Tear Open The Velvet Curtain

She had, er, just returned home from the summer ball. Simply returned home from the summer ball. Her father, eyeing out from behind his newspaper, noticed, but didn’t mention, her skirt crazily tucked into her knickers, her blouse held tight in her hands, her lipstick all over her face and her shoes somewhere, God knows where, maybe somewhere on the steps of the Old Ballhouse or wherever it was that the summer ball had taken place.

The summer ball was, if you were that way inclined, the absolute event of the year. There was no way, man, no way at all, that you could even think about missing it. Why? Dancing, drinking, kissing, fighting, maybe a bit of fucking. You’d have to be a bedwetter to miss it. A jabbernow. A mooncalf.

She lay in dreams and wet her bed slightly as she drifted back to the earlier night’s proceedings. Oh, how could he, how could she? But she liked it really, didn’t she, liked him? Martha said that she had never seen her looking so, oh I don’t know, so daringly dramatic, so starkly beautiful, like a bewildered vampiress forced down the stairs by an unseen touch, perhaps the deadly hand of her master.

But it’s a mid-August night and the window, open, breathes in the enveloping closeness, the joy of a summer night to this summer night’s girl. She’s on the bed still, mere wisps over her, thinking that she’s finally asleep. The music of the night plays deep within her and her slow, imperceptible movements at last carry her into dreams. And he’s there. Of course he’s there.

Downstairs, her father is shuffling with an empty cup, towards the kitchen. A standard lamp throws, but misses, its empty light somewhere into the room which also, somehow, shuffles. He stops in the middle of the room, at the edge of the light, and aches, a little, for what is left of the summer.