My Golden Agnel

This is an edited version of the original submission. I took all my stories down in January of this year. I plan to extensively revise some of them and edit the better stories.

When I published this story before, a reader chided me for the way I portrayed blind people. One of my best friends from college had Macular Degeneration. At the time I knew him, he could see somewhat out of the sides of his eyes but not straight ahead. He had been classified as legally blind for years.

He was a great piano player with perfect pitch. In protest against many blind people learning how to tune pianos, he became a medical transcriptionist. He had a wicked sense of humor that he used to make people at ease around him. To know him was to instantly like him.

I fell in love instantly.

The first problem? I was a mime. There was no way I could tell her without breaking character and that would end my dream.

The second and even greater problem? She was far too young for me at the time. I watched as she got three cups of beer from a vendor near our stage. Since the minimum alcohol drinking age in our state is eighteen, I was sure she was older than that because our venders were picky about ID. I was twenty-nine, a huge gap at our ages, and an aspiring actor who was good at being a mime, but little else on stage.

After many arguments, my ultra-rich parents agreed to allow me to join a traveling circus/sideshow for four months each summer. If it hadn't been for my mother taking my side, I wouldn't have gotten that. My stepfather had other plans. In return, I agreed to complete law school. I already should have graduated from college, but wouldn't until next year. But I didn't care. I loved the stage and I loved being a mime.

Scholarships and my parents covered the basic tuition. Money earned during the summers paid for my living expenses. That was important to me. After seeing the effect limitless money had on my older stepbrother and stepsister, I wanted to be as self-sufficient as possible.

Back to my dream girl. I saw her at Hillsdale first. This girl certainly caught my eye. Blonde hair that turned golden in the sunlight flowed down to her shoulder blades. Piercing deep, blue - almost purple - eyes. A charming face. And a smile that instantly captured my heart. She had a killer body already and both her parents standing nearby made me think she would get more beautiful even though I knew she was too young for me. She brought a cup holder with three cups of beer back with her, gave one to each of her parents and sipped on the other.

We were performing outdoors. It was an interlude act to help keep the crowd from wandering away. At the time, I was presenting one of the longer segments of my set. The mountain climbing routine included music I'd composed and played, putting everything on a tape for the show's sound system.

Up the mountain. Teeter on the top. Realize I'm over my head, literally. Reverse everything, including the music, so it looked like a film running backward. Big fall at the end. Bounce to my feet triumphantly and take a bow. That was my segment.

Over the din of the murmuring, inattentive crowd, I watched as she drilled her gaze into me, totally enraptured, crowding as close to the stage as she could. When our eyes met, it was like an electric current blazed between us. I almost forgot my stoicism at those times.

Along with learning to be a mime, I had learned to read lips. During a break in the noise, I watched her mouth say to her friends how much she liked watching mimes in general, but this mime the most.

Eventually, her friends dragged her away because of their boredom, Her parents wandered away during one of the acts.

She attended every show in the area I did that year and for several years thereafter. She completely captured me. Between going to school and my heart's devotion to my golden angel, I had little desire to date anyone else.

Hillsdale became the highlight of my performance schedule from that point onward. Each year, her companions changed. The next year, the group was smaller and she was just one of them. No parents in sight. Her friends giggled and made fun of the mime. She stood quietly, focused on watching, trying to keep them quiet. Finally, they grouped up on her and dragged her away. I cried as only a mime can. The third year, it was only her and a boyfriend.

Each year her looks and companions changed. Now her beauty included her entire body. She always dressed down, but I could tell. Before the first of three shows that year in Hillsdale, I put on a bigger, thicker gaff to hide my constant erection.

At the same time, I'd seen the handwriting on the wall with the circus and sideshow. Harder and harder to sustain, the parent company was cutting performers. Show dates were being canceled or merged.

The final year I saw her, the show set up in a large tent midway between Adrian and Hillsdale. She was there, this time with a large diamond on her left ring finger. I had lost her without a word being spoken. Her eyes were sad as she made sure I saw the engagement ring. She still watched me as keenly as ever and when our eyes met, it was like nothing else in the world existed.

She shielded her face from her boyfriend and mouthed the words, "I love you, my mime. Sorry."

The next year the joint show between Adrian and Hillsdale was canceled for lack of a venue. I was already through school at the time, and I worked only a few shows to concentrate on my work for a law firm. I would already be older than the average person when I sat for my bar exams.

When I was 33, the circus for which I had worked, decided to put on one last performance at Adrian-Hillsdale. I eagerly committed. She wasn't there. My heart utterly broke.

Silly? Perhaps. But my daydreaming introspective desires had led me into acting and being a mime because I could be anyone I wanted. Dating women was scary, especially as I grew older, because women wanted marriage and children which I did not.

Perhaps the sorrow of her absences contributed to my unhappiness. Six years of general discontent with my life and everything in it led me to pass up a promised junior partnership, leave the large law firm of Grantham, Endicott and Cronin in Cleveland and purchase a small practice along the shores of Lake Erie in Michigan. I wanted to get away from the big city to somewhere near Hillsdale and grieve.

At least that's what I told people. My grief at losing my golden angel drove me into multiple women's beds.

The truth was I had been sleeping with Rachel, the wife of the primary partner in the law firm, and her nineteen-year-old adopted daughter, Melody, in a threesome. Her husband decided that since Melody wasn't a blood relative, she was fair game getting her drunk and fucking her in the marital bed. Our affair was Rachel's method of getting back at her husband.

After I left, she divorced him and wanted to live with me. I told her the truth. I was still in love with my golden angel. She understood and went elsewhere. Last I heard she had married the girl's birth father who was her first love.

My stepfather called me stupid for downgrading. He threatened to cut off my inheritance which would be substantial when he died. I didn't care. I made enough money in my small practice and lived frugally.

I had received a trust fund when I turned twenty-five, set up by my maternal grandfather. My first act had been to withdraw all the money and put the funds where only I could access them. I guess my stepdad figured I'd spent it all like my stepbrother and stepsister would have. I prided myself on leaving the money untouched. The interest and earnings alone would have sustained me for six months with no other income.

In my free time, I searched towns near Hillsdale for my golden angel with no positive results. People started shaking their heads and avoiding me on the streets and in the taverns and restaurants. "Obsessed" was a word I frequently heard. "Tetched in the head," was a phrase heard as well. People in our small town pretty much had to use my services because my rates were so cheap.

This continued until one day I saw an ad in the regional newspaper asking for mimes to audition. "Must have background music." I periodically remained active as a mine. I had the music I'd recorded. I still longed for the stage.

I especially loved doing a mime act in the square near my old office and watching the harried employees I once worked with scurry by like worker bees. Saw the principal in the firm stride by more than once with a worried unhappy expression on his face.

Details of the auditions aren't important except they lasted over three days and included Toledo, Grand Rapids, and Detroit, moving up a level each time. In Detroit, we appeared in front of a late-night audience at a bistro in one of the nearby resorts and got to stay overnight.

I became one of three finalists. Only then were we told where and for what event we were auditioning. It was a private party in the countryside of northern Michigan. Why we traveled to all those other cities wasn't evident, at least at the time.

The final audition promised to be another strange event in an already bizarre string of auditions. We were transported individually to a large house -- almost a castle -- near Houghton on a Saturday. None of us would see the other two performers. None of us were told what to anticipate except an overnight stay might be possible so we should pack a small bag accordingly. We'd be told the results soon after we got home.

I arrived inside a blacked-out van at ten AM, the prescribed time. Once inside, I was shown to a small room. I was told by a woman, short and stout, wearing a nurse's uniform, that I had seven minutes to prepare. With only a small hand mirror, I put on my white face and highlighted my eyebrows. I also took off my outer shirt, pulled up the suspenders I'd tucked into my pants and tied a bright blue scarf around my neck. I had suspected we won't have dressing areas and I'd been prepared. I pulled out my digital recorder and performed the basic parts of my routine. As I continued to practice a door on the other side of the room opened.

Exactly seven minutes after she left, the nurse came in with another woman who was dressed plainly in a dull gray housedress. Her coal-black hair barely reached the top of her neck and was stringy and un-styled. She wore large, black-framed sunglasses which struck me as odd. The whole effect was like someone trying to look ugly.

She had one hand resting on the arm of the nurse and I began to understand. She was probably blind, which made the situation even odder. If she was in charge of the auditions, all this secrecy, all this expense, was worthless for obvious reasons.

By now they were standing in front of me. The nurse stepped away slightly and the woman raised one hand to hold it near my face.

The nurse startled me when she spoke. "She wants to know if it's okay to touch you." Staying in mime mode, I nodded approval. "You need to speak. She can't see you," the nurse said.

I said, "Hello. I'm a mime." Stupid, I'm sure, but I was not used to speaking while in character.

The woman touched my nose, smiled slightly, and began to run all four fingers lightly over every feature of my face: Across my lips, along my jawline up to my right ear, across the top of my head, back to my eyes and down my nose. She brought her left hand up to explore the other side in the same manner. She was close enough I sometimes felt the brush of her breasts against my chest. The contact made my breath catch.

I was perfectly mystified. Why would facial features make a difference? I was a mime. I wore a white face, blackened elongated eyebrows, a red and blue horizontally striped shirt with a blue knotted scarf, red suspenders, and black pants like all mimes.

I suppose somewhere, somehow, I retained a small silver of hope that this was my golden angel. If she was, something extremely bad had happened because I couldn't make myself believe this was the same woman. While she was evaluating me, I searched her face for clues. Her makeup concealed many things. What I did not know.

Now she explored my neck and shoulders. The nurse spoke again. "She wants you to perform some of your routines while she holds your shoulders. I know mimes sometimes stay motionless, but not this time, please. Just do the best you can. If you get separated, make some noise so she can relocate you."

I did. A different act than the one I was performing the first time I'd seen my golden angel, but still one I'd done frequently.

I figured she'd lose track of me right away, but she seemed to know my moves like she'd watched me dozens of times. When we lost contact, I cleared my throat and realized the loss hadn't been her fault; in the oddity of the situation, I simply forgotten a part of the routine and left it out. Her hands were in the proper position where I should have been.

A spark of hope flared. A few seconds later I moved apart on purpose. A frown crossed her face. She began to hum, so low at first that I barely heard. As her voice grew louder and stronger, I recognized the tune. It was from one of my routines; music I hadn't yet played during my impromptu practice today.

I joined her, filling in the places where she didn't remember correctly. Now the corners of her mouth picked up. We moved together, both in motion and voice. When I stopped humming, she continued, switching to a little ditty I often sang to myself while I removed my makeup after a show.

No one in the public had ever heard that tune, at least to my knowledge. Whoever she was, she had somehow snuck backstage in the past.

I moved into another routine, and she joined me, humming and moving along perfectly. When I stopped, her entire face looked like sunshine after a storm and her hands traveled my face tenderly. She whispered in my ear as her head leaned against my shoulder.

"Is that really you, my precious mime? I've missed you all these years. I've searched and searched and finally found you." Tears streamed from under the sunglasses as she removed them. Her eyes were dead, expressionless. They were still blue, but there was no depth, not even a hint of purple. When I moved, they didn't track me; only when I made a noise did they follow. Her face, even without the glasses, was foreign to me. If she was my golden angel, she looked totally different now.

But I knew. Deep in my soul. I knew. The movement of her lips was the same and it released passions that I'd suppressed for years. I started to speak, and she placed a fingertip lightly on my lips.

"Shush," she said. "Stay in character for me, my mime." She followed her hand to my lips with her mouth and we kissed, a deep kiss, filled with passion and promises, a kiss that made me harden like she was stroking me, yet she wasn't.

I lost track of time and presence.

Meanwhile, the nurse had brought two chairs into the room.

"Please sit. I can't stand for long periods, but I'm getting stronger," she said.

"Tell me who you are, my mime? All I knew was your stage name, Silver Fox."

I told her my name was Charlie Russell and that I was a lawyer on the coast of Lake Erie with a small practice after tiring of big city life and a large law firm.

"I've been looking for you for years. Where have you been, my golden angel? That's what I named you."

She laughed evocatively.

"As you can tell, I'm no longer someone who can be called a 'golden angel'."

"My name is Ashley Sherman. I know you saw the engagement ring that day. From there it's a simple story. One requirement of a company saving merger was the marriage of a girl -- me - and a boy. Everyone flies to Acapulco for the wedding. Plane crashes during the landing. One survivor. Me. Again. Coma for a year or so. Loss of most memory. Surgeries continued forever until I said

Stop

.

"I know this sounds crazy, but one of the few things I remember from my prior life was watching a nameless mime perform near Hillsdale. A man who attracted me so much as a teenager that I think I fell in love with him instantly. The psychiatrist who worked with me says that's sometimes how the mind works. It seizes on a few simple things to help the person survive."

As she continued to talk, this time it was me who placed my fingers on her lips.

"Shush. My brain is spinning from what you've said. Let me think for a bit." I held her hand, squeezing it lightly from time to time. She needed some form of communication.

"Okay. I'm thinking that we have a perfect opportunity here. All of us, every person alive, is different every day depending on external influences. But deep down, each person operates from a set of core values. We have a clean slate to decide what those core values are. Maybe they are ones you've always had but have forgotten. Maybe those values are something we learn or invent together.

"You mean like Eliza Higgins in My Fair Lady."

"Yes. You'll need to explain how you know that movie later

"For now, let me continue. You've got your four senses plus your mind." I put a finger on her forehead. "True, you can't remember much previous to recovering from the coma, but you don't have much to forget either. Let's make good new memories." I touched her ears. "Your hearing." I tapped her lips "Your sense of taste and a voice." "And most of all, you still have your heart." I touched her just below her collarbone.

"That's too high for my heart, silly," she responded.

"True, but it's the only place I dare touch without prior permission."

"Oh," she said. I swear I saw a slight blush on her neck.

I moved her hand to my scarf.

"To start with, let's get on common ground. I'll take my scarf off and fold it until all sides are even. That makes it into a blindfold, and I can place it around my eyes. That way neither of us will be able to see. We'll both have to rely on our other senses."

One unintended advantage was to allow our faces to get closer together. I kissed her again. She moaned.

"Can we do on that a lot?" she asked. She grabbed my hand, moved it to her mouth and licked a finger. "Can we do this?" She pushed my finger in her mouth and sucked. I was the person to moan this time.

"Or this?" She pulled my hand to her breast and moved our thumbs over her erect nipple several times. "You have my permission to do this anytime you want.

"Or even this?" She moved to my cock. She squeezed it hard, then started rubbing until my shaft became steel hard. She made sucking noises with her mouth and laughed.

If she could have seen my face it would be covered with shock.

"Methinks my golden angel is a bit naughty. I like that. I'll do anything you want. Just name it. I'm at your command," I said in a tight voice.

"Anything?"

"Yes, anything."

"Be careful what you agree to. One selection I got as part of my audiobook's subscription was

A Good Girl's Guide to Bad Sex.

I loved it. I play with myself every night. But that isn't truly fucking and that's what I want. I need a real cock inside me."

"In due time, my dear. In due time.

"For now, we need to be careful. One of the many disadvantages of not seeing is we don't know who's watching. I don't want anyone thinking I'm taking advantage of your handicap."

She smiled wickedly.

"Ack," I said. "This chair is killing me. Is there anywhere more comfortable we can talk?"

"Only my room where I sleep. You're right. They watch me closely. All. The. Time. I'm not sure my room is a good place."

"If it's got a comfortable place to sit, we'll make it work. We'll leave the door open and invite to nurse to sit in the room far enough away. Anything to find someplace more comfortable."

"I heard her open the door and come inside not long after we started talking so that won't stop us. Can you check?"