Paradise - Part One (The Erotic Adventures of Sophia Durant) Read Online Free Page A

the granules of sand beneath my feet and caked between my toes, and the balmy air mixed with the warm, clear waves of the tropical sea. I heard the Creole voices calling to me and saying something which normally I could not understand, but which, in this state, like lucid dreaming, was easily decipherable.
    Then it hit me; the Afghani bud we had teleported to closet space to partake of. I was conscious of the room as one might be conscious of a golden bubble she is floating in above some bejeweled tower in a futuristic city among the clouds. The kind where all the inhabitants are hermaphrodites, worshiping statues made of dark matter while walking sideways on the walls of catacomb tunnels. I conceived of the whole universe as the grooves in an immeasurable vinyl, while consciousness was the strange sound produced by the gargantuan needle of the record player scratching its endless surface. I was conscious of ants racing in dust storms as far west as Texas. I swear I could hear the scuttle of their feet across the desert floor. I felt extremely ill-at-ease in my skin while simultaneously sensing what I thought was the perfection of the world and this life in it. The sense that everything was exactly the way it was supposed to be. That there was an all-conscious, singular mind manifest in all things—universal consciousness. It was similar to the feelings of ecstasy in my liaison with Julie the night before. I was at the edge of ego-consciousness, pushing outward into something sublime and unknown. The unease was fear.
    Anna spoke to me with increasing speed and I watched two Annas: one that spoke with growing interest in her subject, and one that was silent and watched me. I was terrified of the first and fascinated by the second. Or was it the other way around? Next I had a feeling, at once natural and strange, of the fundamental splitting and doubling of all things. The dual nature, the world of light and dark, of opposites. It was somewhere in this expansive and muddled thinking that there came the voice of Isabella Gardner. Calling from some lost corridor, I heard my name and Anna’s echo into our room and our fireside chat.
    There was a conscious effort to “straighten up,” to put my intense, passionate feelings for wonderful, divine Anna into a box where they temporarily belonged so I could focus. It was like I was floating in a harsh wind, above the clouds, with a lasso fastened around one ankle, and, as I looked down, I saw myself, miles below on the beach, vainly attempting to reel me in. “Sophia,” I called from below or was that the voice of Isabella Gardner?
    The stern woman with the saturnine glare peered into the room, cradling her baby in her arms. Beautiful Savannah, I didn’t want the pure little soul to see me in such a state. I knew babies of all kinds were sensitive to the mental states of others, and, as if in reaction to this very thought, the baby began to cry as she first set eyes on me. I tried to comfort her and made an effort to exude positivity, but Savannah began to cry harder and buried her head in her mother’s bosom.
    “I’ll be taking Anna with me to run some errands since the storm has died down.” She did not look at me as she said it. “I’ll need you to prepare little Savannah for bed, give her a bath, and put her in her crib. One of the maids will show you where it is. Once she is down you may go about unpacking and settling into your rooms. Fortunately, Savannah is one of those magical babies that sleeps through the night without a stir till six a.m. Every night, she sleeps soundly from nine p.m. to six as she has done from the age of three months.”
    Isabella unceremoniously handed me the baby in a way that suggested she felt Savannah was more of an object than a little human being. Savannah smiled as I held her. I began to bounce her as Isabella took Anna off into the maze of corridors.
    I held Savannah still and admired her big happy eyes and ruddy cheeks. She was a fat