My Heart Laid Bare by Joyce Carol Oates

castles. Within a few days of their acquaintance, Christopher was like a big brother to the Sellick children; a decent, sweet-tempered, honest Christian youth and hardly an immoral gigolo living openly with a woman old enough to be his mother. “He is her victim—the shameless seductress!” Mrs. Sellick whispered. “And what a pity, he seems not to have any family to rescue him from her.”
5.
    Christopher! . . . are you listening?
    . . . Yes ma’am.
    Yes Eloise.
    Yes Eloise.
    Are you listening, dear, or daydreaming? . . . I swear your mind was miles away!
    Not at all Eloise.
    Are you bored here in Atlantic City . . . Are you happy? . . . Is it time for us to move on?
    Whatever you wish, Eloise.
    . . . time for us to wed, surely!
    Yes surely.
    And you do love your Eloise, above all the world?
    Oh yes.
    And you have no worry of the future . . . of the world’s cruel censure?
    Oh no.
    And you don’t regret your lost vocation? . . . Please tell me, dear, that you don’t ; for it would be very wrong of me to come between you and God’s wishes for you.
    God’s wishes for me?
    That you were meant to be a man of the cloth . . .
    But God’s wishes for me, ma’am, must be that I would not be a man of the cloth . . . since He caused my father to die, and my studies to come to an end.
    Oh yes dear! . . . I suppose you are correct, dear.
    And it can’t be that you, ma’am, could come between me and God’s wishes for me . . . for God has told me you are His wishes for me. If not, I couldn’t be here in such a place.
    Yes sweet Christopher: I suppose you are correct.
    But how, ma’am, could I be anything other than correct, if God has sent me to you? . . . if all that we do or say or think or wish is prescribed by Him?
    IT’S TRUE: SOMETIMES Christopher frightens Eloise. Just a little.
    Makes her shiver. The fine hairs stirring at the nape of her neck.
    When he speaks so matter-of-factly of God, and God’s wishes.
    As if he believes! Eloise confides in a divorcée she has casually befriended. As if what to others is mere prattle, to him is God’s very word.
    MID MORNING IN the hotel suite sharply fragrant with yesterday’s flowers, and a commingled scent of stale champagne, liver pâté and scattered crumbs of Gorgonzola cheese. Yet: a delirium of satin sheets, and lace-edged pillowcases smeared with Eloise’s makeup, and gilded mirrors holding no reflections, and in the near distance, rooms away, the petulant whimpering of Princess and San Souci mad with jealousy of their mistress’s new love. A delirium of brawny sprawling limbs, hard-muscled limbs, limbs covered in fuzzy pale-blond hair . . . patches of darker hair, wiry, kinky, at armpits, belly, groin. No matter that there is a patina of grime between Christopher’s toes, no matter that his fingernails are permanently ridged with black, no matter that the ignorant world cries Fool! . . . and Harlot! . . . and Adulteress! . . . and Seductress!
    For Eloise Peck would fling in their teeth just one word: Love.
    DOES SHE DARE , now that he sleeps? . . . now that his breath has become a rasping snore, and his body gives off a warm rank damp heat? Does she dare, now that she has drained the bottle of champagne, and the world is a-tilt, to kiss her lover in that most forbidden and delicious of places?
    A secret kiss; yet, at the touch of her swooning lips, the blood-warmed flesh at Christopher’s groin begins to stir like a very snake roused from sleep.
6.
    Father has taught: The Game is never to be played as if it were but a game.
    And the spoils we reap, but spoils.
    So Christopher sleeps truly, exhausted from love; and, when he wakes, wakes truly; and “loves” truly . . . for it would be cruel of him to come between Mrs. Peck and God’s wishes for that improvident lady.
7.
    Except: on the evening of 23 June 1909, in the space of a quarter hour, the lovers’ plans are