I Kissed a Girl by Anthology

Author:Anthology [Anthology]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781607779032
Publisher: Literary Partners Group
Published: 2011-06-30T05:00:00+00:00

Vijaya rolled over and regarded her before answering. “Oh yes, Bahanji. As beautiful as Krishna, and as red as the sun.”

Elspeth looked at her in surprise. “Vijaya! Who is this man?”

She kept her face inscrutable. “Oh, it is no man.”

Elspeth stared and hesitated. “What—whatever do you mean?”

Vijaya returned her gaze unflinchingly. “My love, my heart’s desire…is—a tiger.”

Elspeth was unconsciously holding her breath. Now she let it out with a sharp exhalation and threw a twist of grass at her. “Cheeky girl!”

Vijaya sat up and continued. “By moonlight I go to the garden and sing for him. He stalks out of the jungle mad with love for me. Oh, he is so magnificent, Bahanji, so handsome! His eyes are bright as carnelian stones, his nose is as broad as an axe, his face is orange and black and shot with white blazes. He weighs five hundred pounds and he fears neither elephant nor maharaja. I embrace him and we make love right there on the estate grounds. Or some nights he takes me his secret honey-scented love-bower in the jungle. Oh, such a marvelous lover, my sister.”

Elspeth smiled indulgently and shook her head. Vijaya was given to the occasional burst of the most outrageous fancy.

Vijaya gave her a playful push on the shoulder. “Oh, you are so serious. Come! When we get home I shall give you a proper Indian massage to help you forget all your troubles.”

“That does sound marvelous. It’s fortuitous that Clive is away until tomorrow. I should hate to think how scandalized my husband would be to find me in such a compromised state.”

They laughed.

Peacocks woke Elspeth in the morning with their half-human cries. As consciousness returned, realization descended on her: where she was, and her terrible loss. She rolled into a fetal ball, cried and shook in her bed. Her head felt thick and there was a queer taste in her mouth. On the nightstand was a bottle of McGillicuddy’s Patented Laudanum Tonic. Something was wrong with the room; all her watercolors of the Indian countryside had been replaced by a thick wooden crucifix and a pair of oil paintings depicting Christ the Good Shepherd and Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane. In the mirror, her wet, teary eyes looked like raw oysters.

When she had collected herself as best she could and done some needful things, she wiped her tears and came down to the dining room where her husband sat at breakfast, reading his paper over a plate of smoked haddock Kedgeree. She sat down at the table without a word. The news from home was vexing him more than usual. He fumed over Welsh nationalists demanding recognition of their native tongue. “Bloody Taffies and their Celtic gobbledygook! They should conduct themselves as a conquered people.”

Elspeth forbear to mention that she spoke only Gaelic until she was six. He sneered at the announcement of more dinosaur fossils discovered in the Wyoming Territory; Clive trusted paleontologists as much as freemasons and was convinced Archaeopteryx and Neanderthals were Prussian hoaxes orchestrated by Von Bismarck to sap British morale.

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