I keep my boys on the top shelf behind glass, far out of reach. They sit so close they hold hands, and dangle their polished boots from all the shelves of my cherry display cabinet. I clean a marble eye with microfiber cloth as ball-joint legs straddle my thigh like a pony, her lids clack as I tilt her. A pendulum where her brain is supposed to be gives the illusion of blinking. Lace trim sags on the bodice of this porcelain french girl, I acupuncture her chest and then spear the needle into a cloth strawberry.
The dollmaker cut wrinkles into her artificial knuckle, painted a rosy blush on their cherubic gesture, she was undoubtedly made in the image of someone they loved, there is too much adoration in the details, she is too specific. I want to ask her if she was his daughter or a neighbor or a glimpse on the playground but I am too old to play with toys.
As I latch the glass I make eye contact with her. She is gorgeous in only the way a child can be, round eyes, a large head, she is too delicate a creation to be a toy for a kid, that was never her purpose.
I am mistaken as a homemaker. I clip stems from pink camellias from the farmers' market and dunk them into an hourglass. I rinse sap from scissors in the kitchen sink, stainless steel as opal and reflective as abalone. Baking soda in the drain.
I am mistaken as a virtuous woman. I am not theistic, but I dress long and figure-illusive like a nun, a flowy skirt and peter-pan blouse. Green tea fills a fine china cup. Milk and honey diffuse like marble. I lick sticky residue on my knuckle before I close the honey jar and return it to the cabinet.
I found no joy in preening while tuxedoed men bought me a merry-go-round of cocktails, an ombre red to pineapple martini, a hand-torch burnt miniature marshmallow atop a whiskey ice cube, egg white foam with a spritze of pine essence, blue butterfly pea tea under maraschino cherries on a skewer. Closed my cleavage further with every sip as the bar kaleidoscoped. I do not paint the sistine chapel on my face, nor model nude to be carved from ivory, art by virtue of the diameter of my hips, trapped in a frame like Mona Lisa. Their praise means nothing to me, because I am not attracted to men.
She'd make a good wife, my mother told a flirtatious man on vacation in Florence. I let her believe that. I popped a purple grape into my mouth and weathered the fibrous skin between my molars. On a patio with sun in my eyes, she asked: How many kids do you want? Do you still spend your weekends alone? Are you still a virgin? Are you a lesbian?
No, I am a pedophile. I spread butter on toast. The craggy surface steals rivets of white. I push too hard and the rye caves. I am sick with the black plague in the nineteenth century, an apothecary spraying perfumes into my rancid mouth and stuffing his bird mask with dried lavender. There is no stench, but I am sick.
In the sexual misconduct case studies I notate, the word pedophile couples black-and-white mugshots of men, seldom women. A man posing as a florist kidnaps and rapes a girl in his vehicle. A school janitor strangles an elementary girl and rapes her dead body in a supply closet, buries her two feet deep in the playground. I meet their ink gaze. I know we are the same.
I sip lukewarm tea. On the glazed surface a watercolor hummingbird feeds from a pond lotus. The penthouse is a lonesome percussion of sounds, a click of silverware, a crunch and chew. An impression dips on the loveseat by the coffee table where I poison my mind with true crime television and cremate countless peach-scented candles. As a law abiding woman, I would never approach a child, I lock myself in the glass prison.
The attraction to adult men seems to bring women a sense of purpose that I fail to replicate. At social events with women over tablecloths and under-poured wine, as they gossip about the affairs of their superiors, pilates classes, breast implants, cesarean section scars, I slouch like an inanimate stuffed bear at a child's tea party. I am too shy, too square, too conservative.
I scoop crumbs and scatter them into the compost bin before I leave for work an hour early. I climb sidewalk hills, shadowed by victorian townhomes, tiered like book spines at the library, their pastel paint peeling flakes of lead. I keep my vision low on skittering plastic trash and I do not stare at the boys who trickle past, miraged by an indecisive fog. My ears bathe in their high voices and the rumble of a rolling backpack. I did not ask for this sickness of my mind, but I can not deny its existence as I burn with a hell furnace of lust.
Shadows recede and my blood ferments to wine as I trace their silhouettes for a nose bridge in profile, the flutter of a prominent wrist bone. On worse days, I window shop for boys. A lovingly frosted assortment in a patisserie as I am fasting and famished. I imagine catching their soft small hand and taking them home.
I pace as I wait for the bus that routes to the financial district. Wind stings my nose. I trace the inside stitches of my pockets and rub dried camellia petals. Lonely headlights pierce fog at the peak. The accordion bus pinches and exalts on steep hills as it makes three phantom stops, before it arrives at this concrete curb, and the doors open.
I sit on a blue plastic chair in the lower section. A neapolitan ice cream cone melts in the center of the floor, streaks pink as the bus changes direction, diluting into wet footprints. I am too early for rush hour, but it is moderately crowded with interchangeable puffer jackets. There are the regulars. Those who share my schedule. A construction worker with paint on his jeans and a reflective yellow vest. A caucasian woman with dreadlocks in pigtails. I tuck my kitten heels under my chair to avoid the ice cream creeping towards me. I could afford a car, but the emissions are awful for the environment.
I always glance at the doors when the bus stops at Mason. The cafe behind the stop is opening now, the baristas taking oak chairs off from tables, casting a gold halo around a boy. My favorite regular steps on. I am overcome with an awful fever that crawls from my stomach to my forehead. I cannot hear the trolleys outside or baseline hum in headphones, I can hear the taps of his stride. I promise that in his presence colors split outside of the human optic capacity, and there are new blues deeper than satin, golds richer than honey. He moves to the center of the bus and loops his elbow around a pole. I am mostly nothing, yet this schoolboy melts me like wax to a flame.
He is the reincarnation of an old love named Shota, who I held hands with during recess and swapped hard candy. Sunlight veers from his round glasses and dances over the fire escape as he rotates his head, the fringe of his black bowl cut flicking into his eyes. The navy school uniform fits him as if it were tailored. Under his blue jacket with sleeves wet with saliva from nervous chewing — a replacement of his usual hoodie and baseball cap— a heavy shoulder bag eludes to the line of his torso.
Shota is perfect. Thin as a model, so angular his pose is cubism. He looks more doll than human compared to the men nearby, half their size and pale as fine china. I want to keep my doll in a glass box. I want to know the circumference of his forearm. I want to know how it might feel to hold him on my lap so tight he can't escape, the sharp thrash of his bony hips. I melt in the five hundred centimeters between us so I cannot fathom the divinity of skin contact. I would disintegrate in the rapture, I would burst into flames like a phoenix.
I disgrace him with my gaze. It is easier to ignore him when he sits in the upper level, but he is here in front of me. I peel his clothes like the rind of a tangerine. My mouth keeps filling with saliva, and I keep swallowing it down. My hands shiver in my lap like someone suffering from withdrawal. I know I will never touch him so I allow myself to look. Looking isn't a crime. Thinking horrible things isn't a crime. For ten minutes I feel alive.
