Infandous by Elana K. Arnold Read Free Book Online Page A

her bed and stroked back her hair from her temple, a lover’s gentle caress. Slowly, so slowly, he peeled back the linen sheet and feasted on the sight of Lucretia bare to him at last—the slope of her shoulder, the crest of her breasts, and the wine-dark kiss of her nipples. From the bedside table he took a washcloth, dipped it in water, and began to bathe her, trailing the cloth along the curve of her belly.
    Lucretia moaned, and her eyes opened, confused at first in the dark, mistaking in the first instant Sextus Tarquinius for her own husband. Who could tell what it was that alerted her to her mistake—to the fact that the man in her bed was a stranger? Was it that his shadow was slightly longer than her husband’s? That the fingers pressing into the flesh of her belly were thicker than those she knew so well? Or was it the knife, silently unsheathed, that touched her now between her ribs, its point both cold and sharp?
    “Listen now,” Sextus Tarquinius whispered between clenched teeth. “I have come to you, and I will have what I want. That is not a question. The question is only if I will have my pleasure with my knife buried in your side or without.”
    Lucretia made a sound like an animal, trapped and certain of its fate. And then Sextus Tarquinius took what he had come for.
    When he left her at last, bereft in her bed, Lucretia despaired that she had allowed him to pierce her with one sword and not the other. Surely the cold steel would have been cleaner, more honorable.
    It was a day and another night before Lucius Collatinus returned to his home and his wife. He found her waiting for him, but this time not with open arms and ready lips. Instead, he found her with a knife in her hands. She told him what had been done and who had done it.
    And then, with the words, “Avenge me, Lucius,” she buried the blade into her chest, aiming the tip just where Sextus Tarquinius had held it not so long before.

Five
    Sometimes I can’t sleep, but usually I lie there anyway on the couch and stare into the not quite darkness of our living room. Tonight, though, when I find myself awake long after Jordan has gone back downstairs, hours after Mom went to bed, I pull on my pants and walk down to the boardwalk.
    It’s close to two, the quietest time of the night. The bars are closed, and the drunks have dispersed. The early birds aren’t up yet, so I have the streets almost to myself. The homeless, obviously, are out here, but they’ve curled themselves tight against buildings and park benches, their blankets or jackets thrown over their heads, and they’ve disappeared inside themselves, become as small as possible to conserve heat, to blend into the night.
    I like being alone, and I like being outside in the night air. It’s like there is more of it to breathe without everyone pressed around me, competing for it. Venice is a busy city during the day, full of crazies of all shapes and sizes. And the tourists … the never-ending stream of people from all over, coming to Muscle Beach to gawk at the exhibitionists bending and lifting their weights, pressing them up and away with their arms, their thighs, their backs, their muscles straining against over-tanned skin. Exhibitionists, all of them—those lifting the weights and those posing outside the chain-link fence that surrounds the weight-lifting stations. And the girls walking around in their bikini tops and shorts. And the black guys with low-waisted pants and tank tops, headphones slung around their necks, hawking their CDs on the boardwalk. The little families on vacation who come for the day as a break from Disneyland, pushing strollers that are worth more than my mom’s car. Rubbing sunscreen on the baby’s nose. During shopping hours this place gets packed. Consumers looking to consume, coming to Venice to feast. And us, the locals, the local color, serving ourselves up.
    In Venice, money cycles in and out like the tide. People too get caught up in its rhythm,