The Legend of Red Rose Circle

A soft shuffle of smooth footsteps approached. Someone near her sat down and placed a bag on the ground. She pretended to be asleep. Then she heard Percy. “Hello, Linda. How nice, seeing you here.” Glancing up at an askew angle, she squinted and saw him sitting on a wooden bench and smiling at her. She lifted her head and shoulders, smiled back and with her left hand covering her chest she spoke in a surprised, but sweeter than dripping honey tone of voice. “Percy. What are you doing here?” Percy saw her move. Fleetingly, perhaps he imagined it for a split second, she revealed her breasts on purpose, but he discarded the thought as filthy and disrespectful. His angel had nothing on but the tiny bottom of a bikini but she had the right to sunbathe and enjoy the caressing sea breeze on her naked skin if her heavenly body desired so or her silky skin needed the rays of sun to keep its luster. “My creative intuition told me that you were going to be here.” She giggled, “Your creative what,” then she made a mockingly serious face. “Turn around, would you. How old are you anyway?” Percy turned away. She buttoned back her bra, sat up and pulling her legs underneath her buttocks asked him again. “I asked, how old?” “Twenty-four, why?” “Then you can have a glass of wine with me.” “I could, but where is your wine and how old are you?” She opened the cooler, looked around, for it was against city and state ordinances to have any alcoholic beverage on a public beach, and said. “Here is the wine. And I’m nineteen. But it is not my wine. I was just carelessly allowed to gain access to it. Isn’t that a shame?” Linda remembered something she read a long time ago and in a place very, very far away. She filled up two glasses, gave the larger to Percy and with lofty pathos recited a few lines for him. “Drink up, Percy. The world doesn’t last forever. But while it does, do something good or bad but doesn’t stand idle. Put your soul up to a great task, a great love of yours and if you see it ripped apart by evil forces, drink again and forget and start all over again until you succeed. Don’t ever give up.” They drank and Percy felt small and pitifully insignificant in the company of such a profoundly great, heaven inspired philosopher. She poured another glassful for each and sounding a notch more intoxicated, came down to his level. “In case you don’t have a dissenting opinion, Mr. Tennis Instructor, we shall conclude our outdoor drinking with the consumption of the second glass of this magnificent liquid and should press the stopper back into the neck of the bottle.” They drank again, slowly this time. She put the bottle and the glasses away. Just in time, a second later a police cruiser pulled into the parking lot. Then she said, “With your willing, we shall finish this bottle indoors, my place, ten o’clock. Make sure nobody sees you coming in. I’ll leave the front door unlocked for you. Don’t forget, ten o’clock.” “Indoors, your place,” Percy wondered dreamily, as if he were a street pauper discovering an abandoned treasure chest. “Sure, yes. You don’t want me to break the law by getting drunk in a public park.” An hour later, they sobered up and drove home in separate cars. Linda took a nap and when she woke up she went to the bathroom and filled up Spencer’s oversized bathtub with hot water. She threw off her clothes and submerged to her neck. Looking and admiring her own nudity she soaked for a while and then reached for the soap and a body cleansing brush. Scrubbed her skin everywhere, including her back, the insides of her thighs and between her touchy cheeks. She shampooed her long hair, rinsed it off and got out of the tub. Dried her body with a fresh towel and stood naked in front of the huge mirror. Blow-drying her hair she looked at her full size reflection in the glass and saw a beautiful, fully matured woman. She wasn’t a child, not even a young girl any more; she was a young and married woman. “You are still a virgin,” she stuck out her tongue and disapprovingly sneered at her own image. Virgin or not she liked what she saw. Put on expensive perfumes and applied smooth creams on her skin. Colored her lips bright crimson and brushed her eyelashes with dark mascara. She put on lacy red lingerie and a long black dress with sides slit up all the way to the prominently protruding top of her strong femur bone. Put on matching black high heels and happily noted she looked like a true femme fatale. She never, ever dressed up like this for anyone, but she did it tonight, and she did it for Percy, the young poet from next door. Near ten o’clock she sat down in the living room and waited for him to arrive. Percy followed his routine. He finished dinner, took his late evening recuperating nap and headed out, saying only a brief goodbye to his TV watching, tired parents. He walked past Pamela’s house and, behind the darkened curtains, failed to notice her peering eyes. Pamela watched and instantly recognized Percy’s special gait in the dark. Secretly expecting Percy to come and visit her, she thought, he wanted to beg and ask for her forgiveness. When she saw Percy passing her house and approaching the Shrewsbury residence, she cursed him and there was hatred between her clenched teeth. “You son of a bitch gigolo, that’s where you are going, to that little tramp. Do it. You’re both going to be very sorry you ever existed. I’ll make sure of that.” Percy silently opened the door and let himself in. He saw Linda sitting on the sofa and the sight mesmerized him. In the dimly lit living room, she was a love deity, a divine queen draped in the dappled shadows of the mist, a benevolent sorceress merging out of her humble, unrecognized hiding and about to claim her rightful domain in kingdom of witches and celestial seraphs. Percy couldn’t say a word. He never thought to face his muse live and never hoped to meet her in the flesh. But there she was and his trembling legs turned into feeble mush. He dropped on his knees and tried to kiss the edge of her skirt. Linda reached down and softly beseeched him, “Come on, Percy, it’s only me, Linda.” He put his head into her lap and said, “My love, you are so beautiful, I’m not even worthy enough to be your slave.” She didn’t answer; in silence, she gently caressed the head of her impassionate, love stricken young naïve writer. He continued and poured out the innermost secrets of his unfulfilled love. “Linda, I’m a flaming painful gash, I’m burning. The light tortures me; the soft dew of the early dawn tortures me. I want you. I’ve come to you. I wish more pain. I want you. I want your flame to glow white, my kisses hurt me, my desires hurt me, you’re my pain and my purgatory, I want you, I want you badly. My desires had torn me apart. My kisses bloodied me. I’m a red-hot wound. I’m hungry for new sufferings. Give me misery, misery to my starving self. I’m a scar slit open, kiss me and burn me. Burn me please.” She lifted his head, toward her face and saw the unfathomable depth of true love in his eyes. She saw the lonely man, the genius trapped in an earthly body fallible to mortal sins. She knew he was telling her the truth, his true and most sacred feelings and placed a light kiss on his lips. It was their first kiss. It was her first kiss of love, as she never knew what love was before. She married Captain Shrewsbury and there was no love between them, especially not after the way he treated her, after the abuses and the beatings. She was trapped in a loveless marriage and she had no place to go except to the battered women’s shelter. Tonight Captain Spencer Shrewsbury was flying his airplane on the other side of the globe and this night was Linda’s night. It was her revenge for her upside down life, abandonment by her father, her mother promiscuous behavior and the asininely impulsive poisoning of a worthless boyfriend topping off her attitude and for the tears she shed seeing her mother rotting away in jai