne enjoyed cooking for him. That and rather than lodge in an area four or five star hotel, nights she could've considered trinkgeld, Marianne chose crowding his town house's master bed.
There, she performed as what he supposed the perfect hausfrau. Her efforts shamed his once-a-week housekeeper's. Neat and orderly as the hired woman kept his home, Frau Witmershaus made it immaculate.
Again while she'd never admit it, Marianne behaved as if she were beholden to him. Based on their initial dealings, he would've believed her incapable of such sentimentality.
Yet if events prior to their first encounter hadn't occurred, Abercrombie's next steps may've led elsewhere. He refrained from telling her of that randomness. But she pieced it together through the years. He supposed all she lacked were the two other women's names.
No doubt at this late date Marianne could've gleaned those, too.
An old college classmate's invitation brought him across the Atlantic. Years after graduating, Paul Lowery received a stipend towards British university graduate business courses. At the time Abercrombie wrote for a newspaper. The only comparable gift for him would've been his being awarded a writing fellowship somewhere.
Unlike their undergraduate days, Lowery truly needed to attend current classes sober and awake. That often meant limiting his London carousing to weekends. Which gave Abercrombie weeklong chances to explore Europe apart from England.
During one of these early summer occasions Abercrombie found himself in Hamburg. Not to visit the Cave and bask in other ur-Beatle touchstones. But to gambol along the Reeperbahn, a West German venue Americans regarded as notorious because of its nonjudgmental attitude towards pleasure.
Libertine as he thought himself, Abercrombie, as most of his generation still, ultimately looked upon desire and fulfillment with ambivalence. Breaking the final binds of American cultural reluctance against sexual license -- or a lifetime of eager virgins screaming "no!" but meaning "yes!" -- went against everything drummed into him.
Fortunately, newspaper work proved more enlightening and thorough than practicing ideal morality. Through it he learned that venial drives made the world go round.
The States didn't lack for diversions like the Reeperbahn. However, patronizing tenderloin districts there frequently left one unnecessarily questioning his virtue. An implication fed through constant messages equating carnality with weakness undermined natural human expression.
Abercrombie didn't arrive wide-eyed at this quarter. His Times Square familiarity augmented by occasional Combat Zone excursions, the Reeperbahn failed overloading his promiscuity. In fact it's openness eased what any cosseted American might've mistaken as seedy.
No goggle-eyed tsk-tsking for him.
Had he suffered the least amount of anxiety, the brightly lit police precinct leading into the area ought have allayed his heebie-jeebies. It was such a mild summer night foot patrolmen lolled and joshed before the station house. Of course this was mid-week. Had it been Friday or Saturday night, he'd have expected an entirely heightened vibe.
Abercrombie knew well how work weeks compressed energy. After all, hadn't he spent his entire 20s as a wage-slave volcano?
