BAD LOVE

The year 1899, Manhattan, New York

Mrs. Susan Lindsmore reclined on her chaise longue, her outwardly languid pose belying her inner excitement. Her steady gaze glued to the sitting room’s oak-paneled door, not a tic or twitch disturbing her carefully composed expression, she tunneled her hand beneath the gold toile pillows plumped at her back—

And forgetting herself, screeched with all the dignity of a fishwife, "Where the fuck is it?"

Her naughty secret was gone.

Fear clutched at her chest. No. No. No. This could not be happening, especially not now when she needed relief so badly. Who could have discovered her hiding place?

The housemaid, perhaps. The day girl cleaned in here just yesterday. She might have come upon it while polishing the furniture with beeswax or beating the brocade upholstery for dust.

Or possibly the cook. Mrs. Harris dropped off the week’s menus last night. That fidgety woman was always touching the pillows.

Please, pleeeaaaaase, not one of her six stepdaughters during one of their all-too-frequent visits. Anyone else but her innocent darlings.

Panic-stricken, she twisted in the seat, groping, clawing, punching the perfectly arranged pillows, disorganized tassels and fringe flying every which way. Where was it, where was it? It had to be here somewhere.

Wait. She held her breath. What was this?

Her fingertips brushed something papery, something thin, something deliciously decadent wedged between tasteful beige cushions and the chair’s mahogany arm. That something must have slipped from its hiding place while she pretended to count cross-stitches on her ghastly boring needlepoint pattern.

A yank dislodged the discreetly wrapped package. Like a squirrel recovering a hidden acorn from the lawn, she settled her buried treasure on the outermost region of her lap, ready to dig her guilty pleasure back under the pillows again should one of the girls barge in on her. As an additional precaution against discovery, she draped the gray sash of her loose-fitting surah and cashmere gown over the flat envelope. One could not be too cautious. Or sneaky. Her darlings had an uncanny knack for interrupting at the most inopportune times.

Like now, when she was randy as all hell.

From the outset of her custodianship, she had welcomed her husband’s brood into her private sanctuary. After all, as their father’s second wife, she was the stranger here at Number 22, the interloper, and she had much to prove. Naturally, the girls resented her presence. Naturally, they had striven to drive her away. All motherless children misbehaved the same. To earn their trust, she’d had the lock removed from her private sitting room door and encouraged her new family to come to her with their problems at any hour, day or night.

Just her foul luck, her darlings had taken her up on the offer. Whatever had she been thinking?

Long and short, she had not enjoyed a moment’s solitude since. Like Mary Shelley, she had created a monster. Only her Frankenstein was a beautiful six-headed she-beast with golden ringlets and an annoying propensity for giggle fits.

In this very room, she had bandaged interminable scraped knees, taught a myriad of schoolroom lessons, bolstered flagging confidence, and listened to endless tales of woe. She had always been there for the girls, had always attended to their wants, no matter how large or small.

Or silly. Extremely and utterly silly.

Discussions about clothes and hair and boys had gone on interminably. Girls born to privilege were such insecure twits. Always concerned with what others thought of them while sheltered from the hard reality of survival. Thank goodness, poverty had spared her their ignorance.

Apart from the monetary, she supposed there had been compensations for raising them. Sloppy kisses. Clumsy hugs. Lisped declarations of undying devotion. Pride taken in their successful launches into New York society. Her stepdaughters had all turned out admirably well. No biological mother could be any prouder—or more relieved—at the girls’ debutante balls. At any rate, she had done her duty, and now it was time to get on with her life, the one she had put on hold for the last fifteen years. Thirty-three was not all that terribly long in the tooth. Still, according to Sir Isaac Newton, gravity could drop her tits to her feet any day, so there was not a moment to waste.

She intended to shake up her dull routine—providing none of the girls caught her. Nothing must jeopardize her darlings’ tidy and safe little worlds. Nothing must disillusion them, especially not her. God help her, the girls sincerely believed they loved her.

Loved her?

They knew absolutely nothing about her.

What they loved was the illusion of her, the stylish perception she projected for their sakes, not the real flesh and blood her. Her stepdaughters actually assumed, because of her fluency in the language, that she was French. They envisioned her as a displaced aristocrat of pristine lineage, an impeccably coiffed Marie Antoinette, only in possession of her head. Romantic rubbish! She could hardly countenance their flights of fancy.

Never once, not by thought, word, or deed, did she dissuade them from their ridiculousness. In fact, she guarded their naïveté for it served all of them.

Gravity might someday drop her tits to her feet, but those feet were made of clay. What a shock to her darlings’ delicate systems to learn the truth of her sordid background, that she was a former Five Points street swindler, a pickpocket extraordinaire, the daughter of a Siamese concubine trained since birth in the art of satisfying a man.

At least, theoretically. Soon, if all went as planned, she would put theory to the test.

Chewing her bottom lip in wanton anticipation, she slid the brown paper wrapping off her package. Her mouth agape, she shivered. Ohhhh, my. Oh, my, my, my.

The editorial staff of Licentious, an illustrated underground periodical dedicated to indulging all the sensual pleasures, had outdone themselves. This month’s edition, by far and away, boasted the most explicit cover yet.

Unable to contain herself, she stroked the front flap.

The hand-painted lithography depicted a couple making mad, passionate love. In the great outdoors, of all unlikely places. Amid tall ostrich ferns and stout zebra grasses, a nude woman rode an equally nude man. Her perspiring flesh green-shadowed, her astride positioning scandalously uninhibited, the dominant female clenched her thighs about her submissive stud’s hips as he—dear Lord—bucked obediently beneath her.

One happy subscriber, she ogled the pictorial from every angle, including upside down, pronouncing it an absolutely flawless execution of the subject matter, with meticulous attention to detail. Never mind the implausibility of the scenario. Never mind that, in real life, the sharp foliage of the various plants would flay the man’s broad back to the bone and slice the woman’s knees to a bloody pulp. Never mind that such a humid environment would teem with creepy, crawly, icky insects of every description and variety. Never mind that, ordinarily, she found pooling and dripping sweat anything but attractive. Pesky logistics and intellectual analyses aside, Licentious never failed to inspire her.

Like now.

Now. When one more second was too long to wait for the release of her tension.

She bunched her dove gray mourning gown up over her belly, slid a hand under layers of petticoats and into the gathered waistband of her drawers. Seeped in pulsating pleasure, the area between her legs awash with honeyed liquidity, she found her clitoris and practiced her favorite vice.

Tossing herself off. A phrase lifted from another voluptuary magazine, the Pearl. Call the activity self-pollution. A medicinal cure for hysteria. Or settle for masturbation. No matter. Nothing mattered but this brief moment in time.

On the edge, on the cusp, on the precipice, she tensed as the throes of ecstasy approached.

Yesyesyes. Mmm. Oh my, yessss.

The contractions, the convulsions, the release—all were wonderful. But regardless of the strength of the fulfillment, or how the swell carried her away, after the climax, she was still alone. No lover was there to hold her, to warm her as the tremors of physical euphoria faded, leaving her chilled and as limp as a dishcloth.

"Fuck!" She slapped her gown back down to cover her toes.

Self-pity would get her nowhere. She was a woman who took charge, who took action, who made things happen. Why should carnality be any different?

Muttering all sorts of foul gutter epithets under her breath, she flipped the pages of her pleasure aid to the personal ads. Skipping anything to do with mail-order brides and their ilk, she scanned the column for anonymous trysts of an erotic nature.

And there it was, in black-and-white, succinct and to the point, pragmatic carnal requirements that mirrored her own:

WANTED: A 25- to 35-year-old female for sexual companionship in Maine. Two weeks of rustication in a seaside setting. Lodging and expenses provided. Ideal spot for rest and recreation. Only experienced female applicants need apply. Anonymity guaranteed. No romantic entanglements, no personal questions. Reply to publisher for face-to-face interview.