Lovin’ That Spin
Chapter III.
Thursday:
Karen Tuttle smiled and stretched as she opened her eyes. Her right arm brushed against a muscular male body, and a moment later Nick’s voice said, “Awake?”
“Mmm, yeah,” she responded, instinctively turning toward the sound. The pendant around her neck slithered across her chest, the sensation making her shiver with pleasure.
“Hungry?”
“Oh, yeah,” Karen answered fervently. “I could eat a horse!”
Nick laughed, the rich masculine sound of mirth she’d come to love. “I don’t have any of that, I’m afraid,” he teased. “I’m sure I can come up with something, though.” Getting up, he threw on a robe and padded away.
He was as good as his word. Before long, the aromas of coffee, toast and roast beef hash wafted to Karen’s nostrils, making her stomach rumble. She levered herself upright and, after a short search, gathered up her clothes and got dressed. Then she headed out into the kitchen.
Halfway through breakfast Nick asked, “How would you like to go to one of Dr. Abaddon’s shows tonight?”
“Why?” Karen asked, puzzled. She leered at him. “I can think of better ways to spend an evening.”
Nick grinned, but answered seriously. “As I understand it, he issued you a challenge last time.” He reached out and gently lifted the amulet around Karen’s neck, just enough to draw her attention to it. “Don’t you want to go back and show him up for the fraud he is?”
“Well, when you put it that way . . .” Karen nodded, smiling broadly.
“Eight o’clock suit you? We can have dinner beforehand, and then after, I’m sure we can find something to do.”
Karen laughed and agreed.
The Thirteen Club was nearly full when Nick and Karen arrived at quarter to eight. However, there was still a table open near the stage, and they took it. A waiter appeared almost immediately and took their drink order. He had just returned with their drinks when the emcee announced Dr. Abaddon’s show.
Abaddon made the same entrance he had when Karen had seen him earlier, popping up amid a burst of dark smoke. He ran through a number of the same illusions she’d seen before, including the startling “teleportation” stunt with the two doorframes. Finally he gestured and a stagehand emerged, wheeling out a full-length mirror.
Karen watched with interest. This was new.
Dr. Abaddon stood in front of the mirror. It was angled so that the audience could see his reflection in it. Turning, he addressed them: “Everyone knows that your reflection in the mirror is just an image. It can’t do anything but mimic your actions.” He raised his right arm.
Impossibly, the reflection’s arm remained where it had been. Karen gasped. It’s a trick, she thought desperately. That’s got to be some kind of flat-screen TV projecting a recorded image, not a real mirror.
“Ooops,” Abaddon said comically. The audience laughed. “Well, at least it’s still just a reflection. It can’t come out of the mirror.” As he spoke, he stepped back several paces.
Instead of retreating into the mirror’s reflected background, his reflection moved forward—and then, as the people watching from the club’s tables stared in disbelief, it stepped out of the mirror! Two identical Abaddons stood facing each other on stage.
“That,” choked Karen, “that’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”
Nick smiled. “I told you back at the beginning that Dr. Abaddon was something special.”
“You certainly did,” Karen acknowledged.
The two Abaddons turned to face front and bowed deeply. Then they straightened, faced each other again and walked forward, closing the distance between them. A few paces brought them nose to nose—and then they melted into each other! For a second or two, there was a weirdly doubled Dr. Abaddon with faces and feet pointing in two directions; then one of them—Karen couldn’t make out which one—turned, as if the other were no more substantial than air, until only one normal-looking Abaddon was visible. He turned to face front again and bowed deeply.
There was a deafening explosion of applause.
That, apparently, was the end of Abaddon’s show. The magician strode offstage, disappearing through a curtained side door.
Karen got up from her table. “I have to speak with Dr. Abaddon,” she informed Nick. She headed toward the stage, looking for the door she’d used last time. After a few moments, she saw it.
Unexpectedly, it opened. Dr. Abaddon stood framed in the doorway, the light behind it turning him into a silhouette. Oddly, his eyes gleamed in the shadowed darkness of his face.
“Do come in, Professor Tuttle,” he greeted her. “I’ve been expecting you.”
Karen allowed Dr. Abaddon to usher her through the door and lead her back to his dressing room. Once they had arrived, he turned to her.
“Well, Professor,” he said, “I see you’re still wearing my little bauble.” He smiled broadly.
“Yes, I am,” Karen responded. “What about it?”
“Tell me something,” returned the magician. “Have you taken it off at any time since I gave it to you?”
“Well, ah,” answered Karen nervously, “er, I haven’t. I keep meaning to, but somehow, I always seem to forget.”
Abaddon nodded. “And have you noticed anything different about yourself since you put it on? Anything at all?”
Now Karen saw the jaws of a trap closing on her. If she admitted what had been happening to her, it would amount to admitting that Abaddon’s powers were real. Desperately, she tried to think of a way out.
At last, she opened her mouth to speak. “Yes, Doctor, I have,” her voice said. Horrified, she tried to stop, but she couldn’t. Out poured the whole sordid story, from that first night in the shower right through her arrest at the Alpha Tau Omega frat house.
“Then you admit my amulet has changed you?” a triumphant Abaddon asked. “You admit my powers are real, and that magic really exists?”
“Damn you,” choked Karen. “I don’t admit any such thing! You’ve done something to me—hypnotized me somehow—but whatever you’ve done, it isn’t magic!”
Abaddon gazed at her indulgently. “Whatever you say, my dear. But you know it’s impossible to make someone do anything under hypnosis that’s against her moral code. If I’ve hypnotized you, that means everything you’ve done since last Friday was something you’d have been willing to do anyway. Are you prepared to concede that?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” Karen answered feebly. “I wouldn’t have thought so, but . . . what other explanation is there?”
“You know,” the Doctor observed, “you can still go back. I won’t stop you from removing my amulet, right here and now. And you have my word that if you do, you’ll find yourself restored to the respectable academic you were a week ago. No tricks, no lingering effects, nothing.”
Karen’s hands flew to her neck. Before she could pull off the necklace with its corrupting pendant, though, Dr. Abaddon spoke again.
“Of course, you know that if you do take it off, you’ll be admitting my powers are real, and that everything you believe in, everything you’ve championed in your lectures, is a lie.”
Karen’s hands fell away from the pendant. She gazed dully at the magician.
“That’s right,” her tormentor continued. “Even if I never revealed our little contest, and how it came out—and I won’t promise I wouldn’t; the tabloids would love something like this!—you and I would always know.” His smile widened. “I imagine it would be difficult for you to continue your anti-superstition crusade burdened with that knowledge.”
“Damn you,” Karen repeated, her voice hoarse with fear and thwarted fury.
Something flickered in the magician’s eyes for an instant. “Which is it to be?” he asked smoothly. “Do you remove my pendant, and thereby admit that magic is real? Or do you keep it on, knowing what you’re risking?”
It’ll recruit you for our little club here, as an enthusiastic stripper, and you’ll leave everything else behind. Dr. Abaddon’s concluding words as he produced the pendant at their last meeting came back to Karen. A wave of heat shot through her. The prospect of stripping for a living didn’t seem nearly as bad to her as it would have a week before. Despite herself, she smiled at the images which flitted through her mind.
She pressed the smile out flat as she replied, “I’ll take my chances, thank you.” She glared at the magician. “You haven’t won yet. I’ll beat you! I swear, I’ll beat you!” She turned and ran out of Abaddon’s dressing room. His mocking laughter followed her.
Karen fled out front. When she reached the table where Nick waited for her, she didn’t sit down. Instead, her voice shaky, she said, “Take me home, Nick. Please, just take me home.”
“Yours or mine?” Nick asked, looking concerned.
“Mine,” Karen choked. “Please, Nick. I need—I—just take me back to my apartment, please?”
Nick did as she’d asked. The drive to Karen’s apartment passed in silence. Only when they arrived and she was getting out of the car did Nick say, “I’m sorry you didn’t have a good time. Maybe we shouldn’t have gone there after all.”
Karen answered, “It’s not your fault. I just—never mind. Just—it wasn’t your fault, okay?” She shut the car door and headed inside as Nick watched.
Not until nearly dawn did Professor Tuttle finally manage to fall asleep.
Friday:
The jangling of the phone jarred Karen awake. Bleary-eyed, she got up and answered it. “Yes?” she inquired. “Who’s calling?”
The answer was very bad news. “This is Dr. Elias Schonberg of the American Society of Physical Chemists. Am I speaking to Professor Karen Tuttle?”
“You are,” Professor Tuttle responded carefully.
A throat-clearing noise came over the phone, followed by: “Some disturbing news has come to the Society’s attention, Dr. Tuttle. Very disturbing news.”
“And that would be . . . ?” The Professor was afraid she knew the answer.
“I’d rather not discuss it over the phone,” Dr. Schonberg answered. “I’ve been asked to request your appearance before the Society’s board of directors at a meeting Monday morning at ten A.M. at the Society’s New York headquarters.”
“And if I don’t come?” It was foolish even to ask, Karen knew, but she was irritable; after her nearly sleepless night, her head was pounding.
Dr. Schonberg coughed. “I’ve been instructed that if you refuse to appear, you needn’t bother to attend any future meetings of the Society; your membership will be considered to have been terminated. Furthermore, DeLane University has been contacted regarding this matter, and will be informed of its resolution.”
“Very well,” Professor Tuttle said coolly. “I’ll be there.”
There was a click, and then a dial tone. Karen hung up.
She was in it deep. Somehow, the ASPC had found out what had been going on. If she couldn’t defend herself adequately on Monday, she faced expulsion—and from what Dr. Schonberg had said, she might lose her teaching position at DeLane as well. “Moral turpitude” might have a quaint, oil-fashioned sound to it, but that charge was one of the few that could unseat a tenured university professor.
Her head hurt worse than ever. Wandering into her bathroom, she took several aspirin tablets. They helped a little. Breakfast helped more, once she’d pulled herself together enough to get dressed and go out for it. She wouldn’t have thought she’d be hungry, under the circumstances, but she was ravenous, devouring a large stack of pancakes, several slices of ham, and a large orange juice along with two cups of heavily-sweetened coffee.
Replete at last, Karen leaned back in her chair in the little restaurant she’d found and considered her options.
There was, of course, surrender. She could go crawling back to Dr. Abaddon and beg him to lift the spell on her—might as well call it a spell, she admitted. But if she did that, she’d be at his mercy forever. All he’d have to do was publicize her capitulation, and she’d be a laughingstock. Professional disgrace and probable unemployment lay down that road as surely as if she defied the ASPC—with the added burden of public humiliation.
Or she could just not show up Monday. She’d be kicked out of her professional association, and might well lose her teaching position as well, but at least she wouldn’t be quite so spectacularly ruined. However, she’d still have to deal somehow with Dr. Abaddon. Her record so far didn’t fill her with confidence that she’d come out the winner in that confrontation.
No, she decided, there was really only one choice. Somehow, she had to bullshit her way through the meeting Monday. (Did I really think “bullshit” just now? she marveled, feeling delightfully sinful.) Then she had to get as far away from Dr. Abaddon and the Thirteen Club as she could, as fast as she could.
She never noticed that she hadn’t even thought of separating herself from Abaddon’s amulet as well. . . .
Karen bought a copy of the tabloid she’d read on Wednesday. When she got back to her apartment, she read it through. Several of its gossipy articles about celebrities amused her. She finished up with her horoscope. Today it read, “You will be offered one last chance to change your mind. Choose wisely.”
Karen sniffed in disdain. Change my mind about what?
Contemptuously, she tossed the paper away. She had no more time for such foolishness.
Saturday:
Karen knew she should be preparing herself for Monday’s meeting. Her entire career was at stake, after all. She wasn’t exactly sure what she could do to get ready, though. If the ASPC’s directors knew what had happened at her lecture and then at Nick’s frat party, what could she possibly say in her own defense?
Eventually, she simply put it out of her mind. If there was nothing she could do, why worry?
Toward evening, she called Nick and they went out to dinner. Afterward, they went back to his apartment. Karen told herself it didn’t matter. There was always tomorrow, after all. Plenty of time.
Shortly after that, she stopped thinking altogether, losing herself in pleasure until at last she fell asleep in her golden-haired lover’s arms.
Sunday:
Nick dropped Karen off at her apartment around ten-thirty in the morning. The previous night’s lovemaking had left her relaxed and happy. The ASPC tribunal she’d be facing the next day no longer looked threatening to her at all.
In fact, she was positively looking forward to it. . . .
She packed a few things and climbed into her rented car for the drive to Manhattan. Mason University was located in upstate New York, so it was several hours’ drive; flying, however, would have meant dealing with ticket clerks and baggage checks—including the obligatory Transport Security searches—and so wouldn’t really save time, especially with the trip from the airport. This way she avoided all that—and going in early would let her get a full night’s sleep before facing the tribunal.
By the time she reached the city, she was tired. She booked a room at a hotel she’d stayed in on other, happier occasions when she’d attended gatherings at the Society’s Manhattan offices. It was, she reflected, a little awkward to be renting two rooms in two different cities at the same time—not counting her “home” apartment on-campus at DeLane. But one way or another, she’d be in that situation for only a short time.
Karen ate a light supper, then spent the evening watching television. She tried to watch a couple of news programs, but found it impossible to concentrate on them. Instead, she passed the time watching comedies.
Finally she turned off the TV and laid out her clothes for the next day. Everything had to be perfect. She wanted to leave just the right impression.
Inspecting her handiwork, she nodded. Then, yawning, she got out of her clothes and climbed into bed, nude except for the pendant around her neck. She turned out the lights, and was asleep in minutes.
Monday:
The day dawned clear and bright, the sun streaming warmly through the large windows of Professor Tuttle’s rented rooms.
Karen opened her eyes and smiled. Today was the day, she thought; the day she faced those smug assholes of the ASPC board. She hoped Dr. Elias Schonberg, in particular, would be there. Looking back, she wondered how she could ever have been afraid of them. They were just men, after all.
She got up and dressed carefully; she’d laid out her clothes for this confrontation the night before. Then she went out for a light breakfast. Finally, satisfied, she headed for the city.
The Manhattan headquarters of the American Society of Physical Chemists was an imposing nineteenth-century brick structure. The doorway was marked by a bronze plaque bearing the Society’s emblem and the year of its founding, 1898. Famous chemists like Harold Urey and Linus Pauling had been members and had attended conferences there.
Once, Professor Karen Tuttle might have felt honored to be there—or, if summoned for the sort of grilling the board clearly intended today, thoroughly intimidated. But that Karen Tuttle was only a memory now.
And good riddance, Karen thought as she mounted the marble steps leading up to the entrance’s polished oaken doors. I like how I’ve changed, and I don’t give a damn whether magic’s responsible or not.
The board was to meet in Room 204, on the second floor. Karen took the stairs, spitefully ignoring the signs that read USE ELEVATORS EXCEPT IN EMERGENCIES. Judging by the tobacco aroma wafting through the air, she wasn’t the only one to use the stairwell, signs or no signs.
At five minutes before ten, Professor Tuttle entered Room 204. It proved to be a large conference chamber dominated by a long table whose glossy-finished top reflected the light from the overhead fixtures. Comfortable chairs lined its sides; there was a slightly fancier one at its head, obviously for the Society’s chairman. A single chair, identical to those along the sides, sat at the table’s foot.
The board members were already there, waiting. They rose to their feet as she came in. Karen appreciated the polite gesture, which she suspected was the last courtesy she would be shown. A calculating part of her mind noted approvingly that the tribunal’s members were all male.
The chairman, Dr. Thomas Sowell, spoke. “Good morning, Professor. I’m pleased to see you decided to come in.” His smile was cold in his wrinkled face under his thatch of white hair.
Dr. Sowell gestured at the lone chair facing his. Karen sat, and the board members followed suit. Karen carefully placed her shoulder bag under her seat, then met the chairman’s eyes coolly.
“We’re here today, Professor Tuttle,” Dr. Sowell continued, “to address serious charges of unprofessional conduct on your part.” He produced a sheaf of papers and riffled through them. “Lewd and lascivious behavior leading to your arrest; an additional report of similar behavior at a fraternity party.” He harrumphed. “We are a dignified professional association, Professor. Such antics cannot be tolerated.”
The chairman glared at the professor. “What have you to say for yourself?”
Karen smiled. “Just this, Chairman Sowell.” She reached down and pulled out the CD player she had secreted in her handbag. She set it carefully on the table and turned it on.
Then, as the first notes of music emerged, she climbed onto the table.
She had chosen her outfit carefully: a gray skirt reaching to mid-thigh, a matching jacket, white blouse, sheer stockings and glossy black pumps. The jacket came off as she sang out the first bars of “That Old Black Magic.” She flung it away and reached up to wildly tousle her hair, freeing it from the sedate bun into which she’d arranged it that morning; then her hands came down to unfasten her skirt. Wriggling nimbly out of it, she stood revealed in semi-transparent black lingerie. She danced down the table, then stood, hands on hips, legs apart, looking down at the stunned Dr. Sowell.
“I should stay away, but what can I do?” she sang. “I hear your name and I’m aflame. Aflame with such a burning desire”—she knelt down, keeping her eyes on Dr. Sowell’s—“that only your kiss!"—she surged forward and covered the chairman’s gaping mouth with her own. “Kiss!” She drew back, then plunged forward again for another liplock. “Kiss!” She pulled away again, then mashed her lips against Dr. Sowell’s for a third time before drawing back to coo, “can put out the fire!”
A smug portion of her mind noted that no one was trying to stop her, not even Dr. Sowell. The chairman, in fact, was breathing raggedly and squirming in his seat. He might be in his sixties, but, Karen noted with satisfaction, his virility was evidently intact.
“For you’re the lover I have waited for,” she informed him. Dropping to hands and knees, she crawled to him and oozed off the conference table into his lap, pushing his chair back with determined strength to make room, then throwing her arms around his neck. “The mate that Fate had me created for.” Straddling him, trapping his legs between her squeezing thighs, she finished: “And every time your lips meet mine, darling, down and down I go; round and round I go”—she rubbed herself against him, sliding down until her head rested against his belly, then began twisting back and forth—“in a spin, loving the spin I’m in, under that old black magic called”—she threw her head back, eyes closed, as she ended, ”lo-o-ove!“ With the last word, she rasped the chairman firmly, digging her fingernails into his neck and the back of his head not quite hard enough to draw blood.
Sowell squealed and bucked under her, coming helplessly in his expensive trousers. She gripped him with her thighs again, and he came again. Then she released him, dismounted and returned to her own chair, enjoying the aroused stares of the other tribunal members as she undulated past them on her way around the table. She collected her cast-off clothes and put them back on, slowly, tauntingly, a striptease in reverse. When at last she sat down, there was utter silence.
Dr. Sowell was the first to recover his voice.
“Young woman,” he croaked, “that was”—he raised a hand to mop his sweat-drenched face—“an impressive performance, for a nightclub performer.” In a stronger voice, he went on. “However, the ASPC is not in the entertainment business. We are, as it seems you’ve forgotten, a professional organization. A scientific organization.”
The ASPC’s chairman tried to impale Karen Tuttle with a fierce glare, but couldn’t quite manage to meet her eyes. He moved on anyway, taking refuge in formality: “Professor Tuttle, this tribunal will now consider its judgment. You may wait in the reception area downstairs; you will be summoned when we’re ready to speak with you.” He gestured toward the door. “You may go now.”
Karen went, taking the stairs down to the reception room and sitting on one of the long, low couches which lined three of its walls. As she sat down, a weak voice in her head cried despairingly that her career was ruined. Ruined! She could read between the lines. How was the board supposed to respond, for God’s sake, when she’d stripped in front of them and given the chairman a lap dance right in front of everyone?
A much louder voice answered, Who the fuck cares? If they throw me out, they do, that’s all. Karen smirked, remembering how Chairman Sowell had surrendered to her charms. Even if they expelled her, he’d always know she had ridden him like a prize stallion. To a dry stick like him, that would be a humiliating memory. Presently, the receptionist’s phone rang. The gray-haired woman sitting at the reception desk answered it, listened briefly and nodded. With a bland look, she addressed Karen: “The board will see you now, Ms. Tuttle.”
“Professor Tuttle,” Karen corrected her automatically as she got to her feet. The receptionist returned only a fishy stare.
As she entered the room, Karen was amused to see that Chairman Sowell had put on a fresh pair of pants. He avoided her eyes and addressed her brusquely: “You needn’t bother to take a seat. This won’t take long.”
Turning to gesture at the other board members, Sowell said, “We’ve come to a decision.” Visibly steeling himself, he announced, “It is the unanimous determination of the board of directors of the American Society of Physical Chemists that you, Professor Karen Tuttle, are to be stripped immediately of membership in this Society.”
Karen sighed. Well, it wasn’t as if she were surprised.
“Further,” Dr. Sowell decreed, “it is our judgment that we shall communicate our action against you directly to your employer, DeLane University, with our formal recommendation that you be removed from your professorship there, on grounds of moral turpitude.”
“No!” The word burst from Karen’s lips. “You can’t do that!”
Sowell regarded her coldly. “I’m afraid we can,” he corrected her. “And we intend to.”
Karen glanced wildly around. The other directors were regarding her as hostilely as Sowell. You hypocritical bastards, she thought. You enjoyed my strip act while it was going on. Not one of you tried to stop me! And now you’re accusing me of immorality? But she said nothing. What would be the point? Their unforgiving stares said it all.
It was over.
Karen pulled her Society membership card from the inside jacket pocket where she’d parked it. She flipped it onto the table. “I won’t be needing this, then,” she said.
Mustering as much dignity as she could, she turned and left the room.
It doesn’t take long for a career to die.
Karen went immediately from ASPC headquarters to her Manhattan hotel room, packed up and checked out. By the time she reached the apartment she’d been renting for her visit to Mason University, several hours later, there was already a message from DeLane instructing her to call. Grimly, she did so.
“Ah, yes,” Dean Withers answered; the number she’d been given was his. “Professor Tuttle, I’ve been informed regarding your, um,” he hesitated before deciding on a word, “situation.” He stopped.
“And?” Karen was pretty sure she knew what was coming, but one could always hope. . . .
“Ahem,” the Dean answered. “It’s the university’s position that behavior such as you have recently shown cannot be tolerated in a member of our faculty. Therefore, as of five o’clock today, you are terminated.”
“What?” Karen was incredulous. “Without even a hearing? You can’t!”
As the ASPC’s director had done, Dean Withers contradicted her. “I can.”
He elaborated. “I have the support of the board of trustees, whom I contacted this afternoon. It’s felt that a hearing will only embarrass DeLane University, and will not result in any better outcome for you.”
Withers let that sink in before going on: “However, we are prepared to consider your departure a resignation for, ahem, ‘personal reasons.’ To, ah, ‘pursue other opportunities.’ In that case, there will be an appropriate severance package.” After another brief hesitation he concluded, “Naturally, this offer is contingent on your not contesting your removal, either formally or through the media. If you take the matter to the academic authorities or the press, we shall be forced to bare,” he coughed, “that is, reveal the circumstances behind it, and to treat it officially as a firing.”
“You don’t leave me much choice,” Professor Tuttle said. After a brief internal struggle, she yielded. “All right. I’ll do it.”
“You’ve made the wisest choice,” counseled Withers. “You should return to DeLane as soon as possible, to sign the paperwork.” And with that, he hung up.
Karen packed up her things and checked out. There was no sense in delaying, she told herself as she drove out of the apartment complex’s parking lot.
The sun had begun to set. As she drove through the gathering gloom, Professor Tuttle—soon to be ex-Professor Tuttle, apparently—brooded. How had this happened? A week ago, she’d been a respected chemist and professor, and an honored voice of reason in a world rife with crackpot beliefs. And now . . .
She gritted her teeth and blinked away tears. Now she was slinking home in disgrace, her career in ruins, her self-respect shredded. As far as she could tell, she still remembered all her training and retained all of her intelligence—but who’d employ her now as a scientist, or as a teacher? Who would listen to her, about anything? What would she do?
The worst of it was that she could feel her anguish over what was happening to her slipping away. Soon, if it continued, she wouldn’t care at all. And she knew she ought to care. It ought to matter that she was changing from a coolly rational professional woman into an overheated slut. She had to fight it, find some way out, before she forgot to want to.
Absent-mindedly, she took one hand off the steering wheel and fingered the pendant around her neck. Then she gripped the gripped the wheel with both hands again, and continued on her way into the night.