with
a zip along their length. The music continued to sway but the dancer remained motionless.
Only her fingers moved as they pulled the long zip, tooth by tooth, down to the palm
of her hand. She peeled the glove from her flesh and it was almost pornographic,
that sudden white expanse of wrist, a sexual gesture. The soft inside of her forearm,
just as shocking as if she had lifted a breast out of her sequined dress and held
it up on her palm. When the fingers slipped out of their encasement she stretched
and flexed them and the gesture was a provocation. Holly imagined the perfectly manicured
blue nails of those long, thin fingers could caress or cut you, and that the dancer
would be just as happy either way.
The second glove came off. The dancer let it drop to the floor, swept her shoe in
a graceful glittering arc and both the gloves were behind her and out of sight. She
leaned forward then and Holly could see the lovely curve of her hanging breasts,
suspended in the precarious embrace of her neckline. It was like watching someone
swimming underwater, her motion slow and contained as if the air itself could hold
her in suspension. Indeed it seemed as if the air was thickened by the dancing. Holly
found she was having trouble with her breath. She concentrated on the rise and fall
of her chest as the dance continued. Then the dancer turned her back towards the
audience once more and lifted her arms and, as if by magic, her thin shoulder straps
snapped open and the dress plummeted. The audience saw only the elegant curve of
the dancer’s back, the arms raised, the hint of one breast just visible and the pleasant
swell of it reflected in the shape of her buttocks. There was nothing but the thin
blue thread of a g-string left to outline the shape of her back and separating the
cheeks of her toned arse. The music blared a final chord and the dancer spun around.
The young girl beside Holly gasped and Holly flinched, expecting to see the woman
in all her glorious nakedness. But although the breasts were heavy and taut and thrust
in their direction, the nipples were completely covered by the little sequined circles
with tassels that Holly had seen in the window earlier. The dancer shimmied one last
time, the breasts gyrated, making delightful heavy circles on her skinny chest, and
the tassels followed. Just a small delay but they came spinning after the heavy flesh,
hypnotising the audience with their slow, certain rhythm. Holly found herself leaning
forward, gazing at the movement of the sparkling circles. She wanted to reach out
and touch them through the glass. They would be soft swishes on the palm of her hand,
like a horse shaking its mane.
The window snapped suddenly to blackness, the light extinguished. Holly regained
her balance. The group of schoolgirls giggled and skipped quickly into the shop,
perhaps to catch the dancer before she put her clothes back on or to look at the
nipple tassels, which were obviously for sale. The rest of the audience drifted off,
released from the dancer’s spell, slightly dazed as they ambled back towards their
routine lives.
Holly caught her breath. What would Jack make of such a display? She thought back
to the way she’d kissed him as she stumbled out of his car last night. She remembered
his face, appalled by her wantonness. She hesitated. She could still see the little
glittering circles made by the spinning tassels over the dancer’s breasts. Her credit
card was linked to her parents’ account; this is how it was for all of them, the
privileged angels still nursing at the maternal teat. All she had to do was walk
into the shop and those wondrous minuscule garments would be hers. She watched as
a hand appeared in the window, settling the little blue sequined tassels on the glass
shelf there. Pasties, $120, the sign said. It was nothing. Her parents spent that
much on a Sunday breakfast. She stepped away from the window.
True love waits: it was Valentine’s Day, Jack had planned