by Radclyffe
“Kellie, psst...I’m allowed to leave.” I touched her cheek gently to wake her. “Let’s go.” I went into the washroom and freshened up as well as I could. I found some Listerine. Score.
I sat on the edge of the hospital bed and gathered my things. Kellie settled beside me. “You know, Sam, you turned my life upside down. You turned my life upside down, and I didn’t have my best friend around to help me make sense of it.”
Ouch. Here comes that talk. “I panicked,” I said. “But I’ll fix it. We’ll be back to normal soon. It’ll be like that night never happened.”
For a long moment, she just looked at me. And then she did it. Kellie slowly leaned forward and touched her lips to mine. I sat there unmoving, unsure of what was really happening until she pinched my leg. “I love you too, Sammy. Now kiss me already.” I softened my mouth and felt her melt against me.
Kellie came home with me that day two years ago, on the premise of helping out for a while. She’s still here...
ABSINTHE
Jennifer Fulton
In the walled garden, night jasmine bloomed. Vines had long ago claimed the marble bench on which Eloise sat, their lithe, entwined suckers furnishing a latticework cushion. Lilies grew in fleshy clumps throughout the garden, waxen blooms pale in the moonlight. Eloise considered these, as she did on this day each year, alone beneath the apple tree, attuned to the sound of a key in the latch and the wet crunch of footsteps on fallen fruit.
Come dawn, she would gather her cloak about her and tread the damp grass back out into the world. Why wait, Eloise asked herself, when she could leave early, in possession of her dignity? Perhaps promises made to strangers on trains did not count. Perhaps some wickedness had befallen the woman who owned this garden, precluding their rendezvous.
There were rules for chance encounters, and Eloise feared she had broken every one of them: do not entertain romantic fantasies, do not believe promises of future meetings. People would say almost anything to avoid an awkward goodbye after intimacy. Her pigheadedness had only made the situation worse, compelling her futile return to the designated spot, year after year, just in case Madame had been unaccountably detained.
And here she was once more, alone in the ruins of Eden, feeling as Eve might had the Serpent passed her by.
The warm July evening that set this folly in motion had its beginnings at Victoria Station in London. The year was 1939 and the Night Ferry to Paris left, as usual, just before 10 p.m. The journey took place on a train named Contentment that swayed and rattled down to the Dover docks where it was loaded aboard a ferry with rails and disgorged some nine hours later across the channel at Dunkirk. Back on terra firma, it sped into Paris by nine in the morning, just in time for warm croissants and café au lait in the garden at the Ritz.
In the dining car, Eloise ordered Coquilles St. Jacques Meuniere and champagne, determined to take her mind off the notion of heavy train carriages sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic. At the next table, another lone diner read a French newspaper. At first Eloise mistook her for a gentleman. She wore a pinstriped suit, and her short black hair was combed smoothly back from her forehead.
Catching Eloise’s eye, she lowered her newspaper and said, “Good evening.” Her voice was husky and quite deep but distinctly female.
As Eloise murmured a somewhat startled hello, the maître d’hôtel arrived at the woman’s table, and they conversed in rapid French. He bowed and called her Madame, and then approached Eloise and said, “Excuse moi, Mademoiselle. I took the liberty of explaining your predicament, and Madame invites you to join her for dinner.”
“My predicament?” Eloise blinked, whereupon the man lost his crisp command of English and ushered her from her chair.
“Charles prefers to circumvent the embarrassing spectacle of two women dining alone in his car,” Madame explained dryly.
“Your husband is not traveling with you?” Eloise at once felt gauchely American for asking a question that was none of her business.
Madame did not appear to take offense. “Henry would not be so inconsiderate. Besides, he loathes the French.”
Eloise wondered how Henry felt about his wife’s choice of attire. She couldn’t help but stare a moment longer than she should. Even the shoes were masculine, black and highly polished. It struck her that Madame was almost certainly the kind of woman her parents had warned her about before she left Baltimore—a bohemian intellectual who flouted the rules of society and pursued a dissipated lifestyle in the company of avant-garde artists, political nonconformists, and other hotheads. According to Aunt Constance, with whom Eloise would be traveling in Europe, the cafés of Paris overflowed with such women, recklessly smoking cigarettes and even sampling the illicit Green Fairy. In this day and age.
“Is this your first trip to France?” Madame asked.
“Yes. I am to join my widowed aunt. She has been taking the cure in Dax. We’re planning to tour the Continent.”
Madame had eyes almost as black as her hair. She regarded Eloise with warm indulgence. “You are not concerned by the political situation?”
“My aunt says we shall avoid Czechoslovakia.”
“The invasion being an inconvenience, to say the least?”
Eloise nodded. Something in Madame’s tone made her feel slightly defensive. “My aunt says General Mussolini is making Italy more efficient, and Mr. Hitler is doing the same for Germany.”
“Efficiency charms a certain type of person, it seems.”
Eloise could not help but smile. “Aunt Constance married a man who counted every penny.”
“And she outlived him,” Madame noted. “Efficiency, indeed.”
Eloise laughed and her body relaxed all of a sudden. It was such a relief to talk to someone willing to say exactly what she thought.
“Where are you from?” Madame asked.
“Baltimore.”
“I was just reading about one of your countrywomen. Clara Adams. The first woman passenger to fly around the world.”
Eloise shuddered. “She must be very brave. I would never dare do such a thing.”
“You may surprise yourself one day. I’ve found we never know what we are truly capable of until we are tested.”
“Have you been tested?” Eloise asked, emboldened by the champagne.
Madame’s expression altered momentarily as though a shadow had passed across her thoughts. “Not as I shall be,” she said. Then her eyes were bright once more, and she offered a small platter of appetizers. “Do try a truffle pastry. They’re always good.”
As Eloise politely nibbled a nasty-tasting morsel, Madame introduced herself and they exchanged the usual courtesies, making innocuous conversation over fine food until they were the last passengers in the dining car. Madame then summoned Charles and requested her usual, which was how Eloise came to be acquainted with absinthe.
“It’s illegal in Britain and France, now,” Madame said. “However, we are soon to leave Dover, and we will not arrive in Dunkirk until the morning. At sea, we shall be in no-man’s-land, as it were. Free to ignore the laws of both nations. Imagine.”
There was something wicked in the dark glitter of her eyes and the white flash of her teeth. She observed Eloise with disquieting concentration, the way people study artworks they want to own. Eloise recognized that covetous appreciation from auctions she attended with her mother, who crammed the walls of their home with peculiar paintings by foreigners.
They were obliged to continue their refreshments in Madame’s compartment, for the train would soon be loaded aboard a ferry, carriages squeezed one alongside the next, for the sea journey to France. By a stroke of luck, their compartments were side by side in the same carriage. Madame said it was not luck. Railway officials sought, for the sake of propriety, to locate unaccompanied females in one carriage and lone males in another.
A waiter followed them bearing a pitcher of iced water, a bowl of sugar lumps, and two Madeira glasses. He placed these on a small table between f
acing couchettes, bowed, and left.
“Pray sit down.” Madame indicated one of the modest seats, and not for the first time, Eloise observed that she was remarkably civil for a person on the fringes of society.
She wondered at the wisdom of retreating to Madame’s compartment. For all she knew, her elegant companion might pursue all manner of vices. Eloise had no doubt that Mother and Father would consider the Englishwoman an unsuitable acquaintance, even decadent. Common sense dictated that Eloise remain in her company no longer. She had, after all, promised to conduct herself prudently on her travels.
Guiltily, she blurted, “Perhaps I should bid you good evening, Madame. You’ve been so kind, but I simply cannot impose any further upon your hospitality.”
Madame smiled and drew a step closer. She was taller than Eloise, a fact made more pronounced by the immediacy of the small compartment. Up close, her eyes were not black after all. They were the color of mountains at dusk, a serene purple gray, and etched with fine long lashes.
“Consider this an adventure,” she coaxed softly. “You are far from home and free to do as you please. Do you really wish to leave?”
Eloise knew the answer her parents would expect of her, but her throat closed over the obligatory words. Unable to endure Madame’s teasing stare, she lowered her head and sank onto the couchette.
Madame remained standing before her, and Eloise was overwhelmed by a strange urge to touch the fine weave of her jacket. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled, and an oily sensation settled in her stomach. She hadn’t noticed Madame’s fragrance in the dining car, but an elusive medley of scents troubled her senses now: freshly laundered cotton sullied with traces of smoke. Violets languishing in a shadowed forest. A tease of vanilla and some other subtle spices.
An inexplicable panic rose in her, constricting her breathing. Eloise decided champagne and travel were a perilous combination, one that had obviously gone straight to her head. Fortunately, nobody was here to witness her lapse in judgment. She was in Europe, far from the censure of her family.
Recklessly, she allowed her gaze to meander up the starched white shirt front before her to the collar Madame had loosened, the hollow of her throat, and the strength of her chin, and finally the shadow beneath her lower lip.
Madame was no longer smiling, and as Eloise stared at her mouth, it parted slightly as if compelled by a sharp release of breath. “I’ll walk you to your compartment if it is truly your wish,” she said, taking a step back.
Eloise met her eyes and found them shuttered, the warm indulgence supplanted by a more distant expression. “No,” she said, embarrassed to have betrayed her indecision. “I would prefer to stay.”
Madame gave her a long, assessing look, took the seat opposite, and drew a bottle from her luggage. After rearranging the items on the small table between them, she poured a measure of Pernod Fils from the bottle and then placed a slotted silver device over each glass, forming a bridge from rim to rim. On this she set a lump of sugar for herself and two for Eloise.
Holding the pitcher high above Eloise’s glass, she let a thin stream of water slowly descend onto the sugar lumps. These immediately began to dissolve and drip through the slots. Transfixed, Eloise watched a milky mist rise up through the amber green liquid in her glass. An herbal fragrance floated from the liqueur.
After Madame had repeated this ritual for her own aperitif, she removed the silver spoons and toasted, “To your education, my dear.”
Eloise took a cautious sip and quickly covered her mouth. The liquid was cool, yet her throat burned. The taste was both bitter and sweet. It seemed she had consumed a licorice-tainted flower bud. With each breath it opened farther, teasing her tongue and cloying her nostrils with the scent of wild meadow.
“It’s a taste one acquires,” Madame said. “Take some more. You’ll find it improves.”
Obligingly, Eloise took another sip and then another. “I have heard many are addicted to this beverage,” she remarked.
“It can cast a spell,” Madame conceded. “But you’re in no danger from a glass or two.”
Her hands were pale and fine like those of the marble statues Eloise had seen at the British Museum. Impulsively, she touched one and was almost surprised to find it warm instead of cold. “Forgive me,” she said, hastily withdrawing. How could she explain herself?
Madame seemed unconcerned. “Will it bother you if I remove my jacket?”
“Not at all.” Eloise wanted to shed her own shoes and stockings but suppressed this wayward urge.
Beneath her jacket, Madame wore a plain white shirt tucked into pants that fit quite loosely. These were supported by suspenders, or, as the British termed them, braces. She rolled up her sleeves and opened the window of their compartment, producing a thin cigar. “Do you mind?” she asked. “I would offer you one, but I don’t care to see a beautiful woman smoke.”
Eloise found this sentiment surprising on several counts, most notably that Madame had paid her a compliment. This was rare; Eloise’s looks generally failed to excite attention. She was unfashionably narrow of shoulder and small breasted, and tonight, in a long-sleeved, deep green dress that buttoned at the front, she felt about as dull as she could be. Her mother said the fabric flattered her pale complexion and copper brown hair, but Eloise thought it made her look insipid and showed up the cinnamon freckles sprayed across her nose and cheeks. She had tried to cover these with powder, but she knew they peeped through.
As Madame lit her cigar, Eloise said, like a chatterbox, “I’ve never smoked. Some of my friends from college do, but my father won’t permit it. He says only fast women smoke.”
“He has a point.” Madame’s perfectly etched mouth tugged a little at the edges. “If I may ask, how old are you?”
“I’ll be twenty-four in September. On the first of the month.”
“There’s a decade between us. And an ocean.” Madame looked pensive. “Will you be back in London after your travels?”
“Only briefly, alas. I’ve already spent six weeks there, seeing the sights.”
Madame sent a slow drift of smoke out the window. “I shall be in Berlin later this month. Are you including Germany in your tour?”
“Why, yes. My aunt is quite desperate to see one of those vast parades they’re showing on the newsreels. She thinks the German uniforms are very glamorous.”
Her companion fell silent for so long that Eloise wondered if she’d said something tactless. Finally, after imbibing some of her own green liqueur, Madame remarked, “Your aunt sounds like a very silly woman.”
“I fear so.” Even as she giggled her reply, Eloise found Madame’s comment increasingly hilarious. It was all she could do not to roll with laughter.
Aunt Constance was her mother’s older sister, a strident big-bodied widow who had inherited a vast fortune from her husband and had no children on whom to lavish it. This meant she’d always spoiled Eloise with extravagant toys and clothing Father considered absurd.
The sable coat Eloise now carried with her had been consigned to cold storage when Aunt Constance sent it for her sixteenth birthday. Her father had only allowed her to retrieve it on her graduation from Vassar. Eloise ran her hand across the fine soft fur and could almost imagine herself wearing it in Russia, standing on the timeless steppes described with such calm passion by Countess Alexandra Tolstoy in one of her visits to the college.
“Are you cold?” Madame asked, studying the fingers Eloise had buried.
“A little,” Eloise admitted. Indeed, she was shivering. She felt hot inside, but chills kept crawling across her skin.
Madame extinguished her cigar and closed the window, drawing the curtains so the compartment seemed warmer. She cleared the table and folded it away, and then sat down just inches from Eloise. Slouching back against the corner where the seat met the wall, she stretched her legs out before her, crossing them at the ankles.
“Is that better?” she asked, tilting her head to face Eloise.
>
She was so beautiful Eloise had trouble finding a sensible reply. Her skin was the color of a honey-dipped pearl. It beckoned Eloise’s fingers. Oddly compelled, she slid along the seat until their thighs almost touched. It was as if she were in a dream, trying to find her way out, needing an anchor to keep her from drifting. She lifted her hand, and when her fingertips connected with skin, she gasped and quickly shrank back.
But Madame caught her by the wrist and placed the imprisoned hand on her cheek, sandwiching it gently beneath her own. “You can touch me, Eloise. I’m not offended, and we are at sea. Rules don’t matter here.”
“I feel…intoxicated,” Eloise confessed.
“Then I recommend you make the most of it. I can’t imagine you’ll have the opportunity once you are traveling with your aunt.”
Madame regarded her with an expression Eloise had never seen before, a look so frank and knowing she felt her every thought and feeling must be transparent.
To her shock, Madame’s lips brushed her palm. Blood rushed up Eloise’s neck to her face. Her heart pummeled against her ribcage and beat a rapid tattoo in her ears. Her limbs were heavy and languorous, yet her mind seemed brilliantly alert. She tried to make sense of the impulses she could barely repress. She wanted to reach for Madame. She wanted to kiss her. What was happening to her? Was this the legendary effect of absinthe? Did Madame also feel this way from consuming it? Eloise immediately knew she should leave, but she remained exactly where she was, an accomplice to her own undoing.
Her dress felt too tight at the throat, so she reached for her buttons, fumbling to unfasten the top few.
“Allow me,” Madame said, as one of the buttons snapped off and flew onto the floor.
Eloise lowered her hand and tilted her chin up in defeat. The brush of Madame’s fingers against her skin as the other woman deftly unfastened one button after the next made her mouth go dry. She wanted more. More than the incidental collision of skin.