Drawn Curtains

Paul loved Claudine, the way an addict loves the needle. First, he wanted her, then he needed her, and then he was possessed by her, while she, passively, accepted his obsession even as it took an unexpectedly dark detour.

They were both in their early twenties, each possessed of the youthful egotism that believes age will never mar them as it has all others, that the relentless tug of gravity will never take its toll, and that time will not hunt them down and eventually have them. They were a beautiful couple, matched spiritually, of a kind physically, and when they made love their bodies melted into each other. Having been lovers for many months, there was not anything they had not done, nothing they considered taboo, not a facet of themselves they had not shared.

Except one. And that was about to change.

They were together at his apartment that sultry afternoon when it all started. A minute before, they had been grinding their hips together, both crying out in their shared coincidental orgasms, and now Claudine lay on her back, her skin still tingling from his touch, while Paul stood and walked across the bedroom to the bathroom attached.

Claudine laughed, a girlish giggle, so completely out of place considering what they had just been doing. "How do you do that?" she asked.

"What, pee?" he called from the bathroom, standing before the toilet and urinating. "I don't know. I've been doing it all my life. You just stand here and think about it and it happens."

She laughed some more, and rolled over and lifted up on one elbow, watching him through the opened door. "Not that, silly!" she told him. "You just walked in front of an opened window without a stitch on. That's what I meant; how do you do that so unconsciously?"

Paul shrugged. "I don't know. I spend a lot of my time here naked. Windows opened, windows closed, I don't care. If anybody wants to look, I hope they like what they see."

She lay back again, shaking her head in disbelief. Paul came back into the room, and she asked him to draw the curtains because she had to pee, also, and didn't feel like getting dressed yet.

He walked past the window slowly, looking outside, and waved, pretending somebody was there. She laughed at him again. He came and sat on the edge of the bed, and the curtains were pulled back just as they had been.

"Go ahead," he told her. "Walk past the window. The world will not end if somebody sees you."

She started to sit up, and grabbed a pillow to cover her chest. "I can't," she said, and with another pillow to cover her loins, she went to the window and juggled the two while manipulating the tiebacks. He watched her manage the feat, and considered how singularly awkward she looked doing it.

"If I had your body I would show it to the world," he told her as she dropped the pillows and went to the bathroom. She closed the door most of the way. It occurred to him that she had never used the toilet in his presence.

"All men say that," she said. "All men say they would be whores if they had women's bodies."

"And so we would," he called to her. "Put a man's mentality in a women's body and what else could you expect? We are all expedient capitalists."

"So, what stops you from selling yourself as you are?"

He shrugged. "Men are too easy. Who would pay for me when so many men throw themselves away for nothing?"

She ran water in the sink, rinsing her hands. "I would," she said, and came back to sit beside him.

"And all women say that," he told her. "Really, you have such a wonderful body, I sometimes feel ashamed that only I am allowed to see it."

"Others have seen it," she said playfully, lying back against the headboard. "Doctors. My parents, when I was a baby. And do you think you are my first lover?"

He knew he was not.

"All I'm saying is that a body like that should be shared with the whole world."

She spread her arms out expansively. "So, I should stroll about the city naked, you think?"

She was joking. Paul smiled, but he did not laugh. "I think you should," he said, quite seriously. "I think the world deserves to see what you have."

She wrapped her arms around him. "The world will have to wait its turn," she said, and she kissed his shoulder.

"What if I asked you to," he said softly, "for me?"

Still holding him, her face scrunched up as she studied him. "You mean that, don't you?" she asked cautiously.

"I do," he said,

"You want me to let other men see me?"

"Not just men, women, everybody. Your body is a gift; you should not be so unwilling to share."

"And how would you feel, watching these people see me? Knowing what was in their minds?"

He shrugged again, and stared at the wall as if seeing through it. "I don't know," he said honestly. "Gratified, perhaps."

"Well, it's not going to happen," she told him, and let go of him and lay back across his rumpled mattress. "If you love this body so much, come pay it some more attention." And she raised her arms to welcome him.

But he had other matters on his mind. "Even if it was important to me?"

"How could it be so important to you that I let other men see me?" she asked with a tinge of anger in her voice. And she quickly corrected, "Otherpeople?"

Their eyes locked together. "Because it is," he said, and then he smiled, as if the whole idea was a joke, and he leaned over and opened the drawer of his night stand. He brought out a pack of cards.

"Play you for it," he said, and he shuffled the deck. Claudine watched him and smiled. "High card wins."

"And if you win?"

He shrugged again. "Then, you expose part of your body in public for me," he said.

"And if I win?"

"Then you do not, and we forget the whole thing."

She studied him, trying to gauge how serious he was being and finding it impossible to tell.

"High card, eh?"

He shuffled them and then tapped the deck into his palm. "High card."

She scowled at him, and carefully reached out as he palmed the deck and she pinched off about a third of it. Turning it over, she revealed a ten.

"Not bad," he said, and he selected another chunk of the remaining deck, and turned it over revealing a jack. He smiled at her.

"I win," he said.

"Well, I'm not doing it," she said, and handed him back her small stack of cards.

He shuffled them again. "Two out of three?" he asked her.

She furrowed her brow, and watched as he mixed the cards up and offered the deck to her again. Watching his eyes, then, she reached and selected.

Another ten.

His eyes never left hers as he choose his cards, and held them up to her. By the look in her eyes he knew.

He put the deck back together and put them back in the drawer.

"Tomorrow, noon, at George's Café on seventeenth street," he said. "Wear that pretty gauze blouse with the blue buttons, and nothing underneath it."

She started to laugh, nervously, then realized he was serious. "I will not," she declared.

"For me, you will," he said confidently. "I will be waiting for you, at noon."

It was the last they spoke of it that day. Shortly after the conversation they dressed and went for a walk, and stopped at a deli for sandwiches and flavored coffee, and then he walked her home and they kissed passionately in her doorway but then she asked him to leave, saying she was very tired. He gave her no argument.

"I will see you tomorrow," he said as he backed away from her. "Noon, at George's."

She said nothing, but closed her door slowly and locked it.

At five after twelve the next day she walked into George's Café wearing the gauze shirt with the blue buttons. Paul was sitting at a small round table in the middle of the cramped floor. She joined him.

They ordered drinks, and then she stared coldly at him across the table.

"You are wearing nothing underneath?" he asked casually, calmly, as if asking what she might like to eat. He had already determined that she was naked beneath the gauze; when she entered the café, the light from the door behind her gave him an ample silhouette of her unfettered breasts.

"I am as you requested," she said. "What do you want? Shall I just take my shirt off now?"

He ignored her hostility. "Not yet," he said. "Look around. See all the people who will be looking at you. Think about their eyes on you. Imagine what it will feel like to have them all seeing you that way."

She pretended to be aloof, but the crimson that crept across her face and neck gave her away.

"You have nothing to be ashamed of," he told her, taking her hands across the table. "You are beautiful. You are too beautiful to remain hidden. It is a lovely gift you prepare for them."

"And you want me to do this?" she asked, the question having a singular note of finality about it.

"I want you to want to do it," he said. "I want you to enjoy it. And you will. Trust me. When you feel their adoration, you will love every moment of your exposure."

Their drinks came, and they sat in silence and sipped tenderly at them, barely tasting whatever it was they drank. His eyes were riveted to her; hers flitted from table to table, imagining the other patrons' faces contorted in condemnation when she revealed herself.

And then realized she was thinkingwhen she did it, no longerif, and felt surprised that she had already acquiesced to something so uncustomary.

Their glasses were almost empty.

"Now," he said to her.

Her hand floated up to her collar and the first button. "What do I do? Just take it off? Then what?"

"Unbutton it slowly," he directed her. "Watch only my eyes. When you are ready, take it off, stand up, and leave the café. I will follow with the shirt, and you may put it back on outside."

Her thumb pushed the first button through the soft material. Her eyes darted side to side.

"Watch only me," he told her. "See the rest in your mind."

The second button. Her hand shook. The third. Two to go. Already she felt her breasts were exposed. The excitement made her nipples pucker. The gauze cloth tickled as it glided over them.

The forth button. Her tongue briefly appeared to moisten her dried lips. He smiled at her, reassuring, comforting, the way a parent assures its child that the inoculation the doctor is about to give her won't hurt as much as the expectation.

The last button. Her shirt hung opened. He inhaled deeply, watching her. Over the months her chest had become as familiar to him as his own, and yet every new encounter with it amazed him once more.

Very slowly, she eased the shirt off her shoulders and let it fall to the back of the chair. She stood, looked down at him for a moment, and then turned and walked very slowly toward the front door.

Paul placed enough money on the table to pay for their drinks and leave an obscene tip for the waitress, and he took her abandoned shirt off her chair and followed six steps behind her.

On the sidewalk, crowded with afternoon passengers, he helped her put the shirt back on. She buttoned it up hurriedly, and her face was flush, not with embarrassment but with sheer exhilaration.

"Did you see their faces?" she cried, and she realized she was shouting. Paul took her arm and led her down the street. "That man, I thought he'd drop his teeth! And the look on that woman's face, the one with the blue hair..."

He'd seen them. He'd seen them all, looking at her. He'd read on their faces their shock, their awe, their desires, and their jealousy. He had never felt so proud in his life.

She hugged him and kissed his cheek. "Thank you! Oh, God, that was wonderful!" She laughed, that impossible, inappropriate girlish giggle again. "I never would have thought! I never felt so admired! Oh, Paul, darling, thank you!"

He smiled, and held her hand. "You can thank me tomorrow," he said. "At the fountain by the park entrance. Wear the wrap-around skirt, with nothing beneath it. One o'clock."

Her enthusiasm died abruptly. She stopped walking, jerking him to a halt as well.

"You want me to do it again?" she asked incredulously. "A skirt?" She looked horrified. "Oh, no, I couldn't..."

"And you couldn't do what you just did, until you did it. Didn't it feel wonderful?"

She could not lie. It was the greatest feeling she'd ever had.

"But, I had no idea you meant for it to happen again," she said.

He reached in his jacket pocket and took out his deck of cards, which he shuffled and offered to her. She stared at him, at them, at him again, and took part of the deck. He did likewise.

She had a five. He, a seven.

"One o'clock," he told her, and he left her standing there after taking back his cards.

At one o'clock the next day she entered the park near the fountain, and saw Paul seated on a cement and wood bench beneath a tree. She walked to his side and sat next to him. His face stared stoically ahead. She wore the wrap-around skirt.

"Nothing beneath?" he asked her.

"Nothing," she said curtly.

"When you are ready, unfasten the skirt and lay it across the bench, then get up and walk away without it. Walk toward the entrance. I will follow you with the skirt."

She sat silently, staring straight ahead. "There is a policeman on the sidewalk," she finally said. "I will be arrested."

He tried not to laugh. "The policeman is my friend," he told her. "He won't say a word. In fact, he is there to make sure nothing goes wrong. Did you think I would put you in harm's way?"

Of course, he wouldn't.

Still, she sat, immobile.

"Think of how it felt yesterday at the café," he told her. "How wonderful it felt to have them look at you."

Still staring ahead, she said, "This is different."

"This is better," he immediately countered. "And you know it or else you would not be here."

She breathed deeply, through her nose, making little wind noises inside her head. She watched the wandering crowds, how unawares they were of what was about to transpire, and pasted over their faces the looks she had seen the day before in the café.

Her hand moved to the catch at her hip. Blindly, she unclasped it. The tautness of the skirt vanished immediately. She felt as if it were already off.

"Just open it up," he instructed her. "And walk away from it, as if it had never existed."

Her eyes fixed blindly on some impossible horizon point, and she opened the gossamer material of the skirt and sat there exposed for a short while. He stared into her lap, at her smooth, creamy white skin stretched so firmly along slender legs, with the brief tuft of auburn curls where they came together.

"So beautiful," he told her. "Now, walk."

She stood up, leaving the skirt behind her, and walked toward the park entrance. He watched her, watched her twin alabaster globes sway with her high-heeled steps, read the looks of shock and surprise on those she approached, smiled as he imagined what they saw, under these conditions. How very brave she was, shoulders squared, walking as proudly as if entering a debutant ball in a fine satin gown. He took her skirt and followed her.

On the sidewalk she stopped, and he caught up to her and wrapped the skirt about her waist and fastened it for her. Taking her arm again, he guided her. She walked as if blind, staggered as if drunken. Then, she began to laugh.

"I never felt so alive!" she screamed to him. "My God, such freedom! So natural!" She spun as if dancing, arms extended, hair blowing in the late summer breeze. "I want to be naked everywhere," she declared.

"And so you shall be," he told her, taking her arm again and bringing her back to earth. "Tomorrow, at five, in the train station."

Her face opened as if something inside exploded. "The train station? At five? Oh, no, there are too many people..."

"And they will all go home and tell their loved ones about the beautiful naked woman they saw," he told her.

"But, how will I...?"

"It is supposed to rain tomorrow," he told her. "Wear that lovely trench coat I bought for you." It was tan and had huge pockets and a wide belt and when she put the collar up she looked like a spy, mysterious, hidden, dangerous. "Wear nothing underneath."

He flourished his hand, and she looked to see it holding the deck of cards.

"That won't be necessary," she told him.

And so, at five the next afternoon she arrived at the train station in her tan trench coat, and found Paul lounging about the newsstand, pretending to read a magazine. She came to him and he walked her to a central location, where they stopped.

The station was huge, with a towering rotunda ceiling that echoed the indecipherable loudspeaker announcements. The air smelled of rain, and sweat, and the crisp tinge of ozone from so much electricity. There had to be a thousand people all crammed into the station at once, coming, going, talking, laughing, planning, avoiding. Men and women, there were, of all ages, and children, teenagers, small tots dangling from their irritated mother's arms. Everyone was wet, in rain gear, with umbrellas and hats. Claudine stood in their midst, knowing her secret, inebriated with it, waiting for Paul's cue, hoping it never came, wishing he had delivered it already. This was something she wanted to get over and be done with, it was something she wanted to last forever, and which she wished would never occur in the first place.

"I will help you remove your coat," he whispered into her ear, and his breath startled her. "I will hold it for you. Take a few steps, in any direction, it doesn't matter, and then I will cover you again and we may leave."

Transit police were everywhere; he could not have paid them all. Surprise and the crowd were on their side, however. By the time any one of the slack-jawed officers reacted, they'd be gone, melted back into the mob.

Claudine's hands, stuffed inside the coat's oversized pockets, came out and untied the belt. As she maneuvered the buttons Paul moved slowly behind her. He took the coat by the shoulders as she opened it, and held it as she stepped away.

Crowds have patterns; they have tides as regular as the seas. Her sudden nakedness was like a huge rock dropped into their human ocean; ripples broke free in all directions, and the even flow of population staggered, stumbled, in some places stopped altogether. Sounds altered. The overall noise level, while neither increasing nor diminishing, changed nonetheless, as if the air had suddenly become as thick as water. Claudine walked aimlessly into the crowd, which parted for her as readily as the sea, under God's command, had moved to let Moses through. She saw them all, she saw none of them, she pirouetted, she walked on tip-toes, she changed direction a hundred times, and then she felt the coat come up about her shoulders again and she stopped walking and let Paul wrap the cloth around her. Forgoing the buttons, she merely tied the belt and they walked together out of the station and back onto the rainy street.

"I am like Columbus," she told him, "discovering a new world. My God, I want to be naked always, now, and in crowds bigger than this. I want all their eyes on me. And..." She didn't continue.

Paul knew what she meant, though.

"The streets are dangerous," he told her. "Sooner or later there will be trouble."

Her face dropped. She could not stand the idea of stopping.

"I have heard of a club," he told her. "Where you can do anything you want. Get naked, have sex, masturbate, or just sit and watch."

Her face lit up.

"Where? Where is this place? I want to go there now!"

He shook his head. "I don't know. I will have to ask some questions."

She stared at him in vapid anticipation.

"Not tonight," he told her. "Tomorrow. Ten o'clock. I will tell you where."

"Will you take me?" she asked.

He nodded. "I will be with you."

She kissed him, and he knew of her nakedness beneath the coat, and he wanted to hold her, to touch her, to claim her for his own, right there on the street, but he did not. The kiss lasted a long time, and when it was over he held her face and stared lovingly into her eyes.