John Wright - Titans of Chaos

Vanity looked worried. She whispered something to Colin. Colin took me by the elbow and lowered his lips to my ear. "Amelia, don't you even think about trying to sneak away from us, to lead Boggin away. I am not going to let that happen. I want you too much."

Well, that gave me something to think about. The conclusions I came to were not so pleasant.

Why wasn't Victor here, keeping Colin away? I turned my head. Victor was standing, simply standing, in the prow of the ship, looking out into the snowy darkness, the surging waves, his face thoughtful.

As if he had already resigned himself to the idea that I would run away.

The Bubble Bath

The magnificent Hotel del Coronado looks out upon the blue Pacific across beaches as tawny-white and perfect as no beach in Europe can be. It is summer here, in Southern California, eternal summer. The sea breeze is always cool and crisp and fresh, and the palm trees are always as green, and know no wintertime.

When ancient poets dreamed of mansions on Olympos, in the aether high above the storms and snows of Earth, they sang of untroubled climes and unchanging seasons, not knowing that the paradise they feigned was here on the West Coast of the New World.

The hotel itself is roofed in sun-baked red tile, topped with cupolas and adorned with quaint architectural flourishes. A dozen white dormer windows peer out from under the frowning brow of a titanic conical dome. Inside, the furniture and decor are stately and Victorian, but here and there are traces of Spanish ornament.

The windows here are nothing like the windows I knew in Wales, broad sheets of shining glass, taller than a man and as wide as an embrace, admitting torrents of southern sun when shut, and the warmest zephyrs when opened wide. The western wall of the room here was more glass than stone, and a second sun shone in the reflections of the pale white floor.

It is worth every penny to stay in a place like this, even if you are counting near to your last penny. Warm days drift by while you walk warm sands, wearing as near to nothing as the law allows, and your limbs turn golden-brown; even being alone is not so much a hardship as it might seem, if you are paid up in your hotel suite through the end of the month, and you are young, healthy, blond, beautiful, and wearing a bikini.

One difficult side effect of being alone, healthy, blond, and young I had not entirely foreseen was the men: Men who want to buy you drinks, buy you food, take you to do their odd style of hopping rock-and-roll dances, and even ask you to shows. It is profoundly amazing how many men, of what age and range of types, will pursue you: men Who certainly have granddaughters older than you will smile avuncular smiles while their eyes devour you with un-grandfatherly hunger; boys too young to be out by themselves will strut and posture for you, saying the stupidest things imaginable; crazed men with staring eyes, quiet men with eyeglasses; cheerful or morose men; bald or vain or desperate; men you would never tell the time of day to.

It is amazing how well the worst ones think of themselves, and how little the best ones do.

Some are so bold, it defies belief. More than one man at a cafe table, during the moment when his date stepped away, would send a drink to my table, and catch my eye, and smile. The most bold was this tall and dark-haired chap with arrogant eyes, who asked me for my phone number while a pouting brunette in a tank top was clinging to his arm, listening. What do such men think I would think of them? That I am eager to be courted by cads? It was at times like these I wished that Victor were near, or even Colin.

Well, perhaps I was more carefree than a woman of proper decorum dares to be, because if the gentleman in question becomes too forward or insistent, you can reach out into the fourth dimension, find his governing monad, and jar it to bring his mind-body duality momentarily out of alignment. It might take only a moment for the human brain to recover from the dizziness, blindness, numbness, but in that moment, you can step half an inch sideways into a direction he cannot see.

You might laugh if I said I often had the sensation of being watched, since a nubile girl frolicking along the beach wearing a mere wisp or two of skintight fabric, making eyes at the passing men, must surely expect to be watched. But this was different from the innocent hungers and lusts of mortal men; I would imagine cold eyes staring at me, puzzled but patient.

It was a terrible life, the way I lived for that week, as lonely as my time chained in the jail had been, despite that there were crowds around me. But it was not without certain compensations, certain gratifications. It was warm.

Warm days yield to warm nights, and you can shed your last scrap of clothing then, and spend lingering hours luxuriating in a near-to-scalding bathtub high in your private room, with all the huge wide windows open to the scent and sound of the sea, the soft, eternal crash and murmur of the waves. The freezing rains and fogs of Southern Wales seem no more than unhappy dreams.

The bathroom in my suite was a palace in miniature: The tub was deep and wide, and the rim was paved all around with a marble so brown that it seemed gold. The steam trickled and played across the mirrors and fixtures of the bathroom, and the shining expanse of the cut-glass doors gleamed like a snowfield.

With those doors open, I could see, across what seemed an acre of carpet and polished wood, the balcony doors of the suite, the wide windows, the moon and summer stars. Beneath the moon, the sands of the beach were as pale as ice; the sea was a shimmering tiger, striped with the reflections of harbor lights, and the noise of the sea waves from the dark waters was like its tiger-breathing, soft and huge.

And bubbles. Lots of scented bubbles. Bath oil. The water was warm enough to gather beads of sweat across my nose and brow, and little breaths of steam from the waters tickled my neck, and my toes (which were resting on the huge ivory knobs of the spigots).

It was a summer night, and I was bathing with the windows open, for the night wind was warm, and carried odors of the sea, the noise of traffic. It made me feel all the more warm and comfy, all pink and nude beneath my layer of scented bubbles, to think of those poor motorists, creeping from red light to red light, going about whatever business men go about, far from their homes.

A cold breeze made me shiver. A drop fell from the steam-bedewed fixture above, and touched my nose. A cold drop. One that had turned to hail as it fell from the ceiling to the tub. s"

Boreas, his huge reddish wings furling about him, was stepping in through the leftmost window.

His hair hung loose and waving around his shoulders. His fierce eyes lingered along the little windows of transparent water gaps in the suds the cooler water had created. A mocking smile touched his lips.

He wore little more than purple silk pantaloons. His calves and feet were bare. His chest was nude. I saw the slide of muscles beneath his fair ruddy skin along his shoulders and arms. His eyes were magnetic, drinking me in. And he had a very small half smile beneath his mustache.