The Sensual Mirror Read Online Free

lying on a rug, her back lacerated by bristly animal hair, her legs hung wide, while a strong man moved with inexorable slowness and majesty into her, screwing her to the floor and soaring with her off the edges of brilliant precipices.
    “Fat chance,” she muttered as she stepped out of the tub and stood drying herself in front of the full length mirror, viewing herself with exaggerated scrutiny, wondering by what alchemy she might become a seething volcano of lust erupting to the beat of a man’s steady want. Once again she was troubled by the notion that an itching in her crotch could, amplified and ramified, transform her into a pornographic movie.
    She stepped out of the bathroom and into the apartment proper, originally three medium-sized rooms that had been converted into a single space by tearing the inside walls down. It had seemed a good idea when they moved in, flushed as they were with togetherness and the prospect of more spacious living. The total lack of privacy had, however, over time, proved deadly, and they reached that point, known by so many couples, where the mere presence of the other felt like sand in the eye.
    But with Martin gone, the place was quite impressive and more than adequate. Sixty feet long by twenty-five feet wide, with windows on three sides. It was on the tenth floor of a turn-of-the-century building in Washington Heights. The views were of the entire lower two-thirds of the island of Manhattan with its spires and smog, of the Hudson River and the Jersey miasma behind it, and of the George Washington Bridge, path to the open spaces to the north and west. When the sky was clear, the sun set right through the four main windows, as it was now doing, turning everything golden. Julia stood there for several minutes, transfixed.
    It’s worth it, she thought, the loneliness, the insecurity, even the randiness. All of it is worth it just to have this solitude.
    She gazed over the expanse of the apartment, its uneventful features and sparse furnishings made magical by the extraordinary light. From the kitchen against the far wall to the bed and bureau against the other, with the middle space filled with floor pillows, some chairs, a television, stereo and odd pieces, the place had the air of a stage set on which a bit of off-Broadway theatre was about to be enacted.
    Julia glanced at the clock. It was six-forty. Gail was due in an hour and twenty minutes. Julia went to the clothes closet, picked out a semi-transparent nightgown and shrugged into it. Then she fixed herself a vodka and tonic and sat down to try to figure out what she would tell her friend.
    Martin threw off his towel, stretched, and stepped into the steam room. At thirty-five, he owned a physique that made most men wince in secret envy. He was fairly tall, a bit under six feet, and his entire life, from the age of fifteen, had been devoted to physical exercises. He had majored in Physical Education in college and earned a Master’s Degree in Gymnastics.
    His body type was closest to that of a swimmer, lean, lithe, the muscles flat and smooth. He had no sympathy for the bulk attained by weightlifters, knowing it to be detrimental to the most efficient functioning of the body. His own preference was for the parallel bars where he twirled himself about with lazy precision, belying the terrible strength necessary to accomplish the repertoire of rolls, twists and balancing postures.
    He slid the glass door shut behind him and moved into the dense white cloud of heat. At once all his muscles relaxed. This was the most precious moment of the day for him. For the past three years he had worked as Manager of the West Side Health Spa, one of the dozens of emporia catering to the sudden compulsive interest in fitness among the office workers of Manhattan. It was as though, as the city itself continued its long slide into full decay, large numbers of people began to seek salvation in the care and grooming of their bodies.
    The job itself