The Sensual Mirror by Marco Vassi Read Free Book Online

in their relationship, made a mistake. She was thrown into a scene for which she had only a hearsay scenario, and so she told him to beg for it, which she guessed might be what he expected. He had pushed her off him so hard she landed on the floor, flying five feet from the middle of the bed. The fall knocked the wind out of her and when she opened her eyes he was standing over her. His face was a frightening mask.
    “You get to me,” he said, his fists clenched. “And I’m a little crazy about you. So much so that I want to drink your piss. Which is as weird for me as it must be for you. But don’t you ever lose your respect for me. Even if I’m licking your asshole, don’t you lose your respect for me. And I’ll return the favor.”
    An illumination filled her then, and she felt something which she had forgotten could exist, that sudden direct perception which brings another human being into powerful focus. She could see him with total clarity, down to the lines of his thought. To have called it love would not have been accurate, but in terms of the complete emotional awakening she experienced, the effect was the same.
    “What if he asks me to marry him?” was her first thought. And immediately upon that came the certain knowledge that Eliot wanted a child.
    But no mention was ever made of that, and the moment of naked encounter was slid into the pouch of the past and never referred to, even telepathically. Months stretched into a year, and as Gail chugged to Julia’s apartment in the rusted Checker cab, fourteen months had passed since the night Eliot first took her out. Their meetings had become somewhat routine. He was out of town about a third of the year. During those times, she was free to do what she pleased. When he was in the city, however, it was tacitly understood that she was on call. He might see her four times a week, or not at all for ten days. Without an explicit agreement ever written down, she understood that she should be home no later than midnight on any night when they didn’t have a firm date, in case he should want her at the last minute of his day’s schedule. This in itself was not an overly irksome bind, for in any relationship the details of time and space must find some agreement. And when two people are fond of one another, considerate, and genuinely in touch, their desire to be together authentic, what might be a frustrating responsibility becomes a pleasant discipline. Since the night when Gail realized that she and Eliot had feelings for one another which subsumed all the differences of age and looks and wealth, an attitude of forgivingness spontaneously arose in her and bathed all their dealings with a soothing oil.
    Then, the night before, Eliot stood her up. He was to have picked her up at her apartment, a place he disliked intensely because it was so small, so inconveniently placed in relation to his usual route of movement, and because it was so, as he put it, “poor.” Two hours passed beyond the appointed time, and she began to go through that well-known misery of worry born between anger and fear. She called his Madison Avenue penthouse, but there was no answer. Even his manservant was not home. She speculated that he’d been called away on business, but he would have phoned. The only alternative was that he had been seriously injured or killed. She was astonished, and laughed out loud, when she saw that her first thought upon considering that he might be dead was the hope that he’d left her a lot of money in his will.
    As it was, she accepted nothing from him on any sort of regular basis. The gifts and treats were fine, but she insisted, despite his urgings, that she keep her job, her apartment, and her general lifestyle, including the way she dressed. The ermine stole hung in her closet. She wore it occasionally, around the house, after showers when she needed something to serve as a housecoat. She knew by untaught intuition that if she became financially dependent