Deprivation- The Feast and the Famine

Chapter 10- Snake in the Garden

Somewhere between reality and dream, Claudia's heart wandered bewildered through a maze.  Her feet followed in random meaningless paths across her bedroom floor.  One hand caressed the air in front of her on occasion as if to feel Bennett's phantasmal flesh.

Disrobed of her finery, Claudia looked more the woman and less the girl.  She was still of an age where it was possible to travel seamlessly between the two.  Now in her white nightdress, parts of her flesh only partially shielded from passing eyes, she looked startlingly mature.  Somehow, she owned and understood the body she was in and did not wear it as a garment. Lost to her was the essence of girlhood.

Her thoughts, too, barred her from childhood.  For he, her Bennett, was all she saw.  Not once had he seen her.  Not once had his eyes more than passed over her. Even when introduced, he looked to some point beyond her.  Even so, she knew that they were meant to entwine.

When the party had ended, Claudia hadn't retreated to her room and weep.  Nor had she thrown things.  Instead, she plotted solutions and in its way, her conclusion was sensible.

Swiftly, Claudia transitioned from pacing to useful action.  She blew out the candle that lit her room.  Instead of going to bed, she drew on a cloak from her closet. Without trepidation, she moved to her window and threw the shutters open to the night.  Then she clambered over the ledge and hooked her slippered feet on the trellis.  She rotated and slipped from the window.

Out under the sky, Claudia felt disoriented.  Her whiteness disappeared in the black.  It swallowed her.  Her hands and feet groped at the slender wooden bars, meant only to hold vines and flowers, not full-grown bodies.  It was a substantial drop, but Claudia was not entirely sure the ground would end her fall. Could one literally fall out of God's grace?

God knew what she intended, and every step led her closer to her damnation.  Perversely, her hands and her feet moved.  When the trellis began to groan under her weight, she slid in one direction or another.  After what seemed like an age, her feet reached the earth.  

She stood, allowing her eyes to adjust to the dark in her father's garden.  The night birds called out; their harsh voices accused her.  She ignored them.  The air was warm and pleasant against her face as she began to walk.

The streets seemed new and beautiful under the stars.  Claudia mused that despite what the preacher would say, she was walking to salvation.  How could anything that God did not intend feel so impeccably wonderful?

The city streets were hardly safe for a lone woman armed only with a vague notion of love.  Nor had Claudia ever walked so far.  That she did not get lost, picked up by the police, or accosted on the streets could only mean that something was serving as a guide.  For she made no effort to conceal herself.

She stayed in the light where she could but did not shy from unlit roads over which rats scuttled on their night errands.  The rats eyed her slender silk-clad feet.  Their beady gazes hungry and angry. Claudia encountered only rats and a few yowling cats.

Claudia's feet were sore, and a pain nagged at her side. Claudia pressed on until she reached her destination.  She stopped in front of Philomela's house and stared up.  

Only then did Claudia realize how frail her plan was.  Faced with the dark house, the assurance that had brought her, thus far, cracked and broke.  She did not even know where his window was.  She could not get in, and in any event had no proof that he was home.

In this momentary break, she heard the sounds of the night around her.  She felt the chill of the air and the damp of her feet.  The silence of sleep was loud to her ears.  The night softly laughed at her.  Then after a brief moment, that seemed to last forever, where she knew she had failed, Claudia heard something else.  She heard footsteps behind the fence on the garden path.

She crept over to the fence and peered inside, not toward the house but into the garden.  Seeing the only thing that she thought she would see, she opened the gate and entered.

He didn't turn at her soft footsteps across the ground. She moved silently to take her prey by surprise.  He walked back on the path in front of her, having turned around the moment he reached the gate.  Something drove him out into the night to pace.  It did not occur to Claudia that something was bothering him, or that he might feel as cramped and repressed in Philomela's house as she did.  She saw his presence in the garden as proof that they were meant to be together, here, tonight.

So she followed behind him until they were in the rear of the garden, invisible from the road but lit by a window on the second floor.  There she called out to him.  She was amazed at her voice which had never been so beautiful.

Bennett turned.  He lowered his brow as he saw her and took one step forward.  "Do I know you Madame?"

"You have met me, sir, but you do not know me."

He took another step in her direction.  His wonderful eyes studied her.  Finally, they had found her and not drifted away.  "You are incorrect; I do know you.  Go home."

This command did not upset Claudia nor did she obey.  It would have been silly for her to go home after all she had done to be where she was.  Now that he let his gaze linger, she had to convince him he wanted to continue to see her. First, she wanted from him the act her body demanded.  She had no name for what she needed, but she would not retreat until she had her fill.  "I am yours."

"If I recall correctly, you are affianced. A splendid society match.  Go home."

Claudia took two steps forward and reached out to place her hand on Bennett's chest.  She did not feel his heart beating, but she knew it was there, and that it beat.  "I am as you say.  It means nothing.  I want to be yours."

Bennett took this with a quizzical expression. This was not how young well-bred girls behaved.  A lion does not liedown before the hare, nor does a rabbit decide it's high time to feast on living lion flesh.  Claudia sensed how she had altered the expected roles and also that he was unsure if she was a lion or a rabbit.  

"How did you find your way here?"

"I walked."  Claudia turned her face up to him.  She wanted to press her lips into the curve where his neck met his jaw.  To cover his mouth with hers and drink in his next word.  What's more, she wanted their clothes gone.  She wanted her back pressed into the ground and him on top of her.

Some of the animal hunger in Claudia's wide eyes must have shown because Bennett took one step back.  "I will walk you home.  It is not safe for a young lady to go alone."

Claudia smiled, the predator still. "I accept your offer, but first..." Claudia let her cloak slide from her shoulders.  She stood there for a moment feeling his eyes on her like the brush of fingertips.  She knew every inch of flesh they alighted on.  

"What is your game?" Bennett asked. He already knew.  He was willing to play.  It was there in his voice and his body.  

"Give me what I wish and I will return home.  Tis no game, Bennett." She bridged the gap between them and standing on her toes she kissed his mouth.  He tasted of the bitter alcohols her father drank.  He tasted of himself.  She drifted back away from his mouth. Her hand traveled down his body. "I want you, and I will not leave till I've had you."

Bennett took her in his arms and pressed her against the wall of his sister's house.  His hands were far from gentle where they dug into her flesh.  She had not expected gentleness from her demon, didn't want it. He did not bother to remove her nightdress.

Claudia discovered that she did like this secret thing that people did once they were married.  She ascertained she liked it more than she'd dreamed she would.  And she found this on the lawn of her piano teacher, in the dead of night.

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