Slow Hand (19 page)

Frightened, I poured a bunch of beads into one of your ears whose drooping lobes I’d so often nibbled. My clumsiness made you giggle. And then I began, no longer slowly, to place the beads deep in all the silky crevasses of your sun-baked body. You were lightly brown like tulsi wood by then. I lined up four, maybe five in the creases in either side of your groin where the skin was still pale. And you accepted my little game eagerly, eyes closed, smiling. You looked as beatific as Krishna smiling on the temple altar in Visha’s pictures. You know the pictures I mean—the ones my master has me string with beads, like the garlands on Christmas trees … the very same beads I was putting on you that morning, our last time together.

I smiled back down at you, and you started to run your narrow tongue over your lips. Now when I think of us making love, what I remember most is the slow, gratified way you licked your lips when I sat astride you, as if you could taste me.

Tenderly, I took the biggest bead, the 109th bead of the
japamala,
the bead that’s bigger than all the others so you know when you have come to the end of your mantra, and touched it to the tip of your penis. And your penis swung upward, erect again, and your glittering hazel eyes flew open, but you couldn’t see Narayan who stood silently watching us at the window, only me. I placed the biggest bead in the sunken hole of your belly button, where it nested like one of my master’s dark unblinking eyes.

My darling, you weren’t the only one who thought I made you young. Each time you penetrated me—stroke by stroke, slowly at first and then faster and then slowly again, ah Sankara, how I liked those slow strokes!—each time you
pushed into me, you lost months and then years, decades even! And by the time you came, you were younger than me. Yes, each time we made love I rescued from death the Methusaleh I’d noticed on the first day.

That morning, as you lay before me, splendid in my master’s jewelry, not knowing that Narayan watched you too, I began to grow sleepy. I had been ill several times that last month, twice with a fever and sore throat and once with the flu. That was not usual for me. And I thought for a moment, my flu had returned so tired and sluggish did I feel. I yawned … once, twice, three times, my eyes fixed on you so I wouldn’t look at the window where Narayan stood scowling at us. You didn’t notice my fatigue. You groaned and pulled me down to you, whispering that I should sit on top of you again.

Naturally, I wanted to please you. And show the doubting Narayan that you were as virile as a young man in the bedroom! So I crouched down, excited by his jealousy and prepared myself to summon up in you all your gorgeous youth.

And then an exhaustion, like the exhaustion of age, rose up in me, and I knew I had to make a choice. I could be with you or with men like Narayan who’d lack the wisdom to love with full acceptance but wouldn’t exact your price.

And so my beloved, I made my dreadful choice. I live now with Narayan in——, a new spiritual community Vishna, our master, has started near the capital of——. My guru forwards your letters to me, and I read them with great sadness.

Narayan says if you loved me, you would release me and not write begging for my return. He says you are a vampire who doesn’t have my real interests at heart. Narayan is young and doesn’t choose words judiciously, but in one respect, he is right. I gave you back what I could of your youth. Now it is my turn, my love, to have the gift bestowed on me.
Om shanti,
Sankara! You who loved me the way nobody else has. Without limits or judgment. You’d never seen anyone so supple, you said, as this young woman in Padma’s photographs. You admired her bare legs bending backward into a human wheel.

Thine own self, Shakti

AU
THOR’S NO
TE

Chance encounters and sexy strangers are staple elements of erotic writing, and it is in this tradition of the literature that reality and fiction most clearly part company. However, it is for that very reason—that fiction can improve on reality by rewarding risk-taking only with perfect orgasms—that we get such pleasure from the inhibition-shedding of others in erotic fantasy-adventures. In “Blue Feathers, “Anne Rhyd also recognizes that donning a mask in a carnival atmosphere will lend a sense of freedom and enhanced possibility to even the most staid among us, yet because her author’s imagination is in complete control of the situation, the results of the ensuing indulgence can be sweet rather than sinister.

J
osephine squeezed herself between a lamppost and a trash can as revelers pranced and paraded and even cartwheeled past her down Chartres Street. Her niece was nowhere to be seen—which meant that she truly was nowhere on the street, because even this boisterous crowd could not conceal the horde of children with Susan. Now Josephine had more than an hour
to kill before three o’clock, the time they had agreed to meet after separating.

Only an hour before, she too had been caught up in the festive mood. They had been eating beignets and threading their way through the Vieux Carré from shop window to shop window when Susan had suddenly pulled her into a dark store. “Time to get our masks,” she’d announced, and each child sprang first at one of the jeweled and sequined creations crowding the walls, then at one another, each convinced that the best mask was in someone else’s possession. Josephine leaned against a brick wall out of the way. “You, too, Aunt Jo,” Susan had said. She turned to the proprietor. “This is my aunt’s first visit during Mardi Gras,” she told her. “So she needs a very special mask.”

The woman eyed Josephine through the dimness. She was tall, with elegant posture and languid movements, her hair piled and twisted on her head and interwoven with sparkles catching the light. Her mask was scarlet and decorated with feathers dyed to match, as was her satin dress—a magnificent creation whose strapless and feathered bodice clung to an equally magnificent figure before billowing into a full skirt. She reminded Josephine of a ripe strawberry dipped in chocolate. A white cat on the counter rubbed against its mistress, rumbling, and another cat wove itself around her legs.

Finally, the woman had smiled. “Yes, Queen Etta has a mask for your aunt,” she said, pulling one from behind the counter. “There’s only one other like this one in the world.” The mask was a rich royal blue, the right eye outlined in blue feathers, the left, in blue rhinestones. Two strands of tiny blue beads dipped below the mask on one side. Josephine put it on. It smelled of sandalwood, and the lining was soft. The bead fringe brushed against her cheek caressingly with each breath. Josephine looked in the mirror, then fingered her dress ruefully. The mask made its navy knit and loose fit, which had seemed so practical that morning, look dowdy.

Etta had seen the gesture and pointed to a gown. “Try that one. It’s like mine, only blue.” Josephine shook her head quickly, afraid that the similarity would only emphasize the
contrast between Etta’s full body and her own more sticklike one. But, she thought, she didn’t have to come out of the dressing room; she could just see how it looked. She eased its weight off the hook.

In the cubicle, merely a closet separated from the store by a rough burlap curtain, the silky fabric slipped over her head and slid down her body. As she fastened the long row of buttons up the front, she felt the softness hugging first her hips, then her waist, then her breasts. The skirt draped in soft folds that brushed her thighs. She lifted her eyes to the mirror and saw looking back at her a stranger, a woman strong enough to meet life’s challenges, a woman brave enough to take risks, a woman daring enough to wear such a dress—in short, a woman unlike she had recently felt herself to be.

She pushed the curtain aside and asked, “Can I please leave my other clothes here until later?” The children stopped fighting over the masks to stare, and the littlest boy had started crying at seeing her so transformed. “Certainly,” Etta replied. Then, as Josephine paid, she heard whispered, “Strong grisgris on that. My mother, she knew the voodoo, and her mother before her, and they taught me.” Etta winked. “The dress is sure to bring you a real treat.”

As they herded the children out of the store, Josephine had needed to shield her eyes from the sudden glare. The weather seemed more sultry than ever after the cool cavern of the store. “Good for you!” Susan offered her approval. “That’s a beautiful dress.”

“Queen Etta promises it’ll bring me a treat.”

“Well, you certainly deserve some joy in your life for a change,” Susan told her, and then she and the children had melted into the crowd, leaving the older woman standing alone.

Now, after an hour’s crowded wander, Josephine had found her way back to their meeting spot and at first thought she would just wait there. She had watched a boy try and balance steaming bowls of crawfish, then saw two yapping poodles rip each other’s costumes off while their owners shrieked, then looked at a laughing woman, her dress open to the waist, tossing strands of beads from a wrought-iron balcony. So much
activity, so much noise, yet Josephine felt as detached as if she were watching it all on TV. The smell of gumbo and étouffé wafting by increased her restlessness and made her stomach growl.

“Might as well get another beignet while I’m waiting,” she thought She turned and ran straight into a broad chest. A man’s arms caught her. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, but I’m very sorry.” Embarrassed, she put up her hands to distance herself from him, but a clumsy unicyclist knocked the man toward her. He automatically grabbed her waist to keep from falling, she just as automatically leaned forward to balance his weight, and suddenly she was locked in an embrace with a total stranger. And enjoying it, too, she realized, feeling the comforting warmth of his body through their costumes and smelling his clean scent. The skin of his arms was warm and dry under her hands, and she found herself reluctant to let go. A blue feather drifted lazily between them, and she looked up.

He was wearing a mask that was the twin of her own. But how different it looked! What on her face had seemed so exuberantly feminine had the opposite effect on his; the contrast between the mask’s baroque delicacy and his strong bones gave his face depth and drama and heightened his masculinity, like a pirate in bright silks and an earring, or a cavalier in lace and ruffles.

Between the mask and his pirate’s costume, Josephine realized that all the clues to his identity were extinguished. She could not say whether he was young or old, professional or working class, conservative or liberal; she knew only that he had a solid body and a beautiful mouth, with lines that owed more to smiling than frowning. The idea that she could invent his identity for herself excited her, and she was embarrassed to find herself not only unable to let go of this stranger, but also wanting him, wanting to touch the cheekbones jutting from beneath the blue feathers and to pull the tightly curled hairs escaping from his shirt.

“You have excellent taste in masks,” he said, his voice a rich baritone with an accent she could not place.

Reluctant to break the magic of the moment and be alone any sooner than she had to be, Josephine said nothing but continued to cling to his warmth.

Looking down at her left hand, the man let go of her waist and pulled back a little. “Aren’t you afraid your husband will find us like this?” he teased her.

“My husband’s dead,” she responded, after a pause. The words sounded as harsh and ugly as the reality they represented. Then, she added, “I’m a little scared to take it off.”

He looked at her for a long moment, then reached out hesitantly to stroke her hair. “Then that’s a second thing we have in common,” he said. Josephine could barely hear his words over the crowd and the thudding of her heart in her ears. “After my wife died in a car accident, I kept her toothbrush on the sink, her fuzzy slippers under the bed, everything just the way she left it. Finally, I sold it all and came down here to start over.”

“That sounds pretty drastic.”

“Yes.”

“Was it the right thing to do?”

The man thought for a moment, then said, “I think so.” He added, “It must have been. I never had mysterious and exotic strangers in slinky dresses falling into my arms before I came here.” His words startled her. For the first time, she realized that when he looked at her, he was seeing the stranger who had looked back at her from the mirror at the mask store. Just as his mask and costume concealed his identity, so did hers. She could be anyone she wanted to be today. Suddenly she felt as mysterious and exotic as he saw her.

He reached up and touched his mask. “My wife loved this color. I chose this mask because it reminded me of her,” he said. “Seeing it on you makes me realize I must look silly in something this feminine.”

“No, it has quite the opposite effect on you,” she assured him and was surprised to feel her face getting hot. She tried to gather the willpower to move away.

They stood there looking at each other until an exuberant accordion player whacked them as he pulled on his instrument. “Why don’t we get out of here?” suggested the man. Josephine
explained, “I have to meet my niece here at three.” “Fine,” he said, and she gave him her hand. The warmth of his smile made her stomach knot. He started to lead her away, then stopped and gently pulled her ring off and dropped it in her purse. “Just for now,” he said softly.