" Come to the center of the ring," the girl insisted.
Gloria stood up and was surprised at her own trembling. " What do I do with you?" she implored. " I don' t know what to do with a woman."
" Just do as I tell you," the girl calmed her. " I have no partsyou don' t have: no secrets. There' s nothing to be afraid of."
They stood exposed in the light of the fire. The audience was delighted that the two girls would be the next lovers.
The blond girl stared at Gloria and addressed her. " Reach out and touch my breasts."
Gloria was standing directly facing her lover. They were about a foot apart. She cautiously put her hands before her, and closing her eyes, she cupped the girl' s full globes. Her body heated with alarm. The breasts were soft: soft but firm in their shape.
The girl reached over and put her hands on Gloria' s firm mounds. The hands were gentle… a woman' s hands. It was if Gloria were performing before an enchanted mirror.
" Now do whatever I do," the girl commanded. She freed three of her fingers from the round, throbbing flesh and delicately pinched the hard nipples. Gloria looked down at her body, watching the tits in erected obedience. The warmth was radiating to her vagina. She timidly, then hungrily, fingered her double' s rosy resistant tips, realizing that she controlled her own experience. As hard as she pinched and pressed, the pressure on her own singing breasts responded. It was magic and she kneaded the girl with liberty, forgetting the staring fire- lit faces.
The blond girl clasped Gloria' s head and pulled it toward her. She pressed soft lips against parched lips. The woman' s mouth was softer and more insinuating than any man' s had been. She bit her lips and struggled with tenderness to the dark blood- tasting tissues within. For a long moment, the girl chewed her mouth, fingering her nipples, till Gloria lost cognizance of which was her lover and which herself. They lowered themselves to the sand.
The girl' s head was at Gloria' s thighs and Gloria balanced the position. They formed a white oval on the sand. The girl scissored her head between Gloria' s loins and Gloria did the same. Then she felt a tongue, maybe her own, pierce her clotted passion. The tongue and mouth and teeth gnawed at her core. With fear, Gloria darted her tongue into the girl' s offered opening. Her mouth found the hard button of sensation. So this was her taste. So this was the musk and dampness that she thought she could never know, as mysterious to her as it was revealed to the men who possessed her. She dug eagerly into the soaking membranes and heard herself groan.
She adored her reflection. Then she felt the tension mounting like one brick pressed on top of another in her now familiar vault. Her own tongue urged and nuzzled her completion. Her body writhed with the first mighty contraction. The orgasm waved out of her and the cunt around her tongue expired like a bleeding artery. Then the girls fell apart.
They lay obscenely splayed in the sand. Gloria felt the blond girl rise and walk back into the dark. Alone, she was offered to the stranger' s eyes.
The high priest approached her exhausted form and helped her to stand. " Now you must find your victim," he told her.
She stood subservient before him. He tied the bandage over her eyes. It was stranger than she had anticipated to be blind with the fire first warm on her back and then on her trembling breasts.
She reached her arms into the unseen and heard the taunting of near voices. She circled in the hot dark, sometimes tripping to her knees as she searched for a victim.
CHAPTER XII
It was three o' clock in the afternoon when she opened her eyes in the small cottage bedroom. Once awake, she knew that she would catch the five o' clock boat to New York. She wished herself in the city now, searching the streets for him. The evening' s bacchanal made his death urgent. She would turn into a twisting animal if the poison he had deposited in her could not seep out with his spattered blood.
She slipped into her bathing suit. There would be time for a fast swim, then she' d pack and shower, and by nine she would be home. She hurried out to the beach and found Laura sitting on a blanket with three other bridge players. They were waiting for a bid and had been silent for the past five minutes. Gloria' s presence changed the electricity in the patient air, and they all looked at her with annoyance. Laura smiled and said accusingly, " I hear there was quite a party on the beach last night."
" Yes," one of the players said as she pulled her eyes from the cards, " tales of nudity and strange religious rites."
" I wouldn' t know," Gloria lied. " I just woke up."
Laura regarded her strangely. " You look like the unkissed sleeping beauty."
" I' m going back to the city today," Gloria announced.
" Must you?"
" Yes, there' s something I forgot to attend to."
Laura remembered her breeding and did not press. " Come out again if you can. I' ll probably be here all of next week."
" Thank you," Gloria said. " I had a good rest."
" You look like hell." Laura suppressed a laugh. " If you see Christopher and his concubine, don' t give him my regards. Tell him I never mention his name."
" All right."
" Say it in such a way that he comes running out here to get me. Hint that big things are happening and that if he doesn' t hurry, he' ll be too late."
" All right," Gloria repeated, and looked away from Laura' s painful of- course- I' m- not- being- serious face.
" I' ve been pretty good about Christopher, haven' t I? I mean, I' ve been living in spite of all kinds of preferences."
" You' ve been splendid," Gloria told her. " I hope you get what you want from him." Her tone gave it importance. Laura looked away with embarrassment and quickly bid.
" You' re all right, Gloria, aren' t you?"
Gloria felt a burst of pain in her brutally used cunt.
" I' ll be all right," she promised Laura.
She walked to the sea and stood at the edge of the water. She muttered a pagan incantation to the sea. " Lead me to him tonight. I can go no further. Help me, I pray you." Then she plunged into the divinity' s breast and floated far out.
The boat left sharply at five and it chugged across the inlet, managing to take one- and- a- half tense hours before it docked at Amityville. The slow, painful voyage induced a stupor in Gloria and she sat on the top deck with an unseen book in her lap. She caught the seven o' clock train at Amityville and reached Pennsylvania Station at a quarter past eight.
Gloria unlocked the door of her apartment and entered the silent rooms. The night pressed black through the transparent curtains. There was a sterile order in the flat, except for a lipstick- rimmed coffee cup left on the kitchen table. The order oppressed Gloria and she opened the cupboard and took out a bottle of scotch. She poured some generously into a glass and took a deep drink of the burning liquid. Her mouth stung and she held the scotch in her puffed cheeks until it was warm enough to slide down her throat. She walked to the water tap and diluted the liquor with a third of water. Then she sat down on the couch, smoking and drinking slowly, inspecting her latest painting. The canvas was a streaking of blues and dull grays. The colors moved in and out with a futile energy. She stared at the painting with distaste, wondering if it was better to do nothing than to do something unimportant.
She hadn' t realized, during her hours at the easel, how trivial the final product would be. All her life Gloria had had a faith in her world, in her ideas, in her talent. When she was five years old, she had taken a black crayon in her hand and drawn a black sun that shone on a black farmhouse hidden in a field of black corn. Her mother had shown the picture to Gloria' s father, and that moment her parents had concurred that she was an artist. It was comfortable to have an identity. The rapist had crushed that identity. She would have it back. She would have him back. One hour was all she needed – one hour.