The Sensual Mirror Read Online Free Page A

required very little in the way of physical exertion. He planned exercise programs, interviewed prospective members, and exerted a general influence over the staff, mostly out-of-work dancers and actors. It was something he had seized upon when he moved to New York with Julia after their year in Europe. It did not provide the satisfaction of infusing young boys with a sense of the beauty of the body, but it paid more than three times as much as teaching and did allow a certain pleasure of prestige. In any case, he was forced to agree with Julia that it would be pointless to return to small town life and attempt to pick up where they had left off.
    The other advantage of his current position was that he had use of its fairly sophisticated facilities. He worked out every evening, an hour before closing, serving as an incentive or a discouragement for those members who were there to watch him in his narcissistic dance through space. Then, when everyone but the staff had left, Martin, sweating and happy, went to his office, shut off the Muzak, and strolled to the steam room where he sank into the tingling oblivion of athletic exhaustion.
    Now he lay down on the raised tile platform, sighed, and let himself melt. It was the single most exquisite experience he knew. More profound than sleep, more subtle than drink, more satisfying than sex, the utter abandonment of focus following the period of formal intensity provided Martin with the enjoyment of a state he could only describe as bliss. At such times he often drifted into a deep trance within which vast movements occurred. Awesome galaxies of obscured meaning drifted past brilliant rays of pure light which seemed to emanate from the very source of creation itself. Or memories of childhood might skip across the screen of his adult consciousness. Yet he was completely without a vocabulary with which to appreciate, and thus distort, awareness.
    This night, as he let go, as his fingers uncurled, and the subliminal tension in his eyeballs dissolved so that he stopped the habit of looking which usually persists even with the eyelids down, a vision of Julia arose like a specter from the grave to embrace him with icepick anguish. The history of their relationship skimmed across the surface of his memory.
    When they met she was teaching English at the same school and their nodding acquaintanceship, lunches, dating, sleeping together and marriage had followed a pattern totally without surprises. The surprise came afterwards when Julia began to manifest a sharp restlessness that Martin had never suspected in her. She began to complain about the small town they lived in, the tedium of spending the bulk of one’s time with teenagers, and the meaninglessness of processing students year after year like cars on a conveyor belt. There was nothing in which she said that he hadn’t given thought to, but she had imparted an urgency which he found compelling.
    Their years in the city had been tumultuous, beginning with finding a new apartment and ending with their final fight about Martin’s desire for a child. Instead of enjoying their marriage, they merely defended it or held on to it. And finally, they abandoned it. The breakup had come two months earlier when, in classic style, Martin packed two suitcases, and three boxes of belongings into a friend’s car and moved to a hotel.
    The door to the steam room slid open and was quickly closed. There was a slight drop in temperature as a bolt of cool air was sucked into the space. Martin was abruptly pulled from his reverie, something which ordinarily annoyed him. But now he welcomed the interruption, for thoughts of Julia invariably ended in upsetting fantasies, seeing her with another man or getting mugged or raped. He turned his head to one side to face the door.
    “Sorry lo disturb,” a soft melodic voice said.
    “Oh, Robert,” Martin replied. “It’s you.”
    “It usually is,” the other man said.
    Robert’s tall thin body suddenly