"Cole? Do I know him? Should I know him?"
"Our son."
Astounded, "What?"
"How would you know Cole is experienced in waxing?"
Cole, early twenties, is their only child.
Julia's younger brother, Carl and Julian were bloodmates from young. Cabal. Partners in soft crime. It was Carl who introduced his sister to Julian. Julian, Julia and Carl, the Three Musketeers. Oh, those carefree swashbuckling days.
Carl was killed in a tragic car accident some years ago. Julia and Julian were devastated.
As Cole emerged from teenhood, he and Julian became more like mates than dad and son. It is as if Cole slid into the void left by Carl.
Cole married young. He was widowed two years ago when his Brazilian wife passed away because of terminal illness.
"Cole told me he waxed Antônia regularly, continuing the habit from her Brazilian days before she married him."
"Oh? So our son discussed his wife's feminine details with you?"
Guardedly, "It was in passing... Boys pub talk after a few rounds."
"Did you discuss your wife's, his mum's pussy with our son?"
Julian does not answer. There is a hush, not quite amounting to a silence. For some inexplicable reason, Julia feels a tingle in her loins.
"I take your deafening silence to mean you did?"
Deflecting, "Honey, I only brought up Cole because of your concern with entrusting strangers to wax you, which is understandable. Cole is experienced. He is family. Yes, he is our son. But, I'm sure he'll be adult and professional about the whole process."
Annoyed, "Do you not find it strange that a husband asks his wife to splay before their son, as he removes mummy dearest's bush?"
Julian countering, "Suppose Cole is a gynecologist, the best in the business. Would you be OK if he examines you?"
"Hmmm... You're skirting the question. Waxing is a vain frivolity. Gynaecology is healthcare."
"Suppose you want a photo essay of yourself for posterity, and Cole is an accomplished pro photographer. Would you be OK if he shoots you?"
"That will depend on whether I'll be opening my legs for him to shoot my charms."
Julian discerns a little progress. All this talk excites him in the same way when he was discussing Julia's femininity with their son at the pub not so long ago. He wonders how this is affecting Julia.
Julian knows Julia all too well. He mustn't overplay this. Just get her to a fringe state of fascinated repulsion. Then, things have a way of moving along on their own impulsive force.
Julia in a final-word type tone, "I don't wish to cross the line. If Cole does me, our relationship will change forever. Whenever I look into his eyes, I'll see my secrets in his eyes. It'll be awkward."
Julia and Julian meander on to discuss other matters of lower moral import.
Julia can't help but sense the deflation of Julian's spirit, at least, what remains of it, as they sign off the webcam.
Julia shuts her laptop with a deep sigh. She is still in the Wicked Weasel thong. As she gets up, she senses a run of fluid from the minimalist gusset, down her thigh, to her ankle. Oh my god, did Julian see that? She stood up a couple of times during the webcam. She touches the dribble. This is her thickest excitement ever. She makes her way to the loo to dab off. Once there, she decides otherwise. She feels deliciously wicked, feeding on her own excitement.
A thousand miles away, Julian closes the webcam window with a sly smirk. He plays back the recorded webcam session. Yesss! It is what he thinks it is!
***
Tossing and turning. Usually, Julia falls asleep quicktime like a falling tree in a forest making no noise. But, not tonight. These thoughts, where do they come from? They intrigue and repulse her. They play gentle and awry on her mind.
***
The haze lifts.
Julia is on a pedestal, installed at some kind of town square. A charming rustic piazza. A surge of people of many hues swirling, milling around the place, discerning, studying this and that.
She can't move. An imposing force has rendered her immobile. But, she is acutely sentient. An odd sensation. Metaphysical. She becomes more self-aware. She is both subject and object in the same dimension of being.
She is standing on the pedestal of David. Michelangelo's David. That of Florence, Italy. She is standing on the pedestal of David, posing like the classical David. But, she is not David. She is herself. Julia. Regally proud and yet vulnerably naked.
It is all rather Kafkaesque.
A young man drifts off the swarm of humanity, and stands alone before her. He studies her for a time. Parses her every contour. His eyes trace her curves and sinews, once over, and then again.
He reaches out to touch her mons pubis as if making a determination of something. He is pedantic about the task. Gently, he parses her pubic thatch, runs his finger along her pout of lips, like treasured artifacts. She is of marble. And yet, she senses the warmth of his male hand.
He peeks up tentatively, tilting his sunhat a little to take her in. She sees his face now.
"Mum!" he cries in silence. A smirk.
***
Chapter 2: Reflection
Julia's eyes flicker open.
She is a morning person by habit. Or, more precisely, a pre-dawn person. After a moment of dissonance, she becomes aware of her situation.
She enjoys, and almost hears the silence. The silence is actual, beautiful to her ears, beautiful to listen to. She lays in bed absorbing the poetic stillness.
She gazes at the window. A full moon shines in the pre-dawn sky. It is enormous. A comforting vision. Some greater force is watching over her, and stoically approving.
She drifts out to her open patio, devilishly near nude, a closet exhibitionist if there is such a thing, to write her most inspired private works. Erotic poetry and stories.
On days when Julian is not on business travel, when he rises, she makes the most of the pomp and circumstance of his morning wood.
Here, in the stillness, it all seems so right.
Julia rises quietly even though she is alone. She slips off her nightie, relishing the immediate caress of the night air feeling her up. She traipses to the living room. She fires up her laptop PC on the coffee table. She slides open the sliding glass door to the patio, to let in the remains of the night.
She sits on the sofa, and begins to write down her thoughts and feelings.
She is all too conscious that she is naked. If you've ever walked around your house naked, it feels so weird and wild. She is trying to take some deep breaths and focus on the words. But, words have deserted her en masse this morning.
Her mind is preoccupied with something she cannot quite place.
It is still dark outside.
She cannot see if there is anyone out there looking in at her naked body, sitting, illuminated by the laptop screen. She knows her patio is quite private. But, is there a secret spy sweet spot in the enshrouding thicket of trees? Is there someone who is pulled in by the glimmer of light?
She knows that the chance of someone spying on her is next to zero. But, the speculation makes her feel so vulnerable, so daring, so exposed. So excited.
6am now. Every minute that passes makes her feel ever more exposed, and she has to admit, rather more aroused than she imagined she might be after this amount of time.
She gives up on her writing. Her creative juices are just not secreting. But, something else is.
She decides to amuse herself with the photo album on her laptop. An explicable force field guides her to subfolder "Cole & Antônia".
Here's a photo of Cole and Antônia in swimsuits. By Cole's impossibly boyish looks, it must be circa when they first met. Presumably a Brazilian beach by the looks of it. Maybe Copacabana? Leblon? Ipanema? Is Antônia the girl from Ipanema?
Yes, dear Antônia is lovely. So lovely. May she RIP. What a tragic blow to Cole. It has been two years now. She wonders how Cole is coping with the aching void.
Julia feels a stab of guilt. She thinks back to Antônia's early days in England. She was quite distant to Antônia, at a time when she would've appreciated an engaging mother-in-law to help her settle in what must have been a sedate cold Anglo world to her. It was uncharacteristic of her nature. Why was she that way?
She unconsciously magnifies Antônia's face. It strikes her that her late daughter-in-law looks so much like her, notwithstanding the age difference, if one disregards her latin tone in contrast to her English rose anemic pale. Antônia's wintry Germanic bloodline shows a little, overlaid with summery latin overtones. Is she the secret offspring of a monster Nazi general and a native beach babe, whom he discovers later, perversely, is half-Jewish? Her thoughts are spinning awry.
Julia drifts down Antônia's body clad in custom Brazilian string thong. The bikini looks at one with her being. She was born into it, and then, she just grew into it. Julia begins to appreciate a bit about what Julian was saying about blending seamlessly into the local biodiversity.
Curiously, Julia's hand autopilots to find and select a photo of her young self in a bikini, taken at the nook of cove near her cottage home. She remembers that day. She juxtaposes the photo side-by-side against Antônia's photo. She gasps. Uncanny.
This may be disrespectful to her late daughter-in-law, but she can't help it. She magnifies Antônia's crotch. The string leaves nothing to even the dullest of imaginations. Julia magnifies one more level. The max. She gasps again. One word, surreal.
