Chapter 4: Charlotte

I can’t stop thinking about this. Why would someone who is young and pretty sleep with an old man who is nasty and mean? I really respected Mary. I mean everyone did, and she risked her marriage to sleep with Mr. Stein. I just don’t understand.

Lynn is my friend. I know her, and I met her husband. They’re a good-looking couple. Carl says she’s a really smart lady! My conversation with Lynn did not go the way I thought it would. I expected her to be, well, ashamed or embarrassed about her affair. That was not what she said.

I thought we would grab something quick, but she took me to the Ruth Chris restaurant. She ordered for me like Carl does when she saw that it all just flustered me. I felt like a fish out of water, as Mommy used to say, but the food was really wonderful.

I thought that I would have to ask really hard questions to get Lynn to talk about how she could lower herself with Mr. Stein, but she started out telling me right away how much she loved having sex with him. You could have knocked me over with a feather. She went on to tell me what a great lover he was, how powerful he was and how big he was.

I was skeptical. How big could it be, anyway. He was a short old man after all. I’m taller than he is. Lynn admitted that she was skeptical, too, at first, but the first time she saw him naked she was blown away. Sure, his body is not that pretty, she admitted.

“He looks like Buddha climbing a phone pole,” she giggled, and that made me laugh, too. It was a funny image.

The conversation got really serious after that as she told me how she was seduced. As I told the story to Carl later, he called it being recruited. It happened slowly, Lynn said. First, Mary reached out and befriended her, talking to Lynn about her affair with Mr. Stein. Then, the older man took her out to dinner for a mentoring session.