Chapter One

Ravel comes by my flower stand every day at three o’clock and buys a lily, each day a different kind. After kissing its petals, he hands it to me as a gift. I blush and bite my lip, embarrassed, and then smile like an innocent coquette. He’s honoring me and my name, Lily.

I can only think of sex when he’s nearby.

I watch his eyes, how they comb my body as if he adores me, though I often wonder why. So slight of build, my breasts will forever be pubescent, mere handfuls in a man’s grasp. I never wear bras. When he stares at me, I know my small nipples contract and press against the softness of my shirts like tiny pebbles poking through the sand. I can’t imagine what he thinks of my slim waist and hips, though I often suspect he strips away my clothes in his mind to view my pubis. I’d shudder to think he sees my prominent labia and the snippet of purple flesh that appears between them—or that he imagines me wet there, when I certainly am.

My heart flutters every time he appears walking up the street toward the kiosk where I work. I wonder at his broad smile, his jaunty step, and the grand twinkle in his pale blue eyes. He is a man of leisure, I think. Mr. McCauly, my employer, has told me he’s a man of means, a dealer of antiques, who combs through Europe for months buying treasures he sells in his shop down the street.

I haven’t been brave enough to step inside his odd place of business, though I’ve stood outside and peered into the windows where gold gleams on gilt picture frames, and the crystal is polished like pieces of stars fallen to earth and the tainted metal of ancient swords glows with a dull luster from the dark deeds of their past use. I confess that it is the other door to his shop that intrigues me even more than his front entrance—this one off the alley. I can see it from the sidewalk, painted with Chinese red enamel, sometimes dusty from the street, sometimes radiant when it’s just been washed. I suspect this door leads to Ravel’s private quarters and I wonder what women he’s had there.

Such a dashing fellow, enough charm to woo any female. I see his women as languid creatures that spend thei