The memory of my wife faded. The past ceased to exist. Women came and went through the revolving door of the blogosphere. I met many women online, including a precocious tart by the name of Sandra. That was a mistake I shall probably live to regret, of course, but I couldn't help myself. God forgive me, she was the best of the lot: exquisite, mature beyond her tender years, remarkably precocious in her sexual proclivities, and as dumb as the day was long. You would not believe the extent to which she would go to exercise the outrageous fantasies buzzing around her infantile brain, an attribute that I am ashamed to say I found irresistible. I shall make no excuse for my lapse in judgment, except to tell you that the interlude during which we were in flagrante lasted barely a moment in time. But, as Nabokov suggested, while it lasted the candle burned ever so brightly. Of all the women I met in chat rooms and on threads, while there were the usual fringe benefits, most were less than expected, less than advertised, and well below the standard I had set for myself. I cannot complain, though, for my "ladies-in-waiting" went out of their way to satisfy my needs, which had become, for lack of a better word, excessive. The great restaurant had become the deus ex machina and the focal point of my adventures. I spared no expense, and a good time was had by all. But it wasn't enough. And then I met Donatella, and everything changed.

THE MAN WHO DINED AT LE CIRQUE

A NOVELBy BARRY ARBILOFF

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 Barry Arbiloff
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-4977-3

Chapter One

Bergdorf Goodman on Fifth Avenue and Fifty-Seventh Street in New York City is the center of the universe for ready-to-wear haute couture. My wife shopped at Bergdorf's every day of the week, except on Tuesday. On Tuesday we had lunch at Le Cirque, at our favorite table, the one by the window near the sidebar with the fancy books.

Helen died on her thirtieth birthday. It happened on an agreeable Tuesday morning—in Bergdorf's, in the handbag kiosk (on the first floor). We were supposed to go to Le Cirque to celebrate; she went to Bergdorf's. The "Birkin" had arrived. I was on the other line when a salesperson called to give her the good news. I had no idea what a Birkin was until I heard him mention the name Hermés and the word pocketbook in the same sentence. Helen said that she had been waiting over a year for the "Noir Togo" with the Palladium hardware, the thirty-centimeter handbag, which I subsequently discovered was a must-have accessory among women of a certain class. She called it a bargain at $12,400. I had never seen her so excited. She kissed me on the cheek and ran out of the house. Her blouse was hanging out of her skirt, she was dragging her coat, and I was once again reminded of the power of wearing apparel and accessories to cause titanic shifts in the female persona. That was the last time I saw my wife alive.

Five minutes after walking into the store, while she was waiting for the manager to bring out the bag, a car on Fifth Avenue ran a light. The man driving the car lost control, and the car went through the window and slammed into a display case stacked with Birkins. The case came down on Helen's head. She was dead before she hit the floor. I went downtown to the medical examiner's office to identify the body and passed out when I saw the remains. I shall never forget that experience as long as I live.

Helen and I had been married for ten years. We loved each other, but we were not lovers. Our marriage was rarely consummated in the customary manner. Helen was afraid of sex, and I was afraid of her. There were brief interludes when passion gave way to pleasure, of course; I'd be lying if I said otherwise. But those good moments were rare by any standard. My wife considered the relationship between a man and a woman inviolable, but not in the usual way. Sex, she believed, was for procreation and not gratification. "Fucking," she said, "is the Devil's work," a notion that had been drilled into her head since childhood, which she firmly believed was the reason why intercourse was so painful.

Our honeymoon was a disaster. We went through the motions. Like most young men, I fumbled; like most young women, she had no idea what I was doing. She squirmed and cried out in pain, but remained steadfast in the moment of my repeated assaults on her virginity. She didn't say much before or after these unpleasant interludes, and she didn't have to. I later discovered that her plumbing was defective. She was as dry as desert sand. Her vagina was bulletproof. Penetration was impossible, with or without a lubricant. The pain was such that neither of us had the slightest desire to suffer the effort. I am trying not to be indelicate, and I am cringing as write this, but there is no other way to say it. Eventually, we consulted with a specialist at one of the prestigious teaching hospitals in New York. After a thorough examination and all the required laboratory tests, he put his arms around both of us and said that we were in the best of health. Then he told us to give it time, and he escorted us out of his office.

I didn't know what to believe. At first, I thought I was at fault, but that didn't make sense. I was good-looking, healthy, and more than willing. Everyone thought I had a marvelous personality and all the attributes that any woman could possibly want. It's true that I was intimidated by women, but so what? No one is perfect. My psychiatrist said I had an Oedipus complex. He said that I harbored a repressed desire to kill my father and possess my mother. Jake, my best friend, said he was full of shit. I wasn't sure what or whom to believe. The truth was probably somewhere in between the two extremes, although I never gave it much thought. Either way, as I subsequently discovered, my inhibitions had very little to do with Helen's inability to become an active participant in the boudoir.

How Helen and I ended up together is a mystery. We were opposites in every respect. The only thing we had in common was that both of us were well made, young, and exceptionally good-looking. My IQ was off the charts; she was barely able to read and write. She was the youngest sibling of a fire-breathing, God-fearing, Bible-toting lunatic who took the Good Book literally; I was the only son of a successful architect—a hard-drinking, womanizing atheist and conservative activist. She came from a shack in a swamp in a backwater parish, in the southern part of Georgia. I was brought up in a penthouse on Park Avenue, in the rarefied atmosphere of the rich and famous.

We met at an after-hours club while I was in basic training at an army base in Georgia. I was on a weekend pass. She was moonlighting as a waitress. I wanted to kill time; she wanted to earn a few dollars to pay for new finery. Had her father known that she was working in an after-hours joint, he would have crucified her. I met the man once, and once was enough.

Helen and I fell madly in love the moment we met. We were both kids, but one look was all it took. When I saw her for the first time, with golden-blonde hair and the biggest and bluest eyes I had ever seen, I became light-headed. My heart was beating so fast I thought it would push through my chest. Three weeks later, an old preacher in Opelika married us.

Abstinence was something I had not anticipated, but I never said a word to Helen. I was much too young and too much in love to risk speaking my mind. Young men usually swallow their pride to prevent getting on the wrong side of a relationship with women they think they are madly in love with. What they don't know is that women do not respect weakness. Jake said that women have to be ruled with an iron fist. For all I know, he may be right. There was a time when I thought I was doing the right thing by keeping my mouth shut. "How is it at all possible for a man to have the slightest respect for himself if he has presumed to find pleasure even in the very sense of his own humiliation?" The quote is attributed to Dostoyevsky. He was right, of course.

I thought I could suppress my emotions, but Helen was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. The image of her white, dovelike skin caused an immediate reaction in which every sensory receptor in the lower portion of my body was aroused. It took days for me to recover if, by happenstance, I came upon her while she was removing her clothes. I can still smell her scent, see the almost invisible fuzz on her thighs, and in my dreams feel the gentle slope of her hips, breasts, and buttocks. The combination of her looks and my desire was lethal. Lust ruled my life. I could never understand how or why a glimpse of a thigh, soft flesh, and other parts of the female body can affect a human being with a penis and testicles to the extent that it does. My heart pounded when I looked at her. I trembled when we touched. A napkin on my lap was sufficient to cause an erection. The positions she assumed at any given moment, even while...