down the clues I gave you. No rest for the wicked.”
What the fuck , but she was not really surprised. Several times she had tried to draw off his clothes, to pull silk away from flesh and bone. He hadn’t let her, had drawn back.
His goal was not yet consummation, his aspiration not yet to feel, to map out, the innermost geography of her body, to follow to its inevitable conclusion the oldest law of all, the original dream, toward which all humanity has always striven, will always strive as long as it can, as long as nature and her twists of fate and misfortune will let it.
The final victory of Eros over Thanatos. Of Love over Death.
As she left his townhouse that night—they kissed a while longer, fully clothed, the skin beneath her polyester a pandemonium of dry and wet, standing near the doorway, the Judge was not too cold and forbidding to kiss or be kissed, thank God, praise Eros—he gave her a parting gift.
“The throne is the key, the cipher, that ties the other clues together. It will take you to the location of our meetings.”
CHAPTER SIX
It was later than she’d realized, past 10. She was exhausted, burned through and through, every cell of nerve and muscle in her body ready to implode. Suffocated by a story. The narrative of her body, written by Victor, with his tongue and with his mouth and with his hands, inscribing the emotional and physical language of her erotic self. A slow, incendiary process that had every trapping of ritual, time out of time and space out of space.
Still she had no thought of sleep, could not fathom her consciousness of what had just happened winking out, the risk of not dreaming of the consummation of their passion was not worth taking. She was possessed by a manic energy unfamiliar to her, and the frantic pace of her thoughts, and the beating in her chest, had scarcely slowed since she had left his house. The stakes of their game had become the stakes of her life.
She’d made her way back to Ford by instinct drained of perception, by experience drained of thought, the buildings and the people and the cars along the way had no true existence, were a great blur of flickering colors and the shadows cast by artificial light.
Had she been pulled over by the police, in her faded brick Honda hatchback, the officer would have thought her in a narcotic stupor. Would have been mystified by how someone with almost no alcohol in her system—less than a third of a glass of the bubbly had actually entered her bloodstream—could appear to be such a textbook case of intoxication.
She made it home without incident, unless yielding to the desire to touch herself along the way, only one hand on the steering wheel, to imagine him touching her while doing so, her hand acting as a surrogate of his, should be called an incident.
What she should have done once she got ensconced back in her room: crack open a few cans of energy drink and a couple weighty casebooks. Unfortunately for her, Zora was not one to resort to the Nutshell Series or the Black Letter Outlines.
She should have devoted herself to reading, underlining, memorizing until dawn cases like Cheek v. United States for Crim Law and Jacobellis v. Ohio for Con Law. Some Immanuel Kant and John Rawls thrown in for good measure. She should have been categorical about it.
The thought of it now was alien to her, like the thought of death to one granted immortality. She went straight to her computer to string together the clues that Victor had given her, the mysteries he had written on her skin and in the air.
She started where he’d ended, with the chair, the African throne. It had proven to her the dialectic of love and death, pain and pleasure, for now as she recalled her body in that chair, arcing forward against Victor’s silken form, then sinking back into the recesses of his kisses, her muscles contorting within the confines of the chair, she also imagined the body of the Gatekeeper, not dying from lethal injection as she
What the fuck , but she was not really surprised. Several times she had tried to draw off his clothes, to pull silk away from flesh and bone. He hadn’t let her, had drawn back.
His goal was not yet consummation, his aspiration not yet to feel, to map out, the innermost geography of her body, to follow to its inevitable conclusion the oldest law of all, the original dream, toward which all humanity has always striven, will always strive as long as it can, as long as nature and her twists of fate and misfortune will let it.
The final victory of Eros over Thanatos. Of Love over Death.
As she left his townhouse that night—they kissed a while longer, fully clothed, the skin beneath her polyester a pandemonium of dry and wet, standing near the doorway, the Judge was not too cold and forbidding to kiss or be kissed, thank God, praise Eros—he gave her a parting gift.
“The throne is the key, the cipher, that ties the other clues together. It will take you to the location of our meetings.”
CHAPTER SIX
It was later than she’d realized, past 10. She was exhausted, burned through and through, every cell of nerve and muscle in her body ready to implode. Suffocated by a story. The narrative of her body, written by Victor, with his tongue and with his mouth and with his hands, inscribing the emotional and physical language of her erotic self. A slow, incendiary process that had every trapping of ritual, time out of time and space out of space.
Still she had no thought of sleep, could not fathom her consciousness of what had just happened winking out, the risk of not dreaming of the consummation of their passion was not worth taking. She was possessed by a manic energy unfamiliar to her, and the frantic pace of her thoughts, and the beating in her chest, had scarcely slowed since she had left his house. The stakes of their game had become the stakes of her life.
She’d made her way back to Ford by instinct drained of perception, by experience drained of thought, the buildings and the people and the cars along the way had no true existence, were a great blur of flickering colors and the shadows cast by artificial light.
Had she been pulled over by the police, in her faded brick Honda hatchback, the officer would have thought her in a narcotic stupor. Would have been mystified by how someone with almost no alcohol in her system—less than a third of a glass of the bubbly had actually entered her bloodstream—could appear to be such a textbook case of intoxication.
She made it home without incident, unless yielding to the desire to touch herself along the way, only one hand on the steering wheel, to imagine him touching her while doing so, her hand acting as a surrogate of his, should be called an incident.
What she should have done once she got ensconced back in her room: crack open a few cans of energy drink and a couple weighty casebooks. Unfortunately for her, Zora was not one to resort to the Nutshell Series or the Black Letter Outlines.
She should have devoted herself to reading, underlining, memorizing until dawn cases like Cheek v. United States for Crim Law and Jacobellis v. Ohio for Con Law. Some Immanuel Kant and John Rawls thrown in for good measure. She should have been categorical about it.
The thought of it now was alien to her, like the thought of death to one granted immortality. She went straight to her computer to string together the clues that Victor had given her, the mysteries he had written on her skin and in the air.
She started where he’d ended, with the chair, the African throne. It had proven to her the dialectic of love and death, pain and pleasure, for now as she recalled her body in that chair, arcing forward against Victor’s silken form, then sinking back into the recesses of his kisses, her muscles contorting within the confines of the chair, she also imagined the body of the Gatekeeper, not dying from lethal injection as she
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