gemini

Lost in a vast desert, I find a dark square daring to intrude upon endless sand. I stumble toward this wavering mansion-mirage and lift my fist, expecting the door to dissolve on impact, but my blistered knuckles strike wood. The door opens wide, and a kind-eyed woman beckons me in wordlessly, as if expecting me. She leads me down soft, carpeted steps into a cool basement room where two girls wearing swimsuits lounge on a long crescent couch. Where were they swimming? I wonder. They greet me without standing, one is blonde with pale skin, hair thick and long, and a curious gaze. The other: brunette with harder features, thin cropped hair, and eyes of stone. Despite their outward differences, they are both strangely similar, like seeing two angles of the same object simultaneously. When they both first look at me, I notice a recognition in their eyes. They glance at each other but say nothing. Have we met before? I search my mind, but it is barren. I tell them I'm looking for a woman disappeared. They ask where I last saw her, and I see disconnected images: an ocean, a moon, a forlorn shack. The memory of her face has vaporized into the unforgiving heat. They ask of my home but I cannot remember. The blonde girl giggles at my confusion; the brunette furrows her brow; I never learn their names. After our chat, I am permitted to wander the house at will. I'm told their father is in his office, but I never see him, only hear muffled mutterings beyond the door. The mother busies herself, serving me food, darting from here to there like a spider spinning her web. After dinner, the blonde daughter corners me in the hallway, grabbing my arm and excitedly telling me of their shower. She says it's amazing and she wants to show me, but I demur, feeling the mother's eyes watching me through the walls. She appears, and her daughter lets go of my arm, and she tells me to sleep in the girls' old room, then she disappears. In the girl's room, the three of us slide into a meandering conversation that going nowhere and everywhere for hours. I learn the girls are homeschooled but bright, and I'm surprised by how much all three of us have in common. We talk of their studies. The blonde wants to work with children. She sermonizes about how crucial childhood is. The brunette scoffs: Children are boring like unformed clay. It is only later when we become real. She wants to write therapeutic texts for the purpose of self-transformation. She claims she reads palms. She takes my left hand and counts my dry fingers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. She hums to herself then smiles. You have untapped potential. She closes my palm. The conversation flows, and I feel us growing closer. The girls sit side-by-side at the foot of the bed, and I sit in a chair facing them, close enough to touch feet with the blonde. There's a natural pause then, without preamble, I lean forward and our three faces

merge. I kiss both with the passion of

a reunited lover: shameless,

working my hands down their oddly

familiar bodies, melting into the bed, into

thrilling moments when I lose track

of the boundaries, when edges fuse together,

and perspective is gone, and I feel

taut muscle and prickly facial hair,

and I open my eyes and see

myself, only myself, all around,

then close my eyes, and they're separate again,

their soft hair brushing my face,

pillowy breasts pressing against me.

When we're apart, the blonde one clings,

blazing a trail of kisses

across my body. Conquistador,

claiming it all for herself.

Meanwhile, the brunette strives to separate us,

latching her lips onto mine, forcing me

into herself and grinding rhythmically

against me. Her touch is too rough,

and I reach for the comforting embrace

of the other and find her and close

my eyes, once more on the edge

of total unity and surrender when

there is a loud banging on the door. The girls fly away, disappearing, and I sit up and squint into a spotlight shining down from a catwalk, and before me: the outlines of thousands of torsos, faces blank, sitting in rows and silently watching. I look to the left and the right. The room is no longer a room but a stage. Stage left in the wing, I spot the girls standing and staring. I look at them pleadingly but the brunette offers me only a glare then pulls the blonde away, and they merge with the darkness instead of with me. I wake with a jolt back in my bedroom where a striped cat sits on my bedpost and tells me that a fair-haired girl had been there watching me sleep. But I repress a shiver knowing the dark girl will visit me also and she is not one to forgive.