Thomas only read medical journals, and anything written by a woman would have instantly been used as kindling. In all truth, Thomas didn’t care where he knew Samantha Stanton’s name from. All he cared about was whether she would remember his name later tonight in his bedroom… and hopefully forget it by the following morning in the event that Samantha got too attached.
A relationship with an advice columnist was certainly not one he wanted to invest in—he preferred his women less opinionated. It was this type of detachment that made him so very good at investing and so very bad at relationships.
“So you’re a lyricist?” Sam used the term loosely.
“Not professionally… yet. Only for pleasure—mine and yours. You liked my poem, I take it?”
“Oh yes, it was quite good.”
“You inspired it. Especially the part about the golden lingerie,” he said, eyeing her chest.
“Wow. I don’t know what to say. Thank you?”
“I like to dabble in the fine art of spoken poetry once or twice a week. One of these days I hope to write it down and get published.”
Sam smiled agreeably, wondering if he’d pay off a publisher to create his terrible book of poems just like he paid off the FDA to approve his terrible case studies on medicines.
“How do you tap into such… meaningful prose?” Sam asked, entertained by the way Thomas’s blotchy face grew thoughtful.
“Poetry is easy. Anyone can do it,” he said, unwittingly belittling the talent of the literary greats to mere ordinary. “You should go up there and give it a try.”
Sam shook her head emphatically. “No thanks. As you can tell, I don’t belong on a stage.”
“Oh, I beg to differ. Every beautiful woman belongs on a stage.”
“I prefer to watch.”
“But it’s exhilarating being the center of attention,” he persisted, standing up and reaching for her.
Sam scooted her chair back, blocked by the wall behind her. “Nope. Not going to happen. I’m perfectly happy sitting right here listening to everyone else.” Sam wasn’t perfectly happy, but Thomas Cook didn’t mind her unhappiness if it contributed to his indulgence.
“I insist!” He grabbed her hand and yanked her to her feet. “We’ve got a new poet in our midst!” he bellowed, shocking every table in the room to silence. “Fellas, give Samantha a warm Gaslight Club welcome.”
The blinding spotlight swung back over to Sam. Cupping her eyes, she realized she had two choices: Appease Thomas the Man-Child and make up a poem on the fly, for how much worse could her lyrics be? Or run with her tail tucked between her legs and lose any chance of getting access to Thomas’s files.
A couple claps and a stray wolf whistle followed her up on stage.
While Sam’s home library held plenty of poetry books, a poet she was not. Nor did she want to play one tonight. She doubted a single man in this room had ever heard of Edna St. Vincent Millay, let alone read her riveting poem “I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed.” So Sam, awkward with words and even worse with emotions, conjured the long-ago written verse of the literary icon and recited them from memory:
“I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body’s weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity—let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.”
No one clapped. No one hooted. No one even seemed to notice that she had poured out a soul—Ms. Millay’s as well as her own—for all to drink of. Sam was disheartened but not surprised as the room’s din returned to normal, so she returned to her seat next to Thomas.
“Zest, huh? And my weight on your breast. I take it that poem was about me,” he assumed, leaning toward her hungrily. “So you’re agreeable to my plans for us later tonight?”
Sam was right. Not a single man in the room had ever heard of the poem or understood its interpretation.
“It’s actually about the power a woman has to walk away from a man. The point is that women aren’t made to be possessed.”
