Housecleaning

The young husband-and-wife team the cleaning service has sent over arrives ten minutes early, which pleases me no end.

"There's nothing like starting off on the right foot," I tell them buoyantly, and hold the door open as they drag in an industrial-strength vacuum and a shopping cart full of cleaning supplies. The man, who introduces himself as Dell, is startlingly tall—halfway between six and seven feet, I'd guess—and has a cigarette tucked behind each ear. His wife, Starlet, a tiny figure in a zippered teal-blue jumpsuit, has her hair just like Mary Martin's in Peter Pan. I eye her worriedly, already convinced that Starlet is too small and delicate for the heavy work load in store for them.

"And who's this?" I ask. Hanging back behind the threshold of the doorway is a little girl; as the child stands there gazing downward at the rubber welcome mat, I admire her dress, which has a large black-and-white likeness of a winking cat across the front, one eye ornamented with a rhinestone. The child is wearing black leggings that end a little past her knees and beat-up-looking sneakers with Velcro closures.

"That's Princess," Dell says. "Just stick her in front of the TV and you won't hear a word out of her."

"I'm hungry and I have to go to the bathroom," says Princess, but remains in the doorway. She flicks away the thin dark bangs that are hanging in her eyes and takes a single step forward.

At my temples and in the space between my eyebrows, I feel a headache brewing. "You know," I say to Dell, "I've got mattresses that need to be turned, heavy couches that have to be pulled away from the wall . . . there's actually quite a lot for you to do. Do you really think your wife's strong enough for that kind of work?"

"Not to worry," says Starlet, and places her small hand briefly on my shoulder. "We're the best in the business. We're a great team."

At fifty dollars an hour you ought to be, I almost say but do not. (Having lived through the Depression, I can still remember when you stopped in the street to pick up a penny because it was worth the effort.)

"Fine," I say now. "My husband's being discharged from the hospital tomorrow and what I'd really like is to have everything spotless. If you can manage it."

"Heart attack?" Starlet says.

"What? No, he's asthmatic. He had a very severe attack. It scared the hell out of me," I say. "He—"

"The master bedroom's that way?" Dell asks. "We'll set up in there first."

I nod, waving him past. My husband, Simon, stopped breathing halfway through the eleven o'clock news last week, and if not for a neighbor in our condominium who knew CPR, I would have lost Simon right there in our den, just as the weather forecaster in his smart-looking blue blazer was poised in front of his map predicting three straight days of rain for the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area. Roger Parrish, the neighbor who resuscitated Simon and summoned the paramedics, happens to be a courtly, handsome man with not a hair on his head. Twice-divorced and a champion tennis player (at least on the local senior citizen circuit), he's much admired by the numerous widows in the building. He drove me to the hospital in Fort Lauderdale the night Simon was carried off in the ambulance; later, the two of us went for coffee in the hospital cafeteria. Holding my shaky hands between his own steady ones, he listened patiently as I talked a nervous blue streak, outlining my worries one by one, thanking him extravagantly, then returning to my long list of fears before setting out to thank him again. (What a frazzled wreck I'd been that night—all wilted and dry-mouthed and unable to keep silent for even a moment.) I remind myself now to pick up some small gift for Roger, an expression of gratitude for bringing Simon back to life.

"You do have a TV set, don't you?" Starlet is saying. "Princess is just a lost soul without her TV shows."

"Shouldn't she be in school?" I ask.

"Not if I don't want to," says Princess. "And today I definitely don't want to."

I don't know what to make of this. "In my day," I tell them, "they used to send the truant officer after you. But of course my day has come and gone."

"Princess is a school-phobic," Starlet explains. "It's like a disease, sort of. Sometimes she wakes up in the morning and throws up, just because she's afraid of going to second grade. The school district has a special counselor for her. It's part of her treatment—two hours a week with a very sweet lady-psychologist."

"School-phobic," I say, marveling that they already have a name for it. "What will they think of next?"

"Oh, it's real common these days," says Starlet blithely. She puts on a pair of elbow-length turquoise rubber gloves and rummages through the shopping wagon. "There's lots of kids like Princess all over the district," she says, and trails down the hallway, arms loaded with sponges and an assortment of bathroom cleansers.

"Swell." I look at Princess, whose fingernails are rimmed with an accumulation of moss-green dirt. "Would you like to wash your hands?" I say. "And then Mrs. Sugarman will slice up an apple for you. Would you like that?"

"Who's Mrs. Sugarman?" Princess says suspiciously.

"Me."

"Why do you call yourself 'Mrs. Sugarman?'"

I smile at this. "Because a long, long time ago, when I was very young, I married Dr. Simon Sugarman. And that's how I became Mrs. Sugarman."

"I'm hungry for a bologna and cheese sandwich on an onion bagel."

"It's nine o'clock in the morning," I say, as shocked as if Princess had asked for a martini.

"I'm hungry."

"Didn't your mother give you breakfast?"

"Maybe, but I threw it right up," says Princess. "How about if you make me a hamburger? I like it red on the inside and burnt on the outside, okay?"

"I can't give you a hamburger so early in the morning. It wouldn't be right. What about a bowl of cereal instead?"

Princess looks me straight in the eye. "You're not so nice," she says. "I thought you were, but you're really not."

"Excuse me," I say stiffly. "Right now you're a guest in my home. And in this house we don't insult people, we speak nicely to them, do you understand what I'm saying?"

"This isn't a house," says Princess. "It's an apartment. Why do you call it a house?" She saunters from the foyer into the kitchen, where she heads straight to a half-open cabinet and selects a bag of salt-free pretzels for herself. "We live in an apartment, too. It's Dell's apartment, actually."

"Actually," I say. I follow Princess into the kitchen and shake my head now as the little girl tears open the bag of pretzels with her teeth.

Lowering her voice, hunching down over the cellophane bag, Princess says, "Dell's not real nice, either. Well, sometimes he is, but mostly he isn't. Once, on purpose, he made my mother fall and she broke two ankles. Wait, that's not right, I mean she broke one and sprained the other one. I had to do a lot of things for her, like make her sandwiches and change the channels on the TV for her because the clicker was broken. And she was such a grouch."

I shiver in my air-conditioned kitchen. I imagine Dell thrusting out one of his extraordinarily long legs to trip Starlet, imagine Starlet's shriek of astonishment as she goes flying. "Poor thing," I murmur. "And is Dell your father?" I ask Princess.

"No way. He's like the biggest dork," Princess says.

"Then let's not talk about him." The truth is, I don't want to contemplate whatever dark things might or might not have transpired in somebody else's household; I just want my apartment shining by noon. There's plenty to do today, but I can't remember what's first on my list. It's Princess and her chatter that's thrown me off course. I try to recall my plans for the day, but my mind is a dull stubborn blank. Simon's homecoming, which I'd been looking forward to all week, suddenly seems like something I'd rather postpone. What if having been brought back from the dead has permanently altered him? In the hospital these past few days, he seemed pretty much his old prickly self, though he'd been a little passive, I'd noticed, a little too eager to have me take charge of things, asking me to brush his teeth and his hair for him and even to strap his watch around his wrist. Yesterday I'd glimpsed, through the fly-front of his cotton pajamas, something droopy and sad between his legs; for only an instant I'd been appalled at the sight, but then, recovering, remembering all my affection for him, I'd pulled the thin blue hospital blanket up under his arms and launched into an entirely irrelevant story about one of our neighbors. The humiliation he would surely have felt if he'd seen, in that instant, what I had seen, was my humiliation, too—wasn't that always the way it was when you loved someone? Observing Simon in his bed, it came to me that I couldn't imagine Roger Parrish lying in a hospital, vulnerable and exposed like that. The half hour or so we spent together in the deserted cafeteria that night seems to have taken on, for me, a dreamlike quality, and also a bright sheen of romance and possibility. In my mind, I keep returning to it, remembering the feel of his cool hands over mine, his soft, subdued voice gently reassuring me, his head gleaming brilliantly under the cafeteria's fluorescent lights.

At the kitchen table now, I let out a lingering sigh that ends in a little moan of pleasure and longing. I listen to the distant heavy rumble of the vacuum cleaner. "See how hard your mother's working?" I say.

"This is pretty boring," says Princess. "Don't you have any coloring books for me?"

"If you were in school, where you're supposed to be," I say, "you'd be too busy to be bored. You'd be reading and writing, and borrowing and carrying numbers, and probably your teacher would be reading you Charlotte's Web."

Princess hisses noisily, puffing out her cheeks. "My teacher," she says, "is an A-hole."

"What?"

"Don't you know what an A-hole is?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," I tell her. "But we don't allow people to talk like that here. If they want to talk like that, they have to step outside into the hallway."

"Do they get to come back in again?"

"I suppose so," I say. "It varies from case to case, I suppose."

"I want to see my mother," Princess says in a wobbly voice, and runs from the room. I brush some crumbs from the table into my hand and put the bag of pretzels back in the cabinet. I've frightened off Princess, which isn't surprising: the truth is, I've never had a way with young children, not even my own. And my two daughters would be the first to tell anyone who'd listen that I just didn't have the endless patience that would have made all the difference, that, years ago, would have sweetened the tone of our household. Instead, I lost it, and dug my fingers into their slender wrists, shrieking, Why can't you listen to me? I'm not asking you to climbMount Everest, I'm just asking you to take those filthy feet off the couch. Am I asking the impossible? I would cry, never breaking their delicate skin but marring it with tiny violet marks shaped like crescents on the underside of their pure white wrists. No Iam not—all I'm asking for is a little consideration! And now Simon and I are in Florida and the girls are nowhere in sight, Amy comfortably settled in the suburbs of Boston, Joanna in San Francisco. Unaccountably, both always seem to have their answering machines switched on, no matter when I happen to phone. ("This is your mother calling from Florida," I say self-consciously at the cool, electronic sound of their respective beeps. "Don't you think your father would love to hear from you more than once while he's in the hospital? Don't you think the familiar sound of your voice would do him a world of good?") It's been ages since we all lived together under one roof; sometimes the thought of our separate, distant lives still makes me a little weepy. The therapist I dragged myself to nearly twenty years ago—when both girls married and moved away within months of each other—had been sympathetic but firm. "You had each of them for what, eighteen years?" Dr. Hirschorn asked me. "Well, you have to remember they were really only visitors, just passing through. And take it from me, it can't be any other way, not really."

A fundamental truth, maybe, but one that sometimes strikes me as absolutely heartbreaking.

Silently I make my way into the bedroom now, where I discover Starlet and Princess standing over my dresser, fingering the bottles of perfume I keep lined up in two precise rows on an ornate mirrored tray. "I happen to know this one over here is like forty-two dollars an ounce," Starlet is saying to her daughter. "So you can figure out what a bottle this big must have cost. Want to try some on your wrist?"

"Excuse me," I interrupt. My heart is thumping away in my chest, and I feel a wave of dizziness sweep over me. "My husband gave that to me for an anniversary present," I inform them.

Starlet swings around to face me, the bottle upright in her palm. "That's real sweet," she says, shaking her head, as if in astonishment. "What would it be like to have a husband like that, I wonder."

"Put that down, please," I tell her warily. "I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say we'd be very upset if it broke."

Unscrewing the cap, Starlet tips the bottle against her fingertip. She guides her finger slowly down the side of her neck, then under Princess's nose.

"Yummy," says Princess.

"You had some mildew inside the shower," Dell announces, suddenly emerging from the bathroom. "Nothing too serious, but I took care of it. Better to nip that kind of thing in the bud, that's my policy." He slides a cigarette from behind one ear and pokes it into the corner of his mouth. "Just taking a three-minute break before I start on the other bedroom."

"My husband's an asthmatic," I say. "The smoke is very bad for him."

"Your husband's not here," Starlet points out. Picking up a comb from the perfume tray, she runs it languorously through her hair, then frowns at herself in the mahogany-framed mirror above the dresser. "This is just the worst haircut, don't you think? They call it a pixie cut but I'd say it makes me look like a little mouse. Maybe if I had it streaked with a touch of blond, I'd look more, you know, glamorous."

"You're not the glamorous type," says Dell matter-of-factly. "Never were and never will be." He taps the ash from his cigarette into his cupped palm, making me wince.

"I'm sure I can find an ashtray somewhere," I say. "Maybe in the kitchen." I picture myself dialing 911 from the phone on the kitchen wall, whispering urgently for a patrol car. She used my perfume without my permission. And also my comb. And he smoked a cigarette in my bedroom when he knew I didn't want him to. I can hear the snort of laughter from the operator at the other end: Don't you know better than tobe tying up the line with that kind of silly stuff? Call back when one of them puts a gunto your head, lady.

"What do you mean, I'm not the glamorous type?" says Starlet, as Dell steps into the bathroom to ditch his cigarette. "I could be if I wanted to. Why do you think my mother named me Starlet? She had high hopes for me, probably still does."

Dell stands framed in the bathroom doorway, a Marlboro lingering behind his left ear. Caressing the cigarette as if it were something beloved, he says, "Your mother's a big fat fool. The day she moved to Tennessee with that pathetic excuse of a boyfriend was one of the best days of your life, whether you know it or not." He nods in my direction, saying, "This mother of hers is a deluded tub of lard and a nosybody besides, calling every hour of the day and night to give out advice nobody in their right mind would listen to."

"A deluded tub of what?" Starlet's pale blue eyes widen; she seizes a spray bottle of Windex With Vinegar and aims the nozzle at Dell's belt buckle.

"Don't you pull that trigger, miss," Dell says. His hands are on his hips and he is staring down at Starlet grimly. I can see the ten-gallon hat tipped back against his head, the dusty boots with spurs at his ankles, the spurs glittering silver in the Wyoming sunlight.

"Oh Lord," I murmur.

Hearing this, Princess lets out a squeal and dives under the bed, the soles of her little white sneakers peeking out from under the bedspread. Starlet squeezes the plastic trigger; a delicate spray of something sour-smelling darkens Dell's faded dungarees just under his belt. "You slimeball!" she says in a screechy voice, and then aims the trigger at his heart, soaking his shirt. Swiftly, Dell cracks her on the wrist and the bottle of Windex pitches to the floor.

"That's it! I'm out of here!" he announces. "And I'm taking the vacuum with me!"

"Like I give a flying you-know-what," says Starlet, rubbing her wrist against the side of her face. "Like I need you, right?"

"Like a hole in the head," says Dell, in a falsetto that somehow sounds menacing.

Starlet looks at him, surprised. "That's right," she says. "How did you know?"

Looping the vacuum cleaner cord fiercely around its handle, Dell sighs. "Because you're so fucking predictable, that's why."

"Will you please," says Starlet. "Not in front of Mrs. Sugarbaker."

"Sugarman," I correct her. On my knees now, I flip up the bedspread and speak to Princess. "Are you all right, cutie?" I ask. "Would you like to go see what's on TV?"

"No."

"You can put some of that delicious perfume behind your ears if you'd like."

"Can I take the bottle home with me?"

"Come out and we'll talk about it." I wait a few minutes, listening to the sound of the front door banging shut, and then Starlet's rapid footfalls approaching down the hallway.

"Get yourself out here right now, Princess," Starlet says. "We've got to go and call ourselves a cab." Her eyelashes are wet and gleaming, and she's sniffling into a handful of tissues patterned with pink and blue flowers. "I'm going to count to three. Here goes: uno . . . dos . . . tres."

"I peed in my pants, I think," Princess confesses in a tiny voice. "I tried to hold it in but I couldn't."

"I know," Starlet says. "I know you tried." She blots her eyes with the clump of tissues. "Listen, we'll rinse out your undies and use the hair dryer on them, how's that?" And then, to me, "Got a blow dryer for us?"

"What a terrific idea," I call out from my place on the floor. "Don't you think so, Princess?"

"Oh yeah," says Starlet. "I'm just full of terrific ideas."

"Don't be so hard on yourself," I say as Starlet stands up. "I don't know that spraying your boyfriend with Windex was the smartest thing you could have done, but we all have our ways. One time when Dr. Sugarman said something very cruel to me, I poured a cup of coffee into his lap. Lucky for both of us it was lukewarm, or he might have ended up in the burn unit at Jackson Memorial." Stricken with shame at having shared this with a stranger, I hear myself gasp. "That was a lie," I tell Starlet. "I would never lose control like that. I was just trying to make you feel better, that's all."

Starlet grabs Princess by her skinny little ankles and pulls her out across the carpet. "Let's have a look," she says, and shoves a hand down her daughter's back. "Damp," she reports. "Not too bad at all, actually. But what I'm real interested in knowing is, what was it your husband said to you that got you so ticked off?"

"I don't even remember," I say, "but even if I did, it wouldn't be right for me to tell you, would it?"

"Why not?" says Starlet. She and Princess are back at my dresser, stroking perfume on their wrists. "This is my absolute favorite," she says. "'Escape,' by Calvin Klein."

"Why not? Because some things should remain private between husband and wife, that's why."

"You mean like sex?" Starlet says. "That's not as private as it used to be, you know. You ever watch any of the talk shows? Some people, and I'm not saying I'm one of them, are perfectly willing to let forty million people in on their little secrets. And sometimes it turns out that I can, like, relate to what they're saying. Like these three ladies whose boyfriends were into tying them to the bedposts with silk scarves and stuff. Not that Dell can afford silk—polyester is more his speed—but the idea is the same."

All at once, the air seems saturated with a mix of sickeningly sweet fragrances; breathing in, I feel confused and light-headed. For a moment I can't place the two small figures in my bedroom. The one all in teal looks elfin, like Peter Pan. I don't want to imagine her tethered to her bed with silk scarves as her lover eagerly lowers himself onto her, overcome with passion. After a long slow cooling off, there is no longer any passion in my life; sometimes it seems that it's inexplicably dried up like a parched, neglected flower, turned brittle and then to dust. I find myself wondering what Roger Parrish's smooth handsome head would feel like against my flesh, in my hands. He'd saved my husband, breathed life into Simon's open mouth while I'd looked on fearfully, utterly helpless. The connection between us, between me and this man whose lips had touched my husband's, is something I can feel simmering under my skin; whatever it is, it is miraculous, something to be savored.

"You've got to get rid of this Dell," I hear myself say. "I just know you can do better."

"If he bought me perfume like this, I'd be in heaven," Starlet says. "Fat chance."

"I can see you're not going to listen to me. Neither of my daughters listens to me, either," I say. "Well, I'm used to it."

Starlet nods. "I am going to clean your house, though. But first thing, you got a full-length mirror?"

"Behind the closet door." I watch as, motionless and unsmiling, Starlet inspects herself in the mirror, then slams the closet door shut.

"I need six-inch heels and a mini-skirt," she says glumly. "And a job behind a desk—you know, answering phones, opening the boss's mail for him, ordering his lunch. You can't be glamorous and be in the housecleaning business, they just don't mix."

"Mom?" says Princess. She's been silent so long that I'd forgotten all about her. "When are we going home?"

"Never!" Starlet says exuberantly, rushing toward her and swooping her up in the air. "We're going to move into this nice apartment and have Mrs. Sugarbaker cook for us and do our laundry and take such good care of us we'll never want to leave. How would you like that?" she says, and parks Princess at the edge of the dresser. "Wouldn't that be cool?"

I smile faintly. My heart is racing, alert to danger and also, I have to admit, an inexplicable excitement. I imagine myself flipping the most delicate of omelets for Starlet's breakfasts, roasting chickens for her dinners, folding her laundry, leaving foil-wrapped mints on her pillow at night. And I could never explain to Simon how it happened, how it was that I'd been unable to resist a stranger's neediness.

"I'm teasing you, baby!" Starlet says, but Princess has already burst into tears. "Tell her I was teasing, Mrs. Sugarbaker."

"Of course she was teasing," I say, and wait for my heart to slow. "Don't be a silly goose."

"Why do you keep calling her 'Mrs. Sugarbaker'?" says Princess. She licks at the tears that have made their way slowly to the corners of her mouth. "A hundred years ago she married Dr. Simon Sugarman and that's how she became Mrs. Sugarman."

"A hundred years ago. No way," says Starlet.

"It's true," I say, and sigh. "Grover Cleveland was in the White House and life was sweet."

"Who's this Grover Cleveland character?" says Starlet. "Anyone I should know?"

"Never mind," I say, but I'm surprised at how disheartened I feel. It could be that I expect too much of people, wanting my daughters to fly to their father's bedside, my husband to be moved at the sight of my flesh, my cool, elegantly bald neighbor to appear wordlessly at my doorstep simply because he can't stay away. I slide my hand now along the surface of the night table next to Simon's side of the bed; dust darkens my fingertips, dangerous stuff for a man with asthma. There's probably dust everywhere in the apartment—in the week since Simon's been in the hospital, I've done very little with my time except try to keep him entertained with a steady stream of talk that exhausts us both. Sweeping the sleeve of my sweatsuit across the table, I send dust into the air, above the three bright rectangles of sunlight that pattern the avocado-colored carpeting and rise halfway up the bedroom wall.

"I've got to call a cab," Starlet is saying, her hand on the telephone. "It's like I can let Dell stew in his own juices for only so long and then it's real bad news."

"Have some coffee before you go," I offer. "Your boyfriend will wait."

"Well, maybe one cup. A little milk, two Sweet 'n Lows. And I swear to God," Starlet says, "I'd finish up the work you hired me for if I could. But I know I couldn't do a super job right now—my heart just wouldn't be in it." She seems to be puzzling over something, running a hand through her Peter Pan hair-do, then resting it awkwardly on top of her head. "I think maybe I just quit the business," she says uncertainly. "As of this minute."

"Good for you," I say. "I like to see a young person taking charge of her life." In the kitchen, I boil water for instant coffee and set out two blue-rimmed ceramic mugs on a Lucite tray monogrammed with my initials. I arrange some Oreos on a plate, and napkins and spoons. It's been a while since I've had company, I realize, since any of the neighbors have stopped in to ask how Simon's doing. Everyone has his own troubles here—cancer, heart disease, Parkinson's. What a crew, Simon had said one afternoon down at the pool, looking around him at all our waxen neighbors sunning themselves on chaises lounges. Fresh from a couple of sets of tennis, Roger Parrish had been the sole swimmer in the water, making his way vigorously from one end of the pool to the other. Silently, I'd applauded him, watching carefully as he pulled himself from the pool and draped a white towel across his tanned, freckled shoulders. Even then, before he figured in my daydreams, he had been someone to take notice of.

At the edge of the glass coffee table in the living room, Starlet and Princess sit mesmerized by the sight of a newly selected contestant on The Price is Right. The woman, tall and scrawny-looking, wearing sunglasses and a racing cap and hoop earrings large enough to put your wrist through, is embraced by well-wishers in the audience as she approaches the stage. Asked to bid on a brass crib filled with stuffed animals, she looks back over her shoulder for advice from the audience.

"One thousand dollars!" Starlet urges, ignoring me but taking a cookie from the tray. "Fifteen hundred!" The audience clamors suggestions of its own; the woman crosses herself, then opens her mouth. "Two thousand dollars?" says Starlet. "No way, lady."

"Drink your coffee before it gets cold," I say. Beside me, Princess splits open an Oreo and scrapes her front teeth across the bright white cream, leaving behind what looks like trail marks in fresh snow.

The woman in the racing cap raises her arms in triumph; it's her bid that's come closest to the actual retail value of the merchandise. The emcee thrusts the microphone at her, looking on in amusement as she speaks into it breathlessly. "This is the happiest day of my life," she pronounces. "This is it."

"She doesn't mean it," I say. "It must be that they coach them before the show and tell them to say things like that, but you just know she doesn't really mean it."

"Of course she does," says Starlet. "And anyway, what do you know about her? What do you know about her life?"

I pretend not to hear. I think uneasily of Dell, cooling his heels, listening for the sound of Starlet's apology, of Simon waiting in his hospital bed for the start of visiting hours. Not long ago, the morning before the asthma attack that nearly killed him, I emptied a cup of coffee into his lap. We were in the kitchen, lingering over breakfast, sections of the MiamiHerald spread across the table between us, neither of us speaking. Dreamily I opened my robe to him, shyly guided his hand to my breast. He pulled away so swiftly, so instinctively, it was as if his fingertips had been scorched. You're embarrassing us both, he said in a whispery voice, as if I'd disgraced myself in a roomful of people. Seizing the coffee cup, just for something to hold onto, I suddenly let go, casting my arm in Simon's direction without looking at him. Afterward, I made no offer to help him into dry clothes or to mop up the kitchen tiles where the coffee had spilled in a thin muddy pool. What's eating you? Simon asked me. Could you give mea hint, at least? Fleeing, I went downstairs for a swim and then out to a string of malls, searching half-heartedly for something that might appeal to me. At home, my husband waited all day for my apology, is still waiting for it, for all I know.

Starlet is smiling at the TV screen now, at a freeze-frame of the woman who won the brass crib caught in a jubilant pose, arms stretched high over her head, mouth opened wide, utterly enraptured. "Will you look at that!" says Starlet. "Will you?"

"I'm looking," I say, and see myself somewhere beyond reason and self-control, my ankles and wrists bound in bright silk, as my lover's knowing hands drift lightly along the smooth path of my flesh.