The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red by Ellen Rimbauer Read Free Book Online Page A

John has adopted a different
    attitude toward me, and that this is re?ected both in our breakfast
    and in the fact that we followed breakfast with a stroll on the deck,
    an extremely social activity where certainly my absence has been
    noticed. We lunched together, in a smaller dining room I’d not
    seen before, but one where all the waiters knew John quite well,
    addressing him as “Mr. Rimbauer,” instead of the “sir” and
    “madam” used on guests less well known. After high tea with several
    new friends, we retired to our stateroom and “rested”—
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    John’s new term for our husband and wife activities, which falls
    desperately short of the truth of that time spent together; it is
    anything but restful!—and prepared for a late dinner at the captain’s
    table and the equator celebration scheduled to follow.
    It was sometime during that fabulous celebration, the warm
    tropical night winds playing over the Ocean Star’s rail, the champagne
    playing with my head, the delicious chocolate mousse still
    lingering in my taste buds, that the following events occurred.
    John, I believe, was dancing with a matronly woman named
    Danforth, Danvers—I have a devil of a time with all the names!—
    leaving me to the company of Mr. Dan . . . I can’t possibly
    remember! . . . who rather quickly excused himself to the toilet,
    one brandy over his limit, if I might say.
    “Truf?es, Madame?” A creamy warm voice over my shoulder,
    as welcome as that tropical wind. A woman’s voice. Deep and
    soothing.
    I turned, perhaps too quickly for our proximity, and found
    myself eye-to-eye with a Negro of nut brown skin and enormous
    olive-shaped eyes. Her face was a perfect oval, her lips thick and
    sensuous. I felt myself stir in a way no woman should stir for
    another woman. I am certain I made a fool of myself, the way my
    voice caught, with the blush I must have revealed.
    A waitress, she was dressed in a black costume appropriate to
    her service, with a white apron and a ?rmly pressed white collar
    buttoned nearly to choking. She had a tiny, wasp waist, full hips
    and strong legs, widely set. The shoes they had put her in were
    easily a size too large. She had feet more my size. What an idiot I
    was, just staring into her eyes as I did.
    “Madame?” she inquired a second time.
    “Well, yes,” I answered, having no desire to consume any
    more food. But I picked one off the silver tray nonetheless, and
    bid her to remain in my company a moment longer.
    What I felt is unspeakable, but I push my fountain pen to write
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    it here in these pages: I wanted to kiss her. To touch that soft
    skin. Mind you, I did not want to be kissed back—Heaven forbid!
    —nor touched in any way, shape or manner. But I did want to
    undress her and see her God-given body in all its glory, to run
    my hands over her skin and feel it respond to my woman’s touch.
    So horri?ed was I by this response that I left the celebration early,
    feigning a headache, and I returned to prayer in our stateroom,
    kneeling at the side of that bed where my husband and I perform
    acts of increasing indecency, praying for salvation from wherever
    it is my mind seems destined to take me. Is this what marriage
    brings on in women: a heightened curiosity of the forms that
    pleasure takes? If there were only someone to whom I could bare
    my soul! The ship’s priest comes to mind, but he is a rheumyeyed
    man with a proclivity for drink. My one great fear now is
    that in all my isolation of the forthcoming year I will not ?nd
    answers, not ?nd release for such sinful thought. For the better
    part of three weeks I have been shuttered in our stateroom. I am
    currently ensconced in a ?ve-room suite in the only decent hotel
    for a thousand miles. Laughter rolls up from the hotel bar,
    spilling out into the street and then rising like hot air to the
    room’s high ceilings.
    Dare I confess this? Earlier this morning a chambermaid
    entered to service our rooms, to change