Shadow Seduction

By Teddy Bart

Why do decent people do shameful things? While media attention focuses on the misbehavior of the rich and famous, every day, thousands of ordinary people make choices for which they suffer humiliation, emotional pain, and loss. They can hide behind the cloak of anonymity and their stories are rarely told.

Such was the case of Jonathan Feldman, a respected sixty-nine-year-old businessman. Since childhood, Jonathan has had an ongoing relationship with what Dr. Carl Jung would call his shadoweverything that is repressed, undeveloped, and denied in ones self. For Jonathan, this darker alter ego is the famous actor he had aspired to become. Jonathans shadow manifests as an apparitional entity co-existing as the antagonist, snidely debating with Jonathan as he wrestles with his options, cleverly influencing him to make a series of bad choices. And if Jonathan isnt careful, his shadow could ultimately lead him into planning his final exit.

As he did with A Particle of God, author Teddy Bart probes one of lifes enigmas through the journey toward self-discovery of Jonathan Feldman.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462037582

Teddy Bart

I consider myself living proof of the Law of Attraction. As a child I envisioned myself as a radio and television broadcaster. My path from the dream to reality manifested through the music business. After several years on the road, I brought my piano bar act to Nashville's Printer's Alley in the early '60s. Performing by night, writing songs by day, I had songs recorded by such legendary artists as Brenda Lee, Johnny Mathis and Al Hirt among others. But the broadcasting dream remained an unsettled calling. A fortuitous introduction to the program director of WSM radio in Nashville led to various apprenticeship duties. For ten years I lived on Woody Allen’s advice that eighty percent of success in show business is simply showing up. It worked! Eventually, I persuaded station radio officials to let me host its first call-in talk show in 1969. A year later I assumed the host role of Nashville television’s most prestigious television program, “The Noon Show.” Then three years later, WSM radio named me host of it’s popular “Waking Crew.” Both programs were Mid-South traditions. Eleven years later, Nashville's ABC network affiliate made me an offer I should have refused as its prime time news anchor. I soon found that telling “what” as a news anchor was not as fulfilling to me as asking “why” as an interviewer. So I returned to my first love—talk radio—and introduced “Teddy Bart's Round Table” to the airwaves on both radio and television. It aired for over twenty years. Driven by my lifelong fascination and curiosity for the spiritual, paranormal and metaphysical, I launched a talk show called “Beyond Reason” in 1987. Today “Beyond Reason” is heard as a web cast through www.beyondreason.com. As an published author, “Inside Music City USA,” was my first book followed by “The Mensh. In 2009 I published “A Particle of God," a novel that explores the fairness of success. This was followed by "Shadow Seduction" in 2011 that asks: Why decent people do shameful things?. In 2012 I published an ebook titled "The Hooligan"--a tale of political intrigue wrapped in a supernatural plot. I am extremely proud to have been voted Nashville's Best Talk Show Host five years running. In 2003, my peers in the Nashville Broadcaster’s Association honored me with their Lifetime Achievement award. When not on the air or writing, I spend my down time reading or walking the land of the farm where my wife, Jana, and I live in Coffee County, Tennessee. For more information, please visit my web site www.teddybart.com

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Oh my God, no! This cannot be happening!

Bright light glared in the man’s face as the door to room 208 burst open like an airbag on impact. Three men stormed into the room, hollering at the top of their lungs and clapping their hands like platoon sergeants waking troops in an army barracks.

Stay right where you are! Do not move! they yelled.

Startled, the man’s eyes wide in shock and fear, he bolted upright.

What… what is this? What do you want? he pleaded.

The raid played out in slow motion… a time-warped soundtrack that echoed the raucous shouting and hand clapping from the police officers as they charged into the hotel room.

One of the officers swooshed open the drape. The man turned his head and raised his hands to shield his eyes from the sudden burst of garish light, and he saw the figure of a woman slide out the door. His heart pounded as if it were going to explode inside his chest. He heard himself repeating, Oh my God, no! I haven’t done anything. Dear God, please, this cannot be happening!

Another officer blew out the candle by the side of the bed, approached the awestruck man, and said in a loud voice, You are under arrest for violating the criminal code against patronizing a prostitute. He was read his Miranda rights. Do you understand the charges against you, sir?

He blinked his eyes. His body shook. He could not catch his breath.

Sir, what is your name?

My God, what have I done? he whispered.

Sir, are you all right? The officer told the man to take a deep breath and helped him to the edge of the bed, where he sat motionless.

Jeez, the officer said, we might need to call a medic, fellas. The old geezer’s whiter than Christmas.

The officer squatted, his eyes inches from the man’s face.

Sir, are you all right? Do you need us to call—

Jonathan, the man broke in as if in a trance. Jonathan Nathan Feldman.

CHAPTER 1

Three Months Earlier

We’re ready, Mr. Feldman!

Jonathan Feldman inspected himself in the mirror, carefully checking his recently laser-whitened teeth to make sure a poppy seed from the bagel he had just finished eating wasn’t lodged between them. His thinning gray hair would have a natural wave if he didn’t plaster it down with a greasy balm, the kind he read Gregory Peck had used. He adjusted his tie smartly to his collar. He had instructed his tailor to build his collars to fasten lower than is customary to obscure the second chin forming under his oval-shaped face, a trick he had learned from a book about Ronald Reagan. Removing his black-framed glasses, he polished the lenses with a jeweler’s cloth and then carefully replaced them where they rested snugly against the bridge of his thin, slightly curved nose. His hands were small with delicate fingers and perfectly manicured nails polished with a clear gloss. Finally, he glanced up at the attractive girl beside him and said with a wink, Showtime.

She quickly dabbed a few final powder puff blots on his tanned forehead as he stood and sauntered onto the brightly lit set, where he took his place behind a case of jewelry in his Stamford, Connecticut, store. As always, he shot the commercials early Sunday morning so as not to disrupt business during the week.

He carefully tugged on the French cuff of each of his sleeves so that his links—diamonds inlayed on gold forming a J—were exposed tastefully beyond his trademark navy blue blazer with gold encrusted buttons and matching gold silk pocket handkerchief.

Spider! Jonathan called, searching the area for someone. When a wiry young man in his late teens ran forward, Jonathan smiled and said, Spider, would you mind bringing me some water? Set it over there out of camera range.

The young man darted off. In seconds, he returned with a bottle of water, unscrewed the cap, and set it down.

Good man, Spider. Thanks, Jonathan said with a wink.

Would you like to rehearse one for timing before we roll tape, Mr. Feldman? asked Randy Johnson.

Randy was a new director. Had he worked with him before, he would have known that Jonathan Feldman never needed to rehearse for timing or for anything else. Equipment malfunctions sometimes halted productions—never Jonathan’s performance. He was always on time and always prepared, the consummate performer. He prided himself on his one-takes.

He had gone over the script a thousand times before the shoot in front of a mirror at home. He had his lines, his gestures, his nuanced expressions, and his timing engraved in his memory down to the micro-second. He loved this paradigm. It was his passion; his shining moment in an otherwise mundane life.

That won’t be necessary, my good man. I’m ready when you are.

Cool. We’re all set. Tape’s rolling in 5, 4, 3, 2…

Hello, I’m Jonathan Feldman. For three generations, good folks like you, your parents, and your grandparents have purchased your diamond rings, watches, bracelets, and other jewelry from Feldman’s Jewelry stores. Starting with one small shop in Stamford, you can now visit our stores in Darien, Norwalk, and Greenwich. With Christmas right around the corner, let me tell you about some special items that we’re featuring…

He was in his bubble of bliss. Performing in his television commercials compensated for his problems and frustrations. Local merchants personally hocking their wares on television was once popular and effective. Tire shop owners, car dealers, hardware store operators, and others not only got people through their doors, they became local celebrities as well.

But time, and national chain stores like Jared’s and Kay’s and the Internet, changed the local television commercial landscape. In Connecticut, the last pitchman for his own business was Jonathan Feldman. And business wasn’t good. Feldman’s Jewelry had not had a profitable year for three years in a row. His wholesalers and suppliers hadn’t been paid in over a year. The bank was threatening to call his loan. In short, Feldman’s Jewelry, now solely owned by the third generation’s Jonathan Feldman, was in the red and in survival mode.

 . . . And so, my friends, if you don’t know diamonds, know your jeweler. And remember, if Jonathan says it’s so… it’s so.

Jonathan froze his trust me smile several seconds until the director shouted, Wow! Perfect! Twenty-nine seconds on the dot! That’s a wrap! As he walked over to shake Jonathan’s hand, Randy said, Say, ever thought about going into show business, Mr. Feldman?

The question brought a reflective grin to Jonathan’s face. For as long as he could remember, he had yearned to become a famous actor.

No, one Brad Pitt is enough, he laughed. The crew laughed with him and began packing up. Jonathan shook each of their hands, pressing a twenty-dollar bill into the hand of the wiry lad he called Spider, kissed the makeup gal on the cheek, and held the door open as they schlepped their gear to their van. He watched their youth, vitality, and fun spirits with envy. What he would give to be their ages again. If only…

Jonathan slowly walked to the back of his Stamford store, to his office and his beloved antique mahogany rolltop desk The stains on its old, tooled leather top oddly enhanced the stalwart character of this relic that his grandfather had imported from Germany and that his father had used as well.

Easing into his executive leather chair, he diverted his eyes from the stack of bills menacingly staring up at him from his in-box stamped Final Notice three times in red. He winced at the sudden thought of his creditors salivating over the value of the cache when they take possession of the desk and other precious Feldman family heirlooms decorating his office.

Instead, he looked up at two small frames mounted on the wall above the barrister bookcase. Each frame contained a paper napkin, one with Jonathan’s signature and a telephone number, the other with an autograph: To Jonathan… best wishes, Woody Allen.

Jonathan’s fleeting glance at emblematic tokens of his regretful past dissolved to the troubled reality of his present. The sensation slowly coming over him was familiar. Like docile sunbathed rocks relentlessly pounded by a gradual sea change, Jonathan’s mood transitioned from floating in light to plodding the dank of an underwater cave.

The change to this dark mood was not without provocation or forewarning. Jonathan was intimately acquainted with its precursors, its personality, its tendencies, and its character. Over time, this alternate personality of his took on an identity of its own. Attached to Jonathan like a shadow, this other self manifested when he was emotionally vulnerable, usually upon revisiting his unlived life. So real was this alternate personality to him that Jonathan named him Lamont, after Lamont Cranston, the name of the old radio show character The Shadow.

Jonathan recalled first becoming aware of Lamont when his dad found out that he had enrolled in some classes at the Yale Drama School and immediately made him drop out. Feldmans are not buffoons! We are respected citizens! his dad had said at the time.

But Jonathan acknowledged that Lamont may have been hovering around him, maybe even making a few guest appearances before that, perhaps when he was a child. He vaguely recalled the hurtful reaction after he surprised his parents and put on a show for them in their living room one evening when he was around six years old. He had put on his sister’s dress, smeared on some lipstick, found one of his mother’s hats, and pretended to be Milton Berle. He had no sooner made his entrance when his father bolted from his chair, came at Jonathan, peered down at the child, and shook his finger inches from the boy’s face.

Stop acting like a queer! he shouted. Or you’ll grow up to be one! You hear me? You understand? Now go to your room and do not come out till I tell you to!

Jonathan remembered running up the stairs, throwing himself on his bed, and crying so deeply that his stomach hurt.

It’s okay, Jon, a consoling male voice said. He’s just a bitter, mean old man. In a few years, when you’re older, you’ll go to New York and become famous. I bet he won’t be so mean when he sees your name on Broadway. Don’t cry, Jon. I understand what you want. I’ll be with you.

Over time, Lamont learned Jonathan’s vulnerabilities, what buttons to push, what thoughts for his mind to generate, what words to say that he wanted to hear, and how to disguise darkness so that it appeared as light.

* * *

Jonathan picked up the phone and dialed Edna.

Hello, she said sleepily.

They had had some friends over the night before, the Rothsteins, and they didn’t get to bed until two. Edna fell right asleep. She had seemed tired all night. Jonathan couldn’t stop anticipating taping his commercial the next morning and hardly slept at all.

Good morning, dear. Did I wake you?

Should I lie and tell you no? Yes. You woke me. But it’s all right. I should be up by now. Did everything go all right?

Yes. Fine. It went very well. He wanted to tell her that he nailed the spot in twenty-nine seconds flat again but knew she would not be impressed.

Listen, Edna, darling, how about we meet for some breakfast? Take all the time you need to get ready. Maybe we’ll see a movie after or visit that new art exhibit at the City Center.

She hesitated and then said, I’ll tell you what: Why don’t you come home, and I’ll fix us both a special breakfast. What would you think of a plate of corned beef hash, poached eggs, and English muffins? She paused. Whoops! Forget that. I meant to buy a can of hash but forgot. I’m so forgetful these days. Okay. Poached eggs and English muffins. If you want some bacon, I’ll fix it, but you really shouldn’t have it. But, then again, it’s Sunday. So… what do you say?

Lamont stirred. It wasn’t the food Jonathan wanted; it was the going out. He had just finished performing. He was on a performer’s high, and performers go out to eat after they perform.

Edna, are you sure you’d rather not go out for breakfast—you know, let someone else cook, clean up the mess, and do the dishes? I just thought… it’s a lovely morning. But if you’d rather not, I understand.

I’m sorry to disappoint you, Jon. I’m just not in the mood, and I’m… Her voice trailed off. She hesitated. I’m just feeling a bit more tired than usual. Must be how late we were up last night. I think I’ll just lie around and take it easy today.

Normally, after decades of marriage—in Jonathan and Edna’s case, forty-seven years—a couple picks up sonar soundings of each other’s unspoken messages.

But that Sunday morning, Jonathan Feldman’s bliss following the taping of his television commercial, combined with the desolation rendered by the Final Notice warnings gawking at him from his in-box, made his sensitivity to Edna’s mood as irrelevant as an errant torpedo. Lamont had shaded his higher self. Shadows adore the self-absorbed.

Okay. You take it easy, dear. I’ve got a few things to tidy up here at the store and then I’ll be home. Or I might go out and grab a bite. I’m not sure.

Be sure to eat something if you stay later. I love you, Jon.

Bye, dear.

He was disappointed.

You have a right to be, Jon, Lamont said.

Glancing at the stack of bills and then quickly up at the framed napkins, Jonathan picked up the phone and dialed a number.

This is the right thing for you to do, Jon. Like they say, You deserve a break today.

A raspy, sultry-sounding voice answered, New Haven Heaven. This is Piper.

CHAPTER 2

Audrey Hamilton, a.k.a. Piper, had met Jonathan during his ill-fated, short-lived drama classes at Yale, and they started hanging out together. By then, Jonathan’s inherent predilection for elegance and refinement had melded with his veneration of actors who exhibited those characteristics. There was something Old World about the young man that was both natural and cultivated. And this persona embellished as he aged.

At the time he met Audrey, Jonathan was engaged to Edna, the daughter of his father’s stockbroker, a girl his father strongly urged Jonathan to marry. He was pledged to Edna, but Jonathan’s heart belonged to Audrey. It had always belonged to Audrey.

I’m not sure I love her, Jonathan said to his father one evening after his father asked when he was going to pop the question to Edna.

Love! his father belted incredulously. You want ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ love? ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ love? ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ love? Is that what you’re looking for? Let me tell you something! That love makes for good songs, but that love doesn’t exist in real life. Even if it did exist, it quickly disappears. Come the first mortgage, an infant screaming all night with colic, the first pretended headache when you’re wanting some affection, and that love disappears faster than shampoo in a hotel bathroom. He paused, got in Jonathan’s face, and said, Love? Get your head out of the clouds, boy. This gal is 14-karat solid gold. Leave her in the case and someone else’ll grab her. I know a bargain when I see one, Jonathan. You and Edna—a perfect match!

And if Father says it’s so, it’s so, Lamont taunted.

After he and Edna married, he and Audrey remained close friends throughout their lives, sharing their deepest thoughts and feelings and guarding their precious secret.

After Audrey graduated from Yale, she did some professional acting—mostly dinner theater and some summer stock. The closest she had come to the big time was a two-week run in an off-Broadway play called Pay the Piper, which men did for an hour or more of her time after the play folded. She had decided to cash in on her Kim Novak looks and charm. She was street-smart, knowing it was wise to leave the starvation and heartbreak of the theater to others.

Eventually, she convinced her employer to stake her in a brothel of her own in New Haven, Connecticut, where, as she told Jonathan, The plebes could learn the true facts of life and pay their tuition with daddy’s money.

I envy your chutzpah, he told her many times throughout the years.

You’d have it, too, if you didn’t think so much, she chided.

Jonathan shut off the ignition to his Lexus in the driveway of the old, two-story home, five miles from the Yale campus. He walked around to the back door, careful to avoid slipping on the shaded icy patches that had not thawed. The clinging ivy that had been peeled from the cedar-shake siding during the fall cleanup had left its finger-like imprint. Earlier in the morning, salt had been thrown on the three wooden steps leading up to the back door, where melting icicles had frozen on impact.

Jonathan punched numbers on the keypad on the side of the door, and the lock clicked. He opened the door and entered. The warm, huge kitchen made him feel as if he had come home—a home he had never known.

Good morning, Mr. Jon. Miss Hamilton will be down in a minute. May I get you some coffee?

That would be wonderful, Ezra. Thank you.

Jonathan took off his Burberry trench coat and sat down at a round oak table large enough to accommodate at least a dozen people. This is where the girls had their snacks and meals. Audrey had retained the home’s original cozy, country kitchen look, complete with colorful potholders stitched with chickens and ducks hanging from nails on the antique blue painted walls so the girls could enjoy a relaxing respite from their otherwise vigorous activities.

I don’t mind whipping up some eggs and whatever-you-like around that coffee, Mr. Jon.

Ezra Cotton had been driving Miss Audrey for over thirty years. His last name wasn’t really Cotton—Jonathan couldn’t remember what it was. But he had begun working for Audrey as what is known in the trade as a towel boy—the person who brings clean towels to the girls in their rooms so they could clean up their clients upon completion of their activities. If there were no towels, some of the girls used to yell, Where’s my cotton? I need some cotton here! and Ezra would hustle to her room with an armload of clean cotton towels. In time, just plain Ezra became Mr. Cotton, and then Ezra Cotton.

No, thank you, Ezra. Just some black coffee would be wonderful. Thank you.

Don’t thank him. He doesn’t pay for it! mocked the unmistakable cigarette and whiskey-coated voice of Audrey Hamilton, who posed in the entry of the kitchen. She resembled a female lead in a ’40s film noir.

One would never know this woman was just shy of seventy. Wearing a floor-length pink silk robe and fuzzy pink slippers, her light blonde hair bouncing on her shoulders like a model in a shampoo commercial, she flashed a smile that stopped time. Whatever work she had had done was obviously done by the best. Nothing sagged.

Jonathan stood and extended his arms. Hello, Ilsa.

They embraced and kissed on the cheek. She was taller than him by at least three inches, maybe more.

It’s good to see you, Victor, she said.

She had called him Victor since the first time they had watched Casablanca together one evening after classes at Yale. Jonathan had been dazzled by the character of Victor Lazlo, played by Paul Heinreid, who possessed all the suave characteristics to which Jonathan aspired.

To complete the fantasy, he began referring to her as Ilsa, the name of the character, Ilsa Lund, played by Ingrid Bergman in the film.

Audrey sat down in the chair nearest his and assessed him with her eyes as if he were a first-time customer at her establishment.

I see you brought Lamont with you, she said with a sly grin. She knew all about Jonathan and his Shadow. Don’t tell me. Let me guess. She tamped out her cigarette while simultaneously blowing smoke from the last drag above his head and said, You made a commercial this morning, and Lamont came riding in afterward on a dark wave of regret. How’s that?

Shaking his head, astounded, he said, As always, my dear, you know me too well. He paused, his eyes brightened, and he added, I nailed it! Twenty nine seconds! One take!

Audrey’s hunch was not a long shot. She knew he filmed his commercials on Sunday mornings, and she knew his mood afterward. The present encounter was another epilogue repeated through the many years of his visitations with his inner world, his unlived life. Any event, activity, or experience that lifted the curtain to his unrequited life beckoned Lamont, who would frequently urge him to call or visit Audrey.

She decided they were hungry, and Ezra fixed them some eggs and bacon with homemade biscuits. Occasionally she was interrupted by a call or by one of her girls whispering something in her ear, to which Audrey’s response was either yes or no. After each interruption, Audrey would say, So sorry, Victor, darling. You know… Sundays… they’re crazy here. Her justification was evidenced by the cars Jonathan could see through the window pulling up to the house and the pink-faced boys prancing up to her front door and excitedly poking the red button.

Your business seems to be flourishing, my dear, Jonathan said as Ezra gathered their dishes and poured more coffee.

Audrey withdrew another cigarette from the pack, tapped it several times, and held it for Jonathan to light with his thin gold lighter.

It has become a monster, Victor. You see how it is.

Count your blessings, Ilsa.

It was the way he had said count your blessings. She looked at him quizzically. There’s more than the usual Lamont issue, isn’t there, Victor? Something else is going on.

She watched with an expression of familiarity as Jonathan smoothed his thin gray mustache with his two index fingers. Reaching into his breast pocket, he withdrew a long Montecristo cigar, to which he surgically removed the tip with his gold cigar cutter. Once lit, he blew a waft of gray smoke to the side, and said, As usual, you know me too well, my dear. Yes, there is something else. He paused to find the proper words. My business has been declining for the past two years, Ilsa. Over the last six months, the decline has accelerated. The public taste has changed—as well as their buying habits. But that’s another story, he said with a wave of his hand. The bottom line is that my creditors have banded together and brought a class-action lawsuit against me. He pulled a deep drag from his cigar, blew out the smoke to the side, and then finished