afternoon with me and my girl in my enclosed boudoir and keep from breaking the jar open, I’ll believe that you love me and not simply the pleasures of copulation. But if you lose control and
“What, pray, do I get if I can restrain myself?”
Her laughter is like a teasing wind. “If you can check your desires until evening, I’ll send her away and break the jar myself.”
I’m both excited and dismayed by the prospect of her “game.” My lover will ensure that our time is not spent on chaste recreations or thoughtful conversation. She will pose herself and her servant girl in all manner of ways suggestive of copulation. And she is probably already drenched in one of the trendy distillations — Passion Without Doubt or Exotica or Citrus Nectar — to madden me further. Still, the reward will be sweet. And at the very least (my love did not altogether peg me wrongly), I’ll get to do the servant girl.
My prospective consolation prize opens the door. Her mask is a sage green that suggests transparency, the eyes rimmed in toffee lace. She snatches the Queen’s Honey from me, but there the anticipated script ends. She twists off the lid and scoops the unguent out. Without embarrassment or coyness, she rubs it on herself, between her thighs. As I stare dumbfounded, she smears a glistening coating on me. Instantly, I’m aroused and eager.
“Want me?” she whispers.
“Yes.” Flesh on flesh, the Queen’s Honey brooks no denial.
“Then catch me.” She sprints away.
I waver for only a breath. Above, my sweetheart calls down plaintively, wondering at our delay. But desire roars through me, and all I care about is the servant girl.
I chase her through the dormitory block as she weaves around crowds and over obstacles — sculptures, shops, new constructions. Sometimes men turn, catching the fleeting perfume of Queen’s Honey mingled with her sex as she darts by.
I am enthralled. She fills every breath I take. I run until I’m a creature of fire — blazing lungs and burning limbs. But it is spice to my eagerness. I will catch her, and then we will copulate.
She leads me past the market district, past shop windows filled with citizens making purchases, and into the rural outskirts where the machines harvest our food and workers gather esoteric materials for the Mask Makers guild.
In a shaded copse of green wood trees, she drops to her knees. I’m upon her, not even waiting for her to assume the proper position. She opens to me, and I rush to join our bodies.
It is glorious, of course, the release all the more satisfying for the chase. But even as I spend myself, I notice something wrong. The girl is not making the right movements, and her scent, while intoxicating, is strange. Beneath the Queen’s Honey she is impatient when she should be impassioned. As soon as I’m finished, she pulls away, and for the first time after a copulation, I’m not happy and languid, awash in the endorphins of sex. I feel awkward.
Before I can say anything, the girl tears off her mask. The horror of her unmasking paralyzes me; I’m unprepared for her next action. She lunges, ripping off the bindings of my mask, and yanks it free.
I am barefaced.
It’s not the unmasking hour, not the time for emptiness and slumber. Without my mask, I don’t know how to act or feel, or what to say. I don’t even know if I
6. White Is for Obedience
While I kneel, stupefied, the girl discards my mask, letting it fall among the long grasses where we loved. I don’t even have the presence of will to retrieve it. She examines the inside of her mask. With infinite care, she peels a sheer membrane away. It is like a veil of gauze or chiffon, but this veil has a shape. There are nose, cheekbones, and chin.
It is a mask, but a mask unlike any I’ve seen. The fabric is unornamented and diaphanous white, like thin fog or still water, all but colorless. It doesn’t conceal what it covers, only overlays it.
She takes this ghost of a mask and drapes it over my face. Without cord or chain, it fastens itself, clinging to my head. It is such relief to have my nakedness covered, I’m grateful when I should be outraged.
I wait for the mask to tell me who I am and what to do.
And I wait.
“There’s not much oversoul there,” the girl says. Without a mask, her features are too animated, obscenely so. I avert my gaze, wondering if the ghost mask exposes my expressions in such an indecent fashion.
“It’s only a scaffold to help you get past the schizo-panic,” she continues. “It doesn’t have any personas or relationship scenarios to instill, and absolutely no emotives.”
I don’t like the ghost mask’s vacancy. But at least I can think now, and it occurs to me to scramble for my own mask.
“Stop,” she says.
I cannot move. My fingertips brush the darker green and glint of silver lying in the grass, but I can’t pick it up.
“I’m afraid the scaffold does have an obedience imprint. I am sorry about that, but it’s necessary. You wouldn’t be able to access the oversoul in your mask anyway. The scaffold creates a barrier that mask imprints can’t penetrate, and you won’t be able to take the scaffold off. Go ahead, I know you want to. Try to remove it.”
I grope my face, my head looking for something to undo. There’s nothing to unknot, release, or unbuckle. I find the edge where the ghost mask, the scaffold, gives way to skin, but it’s adhered to me. The memory from yesterday — the saffron mask, being skinned alive — is enough to deter me from anything drastic.
“What did you do to me?” I ask. “And why?”
“Good, you’re questioning. I knew you’d acclimate quickly.” A scent penetrates my distress. She is pleased. Except the tang isn’t right. It’s not feminine but not masculine either. She has no mask to tell me whether she’s male or female. Should I continue thinking of her as a girl? And for that matter, the scaffold hasn’t provided me with a gender. Am I a man or a woman, or am I neuter, or perhaps some sort of androgyne?
I feel lightheaded and ill. “If this is some perverted game,” I say, “I’m not amused. I’ll report this to the gendarmes. They’ll confiscate all your masks for this crime, and—” I trail off. Her naked face is testimony of her indifference to the severest penalty of our society.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I whimper.
“Did you ever wonder who you are beneath your masks?” she says. “When you say ‘me,’ who is that?”
Hearing her voice the question that has lately made my mornings so troubling and the hours after unmasking so long is a kind of deliverance. I’m not the only citizen to have these thoughts; I’m not alone in my distress. But the guilt remains, along with an added unease. Is exposing my crime what this is about? Am I to be penalized?
“Don’t be afraid,” she says, “I’m not going to turn you over to the gendarmes or anything like that.”
My breathing quickens. “Are you hearing my thoughts?”
“No, only watching your face.”
“My face?”
“It conveys emotions. It’s like smelling another’s confusion or knowing that someone’s angry by the tightness of their shoulders, only with facial musculature. Before long, you’ll read it as instinctively as you do scents and stances.”
“You say that as though you expect me to be pleased.”
Her mouth curves and parts, revealing the whiteness of her teeth. Being witness to such an intimate view is both repulsive and fascinating.
“I know you don’t think so now,” she says, “but I’ve given you a gift, one very few people receive.” She stands. “Walk with me.”
I don’t want to go anywhere with her, but the scaffold compels me to obey. We stroll deeper into the
