Dance at the Edge
Perched on the stool, Emma found her eyes about level with Ledora’s. “I’m going to put a personal question to you, Emma,” the dancer said. “Answer it or not, but do tell the truth. Are you feeling frustrated in getting Viola Knight’s attention?”
Emma almost slid off the stool in embarrassment. She pressed her trembling fingers to her burning cheeks.
“Trailing her like a dog in search of a master is not going to work with a Viola Knight,” Ledora said sternly. “Nor will going up to her, tapping her on the shoulder, and telling her you’re hot for her bod.”
Emma lowered her eyes, wishing she could, like the Edge, vanish on penetration.
“But if you want her, you can get her, and I can show you how.”
Ledora made it simple, when it wasn’t. But tired of smashing into walls keeping her from the heavenly honey of the hive, Emma took Simple, and went for it.
10.
Haunted with desire and verging on anger with the object of that desire, the shy and retiring Ms. Persimmon now flagrantly flaunted it. If she had thought she was being obvious wearing a red scarf, she now added red gloves, stockings, and broad-brimmed hat to her person. And instead of following Viola Knight, Emma anticipated her—popping up several times a day just where Viola was about to be. Though she could not be as immediate as a dancer, Emma became more immediate than she would ever have imagined possible. Emma buzzed furiously in pursuit of The Moment.
Viola noticed. Oh yes. But swept up in the dry elegance of partial differential equations, she found it easy to procrastinate anything that was a distraction from her own agenda. It was only on the Saturday afternoon when she found the reddest of red Emmas awaiting her as she got off the bus at the edge of town that she understood she would not be able to ignore such passion so much as a split-second longer.
“Emma, let’s walk,” she said, prepared to be stern and firm with her pursuer. But the Moment positively ambushed her as she perceived through all her senses the vivid, intense, now-ness of Emma Persimmon’s desire. The brilliance of Emma’s gaze drove scalding waves of sensation through her bones and sinews, and the radiance of Emma’s expression dazzled her, damping her awareness of the rest of the world. In that moment only Emma and Emma’s passion existed. Viola’s nerves sang. Her belly and thighs grew heated and heavy. Now visible in all its splendor, Emma’s desire threatened to possess her whole.
When they had gotten well into the woods, out of sight of the bus, they stopped, and Viola touched Emma’s cheek. “Emma, all this beauty. I’m overwhelmed! But—for me?”
Emma closed her eyes at the thrill of that touch. She perceived that her beloved was moved, rendered almost too breathless to speak. And yet the warning in Viola’s voice, the tone that told Emma that Viola, though excited, was grudging, did not escape her notice. Emma laid her hand over Viola’s; her lips addressed the hard, callused palm, her tongue the sharp little knob of bone on the wrist, with her answer.
Viola murmured pleasure, piquing Emma’s pricked ears. But—“Emma,” she said. “You must understand, my passion is physics. Which demands all I’ve got. I’ve sworn off romance and will marry only engineers. Physics is my life, it owns me!”
Feeling her power, Emma grew bold, yes, and let her desire soar and carry her where it would. They might no longer have been in the stark winter forest, they might be aflutter in the hot desert Edge, like shimmering hummingbirds dipping their long pointed beaks into the soft mauve bells of willows, sipping nectar, dripping pollen, shifting only for another beakfull. Their palms and fingers and lips laid trails, cunning and lingual. The Moment was all Emma had ever hoped for.
“You can have us both,” Emma said when she had breath to speak, breath all full of the scent of Viola.
Viola’s body had loosened, sensation all slipping and sliding in an abandon that set her wanting wanting wanting all that Emma’s hands and lips were promising. “I can’t, I can’t,” she whispered—even as she was discovering the fine-haired neck so eager and responsive under Emma’s scarlet silk scarf.
The Moment was bliss, but yielded to struggle. Emma’s passion equaled Viola’s will. Their pleasure was so outrageous and breathless Emma knew they must be Fated Lovers. But Viola swore it was a once-and-only-once kind of thing. She had been tempted to infidelity and had been weak. It would not, she said, ever happen again.
Emma could not believe it. It made her numb, hearing passion put into the past tense, even as the tingle was still receding from her thighs and buttocks. It defied nature! Could Physics, she wondered, be so perverse? Suddenly she saw the forest around her—gray, damp, and stark. The chill bit at her skin as she pulled herself up to glare down at Viola. This is what it feels like to be a woman, she thought. For after the Moment comes knowledge.
She said, “Listen to me, listen to me, Viola Knight. If it weren’t for passion, I would be hating you. You are wrong to try to keep yourself cold for your work, and you are wrong, wrong, wrong to conceal the existence of the Edge. Your attitude sucks, big-time. And pretending to be above feeling is sick.”
