The Effigy

Chapter One

Golden sunlight flared through the stained glass and open shutters, glancing off the angled surfaces of the unfinished pine walk and simple furnishings of her bedroom. Beneath the white linen sheets on a king-size brass railed bed, her blazing hair spilt over the cotton, Leslie Alexandra Dumas lay sleeping, dreaming of visiting the Eiffel Tower in Paris, though she’d never been there in all her twenty five years. In her mind the gargantuan structure towered before her, its four legs swooping down to meet the concrete floor of the Champs D’Elysses from a pinnacle lost in the bulbous cumulus clouds that all but filled the blue sky overhead. And then, suddenly, she was at the top of the Tower, hundreds of feet above France, above a seething part of the landscape that corruscaded from infinity to focus upon the fragile sheet of steel that suspended her.

The platform was shifting, swaying in the winds that had moved the clouds; the girl felt her center of gravity being coaxed away from the safety of the Tower, out into the void where she’d accelerate toward the earth, her limbs scrambling for departed handholds. A cry of desperation sprung from her lips, and her hands shot out to grasp at the framework; instead, they found the smooth, cylindrical tubing of her familiar bedframe, and she awoke, her heart pounding in her breast.

For several minutes she laid there, gratefully absorbing the tranquil luxury of her bedroom. Brilliant morning light, as it danced amongst her humble possessions, her books, the clothes she had laid out for today, her Oriental rug, her desk, filled with warmth and cheer and eagerness for life. She inhaled deeply, and as she exhaled she stretched out her arms, and legs, savoring the invigorating oxygenation of her finely tuned muscles, the gentle friction of cool cotton against the nerve endings in her soft, delicately freckled skin.

She stepped from her bed to the center of her rug, where a shaft of sunray made the intricate design seem to exist independently from the handworn fabric. With a grace acquired through years of dedicated training she drew the gold chain bearing her simple locket from within her woolen bodice to dangle in open sight; other than her wrist watch and Harvard University class ring, this was her only article of jewelry. Unlike most women and girls she had no jewelry box, her ears bore no tell-tale scars of having been pierced; and engraved in italic letters on the fron of her round golden locket was the simple name, “Sandy”.

Moving into her kitchen, she filled her percolator with cold water and ground a basketful of whole bean coffee in her electric grinder. The delicious aroma of brewing began to fill her efficiency kitchen, and she made herself a bowl of milk and cereal, garnished with slices of banana. She poured herself some orange juice and switched on her clock radio, tuned to the local classical music station, WBBB. As she ate her breakfast the sensuous urgings of a Verdi opera blended with the sensations of her nourishment; unconsciously, her mood drifted, away from the serene detachment of her Eastern philosophy, so that, but the time she had poured herself a cup of steaming Colombian, her mind had long fled her suburban Virginia apartment for the canals of Venice.

Cradled in a gondola, between a shallow canyon of modest Italian buildings, she gazed into an infinitely blue sky as her fingers trailed in warm Mediterranean water, positive ions saturating her lungs, romantic music ravishing her ears.

With her eyes closed, Sandy imagined that the wasn’t alone on the floor of the boat, that her ex-boyfriend’s head rested in her lap, on the pillows of her thighs, his youthful features oblivious to her attentions, as she ran her finges though his thick brown hair as the boat rocked gently in the languid current. “I love you, Alan.” she murmured, “I wouldn’t let anyone else touch your hair.” Her skilled, exploring fingers feeling, studying, remembering the places where they had trimmed and feathered his hair into a work no other hairdresser would have cared to approximate. “Mine. You’re mine” she thought.

“I DON’T BELONG TO ANYBODY!” he had yelled. Crashing through her reverie, the words, the revulsion on Alan’s face, her hairdressing instruments clamoring against the wall, his gritted teeth, his hysterical eyes; the agony that followed, her mind struggling to cope, to understand, the worst moments, to simply survive. Her will swam against her current of hot tears and she retired to her kitchen scene.

The clock radio displayed the time: 9:00. Wiping her face on a paper towel, Sandy picked up her purse and her hairdressing kit and left for work.