1. Cruelty and Compassion

Young women are a sweet agony, a toyshop I’ll never enter. I’m a moth, forever singeing the wings of my soul, stupidly circling toward destruction.

Courting ridicule, courting rejection, I instruct my prison on wheels to advance across the Esplanade, stopping against the wrought iron railing.

And there’s my other love, the one giving me nothing but joy. Way out, the rollers rise, turn from azure to turquoise, relentlessly rush the shore until their front is an impossible incline, and their tops boil with foam, until they break and fall with a roar of thunder. The concrete under my wheels vibrates with the shock of their ever-repeated assault.

A thousand times have I seen the beach, in all its moods, and always it is different. A dozen times have I tried to capture the grandeur in my paintings. Others praise my work, even with the ultimate praise of a purchase, though they know nothing of the twisted wreck I am. To me, my attempts are ever short of the real: the living sea meeting the immovable shore.

The beach is an expanse of gold sprinkled with people. Wherever my eyes roam, they light upon rounded breasts seeking to escape skimpy restraints, flaring hips, flashing legs, hair of gold and chestnut and anthracite blown by the breath of the sea.

Torture.

Someone casts a shadow. A head intrudes between me and the sun. “Disgusting,” a cold female voice says. “They should lock things like that away.”

“Don’t be unkind.” This is from a higher voice, perhaps even younger. “He can hear you.”

A tinkling laugh follows, a musical sound of amusement that chainsaws into my heart. “Who says he can even hear? Or if he can, would he understand? That thing?”

I should pretend. I should be the idiot of her supposition. I should sit, mute and immobile and invisibly bleeding, and wait for them to move on before returning to my lair. But my lips click the control and my tongue turns the little ball. My chair spins on the spot, and I face them.

Long, shapely, suntanned legs end at tomato-red panties so brief that little blonde pubic hairs peek out each side, mocking me. Smooth brown abdomen stretches to luscious red-clothed swellings above, the nipples outlined against the material. Still higher, a heart-shaped face is framed by hair of deep gold, lighter at the tips. The cruel, scornful eyes are blue, blue, bluer than the sea. A little, pert nose, a grimace of distaste on the full lips I’ll never kiss.

Beyond, long straight hair of burnished bronze partly hides a plain face, covered with freckles. Her eyes, same color as her hair, look through thick blue-rimmed glasses. She wears