The Cure for Dreaming(60)

I shook my head and straightened my posture. “You don’t understand. Relaxation is precious to me. And you’re talented.”

“Be strong—forget the soothing parts. Slam the door in my face.” He squeezed my hands. “Look into my eyes.”

I did, and my forehead tipped forward as if it were made of a sheet of slate.

“No. Awake.”

I righted myself again.

He sighed and furrowed his brow. “My job, Olivia, is to catch you off guard. Your job is to be alert and strong at all times. I don’t want him to force me to do anything despicable to you ever again. And I don’t want to think that last night . . .”

He stopped and rubbed his hand over his mouth.

I pinched my eyebrows together. “What about last night?”

“The hazard of the profession I was telling you about.” He scooted backward on the floor and stared at his folded legs. “Women saying they’re under my spell. I don’t want to think hypnosis had anything to do with . . . anything . . . last night.”

“I was in a fully conscious state, Henry. I may be an overly susceptible subject, but I can tell when I’m hypnotized and when I’m not.”

“I wasn’t sure. I started to worry when I got back to the hotel.”

“I kissed you because I thought it would be fun.” I pushed my hands against the floor and slid myself toward him. “I thought we could both use a kiss. It had nothing to do with hypnosis or female equality or anything else but the simple fact that we were having a grand time.”

“Well . . . good . . . and, well . . .” He scratched his neck. His eyes met mine. “You were right.”

“About what?”

“I did need it.” He played with the pucker of my skirt above my knee. “I didn’t even realize how badly I needed it until it happened.”

I gave a soft breath of a laugh. “I understand.”

He took my hands again—a tender gesture, not another hypnosis test. A hush came over us. Footsteps moaned against the wood above our heads, but the rest of the world seemed miles and miles away, as if we were holed up in our own private burrow at the center of the earth. Our interlocked fingers nuzzled against one another. Our seated bodies fidgeted until our knees touched and stayed together. The ethereal spell of our moonlit bicycle ride settled over the hats and the costumes and our tipped-together heads, which seemed to be drawing closer on an invisible thread.

This time, Henry kissed me first, his lips soft and warm, even more so than the night before. I set the handkerchief and the bicycle bloomers aside and reached up to his neck, not caring if the gesture seemed bold. The harder we kissed, the faster the demons in the crooks of my mind slipped away. A better escape than hypnosis. Almost better than bicycling. I reached up to his soft hair and pulled his whole body to mine.

He eased me backward to the floor, and my head rested amid remnants of lace and scattered snippets of fabric. I thought I heard the distant music of the pipe organ playing “Beautiful Dreamer,” or maybe even “A Hot Time in the Old Town.” It didn’t really matter. Nothing mattered except for lips and gentle hands and the coarse texture of a black woolen coat beneath my fingertips.

A mirror stood over us—I had seen it when we first entered the room but tried to ignore its intimidating slab of reflective glass. It watched us as we lay there, tasting and feeling each other, like Sapho and her lovers.

I kept my eyes closed. Henry’s fingers slid between the buttons of my blouse, and I worried my reflection would show me a ghost of a girl, fading, oppressed, and ruined. My hand strayed to the firm spread of his lower back, below his coat, his vest, and even his shirt, and I feared I’d look like one of the North End prostitutes I’d always heard about, with their rouged cheeks and low-cut gowns. My mouth strayed to the sweet taste of his neck, and I thought of Lucy Westenra and her unclean lips and eyes.

Not knowing how I looked became too much to bear.

I turned my head to the side. My eyes opened. I saw her.

Olivia Mead.

Just me—and Henry Rhodes—evading our troubles in the farthest corner of a theater.

Henry lifted his head, his cheeks flushed, his breaths uneven. “What are you looking at?”

“Us.”

He peeked at the mirror and met the reflection of my brown eyes. “Why?”

“To see if we look wicked.”

He tilted his head against mine. “And?”

“We just look like Olivia and Henry.”

He brushed my hair out of my face. “Do you feel wicked?”

“I didn’t until I started thinking about it.”

He leaned forward for another kiss, but I touched his chin before his lips brushed mine.

“Here’s another worry,” I said. “I think I may have gotten my start in the world in the back of a theater, just like this.”

He snuck in a soft kiss to my cheek. “What do you mean?”

“My mother came to Portland with a traveling theater company when she was barely sixteen. My father was an eighteen-year-old dental apprentice. For all I know their relationship started in this very same theater. Oh . . . good Lord.” I cringed and sat up. “I hadn’t even thought of that before.”

“I’m sorry you did think of it.” Henry sat up, too, and removed his coat.