Free Netsuke by Rikki Ducornet Page A

folded tissue.
    Tonight, as she wanders the woods in the moonlight, it occurs to Akiko that the pen shop had provided a public stage upon which her husband had sexually performed. That what had happened in the pen shop was a disclosure. An admission of betrayal. In the pen shop in Oaxaca, he had betrayed her before her very eyes.

    Is it possible? Is the world as strange as this? No, she decides. It cannot be as strange as this.

4
    IN THE MORNING he stands in the shower until something shifts, the dark weather that has begun to plague him dissolves; he rises like Neptune from the cleansing waters and feels beautiful; he touches the muscles of his calves and arms; he caresses his stomach and chest; he feels the comforting weight of his sex—and as he steps out into the sunny room and tiles to stand before a window facing east, he feels expansive; he thinks his home is like the palace of an Assyrian king; he relishes the comforts it provides. Even the towels, he notes with satisfaction, are luxuriously sized and of a rich, indeterminate color, like a warm sand of nacreous shells.
    He has the dressing room of a prince, with a large three-way mirror that allows him to fully see himself. By the time he sets out for the new cabinet, he is his own man. He has once again set up the day so that by three he can receive David Swancourt without any fear of disruption.
    He has rearranged the room. And opened windows. The distant roar of city traffic delights him. He is an urban prince at the height of his powers. A king of a kind. He is wonderfully strong, his flesh burnished like bronze. He is wearing a silk tie the color of burned oranges. He ranges through the room, delighting. Everything is renewed. Everywhere new buildings rising, old neighborhoods torn down, the dingy houses and their sorry little orchards replaced by mansions. There is talk of a new city park. The theater and library, the art museum, have all been recently transformed into temples, palaces! He thinks he lives in Babylon! He is the king of Babylon! Everything about his life is remarkable. There is a boundlessness to the day, to these rooms, this city, his own life, his own erotic hunger, this capacity of his to awaken erotic hunger. Spells is ready to receive his new lover in whatever form he/she decides to take. Perhaps David Swancourt’s forms are limitless. He’d like to think so. This time he has found a lover as protean as the weather. As protean as he is himself.
    This is what is delicious: a professional man, a trustworthy, mild-mannered, thoughtful man who measures his words; a beautifully groomed man of impeccable taste who moves with ease; a graceful man, a man whose mind is occupied by many obscure complexities, whose life is both comfortable, expansive, and above all mysterious …

5
    … AND ALL OF THIS on the line. Reassuring, deeply desired. Because when it is set on fire, it blazes with such intensity! When such a man stands fully clothed but for his bounding cock, which she takes with such delicacy, such tender ferocity, into her mouth, well! Then the entire castle of cards so carefully set out upon the table tumbles to the floor with unprecedented abandon! And when the man and his life have all burned down to a small heap of ashes, well then, she’ll dance upon those ashes, she will be Kali in a necklace of bone.
    This is what drives David Swancourt: the burning of a world, the setting of a man on fire, a distinguished man, the man she can never be, not ever, because that chance was stolen from her during her own secret prehistory. He is the man she would have become, or so she thinks. Because she does not, cannot know, the bitter truths that rule him; she does not know, cannot know, that he, too, is in drag.
    She does not, cannot possibly imagine, that her doctor is her biggest risk. Because she has come to him in deep trouble. Because a month earlier she went off with three men she picked up in a bar and was raped. Because like Kat, she