Three One Four: Shadows

 Long, long ago I found a short story with an image that's stayed with me ever since. I can't recall the name or the author. That's long gone. The story was in a paperback anthology of  "modern horror" stories I bought at a used bookshop in Tampa. Ten cents-- I do remember that. I bought a dozen paperbacks there at ten cents each.  Mostly sci-fi, since that's what I was very much into in those years. I was in Florida with my parents, and I needed books for the beach or to read while they drove from St. Augustine down to the tip of Florida on A1A and then back up the Gulf side. 

The stories were all "modern horror", which meant (I suppose) that there were no monsters and no demons, or at least no external ones. No creatures in the swamp and nothing supernatural.  All the monsters were human--- isn't that the definition of "modern"? 

Anyway, the story...  I don't recall the author or the title. That's all long lost. What I do recall is a scene where a character--- a teen girl, maybe the daughter of one of the other characters ---comes into the darkened library of a vast old tumbledown house and spends time going through the shelves and reading by a single small lamp. She does that while naked, though I don't recall if she undresses in the library or walks naked through the dark house. I don't recall what happens, and I don't recall what she was reading. But I do recall being stunned and thrilled by the image--- a beautiful young girl reading naked at midnight in some library with a second level and a balcony and huge bookshelves. Well, I was thirteen or fourteen. Of course I was excited by the image. But of course--- of course ---what meant the most to me was the idea that she'd chosen to be naked with books. I do wish I had a copy of the story. I'd like to know what went on before and after that scene and what the story was actually about. I suppose I never will know, but...that image of a girl naked in a shadowy library has been with me all these years, and it's not something I'll give up.

I liked the idea of her waiting 'til the house was asleep or until everyone (parents? hosts? relatives?) had gone out and then wandering naked through the hallways, feeling deliciously daring. Miss Ginny in Montreal said to me once that she'd done that at the lake house her parents used to rent in the summer, and that once--- on a family trip to the Tennessee mountains ---she'd waited for her parents and siblings to drive into town and then spent a morning wandering the big rented vacation house, peeling off her white bikini and dancing through the rooms and out onto the dock, naked except for headphones, a big glass of white wine in her hand. Beautiful, beautiful image--- Miss Ginny petite and blonde at sixteen or seventeen, whirling and pivoting, listening to British Northern soul, feeling wicked and daring.  What lovely teen girl wouldn't like that feeling? Being naked in the house, she said, was like having her hidden cigarette case or flirting online with older men. Transgression, she said, made her feel alive.

The first time Miss Ginny followed my advice and went to class at McGill in a skirt with no underwear, she called me at eleven in the morning, breathless and exhilarated. She felt, she told me, so alive, so vulnerable and daring. She felt, she told me, like Jane Birkin in 1964. I had to laugh at that, and I had to tell her how perfect that thought was.  

I've always encouraged lovely Young Companions to avoid underwear and to sleep naked. I've always told lovely girls that there's an official dress code if they're involved with me. Miss Ginny of course adopted all my suggestions--- I was the older man who was corrupting her, and she knew exactly how to play her role. 

The girl in the story... I have zero idea how the story developed. I have no idea if anyone was watching her or what happened. But I do recall being there in the car reading and thinking that this image was perfect, that one day I'd ask a lovely girl to be naked in a big, dark house and be in and out of the shadows while we flirted and played.  Levin (of course) slept naked, and I loved seeing her stretched naked on afternoon beds making notes and sketches in her journals or curled up naked in a big chair, reading on an autumn night.

I've kept that image with me for all these years, now--- the girl naked in the library, looking over the rows of floor-to-ceiling shelves,  finding one book after another. So breathtaking to imagine her in a big overstuffed chair, turned to hang her bare legs over the chair arm, naked except for reading glasses, reading something antique and amazing by lamplight.

I'll never know what the story was, or how it developed. But that image will be with me forever.