still when the boys with their stones and their fishing nets have gone and all that was disturbed in the pond sinks back to the bottom and leaves but a calm understanding with no ripple upon the water. It reflects the moon but is not disturbed by the moon. So would I have had my mind be, as a mirror that passes judgement not nor frets about reflections after they have gone.
In time there were moments-are moments ever on-when my mind is such and I have not two eyes but one and that one eye becomes the entirety of my face so that I have only seeing, and I have hearing, but I respond not.
I am become a mirror.
“There is neither coming nor going there-where the dancing is.”
Charlotte's words have the sadness of things which are left alone too long in darkened rooms.
“Yet there is dancing. Is there dancing? Come, you must change, take off your clothes. You are ill suited to them.”
“Do you remember once that he said I would become a servant if I did not bend to his will?”
“He?” I seek for shadows which are gone.
“It does not matter, Laura. Sometimes we remember and sometimes we do not.” The hurried words, the scurried words perform their dance of dried leaves.
She seated on the bed, I bend to strip her stockings, shoes, and suck her toes. They taste of cherries. “I wanted to do this on the train, but you are not the same. Not the same one-no, not the same.” She does not answer, languid in her pose.
“It is nice, I like it,” she says at last and wiggles her small toe in my mouth.
“No, you are spoiled. Get up and put on this chemise, this gown. There will be gentlemen there who will flirt with you. I was always happy when they did.”
Her bottom has a pertness that enchants, the cheeks tight with their secrecy that yet I sensed and knew had yielded oft. I hold her chin, she standing upright, and feel the groove between the bulbous half-moons.
“Do not bunk, Charlotte. Keep your eyes to the front, your legs straight and apart. Do it-you must!”
Obeying, she obeys. Her eyes are pebbles under water. I have seen myself so in mirrors in the past when first my fondlings front and back occurred. I stand to her, my belly to her hip, my left hand cups her pulsing nest, the right explores her netherness.
“Is it nice?” I ask as one whose interest is faint. She nods, her lips compressed. “Both together front and back, is nice?” She nods again, does well to speak not One must have obedience and immure oneself in silence save for the hissing of the nostrils' breath. A small puff escapes her mouth as my digits make their entrance, work and twirl. Now tighten both her lips as on the pleasure comes-but I desist. She should have the strap now for both her naughtiness and her obedience. Such is the paradox that one accepts.
Bend forward now, Laura, hands on your knees. Be otherwise still. Legs splayed!
I knew, expected, and received. A dozen first of swirling tawse and then the deep, warm entry of his tool-I yielded, rocking, whimpering, dust of the summer's present golden on my brow. Sometimes as he worked I would be urged forward inch by inch until my hands could rise and rest upon the burred edge of my cabinet Then to the peak-point would his crest enter, my quim full nesting on his comforter, his palm, and my eyes would dwell upon all unseeing. I would see into yesterday and the morrow, the swallows in their high flight soaring. To my eyes would come the veins of leaves, translucent green, myriad, and magnified.
I turn Charlotte's face to mine. She remains otherwise still My fingers return to tickle her a little.
“There were words. Do you remember the words, Charlotte? Speak-you may speak.”
“Words-there were blatherings of words, tongue to tongue, words, lips to words, lips to lips.”
“In the liquid spurtings, yes.” My eyes dance. “Are you going to come?” Again her nodding nods. Her knees quiver and bend a little, neck bends, face back. She is spring and summer to my whims.
“Laura, oh, Laura, let me, yes.”
“Yes, my dove, my wanton, come-come spurt a little as you ever did, sparkling of splashing rain upon his cock. Give me your tongue now, the way we were taught-in, out in out flick fast flick fast!”
In the leavings of love's desirings, lost and sticky, a paleness to the cheeks and yet a warmth.
“We must go now. Come, finish your dressing.” I am abrupt with her. It is in her wanting. Her hair brushed and crested, we depart. The corridor lies empty to our view.
“This way-I am sure it is this.” She takes my hand, here where the electric lights in their unhissing gleam. At the far end-the doors we pass gazing stolid upon us-we turn right and come upon a dead end. The wallpaper here is stained. One corner at the top is loose. It waits with the patient sadness of things to be replaced, put back, made whole again. If it could speak it would speak to me of this.
“There is music. Can you hear?” Her eyes have a momentary wildness of lilies.
There is no door, Charlotte.” A mewing of violins, the temperate tinkling of a piano, and a faint brouhaha of voices come to me. Reaching to the blank end of the wall, I trace a ridging where a door hides beneath.
“We cannot get in. I knew we would not, Laura.”
“Wait! If we tear the wallpaper-we may tear the wallpaper, may we not?”
“I can assist you, Madam?”
We turn as marionettes might turn. A gentleman of voice, he is yet dressed as a pageboy, though immaculate.
“There is the dancing.” My voice quavers though I wish it not to.
“Yes? It is not permitted for you though. I regret this, of course, deeply. Perhaps I may accompany you back to your room? Your uncle has returned, I believe.”
“My uncle? Charlotte, you must come, must come!”
“She should not be dressed so, Miss.” He has seen now the bareness of my wedding finger, for I have removed my ring. “There are insistencies and there are insistencies.” His hand dares take my elbow, leads me on.
“Charlotte!” I call back to her as one calls in one's mind to the writer of a letter of sadness but he has turned me at the corner. “She does not follow! Why does she not follow?”
“It is not permitted. Wait You understand that you must wait, ever wait?”
I would speak, but he has turned back. A murmuration of voices-a cry from Charlotte.
“No, not on my own! Not there-I cannot go in there alone! Laura!”
The opening of a door-the music louder. The door slammed. And gone, she is gone. I run back and the wall is blank, the wallpaper untouched. There is music still within, within.
One should know if one is lost, should one not?
“Come, I shall return you, Miss. To your suite, Miss.”
“Should one know if one is lost?” I ask, “Should one know?”
“Yours is the cry in the night that echoes often. What is your suite number, Miss?”
“You said my uncle waited there.”
“Some wait, some do not.”
“Charlotte!” My voice echoes and I turn my head to the infinity of the corridor behind me. With each step that we walk a light goes out behind us, extinguished in series until all behind is darkness.
“She is best where she is. She will soon enough get caught up in the music, Miss. You may want her back, of course. That is appreciated. If it is right and proper, she will come back. If you have the knowing of it then she will.”
“The knowing? This is my suite. Are you going to attend on me?”
“That it should be your wish, then I will. Time quivers and is gone so quickly. I wanted to see the form of you as soon as you appeared here. You have been trained to obedience, I believe, and that is the best for any young lady. I have no whims other than you have known. They jump a little at first, the young ladies, but soon enough they know where to land. They have their point of reference, so to speak-it is a guidance and an understanding. Such have I learned. I approach you with the homage due from a gentleman to a lady.”
“Of course.”
We are within. The lights appear to glitter more brightly than when I left but minutes ago. Or hours before. There is no sign of my uncle, no upturned hat, no gloves, no polished stick.
“He may come yet, after me.” The man appears to read my thoughts. He is tallish and a little saturnine. I judge him to be twice my age. He picks up from a table where I had placed them the small likenesses of Mama and
