Read You Are Always Safe With Me for Free Online Page B

two fingers like a column within which she hid herself, moved it higher to cover her face, letting only her eyes peer over the edge. Slowly, she let it fall, let it snake down, inch by inch over her shoulders, breasts, hips….till she stepped out of it and swung it around to the final ululating cries of a Turkish woman sitting in the shadows, the traditional cry that women in this part of the world make to honor the belly dance, a wild, high tremulous vibrato which guided Lilly to the climax of the dance. She let the veil fall to the floor, stepped out of it and slowly walked back to her seat.
    Breathless, gaining again the boundaries of her body, Lilly lowered herself to her cushion and collapsed upon it. Hot and thirsty, she gulped the rest of her wine and wished for more. She could not raise her eyes to meet her mother’s—or anyone else’s. She closed her eyes and leaned against the wall. When she opened them again, Izak was beside her, offering her a drink from his glass, a tall iced drink which swirled with cream. Gratefully she drank half of it. Gratefully she accepted his smile of admiration.
    “You dance with much beauty,” he said. “But sorry for my English. “You have a great beauty.”
    “Thank you,” she said, handing back his glass to him. He immediately drank from it, drained it in front of her.
    *
    After a break, when the musicians came back on stage, Lilly kept her seat. This time, Marianne got up and gyrated to the music, awkwardly but with determination. Then Jane and Jack, and Harrison and Gerta, full of enough drink, stood and stumbled, laughing all the while, shaking their hips, shimmying, making happy fools of themselves. Even Lance tried to pull Lilly’s mother to her feet, but Harriet said “Oh no, not me, not at my age.”
    “Age won’t stop me,” said Fiona O’Hara, and she got up and danced something, surely not a belly dance, but steps perhaps from a tango of the past, something weird and exotic.
    Even Morat stood and danced by himself, unselfconsciously, eyes closed, his feet moving with the heartbeat of the music. Only Izak remained still and silent, back in his place against the wall, from time to time looking slowly over at Lilly, while, from time to time, she looked slowly over at him and met his gaze.
    *
    When they boarded the Ozymandias again, it was well after midnight. Lilly made her way to the cabin below and changed from her dress to her tee-shirt and sweatpants, put on the jacket she slept in, and dragged her pillows and blanket to the upper deck. Her mother silently did the same, they did not speak, perhaps because Lilly made it clear she preferred not to. She took her usual place on the foam pad, and pulled the blanket up to her chin.
    Above her the night sky was alight with a thousand stars and the glow of moonlight. She could feel the wine still coursing through her veins, swirling and moving with each beat of her heart. After a time one of the crew turned off the deck lights. Her mother was already curled on the narrow bench and perhaps was asleep. Izak came up from below and quietly laid himself on the bench opposite her mother—Lilly could see him turn on his side and push the pillow under his head till it satisfied him. But then he raised himself on his elbow and looked toward where she lay. He looked at her till she had to acknowledge him without speech, say goodnight without words.
    She lifted the edge of her blanket and tipped it toward him. Then, shy as a schoolgirl, she buried her head under it, and prayed for sleep.

CREPES
    In the morning, wasps flew in from shore to hover over the breakfast table—over the bowls of honey and yogurt, over the platters of cheeses and tomatoes, buzzing and settling on the rims of coffee cups and even on the knuckles of those who were about to drink from them.
    The couples who had been most inebriated the night before, Jack and Jane Cotton, and Harrison O’Hara and Gerta, were still asleep in the cabins below. Fiona