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Below me, Cleo was still standing on the stoop smoking her cigarette. Two men, walking east from Madison Avenue, slowed just a little as they approached, watching her standing there in the street. having her cigarette. She must have smiled at them--her back was to me--because one of the guys' faces lit up as if he'd been anointed. The other just stared. It would have been rude if his expression hadn't been filled with admiration. They passed her. Then one turned back for a last look.

Cleo took one more puff and threw the cigarette down on the sidewalk, stamping it out with that high-heeled shoe that showed just enough toe cleavage, then she started to walk west, away from me. Just as I was about to turn back to my office, I noticed a third man in the shadows of the building across the street, a bulky briefcase by his foot. He gripped an umbrella with a shining silver handle despite the sunny day.

Clearly, he was watching Cleo.

He stood, unmoving, just staring until she was almost to the corner, and then he began walking in her direction. He moved as if mesmerized, as if pulled forward because of her.

I crossed my arms, shivering despite the warm air. I was suddenly scared for Cleo.

She didn't sway her hips. There was nothing lascivious about the way she held her shoulders or head. What signal did she telegraph, what was it that men instinctively knew just from looking at her?

I wanted to follow her, to protect her and to watch her interact. It was one thing to hear her talk about seducing men, but I wanted to see her do it, to note the steps of the process, to study the interaction.

If I was totally truthful with myself, the reason I was so curious about this client of mine was because I wanted to learn from Cleo Thane.

I had been studying human sexual response and counseling patients with sexual problems for years. But living with the same man for almost fifteen years, I had forgotten so much about how to deal with men. Now that I was once again single, I felt naive.

Physician heal thyself.

If I could have followed her around for the rest of the day, I would have. Even into the darkened rooms where her clients waited for her, desperate to have her work her magic on them.

We want what we don't have. We take what we have for granted. I was curious about what it would be like to be hungry for someone again. I had not tasted a man's skin or licked a man's lips for too long. What would it be like? How easy or how difficult would it be to find that part of myself again?

My husband and I had separated two years before. And for a few years before that we had not been very physical with each other. Early on in our relationship we'd fallen into being friends and parents first, and lovers last and infrequently.

That's what I mean.You want what you know you cannot have. Cleo didn't want what I wanted. She had men's desire. She wanted what I'd had--unconditional love that didn't depend on sex. That was what my marriage with Mitch had become. What I really still had with him, despite our divorce. We couldn't generate any heat anymore, but we cared about each other. That was what made our breaking apart so bittersweet.

To be a therapist, you have to go into therapy yourself. I'd started that part of the process when I was a teenager, and over the years I had gone back several times. I knew that I had some issues with control, with wanting to please the people I cared about--sometimes too much. And I knew I'd lost the connection to my own sexual energy. Only in the last few months, once I knew my divorce was imminent, had I started to think about it again: about seduction, passion. About the hot rush of pleasure that I hadn't felt in a while.

Cleo talked about standing in front of a man and watching his face grow slack with need. Seeing his eyes half close and have him fight his urgency. Listening to him beg her to take him in her mouth or let him slip inside of her so that he could, for just a little while, swirl off into that soundless, sightless place where everything falls into waves of blues, greens, reds, yellows, and bursts into feelings. Explosions of sensation. No words.

I wanted to see what she saw.

The man in the street was still twenty or thirty paces behind Cleo, his footsteps not intruding on her shadow. Was he being cautious not to go faster? Was he measuring his steps? Was this someone who just happened to be walking in the same direction she was going? Or was he following her?

I knew about trailing someone, even though it had been more than twenty years since I had done it. I'd followed my mother, sneaked out of the apartment after her, waited on the street corner to see which direction she took and then crept forward, staying in the background. Not to spy on her, but to make sure that she was, indeed, going where she had told me. To make sure she was not going to get more pills or alcohol. Or to meet another man whose name I would never hear.

If you don't want to be seen, you are careful. The way the man in the street below was being careful.

Cleo had reached the corner, still unaware of him. Men's glances couldn't be important to Cleo anymore. When someone was willing to give you thousands of dollars to look at you, and touch you, and have you touch them, when you were desired that way, a mere look must have been meaningless. There were other things that might have caught her attention, but a man's attraction?

This guy was good at what he was doing. To anyone else on the street who had not watched this aerial ballet of suspense that I had, there would be nothing suspicious to see.

But I believed she was being followed. And I didn't know what to do with the information. Call her on her cell phone? Warn her? Except what if I was wrong?

She turned the corner. And ten seconds later he turned, too. And then they were both gone.

Maybe, it didn't mean anything.

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